#so they might not be the best examples. idk.

[emero0]

Someones said this already- surely- but i cant stop thinking about ruis whole “thank you for giving me a chance to change” mentality

Because its super sweet and all but i dont think either him or tsukasa have realized how much tsukasa has changed because of rui

Like- read main story or even early game tsukasa and then read the most recent (eng or jp)

HES CHANGED SO MUCH and its all because rui humbled him- told him that he’d never be a star—because at that rate, he really wouldnt have—in a moment of pain and hurt because tsukasa was being a bitch towards nene, and also possibly because this great opportunity rui wanted to have was turning out to be a lie

Until tsukasa changed

Realized his behavior and worked to better himself, and (lets be honest) practically begs this guy hes known for maybe 2 months (idk how long the main story takes place) to come back and make shows with him because??? Because tsukasa thinks hes just that good of a director? Or maybe its because ruis the one who made him realize his true dream again and what being a “future star” really means

Not to say rui hasnt changed either, him and mizuki talk a bit about it in ena5 and he mentions it a lot,

I think the wonder halloween event might be the best example

Cus the reason i thought of this post is because i was reading tsukasa side story from that event and MAN is he cocky- like annoyingly so- idk why he was (and still is) my favorite /j

But anyway- i remembered just now that the whole plot of that event is rui learning not to hold himself back, which is a big part of his character development imo

On the other hand, ruis impact on tsukasa is less direct

Like i said its because rui first got him to realize his “true feelings” (as the game calls it), but after that its really all on tsukasa—well not quite-

See- a big part of Tsukasa’s character development is his constant realization of- i guess “his place in the world”

For me personally the phoenix edge event is a good example of him acknowledging it- but i realize it actually started way sooner

In the pop in my heart event- he realized that his acting is so far behind these american (or atleast english speaking) actors who can convey feelings through language barriers

Its his “humbling” arc if you will, he realizes just how far he needs to go, and its not that he’s not confident anymore, but that hes more aware of where his talents lie and isnt overconfident

And this is all stuff he learned more on his own- however: rui still helped propel this growth

He realized in the torpe event (on the stage of dazzling lights i believe-) that he had been holding tsukasa back by typecasting him, and decides to give him more diverse roles as well as let wxs do the play torpe in the first place (because as director, it was his final decision)

But after that—and this applies to all of wxs, but mostly nene+tsukasa—he goes and tries to figure out how to keep wxs together while still giving them the chance to grow as actors and not be confined to a stage

And he succeeds, and off wxs goes to improve!

They (and every character in game i feel) have changed and grown so much and its so awesome to see it happen—and its neat how much theyve influenced each other’s change through it all

So yeah— ruikasa(/p or /r idc) have helped each other grow so much and i hate them with a fiery passion /j

[rei-ismyname]

The deification of Jean Grey

When a 16 year old Jean Grey was bought to the present by Hank McIrresponsible, she was immediately confronted with the post-death canonisation the X-Men greater social circle had saddled her with. Big feelings and bigger expectations.

The worst of it was from people who'd never even met her, but those closest to her was no less fraught. Adult Scott was certainly affected by her presence, but he behaved the most normal about it (cough, Logan.)

This is a really cute conversation, clearly something Jean needs. Not sure I agree that Jean never had a chance. She made her choices as a hero but there's plenty that *could* have gone differently. Besides, she's already come back to life at least once and travelled through time a bunch. You can't keep Jean Grey down for long. I'd expect Scott to say something like that, though he seems especially pensive at this point. I guess it's understandable, as time travel is a headfuck. It's cute that he's jealous of his younger self and that he admits it.

Scott's empathy for Hank here is really sweet, especially considering the lengths Hank went through to hurt him (intentionally or not.) The very presence of Jean should be reminding people of the culpability of a Phoenix host. Jean is safely dead and can be put on a pedestal, whereas Scott receives nothing but venom. I'm sure Chuck's death is a big factor, but the man tried very hard to die by Dark Phoenix Jean, too. It's easy to overlook the flaws of the dead, and in many ways Jean and Xavier both get canonised as mutant saints. Neither deserve it, for different reasons.

Oh boy, Jean's actions here are difficult to discuss appropriately. She's lonely and scared, she's just woken up from a nightmare, and the person she's closest to is there for her - all grown up. I doubt this is intended to be sexual, my read on it is Jean reaching for platonic intimacy. It's definitely rooted in the love Scott and Jean have for each other, something their awkward 16 year old selves haven't managed to navigate. 'The man I hoped you'd be' is loaded as hell, but it is very human. None of us have ever met our time-displaced selves or loves, and it's very understandable to view them as the same person, except not/better.

I'm not going to credit Scott for not learning into Jean's confusion and need for comfort (because it's just the right thing to do) but I do think he understands and he definitely handled it appropriately. Setting firm boundaries and pivoting the focus to the kind of support Jean needs is considerate and responsible.

Kitty's stance and pseudo-threat here is difficult to parse. She says he handled it well, luckily for him, implying that she was listening the whole time but was also wary of him not handling it well? It's hard to see this as anything other than Kitty thinking they might fuck. I'm not sure they do understand each other, because Kitty didn't listen to him, she just banned him from being in her room alone. Not an unreasonable policy to have, but it doesn't give Scott a lot of credit. As they both leave, Jean cries which seems like a failure of duty of care. Feels like there's more going on here. 'But if the genders were reversed' whataboutery is usually bad faith nonsense, but there is an actual example here. If Kitty heard young Bobby crying alone or screaming in the middle of the night I'm pretty sure she'd check in on him. That she's dated his adult counterpart changes nothing. Adult! Scott and Teen! Jean could communicate telepathically any time they wished, so idk. Maybe just the writers covering their bases and overcorrecting.

Then there's Emma and the Cuckoos. While Emma is the best person to train and teach Teen Jean, she does it in a very messed up way. Jean is so obviously right when she identifies that Emma has issues. I'm not fond of this plot point, or at least how it's written - the whole 'girls are bitchy and jealous' regressive idea put centre stage. This psychic duel fails the Bechdel Test and makes all the adults look super irresponsible for allowing it to happen.

Keep in mind Emma is bombarding a 16 year old with sexual images. Jean IS a saint for putting up with this shit and not melting her brain. Telepathy isn't real, but intrusive thoughts are - and I don't think it's a stretch to say targeted sexualised intrusive thoughts is deliberately traumatizing a teenager. I definitely think this could have been written better. Emma having unresolved Jean Grey issues is to be expected, but dealing with it like this and everyone being okay with it is difficult to believe.

Then again, it seems nobody is immune to the deification of Jean Grey, not even the writers. They all know her as the most powerful telepath so obviously teenage Jean can deal with whatever you throw at her. Kitty and Scott should know better, and Emma has plenty of other ways to train Jean. Yes, she's the great Jean Grey, but she's also a 16 year old who's not coping all that well. I'm glad that Teen Jean and Emma became friends not long after this, but it says a lot that the dude writing it couldn't figure out a way to explain it on the page. There was an opportunity here to show women building a friendship off their commonalities, but instead it's something Jean has to overcome with psychic power not emotional strength - and the adults looking after her don't look very responsible.

[sonknuxadow]

ignore razor and blade in the background this isnt about them . anyway . Looks around all scared. thoughts on him ^

[batsplat]

hello, i have a question. what is the difference betwwen a hard and a dangerous racer? is there some sort of characteristics like how succesful a racer is or is more of a "a dangerous racer races on the limit and that's dangerous. a hard racer races on the limit but. its just a hard racer". thank you for answering!

completely in the eye of the beholder, I'm afraid. it's a perpetual debate, and one where everyone draws the line differently... very much a case of one man's dangerous manoeuvre is another one's hard but fair overtake... that being said! I'll have a go at coming up with a general framework with which people assess this stuff

let's bring in two strawmen, which feels like the most direct way to illustrate the possible stances you can take on this debate. to be clear, nobody really fits neatly in either ideological category - but, well, these are pretty much the two most extreme positions anyone could have:

when people are describing something as 'hard racing' (as opposed to... idk, 'clean' racing), they are usually talking about a) contact between the two bikes, and/or b) an action that forces the other bike to take evasive action. what constitutes forcing evasive action? well, this is all very nebulous and hard to define - there's crossing another rider's racing line, making them pick up the bike mid-corner, forcing them wide/off-track, not yielding in situations where one of you will have to yield to avoid a crash... but this is always an assessment that will depend on the specific circumstances. not every block pass is considered hard racing, for instance, even though you are quite literally 'blocking' the other bike. contact is the more straightforward one... if you initiate a move that leads to contact, then most people would agree this is 'hard' racing

so say you are in the 'A' camp. according to this line of thinking, pretty much every contact is 'dangerous' riding and should not be allowed. here's what gibernau said about jerez 2005, included in the sete post:

let's not discuss the merits of the jerez 2005 move specifically here - this is an expression of a broader ideological position. "this is not a contact sport" "it's not about hitting another guy"... so, according to this stance, actions that knowingly result in contact should not be acceptable and as a result need to be penalised. taken to the logical extreme, any and all 'hard racing' is dangerous

let's go to the other extreme, 'B'. let's say you're very pro-hard racing, to the point where you think that contact is more than fine and that it is unreasonable to call it 'dangerous'. sure, of course it is dangerous, but inherently all motorcycle racing has a lot of risk attached. racing that involves contact is basically acceptable. even within this extreme, my lovely venn diagram allows for some actual 'dangerous' riding - either behaviour that is wholly irresponsible during races... or stuff that doesn't count as hard racing because it's not 'racing'. here are some examples:

stuff that happens during races but is like... egregious misbehaviour. cf romano fenati pulling a rival's brake lever during a race - obviously dangerous and no longer really exists within the confines of actual racing

in either races or non-race sessions - not following proper safety procedures like for instance ignoring yellow flags. again, should be pretty obvious why that's dangerous

poor behaviour in non-race sessions,the general tag for not exhibiting appropriate care, awareness for your environment, all that stuff... the extreme example is marc barrelling into the back of another rider after the chequered flag had been waved in friday practise at phillip island 2011 (more on that here). it's also things like faffing about on the racing line, see the pecco mugello dramatics

so, yes, everyone will agree that there's some stuff that counts as 'dangerous riding' that's distinct from 'hard racing' just because it's not actual racing. that's the most straightforward stuff... but yeah, anyway, those are basically the two extreme positions you can take. you can say that all contact is bad and dangerous, that any time you're forcing another rider to take evasive action and are making a pass that isn't 1000% clean, you are putting others at unnecessary risk. or, you can say, hey, everything goes, rubbing is racing on steroids - sure, there's a small category of things that aren't acceptable, mainly stuff that isn't actually racing, but otherwise you should be allowed to brute force yourself past riders whenever you please

obviously, they're strawmen for a reason. basically nobody holds either of these positions in their entirety - and in race situations, there's always going to be actions that are seen as hard racing by some and as dangerous by others. so, unfortunately, we're going to have to dig a little deeper here, and figure out by what metrics people draw the line between hard and dangerous. let's... hey, how about we bring in casey stoner, just this once. as a treat. here's what he said after laguna '08:

“I’ve been in hard racing all my life, some very aggressive racing, but today was a little bit too much. I nearly went in the gravel so many times and I don’t think it was necessary.”

hard racing? casey's done that before. some very aggressive racing? no issue. but what valentino did at laguna was "a little bit too much" and not "necessary". the specific thing casey cites is nearly going into the gravel - and indeed, forcing other riders wide/off-track is one of the types of racing behaviour that most finely straddles the line between 'hard' and 'dangerous'. for other examples, see suzuka 2001 in which biaggi forced valentino off-track and valentino flipped him off when he eventually got past (a few more details here), qatar 2012 where marc forced luthi off-track and got slapped after the race (here) and sepang 2015, where... uh. you know. or how about argentina 2018 where... look, I think you get the point - plenty of controversy comes from forcing your opponent's bike into places where it's simply not supposed to be

while we're at it, let's throw in a little excerpt from casey's autobiography about the race:

A lot of it was fair racing, he was out-braking me on the inside and riding better than me around a lot of the track. If it had all been like that I would cop it sweet. But a couple of moves off camera added to my frustration. I risked running off the track, and racing at the limits like that as we were I even became worried about my safety.

(does have to be said that the pair of them spend... relatively little time off-camera, never when the bikes seem to be particularly close - but of course the problem this statement creates is that by definition you can't judge any footage you don't have access to)

so, let's strip away the details and think about what casey is actually talking about here. it's a risk/reward calculation. this is what's at the heart of this riding standards debate: what level of risk is acceptable for what level of reward? there are situations in which there is inherently a higher level of risk in a way that isn't caused by either party - influenced by the circuit layout, what the weather is like, how hard you're both pushing aka how much on the 'limit' you are, and so on. but even if that risk isn't your 'fault', if you are riding at very high speeds on a dangerous track, you can still be considered a dangerous rider if you're not exercising appropriate levels of caution

so, let's break it down even further and try and come up with some basic criteria by which people judge whether a specific move is 'hard' or 'dangerous'. how about this: (1) does the action have a reasonable chance of coming off, (2) is the risk you're taking proportionate to the reward, and (3) is the move likely to cause serious harm to you or the other rider. let's take them one by one

listen, it needs to be plausible that you're going to be able to pull this move off. if you're firing the bike from fifty miles back into a gap that doesn't exist, then this is by definition an unnecessary risk. you are not going to do yourself any good and you are also not going to do the other rider any good. (sometimes it might be in your interest to crash the other rider out so you might as well, but unsurprisingly this is frowned upon. see the 1998 250cc title decider.) obviously, this is going to be affected by your skill level - if you're a mid rider, there will be fewer moves that are 'plausible' for you than for the best riders

this is basically the common sense metric. if you are riding in a pack, make sure to keep in mind that crashing in this situation could get ugly. if you are fighting for p5, maybe a different approach is fitting than fighting for p1. if you can make an overtake a lap later as long as you're patient, in a way that's a lot safer than doing it now, perhaps just do that instead. don't be silly in the wet! this comes down to stakes, whether it's worth it, how likely the move is to succeed... and also what the consequences would be if you got it wrong, for both yourself and other riders. you're making an overall judgement based on all of those factors... sometimes you need to take risk, but it's better to make sure that risk is reasonably sensible

however high the potential rewards are, there's a certain level of risk that is no longer acceptable, where the 'risk/reward calculation' stuff has to be thrown out of the window because the reward no longer matters. this is basically the catch-all for 'wholly irresponsible riding' - anything that's just going too far

so, uh. obviously everything described above is super subjective... but that's what people are judging in my opinion, this is the standards they are using in their head to determine where they draw the line. so, as an example, to bring back the stuff from this post about the inter-alien ideological differences:

and again, this is also what the debate after aragon 2013 was about:

if you think aragon 2013 is unacceptable to the point of being dangerous, then you probably take quite a hard line view and think pretty much any action that could lead to contact needs to be stamped down on. while that contact did have unpleasant consequences for the other party (dani wasn't able to walk for several days and his title bid was basically over), it is perhaps a little worse than could have been reasonably expected in that situation. in that sense, there's a bit of surface level similarity with jerez 2005... there, valentino made the pass for the win at the last corner, knowing he would probably bump into sete while doing so. neither rider is knocked off their bike (though sete has to leave the track) and it is at a slow corner, with relatively 'light' contact. unfortunately, as a result of where valentino's bike impacted sete's body and sete's preexisting shoulder issues, it ended up injuring sete (see here for valentino learning of this perhaps a little later than was ideal and only after he'd taken the piss out of sete for dramatically clutching his arm). at aragon 2013, marc was harrying dani and sticking very close to his rear tyre as he applied pressure to his teammate before he made a small misjudgement, getting his braking a little wrong and clipping the back of dani's bike. he happened to cut a crucial wire in the process, causing dani to highside a few moments later

these aren't equivalent situations and each have their own risk/reward profile. but the basic point is this: inviting contact with another rider will always generate more risk, and can always have unintended consequences... even when the action is relatively innocuous and the rider would not have expected this outcome. if you are in the 'all passes should be clean passes' school, this risk is fundamentally unacceptable. even trickier - what if contact is made as a result of a move you initiated but the other rider could have avoided? of course, you started it, but they could have yielded... and maybe they should have, maybe that would have been the wise, the sensible thing to do in that situation. it's always important to remember that at least two riders are involved in all these situations - and there are many cases where contact and/or crashing is not 100% the fault of any one party. so, for instance, there are several moments in laguna 2008 that are so risky in part because casey is also refusing to yield. that's not to necessarily imply any blame or fault! of course, it might not be ideal for the most aggressive riders being able to bully everyone else as they please because they know they can generally rely on everyone else being more sensible and yielding. but the differing outcomes resulting from the choices made by the 'other' rider will always help influence perception of any race situation - a move that is seen as 'hard but fair' might have been seen as considerably more dangerous if the other party hadn't yielded

and yes... yes, there is absolutely a question of your success rate. this links back to point (1) - is the move plausible? there are moves that aren't really considered examples of 'hard racing' and certainly not dangerous... because they worked. take valentino's last corner move at catalunya 2009, at a corner where you don't traditionally overtake (remember, before the race jorge was going around tempting fate by saying that if you're ahead by that point you're sorted). sure, he goes for a gap that exists, but it could easily have gone wrong - and if a lot of other riders had tried that, then it would have. how do you think yamaha would have felt if valentino had taken both yamaha riders out at the very end of the race to allow ducati to claim an unlikely victory and an increased championship lead? here's another one: misano 2017 and marc making a last lap move in treacherous conditions to snatch the win. no contact required to make that risky as shit - and if stuff like that goes wrong too often they call you an idiot at best and dangerous at worst. of course, both valentino and marc have had moments where they very much did not pull off moves they were intending, which is how we get ambition outweighing talent and 'I hope he can learn from this one and improve for the future', among other hits. but, relative to the amount of risk they're regularly taking in their racing, they get a lot of reward for their troubles... because they're very good at what they do. the risk/reward calculation is one that they... uh, can both be very adept at, but it's also one that's fundamentally easier when you're skilled enough to pull off a lot of moves that would be beyond the capabilities of other riders. it's when you don't know how to judge your moments, when you keep trying moves that you can't pull off - that's where other riders will start having a problem with you

which is where we get to reputation! how different incidents are judged will also depend on the existing reputations of the riders involved and whether they are seen as 'fair' racers or not (an even more nebulous term, if possible), versus hard racers, dangerous racers... often, this is a question of quantity too - with certain riders on the grid, you will notice they're involved in controversial incidents disproportionately often. how likely people are to pay you the benefit of the doubt... how likely they are to believe you as to what your intent was in a certain situation, perhaps the most nebulous concept of them all. 'hard' and 'dangerous' aren't assessments that are made in isolation, and how severely riders are judged will often depend on their pasts and how those pasts are perceived by others

where you get into really sticky territory is... okay, both valentino and marc have more often than not (arguably) been able to stay on the right side of 'the line', where their moves might be hard but aren't putting anyone else in active danger - but that's because they are at least theoretically capable of exhibiting a good sense of judgement and are also good at what they're doing, as covered above. here's a question: do they bear any responsibility for when younger and/or worse riders copy their moves and/or general approach to racing, with worse consequences? when they have been criticised, when they are called dangerous, at times it's not just what they're doing in the moment... it's what they're inspiring. so you've got stuff like this from sete:

even more drastically than that, after the death of a fifteen year old rider in supersport in 2021, one of his fellow rider said this about marc (which marc unsurprisingly strongly pushed back on):

(just worth remembering, this is a rider who did walk away from the sport as a result and was clearly deeply affected by what happened - the marc comments were part of a longer statement that got overshadowed by this part and the resulting controversy)

setting aside the merits or lack thereof of these specific assertions, what of the general questions they raise... can you be a dangerous rider in an indirect fashion like this, by the very nature of your legacy? are riders who helped bring about a more aggressive baseline standard of racing in any way responsible for anything that happens as a result of this standard? (even worse, there's a line of succession here - after all, who was marc's biggest inspiration?) or does individual responsibility reign supreme here? athletes are by design only interested in their own successes, aren't they - and 'legacy' is so abstract, how can anyone know how others will be influenced by what they do? how can we even begin to assess how big an influence individual riders really are? let's not forget that there will be other factors - riders in the past have discussed how particular characteristics of the moto2 class have bred more aggressive racing, or the influence of the size of motogp bikes, or how difficult it is these days to overtake in a completely 'clean' manner, or the rules themselves and to what extent they have actually been enforced etc etc... maybe there's also an element of people focusing on the easiest, most visible explanation in the form of star riders, without giving proper consideration to the underlying factors that will influence an era's style of riding. again, how you feel about all of this will vary from person to person - but part of the hard vs dangerous debate is inherently forward-looking. and it's hardly just legacy... your hard/dangerous moves may also be setting a precedent in the present. to what extent is it the duty of riders to worry about that?

so then, that's what I've got. how you draw the distinction between hard racing and dangerous riding will come down to your individual ideological position and what you think racing even entails. do you think all contact is objectionable? do you think only the most extreme of transgressions - most of which don't qualify as 'racing' per se - should be labelled dangerous? somewhere in between? everyone will draw the line in a different place, according to the situation and their individual biases and understanding of events. it comes down, generally speaking, to how you judge the risks and rewards of a certain move, whether you think what a rider attempted was 'worth' it. all of which depends on whether the rider could realistically have managed whatever action they were attempting, whether the potential rewards were proportionate to the risks, or whether the whole thing was just too flat out dangerous to ever be worth it... of course, none of these are objective standards by which you can assess the racing, but they should give you a rough indication of what people are even talking about when they're distinguishing between hard and dangerous racing. riders as individuals are also far from consistent in their stances (surely not!) so you do have to play it by ear a lot of the times... and while there are plenty incidents where the majority can agree whether it is 'hard' or 'dangerous', there are plenty more where you're going to get a lot of contradictory opinions. no definitive answers here - unfortunately a lot of the time you'll just have to make your own mind up

[spinnysocks]

heyo spinny!! whats some of your favourite tlg ships? or just any you like in general

EHEHEHE rubbing my hands together. evilly. hehehe

well, kiburi is my pathetic wet cat blorbo and i happen to love all the crackships for him. kiburi x makuu? funny as fuck. kiburi x ushari? love them in nikki's pirate au they keep me up at night. kiburi x janja? the outlands brotp ever. my favourite character's stupid ships my beloved yknow?

in terms of other ships: reirei x goigoi obviously. baobabfruit ofc (thanks to you :] /pos). jasiri x kion because yeah. and as you could never tell (/sarc) i love poly ships so banzai x shenzi x ed, tano x nne x madoa, & kiara x tiifu x zuri are ones i really enjoy too. oh and i'll say timon x pumbaa too since they were my first tlk ship i suppose :]

[puppyeared]

footnotes arent enough I need you to talk to me like im fucking Amelia Bedelia

[everythingsinred]

Family and the Institution of Alice Academy

Was thinking about this ever since someone (I forgot specifically who, sorry) posed a question like this in the GA discord, asking about (I think) Natsume's extended family or something like that. It was a really interesting concept that I've been thinking a lot about since it was brought up, so here are the thoughts I've accumulated. I'll try to be concise but I have a LOT of thoughts and my brain is messy.

My general opinion at the end of all this thinking I did is that I don't think Academy students typically have very close familial ties after graduating.

I think the most apparent reason for that would be that students are expected to graduate when they are twenty years old. Our main four are exceptions to the rule, coming to the Academy pretty late in life. Most children are taken early, as toddlers or even babies. Natsume, Ruka, and Hotaru's families did all they could to avoid Academy scouting. Mikan was entirely accidental--if she had never met Hotaru, she might have never even found out she was an Alice to begin with. That being said, most kids were separated from their families at a very young age, only to be allowed to reunite with them once they're already adults. For many students, they've been away from their parents for close to two decades.

On top of that, the Academy doesn't allow visitations or phone calls and severely restricts letter communications. Only one child from each class is allowed to return home for one week each year, and that one week does not do much to make up for all the time spent at school.

My point is that by the time students are allowed to see their families again, that familial bond has already been severed, for all intents and purposes. That feeling of closeness and protection no longer exists. Students will feel more closeness and connection to their classmates and even to their teachers than to their parents or siblings, and as a result, I can imagine many graduates not even bothering to visit their families.

While I was pondering this, I made the connection between Academy students and the real life example of a similar situation with Janissaries from the Ottoman Empire. Basically, Janissaries were children stolen from the subjugated people under Ottoman rule. They were taken for the purpose of a "child levy", also known as a "blood tax." Some children were even willingly given by their families due to the possibility of socially advancing, and because the children were promised first class status (sound familiar?). Essentially the children were taken, forced to comply with Ottoman standards and traditions (including forced conversions and circumcisions), and then trained for military service. These soldiers would actually end up being incredibly loyal and efficient, despite likely never seeing their families again.

(Edit: forced circumcisions are particularly heinous when you consider that the children were typically at least 10 years old at the time they were taken.... so.... uh.... not pleasant.... But also interesting that the Janissaries were typically much older than the Alice children at the time of being taken.)

That level of separation doesn't endear ties; it severs them. These Janissaries--very often forcefully taken from their families--ended up growing up with very little connection to their parents or siblings. The feeling of belonging to their previous communities was gone. Absence does not always make the heart grow fonder. This was done as a means of creating a strong military force but also to disillusion subjugated communities and tear away their hope. Their children could always be taken; their communities could always be crushed, even without the use of physical force. It's a very effective tool to oppress a group of people.

(There's actually a lot of similarities between Academy children and Janissaries beside the separation of children from their families. They were also paid for their service and were high ranking; the Academy students are given an allowance and many of them, despite being stolen from their families, have a sense of superiority over non-Alices. They feel like they are treasures, and are of higher value and rank. Additionally, Academy students, especially in the DA class, are highly trained and efficient child soldiers, much like the Janissaries. Janissaries are actually a super interesting historical topic and are worth looking into!)

We can even see the effect of this distance when Yuka escapes the Academy and runs away to her family. Yuka was essentially sold to the Academy, with her parents trading her in exchange for money and status. She was very young, far too young to really understand that her parents had abandoned her. As a result, she romanticized her bond with them, and the longer she was separated from them, the more that bond became fantastical. She made many attempts to escape the school to reunite with her parents and she fantasized about seeing them again. When she finally is able to, it's nothing like she imagined. They're cold, and unfamiliar. They don't recognize her. She doesn't know her brothers. They're related, but there's no real connection.

"I shouldn't have come here."

Yuka's is an extreme example, but I'm sure she's not an exception. For most Academy students, the almost 20 years of separation from their parents would be too much to ignore. They would not recognize each other, or be close. I'm sure many parents did not sell their children like Yuka's family did, but the bond between child and family had not been nurtured the way it should have been, resulting in coldness and distance.

Because of that, I doubt most students even bother seeking their families out, or even if they do, it's to visit a few times before starting a new life with a career. That familial bond, now broken, is difficult to repair. The connections people often feel with their families or hometowns is something Academy students instead feel with each other. They are all Alices, all in the same boat together. That feeling of superiority that many kids feel means they view each other as on the same level, and I'm sure that could interfere with family connection as well.

Thus, I don't think there's many multigenerational Alice families out there with close bonds. I don't think families like Natsume's have strong ties with grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. Even the sibling bonds at the Academy are stunted, with the Imai and Shouda siblings being the prime examples of that.

The Imai siblings have a significant age difference, yes, but additionally the Imai parents had a very different approach to Hotaru after seeing what happened with Subaru. They refused to hand her over as easily, wanting to show her important things in life and build happy memories for as long as they could. Even when Hotaru does enter the school, it's more than six months before she even comes across her brother, since the high school and elementary school are not integrated with each other and they do not belong to the same ability class. Similarly, the Shouda siblings are in different ability classes but they have a much smaller age gap. Despite this, Sumire refers to her brother very respectfully, indicating that there isn't a particular closeness.

The Imais fight against this divide, and put in genuine effort into rebuilding their relationship, but it's a difficult process, and one they struggle to admit to for a long time and for various reasons. Familial closeness is not encouraged, not even within the Academy.

(Though Natsume's bond with Aoi is exploited and the school does rely on him caring for her to take advantage of him, but ultimately he is kept from seeing her. Thus, that bond is also severed despite being exploited.)

Additionally, it would make sense to me if many Alice graduates decided to, upon having children, avoid scouting, like Natsume's parents did, and thus ended up moving around a lot to escape Academy notice. Moving around like that and laying low means that you're not going to be hosting huge family reunions or inviting relatives over often, even if all the other points were moot.

Finally, I think all this creates further obstacles for Yuka's wish to "have a family." At some point she says that, for normal people, the desire to settle down with someone and start a family is a pretty modest goal, but for Alices it's almost impossible. Escaping from the school, or even graduating, is a struggle. And you can have a kid, but it's likely that child will be taken from you, just as you were taken, and by the time the child graduates, they will have no connection with you. Wanting to be a potential grandparent, for example, might seem like a definite impossibility, since being a real parent is impossible.

It's even more proof that the Academy exists as an institution to subjugate and undermine Alices, as children and then as parents. Ultimately, an Alice never has control, not as a child and not even as an adult. The pain doesn't end once you've graduated; in fact, it never does.

[nervocat]

man.

[mellotronmkll]

i love apollo 18 but i have a few problems with it and one of the biggest ones is that i can never just listen to the fucking album because its impossible for me to hear this song without repeating it at least like 4 or 5 times

[airenyah]

so for the past 2ish years that i've been taking this thai course i've been the youngest participant by far and also (mostly) the only girl

and because of that, even tho it's an online course so we're not super close with each other, despite that i still often feel like i have a bit of a status as the group baby (affectionate). and it shows in moments like earlier in class when someone asked about the word "inspiration" and then, when asked to give an example sentence, without batting an eye went "[airenyah] is my inspiration to learn more thai"

y'all. this man is one of the best (if not THE best) student in our course 🥺

[lesbovalentine]

im thinking about tehanu again

[coolerdracula]

I've also been thinking about systems with introjects with sources that are "problematic" in prominent, all-consuming ways, and the main thing is that you can't choose what you introject, but you can choose how you portray it to the outside world, and how much you communicate how comfortable you are with the actions associated with the source character. and that can say things

[selfinflictedgunshotwound]

i think i've finally come to understand why i'm so bad at communicating with friends 👍 at one point or another i've thought i was in love with every single person i've ever been friends with (for the most part, at least) because i don't expect other people to like me. OBVIOUSLY this is not true but platonic feelings are not dissimilar to romantic ones (baseline they're the same: you want to love and be loved by someone) but i always end up realizing that i'm not in love with them, just that they matter to me very much and i wouldn't know what do to w/o their presence in my life. BUT this brings me to facet number 2 of my awful communication skills: i hate it when things Get Real. i find myself retreating any time it seems like Something Could Change in my day-to-day life due to them being around and "forcing" the change. i run away from talking to one of my only irl friends on almost a daily basis bc i dread the idea of having to do anything she might want me to do. i think, at the end of the day, my problem might just be that i don't want to change... ANYWAYS

[wileyfern]

people who've gone to a renaissance faire before where do you get your clothes?

[hoot-h00t]

so turns out. finding out the thing you’ve been varying levels of paranoid about the past couple years wasn’t paranoia at all really sucks. :(

[vamptastic]

i'm very far past arguing about it anymore but i still think the term pansexual is stupid. it'd be one thing if it was a simple reworking of the term to have more accurate etymology, like phasing out transsexual and transvestite in favor of transgender and gender non-conforming. you should still let people use the old term if they want, but coming up with a new one that conveys the meaning more precisely is fine.

but instead it seemed to be suggested as an entirely newly coined thing of its own. which is ridiculous, because it means the exact same thing that the term bisexual has meant for as long as the word has existed- being attracted to men, women, and people of other genders. and of course it implies that bisexual people have a sexuality exclusive of nonbinary people, which obviously has just never been the case, beyond individual bigots. if i call a historical figure bisexual, i generally mean they expressed attraction to men and to women at the same time, OR that they dated someone of an indeterminate gender, OR sometimes that they continued a romantic relationship with somebody through a gender transition. like, that's what the term means, it is identical to pansexuality in terms of who you might actually date or have sex with.

the only place where the terms ever diverge is that sometimes people say bisexuals are attracted to people with gender as a component, so, say someone who is only into a specific type of woman and a specific type of man. while a pansexual would date lots of different sorts of people within the male and female gender, or one type of person across multiple genders. but that's retroactively applying a new definition to bisexual than how people used it before. it's nicer than saying that bisexuality must actually mean bigotry due to its etymology, but it's still using an inaccurate definition that nobody has ever used until you decided it meant that.

basically i think the term was created because bisexual history is difficult to research and most people are entirely unaware that it even exists to be read about in the first place. so instead, people looked at the most literal etymological meaning of the term and decided that definitely must be what people mean when they say bisexual, so let's invent a new sexuality that includes more than two genders.

some people call themselves pansexual because they just like how the word sounds better, which is fine. i also don't care about stuff like omnisexual multisexual etc, it's true that bisexual has a misleading etymology. but generally when i ask somebody why they prefer that term they misdefine bisexuality to explain it. and that greatly frustrates me, because it is not particularly difficult to find writing from the 70s where bisexuality is clearly defined. it's like saying lesbians need to call themselves femalesexual because the root of the word implies they're from the island of lesbos. it's stupid.

basically i don't care what you call yourself, but don't misrepresent what another term means to justify it, just because you don't know anything about bisexual history.