#thank you so much for enabling me

[umemiyan]

robin your ‘old soul’ (affectionate) posts are giving me life. i don’t know umemiya (insert the Kiki Palmer ‘I don’t know that man’ meme) but imagine tending to his wounds with the some classic rock playing on a vinyl in a little cabin somewhere, humid air coming in from the open windows and front door. a glass of sweet tea in his hand and a wet towel around his neck, content as you wipe blood off his temple and murmur playful banter underneath the humming of a box fan and the chirp of cicadas

anyway happy wednesday! 🤘🏼

head in my hands......... sav how could you do this to me.........

this is so perfect. like the ideal scenario. i'm fucking face down in the floor rn.

i'm imagining we were out in town strolling around and he ended up trying to defend someone who was being mistreated in some way because he just couldn't stand for it. he was probably outnumbered and came out with some scrapes and bruises, but ultimately took care of the situation. we have to head back so we can rest and i can clean him up.

i don't always have the gentlest touch, but i'm pretty decent with some first aid stuff. i would do my best to get him disinfected and patched up without hurting him too much! meanwhile he's just enjoying the closeness and the way my hair is pushed around a bit by the fan and how i sing along to some of the songs while teasing him for being so righteous. at some point he just wraps his arms around my waist and presses his head to my chest with a smile.

[saucy-mesothelioma]

If you'd like, u can talk about any other songs you like too, since the 5 song limit seems to have wounded you

:3

*cracks knuckles* Alright bitches (affectionate) let's fuckin go. To keep things simple I'll try to stick with artists, but I do have a few stand alone songs that I think deserve attention. This is gonna be a long one, so apologies in advance.

The Spy and the Liar/ Cog in the Machine from I Expect You To Die 2 and 3 respectively. The game series itself is highly underrated and I couldn't suggest watching a playthrough more, but these two songs perfectly encompass the vibe of the game. I even included a link to the opening credits for both games because hearing the song is one thing, but seeing it with the video is a goddamn experience. Puddles Pity Party is responsible for the vocals in The Spy and the Liar and Haley Reinhart for Cog in the Machine, and their voices are fucking incredible. I could not possibly do any explanation on how good they are proper justice.

Ronnie James Dio. Probably my favorite voice in metal music. He was the lead vocalist of Black Sabbath for a bit after Ozzy Osbourne left as well as a vocalist in the band Rainbow for a while, and although his performances in both bands are stellar I think he really comes into his own in Dio. Some songs of his I would recommend are Holy Diver (my favorite of his), Caught in the Middle, Rainbow in the Dark, and The Last in Line. I feel like the best way to describe his music is "epic ballad", and that's very much reflected in the music video for Holy Diver.

Motörhead. This band was a prominent influence for Metallica, and at it's head is Lemmy Kilmister, the lead singer and bassist. His gravelly voice is incredibly distinct and is absolutely fantastic, and he was also close friends with Ozzy Osbourne. My favorite song of Motörhead's is by far Hellraiser, but some other highlights of theirs are Ace of Spades, Motörhead , and Heroes (a cover of David Bowie's Heroes which is just as good as the original).

Living Colour. If Motörhead is The Father and Dio is The Son, then Living Colour is the Holy Spirit of metal to me. As I said in a different ask, everybody seems to forget about Living Colour or dismiss them because they tend to lean into the funk metal genre, but I think that’s one of the many things that makes them such a strong metal band. Their lyrics have touched on so many social and racial issues that I’m in no way qualified to talk about, but for a genre that at the time was dominated by white men (with a few important exceptions such as Jimi Hendrix, Lita Ford, Ann and Nancy Wilson, etc) it wasn’t something you heard very often. Their music is phenomenal and definitely deserves more attention. Some songs of theirs that I would recommend are Cult of Personality (my favorite of theirs), Open Letter to a Landlord, Song Without Sin, and Sacred Ground.

Jim Nabors. This man was a huge part of my childhood and was actually born close to where I lived most of my life. As a queer Southerner himself, he means a lot to me personally. He is well known for his role as Gomer Pyle on The Andy Griffith Show and Gomer Pyle USMC, as well as for his incredible baritone singing voice. And holy fuck that singing voice. My two favorite songs sung by him are The Impossible Dream and Blowin' in the Wind, the latter unfortunately only on the show Goner Pyle USMC. I actually own one of his records from the 60s and it's one of my most prized possessions.

Tom Lehrer. Lehrer is one of the greatest satirical songwriters ever. This man walked so Weird Al could run, and he was actually a math teacher at MIT and Harvard of all fuckin things. It's hard to just choose two or three songs of his to recommend, but some of my favorites are We Will All Go Together When We Go, So Long Mom (A Song For WWIII), The Vatican Rag, and Wernher von Braun. Two of his most popular songs however are The Masochism Tango and The Elements. I also own one of his records from the 60s, and it's another prized possession of mine.

The Aquabats!. Probably my favorite ska punk band ever. They've got everything: funky outfits, a tv show, Jimmy the Robot. I used to watch the show when I was younger, and I've been a fan of theirs ever since. Their music is just plain fun, and let's be honest "I ride an otter like a motorcycle" is probably one of the greatest lyrics ever known to mankind. Some of my favorite songs of their are Super Rad! (my beloved), The Shark Fighter!, Cat with 2 Heads!, and Fashion Zombies!. I'm also just now realizing how many of their songs have an exclamation point in them

Now I was originally going to add some country and bluegrass artists to this list, but I think I'm going to make that into a separate post because I can't talk about bluegrass without talking about my personal journey with both the genre and my Southern culture. Again, my apologies for the long post, but I had fun with it and hopefully maybe gave some interest to some underrated songs and artists.

[iwantmochisoup]

TWIN BUNNY SKK!! Inspired by @ediblepandas (tysm!! pls feed me more dresses!!)

PLEASE READ THE FIC FOR IT HERE !! :3c

[funny-friends]

i love to post my silly little drawings on the world wide web

[gingermaple]

i am once again drawing grian in cute outfits - specifically these shoes as suggested by @definitelynotshouting

[little-pup-pip]

Ghost!!

[corviiids]

sparknotes for chapter 9 of as you like it because a very kind commenter asked for a breakdown and if theres one thing im good at it's breaking down

(spoilers for the fic obviously)

tihs chapter gave me so much trouble. i sat on it for so long i literally hated it by the time i posted it but im starting to forgive it now. it was, as ive said, originally way longer, and the next part of the fic was supposed to be the second half of this one... but it was starting to get absurd and i realised that neither part would have the weight i needed them to have if they were lumped in together. (with some relief, honestly, because i kind of had wanted them to be separate initially but didn't think they'd be long enough. i dont know myself very well.) anyway, the next chapter should be a bit of a doozy now although hopefully not SO absurdly long.

this chapter picks up where the previous cliff hung off, which is to say, after the 'shadow' akechi reveals that he's actually just the real ass guy. akechi in the palace what will he do. the chapter doesn't immediately kick off with ren's reaction though and that is because ren is the most repressed man alive and does not know how he feels about it.

so, akechi disguised himself to enter his palace, which is significant for a few reasons:

1. he's disguised as himself

which i think is ironic in a fun way, but it's also just a very basic nod to the fact that akechi pivots between which of his personae is his default. this isn't necessarily super meaningful, but he does later refer to the black mask suit as

a costume, instead of an outfit. i mean, don't read into it too much, he's just talking, but i did think that probably points to how he feels about his appearance generally.

2. more importantly, his disguise involves taking off his mask.

so he's disguised, yes, and he's disguised as himself, yes, but that disguise is a literal unmasking, which is also kind of ironic. in presenting himself this way he has literally and figuratively made himself vulnerable. they're inside his heart, and the entire time he's in the palace, he is exposed... again both literally and figuratively because he also starts sharing more with ren than he ever has. look, i just think it's fun to have a character who has so many layers that he has to lie so hard that he becomes himself again.

i only want to point this out because (this is also part of larger meta about mona lol) akechi knew about the metaverse, but there is no way to intuit the method of stealing hearts without guidance. it's such a specific and involved process. thje most akechi could work out on his own was that if you killed a shadow, that person would have a mental breakdown. no way to guess that if you send a calling card and then go in within the next 24 hours and take a physical manifestation of a thing that you didn't know existed (process) would lead to that person ahving a change of heart (result). so even if akechi had a palace and knew about it, even if he wanted to do something about it, he would have assumed there was nothing he could do about it - i also have no idea what the process would be for sending yourself a calling card, even if he DID know about the process. so basically in this fic akechi found his palace and just assumed that was it. he was like, fucked up lol. anyway

this just straight up isn't true HAHA so i put in the silly little dichotomy of akechi gently taking ren's arm to protect him from slipping on the ice while telling him that he lied about caring about him. i think in this chapter as akechi begins to openly explain more and more of his thought process, this is probably the first truly clear glimpse you get of exactly what akechi's distortion is and how deep it runs.

the things akechi says with total conviction in this chapter are just... not true, not a fair or founded way to view the world (or the art of performance haha), but he says them with total conviction, and hopefully it should show off how unreliable he is as a source of exposition. one commenter asked about this moment of akc's eyes going yellow and if it was somehting that happened in canon - not really, i was just thinking about those little moments in the game after you send a calling card where the game cuts from the person to their shadow to do a little oneliner about their distortion.

akechi's IN his own palace, so i thought it would be fun to kind of make it a physical thing that can happen to him where he sort of merges with his shadow for a brief second in the moments when the distortion is strongest.

OKAY this is one of my favourite bits of the chapter HAHA the deep soda lore. i dont expect anyone to remember all the way back to chapter 3 but:

literally nobody asked about this but i love the phantom thieves!!! i dream of all the little silly moments of being a team that they must have that we don't get to see in gameplay, for obvious reasons of it wouldn't really work in a game, but i can imagine them in my brain. i can imagine their trickshot contests that get their asses kicked. i can imagine them chanting at each other to chug while joker and oracle compete to down an entire bottle of brand neutral mountain dew baja blast. i can dream.

soda lore is gay.

i dont honestly think it's inherently a bad thing necessarily but this part does kind of set up like... you can see akechi very early on in life forming this worldview that the truth isn't always what you want, you know? this was a 'lie' he and his mother both bought into, they both knew what the truth actually was, so it wasn't real dishonesty, but they just had this little fantasy. i just thought it would be fun for akechi to have a way to bond with his mother and feel closer to her, and that way is by buying into this white lie. idk

akechi's mother isn't really a character and i don't want to form her into too much of one because i think it's very much the point that, like... he made this point in an earlier chapter but having lost her at a pretty young age i think it's quite crucial that akechi doesn't really have a fully formed image of who his mother is outside of what she was to him as a child. so i actively don't want her to feel too real or defined. im not interested in making an oc out of her because i think it defeats the purpose. that said, this line exists to maybe gesture very vaguely at the notion that akechi's mother was a very bright person who similarly was stuck in circumstances that didn't serve to foster her real potential. just the image in my mind of a person who's clever enough to get across algebraic notation in chess by flipping through a book in a few minutes, but was never exposed to the opportunity to learn chess until this moment in someone else's house, and also the particular situation of learning this skill WHILE at someone's place as a call girl, i dunno . i hope im treating this with the grace it deserves but i wanted to build just this particular image in vivid colour while also keeping the reality quite blurry and vague, just to give the reader a sense of where akechi came from while still preserving his limited pov.

my thoughts on the phantom thieves' methods (and how they compare to maruki) are definitely too long and involved to put into a post about this fic chapter specifically, but maybe one day. i also wanna stress im not like... strictly anti-phantom thief or anti-heartstealing lol but i do have thoughts about the philsophy of it and the thieves' hypocrisy WHATEVER that's not for this post. i bring this up only to crow about finding a way to bring up the experience machine (ie maruki's reality) in this fic without it being royal compliant and have it be... hoepfully... sufficiently relevant to the plot. wa hoo! the experience machine came up for the first time back in chapter 4 and im just delighted that i finally got to close that loop. by the way, that experiment is also called the lotus eater machine after the lotus eaters in the odyssey! i dunno that it's actively my favourite thought experiment but it's definitely up there and i think about it a lot.

TITLE DROP

i think i spoke once about what 'as you like it' means. it's obviously the name of the shakespeare play from where 'all the world's a stage' comes, but it has a couple more layers to it as well - akechi's palace is a place where he performs to what he believes other people want or need to see from him - so his appearance is as you like it. and his accusation of the thieves' heartstealing methods is that they twist a person's internal reality to suit their vision - that's the meaning he's taking here, claiming that joker is turning akechi into an unfamiliar new thing, as [joker] like[s] it. you get it.

this running joke of ren really hating vents wasn't something i planned but im attached to it now. prayer circle for his knees

ive basically given up on making sense of samerecarm, which is par for the course for any rpg or video game really where reduction to 0hp/revival are mechanics. like, im inclined to think 0hp is more equivalent to unconsciousness, because... well... otherwise it's pretty cold that they left akechi dead in the engine room without even looking for a way around the wall. lol. but one of mona's revival lines is 'being dead isnt easy!' or something like that, so i kind of just give up and assume it's video game logic you'r enot meant to look at too hard lol. the way i reconcile it for my purposes is to say it's a sort of metaverse-exclusive state of being which is not quite dead but sort of in a limbo state wher eyou can be brought back with specific revival magic, which i refer to as being down. that's uhhh, that's different from the battle status of down... which you get after being hit with a crit/technical/weak skill... look, don't think about it. joker in crow's arms.

this is literally meaningless i just wanted to include a cameo of my very favourite persona q2 battle theme.

[make-friends-with-the-rats]

can i hear more about why you think the bowery beauties were brought in "to retain vaudeville/burlesque elements while desexualizing Medda?" :0

But of course!

Allow me to set the stage...

Vaudeville and burlesque were both popular forms of variety shows in the 19th century. The first vaudeville show in America can be traced to 1816. A vaudeville show might have acts ranging from singing and comedy to acrobatics and ventriloquism [source]. Burlesque was introduced to theaters in New York as early as the 1840s and often were composed of comedic skits, satire, songs, and women dancers in rather provocative costumes [source].

As I touched upon in my previous post, Medda Larkin, in her stage musical iteration, is inspired by the vaudeville star Aida Overton Walker.

Born in 1880, Aida Overton Walker was arguably the most famous and influential African-American star of her generation. She was as progressive as she was talented. She refused to conform with black stereotypes on the stage and devoted much work to helping young African-American artists [source]. With her as inspiration, Medda becomes bold, comedic, and confident, every bit the vaudeville star.

As a result, in nearly every Newsies the Musical character description or script you can find, Medda is described as a vaudeville performer. But before the rewrite, this wasn't strictly the case. Of course, Newsies is a Disney musical at the end of the day, so you would never have found an overtly burlesque performer in the story. But in the original movie, the line between vaudeville and burlesque is blurred.

What I mean, to put it plainly, is that Medda Larkson in the film was sexualized. (The actress Ann-Margaret herself had been a popular pin-up star in the 1960s and 70s.) Although she is portrayed as a caring adult figure and a successful actress, several characters all but drool over her and we hear catcalls in the background of both of her songs. Not to mention her first song, My Lovey-Dovey Baby is very suggestive. The overall atmosphere that is created around Medda in the film is highly reminiscent of burlesque rather than purely vaudeville.

In the musical adaptation, that burlesque energy is redirected away from Medda and towards the Bowery Beauties. This is particularly obvious in the way the song Don't Come a-Knocking was presented in the Broadway show/proshot in comparison to Medda's solo, That's Rich. While Medda commands the stage with confidence and comedy, the Bowery Beauties are shown obscured behind a male audience or are viewed literally from the male gaze.

The Newsies musical adaption took Medda Larkson and created a separation between the vaudeville and the burlesque. Or: it made Medda purely a vaudeville actress and created the Bowery Beauties. In doing so, Medda was desexualized. There are two major reasons for this. First, because of the vaudeville inspiration taken from Aida Overton Walker herself. And second, to have Medda be portrayed as a more maternal figure.

But should Medda have been completely un-burlesqued? Here's the part where I take advantage of this ask to yap about something you didn't ask for. Enjoy!

While burlesque shows did tend to attract a largely male audience, there is another aspect of burlesque that is largely overlooked.

Burlesque and vaudeville not only gave women a chance to join the stage, but gave them the freedom to be loud and self-aware when society called for women to be soft-spoken and modest. But burlesque took it a step further in the costumes female performers wore. Not only were the costumes in direct contrast (and perhaps defiance) to the Victorian image of a woman...

"A woman onstage, displaying her body, speaking freely, and challenging her audience, was a strange and shocking sight in the nineteenth century, when female performers of any kind were still conventionally equated with prostitutes." [source <- highly recommend checking this one out]

Burlesque performances at it's best gave women a unique outlet for self expression as well as confidence in her body. It was much more forward thinking and feminist than you might think.

"Men loved to watch burlesque performers, but at the same time, they were afraid that her feminine power was too dynamic to stay safely confined to the stage." [source <- same as above, literally such an interesting read]

Now, keeping this perspective in mind, the original Newsies film had the right idea in giving Medda more burlesque elements, they were just going about it wrong. And rather than fixing the problem of sexualization with a complete separation between Medda and the Bowery Beauties, Medda and the Bowery Beauties should be building off of each other.

Personally, I think that Newsies UK did it best. In the West End production of Newsies, there isn't much difference between Medda and the Bowery Beauties. They share the same costume and they share the stage during That's Rich. Medda is still commanding the audience, but the addition of the Bowery Beauties here lends new meaning. Medda has remained the vaudeville star, but the Bowery Beauties have broken out of the male gaze and joined Medda in challenging 19th century society.

[hide-your-bugs-away]

The Animal-squad and I are seeing Peter Noone from Herman's Hermits tonight!! 😎🐾✨️

[delulluart]

Terzo for the Suspenders Series

[nauticrowe]

"Thank you for giving me a chance..."

[emry-stars-art]

Omg PLEASE tell us more about the hurt/ comfort after Neil gets back from evermore after being kidnapped

Oh you know the fun parts to brainstorm ��👀 First I needed to draw some of the comfort so here’s a sketch:

Anyway this is aftg we’re talking about, specifically Riko and Nathan, so once again; it’s rather vague but take care reading on (or skip to the next bolded sentence for the comfort 💕)

I honestly still don’t have all the specifics on what might happen at Evermore! One option is just to make it very similar to Neil’s canon Christmas break, because the angles are similar: in canon, they want Neil quiet and obedient to play exy and not act out against his treatment, and in this au the only difference is instead of exy it’s… violence, essentially. But let’s be honest. This is a royal au, we have to add some things, right

So the main tenant is “they want Abram to do what he’s told without argument”. In my mind that includes being forced to watch every bit of Nathan’s work and then having to do it himself. Of course, Abram is still stubborn and still hates doing it more than he hates anything else, so it takes a long time for him to hurt or torture or kill anyone the first time he’s asked. Usually there is heavy coercion and harm before he touches anyone.

But the point isn’t to get Abram used to doing it, because he’s already as used to it as he will ever be. The Moriyamas’ focus is more on breaking down the stubborn streak and strong moral compass. The best way to do that, they figure, is to take away his personhood altogether. So Abram is never referred to as a person, and instead they more or less treat him like some inanimate weapon or like a dog. A very volatile, vicious dog. Kennels and muzzles and commands and all. Some starvation and sleep deprivation when they decide it’s “necessary”. Even long into his recovery Abram can’t hear a word like heel or sit without his muscles twitching to do so.

So it’s a mix of the dehumanization and punishment. Riko has almost free reign once again, though Tetsuji will step in at times when he deems it’s too much. (Though I don’t think he considered waterboarding/near drowning every time Abram is made to bathe or shower “too much”.) Near the end of Abram’s time, a week or so before he’s either rescued, somehow returned, or escapes, Tetsuji revokes Riko’s privileges altogether when Riko causes some heavy head injuries that concuss Abram and make him lose his sight for a while. It’s not permanent, but it’s long enough term that when he gets back to Palmetto, Abram takes a long time away from most people to recover. He doesn’t trust himself not to act before he can think when he can’t see his surroundings.

Back at Palmetto, it might take most of them a while to realize how bad it was. Day is most familiar with how Evermore works, but he was still high up in the chain of command and respect, so he wasn’t necessarily familiar with the underworkings like that. Abram was raised in the environment, he is horrifically good at more or less acting normal. And when he’s fully awake and conscious, he’s very good at keeping things separate - people can still touch him with enough warning, he still holds conversation when he has to. The worst things come to light slowly - the first time he wakes up in a flashback Abram and Day immediately decide it’s best if he doesn’t stay around Andrew. So Andrew kind of has to watch from the outside and it kills him. He watches when Abram refuses to bathe, but if he doesn’t get clean the wounds will get badly infected, so Day kind of has to make him. But Andrew can’t help - because as Day expects, Abram panics and Day ends up with several bruised ribs and nearly broken fingers. Abram won’t wear high collared or tight shirts any more, and one time in helping the Queen care for the castle’s hounds Abram has a panic attack when he’s accidentally left alone for too long. There are little punctures over his cheeks and nose in a circle across his face. He has a hard time eating around others. Abram never tells them what happened to him, but Andrew and Day slowly figure it out anyway.

As they figure it out, everyone does their best to adapt. While Abram’s still recovering his sight, Day announces himself and most of his movements. He talks all the way through finally washing and detangling Abram’s hair (even after the long time he spends on it, they have to cut out the worst mats) when Abram tells him it helps to hear a friendly voice in a language that isn’t the Moriyamas’. Day talks more often and more softly than he probably ever has in his life, because he’s made himself Abram’s main caretaker. Not to say he doesn’t make honest mistakes, because they all do, but he’s quick to change his behavior.

Then, when Abram’s almost fully recovered his sight, Day lets him stay with Andrew once more. Now it’s not as much Abram watching out for the prince - he will do his job well enough, but sometimes he still has to step back and away because of course he does. And Andrew’s approach is very different than Day’s. It isn’t as much his voice as it is his presence, or when he uses his calm but direct authority to tell Abram to go to sleep, I’m going to be right here. After Abram’s panic attack in the kennels, Andrew discovers that if there’s nothing around to pull Abram into a panic attack he won’t generally fall into one again after leaving the stressor, and Abram finds great comfort in some grounding hold on some part of him. Usually the back of his neck or his hands. He won’t let Andrew hold a knee or leg when they’re sat together, but he will put his weight against Andrew’s shoulder for balance. Little things that Andrew figures out by asking or trial and error. When Abram slips, accidentally refers to himself as “it” or “thing” - words he’d never use normally and sometimes even flinches from - Andrew learns to stay within arms reach, sometimes talking through his and Abram’s schedule. If it’s bad enough Abram might play with Andrew’s fingers and hands while he does, like he’s trying to make sure he can still touch someone without hurting them. This afternoon we discuss plans for the upcoming festival with Day, Captain Wymack, Abigail, and Aaron and Katelyn, and after we’ll eat. Join me in the garden? Always official, non-confrontational events. Slowly Andrew gets Abram readjusted to eating at a table and speaking without seeking permission first.

But again. There’s a lot of possibilities and things are always subject to change or be added, so this is kind of my jumping off point! (And is half of this summarized from things I’ve written? Yes. But I want to have something else polished and posted first so 👀 I hope to circle back to this soon) Thank you for the ask!! 🥰

[heesulovebot]

IMPRISON ME IN YOUR NAME; LET LOVE KILL ME  

the eighth sense (2023), dir. baek inu & werner du plessis // small favors, erin a. craig // the affliction, marie howe // the amulet of samarkand, jonathan stroud // gif credit: @aejeonghae

[s2pdoktopus]

There's a whole ass AU behind the stupid drawing based on a stupid conversation with @tamanone. Something about Tatsuma and Takasugi forming a boy band and a meta humor about their voice actors having been in a band together. And them guesting in an Otsuu concert. There are a lot of stupid thoughts involved. And then tamanone described a stupid cute scene (Tatsuma serenading Takasugi in the backstage with Otsuu's Omae to p-chan nondakure) that I can't do any justice. I tried tho.

[johaerys-writes]

Re: revisiting the Thetis month(s?)- oooooh I cannot blame you. Heavy times. So fun stuff! What about the boys building that ill fated boaty boat when they were kids? What other projects did they get up to? ((Ps I’ve read Dawn, Revisited so many times now. So lovely and heartbreaking))

Ill fated (and ill advised) boaty boat adventure ye ask; that ye shall receive. Now up on AO3! :D

[pine-needle-shuffle]

:0! I’d love to hear your Wedge thoughts!

I want to preface that a lot of my observations and feelings stem from my personal experiences, which is why I had said I felt very empathetic. Also, discussions of fatphobia, be warned is all. This turned out a bit more negative, at least in the beginning, than I had originally intended. There's just a lot of experiences and feelings that feed into how I understand him, and that means talking about some less than fun topics first.

There's something about how he presents himself and how he is treated(in several regards) that is very familiar to me. Deep down, he's a very nervous person, he shows this in varying degrees to different people. Oddly enough, he hides it from the people he's closest to. but in a way, that makes sense. if you're used to being in the out group, whatever that may be, you will put up with a lot in order to have a group at all.

His friends very clearly care about him, but there's little things here and there that clearly hurt, things that get brushed to the side. Jokes that, on the surface, are meant to come off as "endearing" or "supportive", but carry a quiet message. One that's hard to pick up on unless you're on the receiving end.

While I truly believe that Jessie and Biggs mean the best, a good portion of what we see when they interact with him is. Not nice. There's a jab about his love life, or lack there of (what's implied to be the reason for that?). There's the way him getting injured was shrugged off (or even the fact that they'd hit him, 'as a joke'. That shit still hurts even if you've got 'padding'). And, in a couple of instances, it feels like they hold him back, like he's going to embarrass himself.

And this all feeds into that feeling of inadequacy that he describes after the parachute fall. He plays into the role of "the funny one", cause why else are they keeping him around? Because clearly he isn't anyone to be taken seriously. This is the one thing about the writing that I can stomach, that there's a clear effect on him from how he's treated. As much as I'd rather he not get treated like this at all. Par for the course, unfortunately.

But he legitimately has so much merit. He's the teams exit strategist, he's an impeccable shot, he's willing to put himself in danger for others even when he isn't the most qualified to do so (Cloud's the fighter for hire, and he took a shot for the guy anyway). It's clear he has a deep love for his community in the slums, and is just an incredibly kind person.

Despite his own reservations and anxieties, he does what he thinks is right, just, with the understanding that it could very well get him killed. He calls himself a coward, he always puts others first to the point he's worried he's a burden, but he truly does so much. And he's very emotionally intelligent, being the only person to see that Cloud actually cared about what he was doing in the beginning. He's just severely underappreciated, and it messes with how he views himself.

I think he deserves the world, honestly.