#that's shown to be a good person in canon

[nabi-unveiled]

A Few Interesting Breadcrumbs On This Finale Eve

An interesting discussion with @ginnymoonbeam led me to rewatching the flashback scene of Hagiwara and Kaori.

I'll be honest, it's one of the scenes that I don't pay a lot of attention to in my rewatches. I'll have to think about what that says about me.

However, this rewatch led to a few interesting discoveries.

Hagiwara seems to have been in a meeting about the eyelash curler when Kaori/him first met.

This is the product he references when he's talking to Sei at the party. There's not a lot to dig into there, but it's an interesting parallel.

Hagiwara and Kaori BOTH stare at each other when they meet. So they never had the phase of Hagiwara being interested but Kaori not.

She leads/controls this relationship (because he lets her). However, Hagiwara actually DOES initiate physical contact/intimacy with Kaori. She grabs his hand to talk about his nails, but HE is the one that grasps her hand turning it into a handhold.

There's an interesting parallel in the phone call between Kaori/Hagiwara and Hagiwara/Sei. Kaori calls confessing her feelings saying she is restless and wants to see him. Hagiwara says he'll go to her, and they end up having sex.

In the call between Sei/Hagiwara, Hagiwara calls and confesses his feelings (different feelings but still feelings). Like Kaori said about herself in the flashback, he's restless. He doesn't say that he wants to see Sei like Kaori did. (It's actually Sei who in a later scene said he wanted to see Hagiwara.) But Sei says very similar words to what Hagiwara said in the flashback, and they end up having sex.

The difference is that Hagiwara doesn't let Sei come to him. They meet in the middle. They BOTH want to go the other. There's not a one way flow of energy here.

I don't know if I've said it in a post before, but Hagiwara is a mirror.

He's great at reading people, and he's good at matching what people want/expect. It's what makes him so good at his job. It's a great trait for a salesman. Hagiwara tries to keep everyone comfortable. If they joke, he jokes. If they're serious, he's serious. Kaori gives shallow conversation, so he has shallow conversations with her. Sei is more straightforward and personal in conversation which allows him to be more straightforward and personal. He can explore the depths of Tokyo with Sei. He couldn't do that with Kaori.

In e-mail, Hagiwara allowed himself more freedom. But in person? He will suppress his thoughts and deprioritize himself to give the other person what makes them happy and comfortable. It's why him giving Sei sweet coffee and refusing to let Sei out of the room is a BIG deal. (For those watching Perfect 10 Liners, there's some interesting parallels to Faifa here. It's not the EXACT same dynamic, but there are similarities.)

Which leads us to our last fun discovery (and really what started this whole flashback rewatch).

I was overexplaining a head canon I have about why Hagiwara kept asking Sei (in e-mail and in-person) if he had always been attracted to men. Indulging my need to talk about this show, @ginnymoonbeam posed an excellent question about why Hagiwara had become so avoidant with Kaori.

After all, he may not have realized he was attracted to Sei, but he was already initiating with Sei. He WAS attracted to Kaori too. Wouldn't he have shown similar behaviors then? Well, we know they never had the one sided attraction phase. That's part of it. Gender could be a part of it. (I don't think that's it, but going into those reasons would make this post way too long.)

However, Kaori has been subtly rejecting Hagiwara physically all along. When he turns the hand grab into a handhold, she hesitates. And then there's this...

Hagiwara initiates a back hug.

Kaori doesn't REJECT it, but she doesn't ACCEPT it either. And this is when they're "madly in love" and in the honeymoon stage.

As Hagiwara says, she's always indirect. BUT Hagiwara is a mirror, it would only take a few soft rejections like this before he begins toning it down. It says something that he was still trying to initiate sex at all.

Contrast that to Sei who always encourages Hagiwara to open up more and who think its strange that Hagiwara is polite with him. Hagiwara apologizes to Sei any time he thinks he may have been too open, crossed a line, or made Sei uncomfortable. It's a lot.

Hagiwara isn't USED to being this open/direct with people. He's a super genuine and thoughtful person, but he is USED to masking. (Makeup in public analogy - I see you.).

Sei always affirms him though and tells him it's okay to be open. He doesn't accept the apologies. Sei encourages him to let his own thoughts take priority over the mask.

Because of this, Hagiwara learns to directly express what he wants with Sei. This happens at least five times with Sei. "There's so much I wanna talk to you about", "I just want an answer", "I want to have sex with you", "I don't want you to go", and "I want you".

Hagiwara mirrors that accepting energy back to Sei as well. He tells Sei it's ok to be him.

He doesn't judge him for being rude, not having LINE or not liking transportation. He accepts him, rough edges and all. In fact, he doesn't even see it AS rough edges.

Just like they met in the middle, they both allow each other to be comfortable in their own skin. They allow each other to have a personal identity. As @respectthepetty has said in several posts at this point, they BALANCE each other.

Which is why I need them TOGETHER AND HAPPY!

Please, please, pretty please. I don't even care if I don't get the things on my symbols & parallels wish list. Just let them be happy.

[clawdee]

Earlier today in Discord I did question why it is okay to write Pedro characters as murderers, cannibals, violent, disgusting, a rapist, and a whole bunch of other things - but we draw the line at racism.

I'm not going to excuse what I said. But I will try to explain.

I was coming at it from a very white perspective. As a white person I have internalized racism that I have to fight all the time and unfortunately it just snuck out this morning.

But after rereading what I wrote and digesting it better (bc I did write it immediately after waking up) I understand what I said was that internalized racism, and I deleted it and apologized in the Discord that I had posted it.

In this current state of the US with the rising fascism, and the rising rampant racism - there was no reason for the Confederate flag to be in a fic unless it is being thrashed. There's no reason to make any character be racist who has not outwardly been shown to be racist in their canon (skit, commercial, movie, etc). There were plenty of other ways to make Kermit not a good person without bringing racism into it, if making a flawed character is what you wanted to do.

[kiwibirbkat]

I hate when people make canon love interests horrible people just so they can ship something else?? Like no, you can in fact still ship something and have them just be friends with their love interest? Or friendly ex's? Unless they're bad in canon, there's no point 😭

UNLESS YOU'RE XAVIER THORPE

I DESPISE XAVIER THORPE

FUCK YOU XAVIER 🖕🖕🖕

[cherry-treelane]

everytime i feel bad and stressed about my life i remember that i might be in a troubling situation and having a bad time but im not season 4 fiona gallagher in the clink after leaving crack on the counter which my 3 year old baby brother happened to ingest resulting in a fatal near-death experience thats wracked me with never-ending guilt and forever altered my life

[horsechestnut]

Reading Batgirl 2000 is making me want to write a Dark Batman fic.

[dykedvonte]

Discussing the NCR (Fallouts NV's Military Industrial Complex)

Fallout regularly discusses the idea of the military, its faults, its strengths, and most importantly, the psycho-social aspects of it regarding those who are members. We have seen a direct critique of the military generalized through the Enclave's overt nationalism, the hoarding of resources and indoctrination through the Brotherhood of Steel, and an almost eerily modern critique of the whole military-industrial complex through the NCR in New Vegas. In these series of posts, I will be focusing primarily if not exclusively on the last one.

The NCR we see in the game is strictly the military side of things and the depiction of active occupation during a time of eminent war, conflicting factions, and resource scarcity. It is in this we are missing a major factor that negatively affects the view of the NCR in the game and out: Civilian life along with citizen opinion on the military. While we do get Mojave civilian opinion on the military (often neutral or negative) we do not get those who are New California Republic citizens, not those who actually discuss the military more so not understanding the importance of the occupation and the President's choices.

We do not see how life is regularly lived by the average citizen as we have not seen New California in New Vegas, though, we get words and glimpses that the people are relatively content in the growing country minus the fact many people are not happy with the choice of encroaching on the Mojave. This most similarly reflects it's real-world application that many civilian citizens reject acquisition and war due to the economic effects it has on the country and the general violence/loss associated.

In this, we come to an issue of losing a perspective that is unique to the NCR as a military representative. The Brotherhood is notably a place where its active members are intertwined with its efforts, the young are raised to be scribes, paladins, etc... To where even if one is not fighting for The Brotherhood, they are still intertwined, it's propaganda is the life. The Enclave is even more cut n' dry in that it is mostly made up of government representatives. It is a group even smaller than the former, even more selective and intertwined that their propaganda IS a form of Eugenics. The NCR is unique in that there is a clear distinction between what is the military force, the civilian population, and the choice if one wants to be a part of the former.

There is a distinct difference in the cultures of the factions you are born into and those you must enlist or join (forcibly for some). While this is a long-winded way to get into the actual discussion I want to facilitate throughout these posts I wanted an initial background post to understand the aspects I am and am not exploring and explaining along with a hub post to link everything I intend to discuss in the coming days and weeks, starting with:

Why Do People Join the NCR?

...which will be discussed and linked back here like everything else regarding to this topic.

Links: TBA

[eriathalia]

Devotion

[red-dyed-sarumane]

"isnt the new magu song a lolibait song" god u people dont have brains do u.

[mcybree]

yknow I wasnt feeling like finishing my flower husbands essay (I feel less of a push to now that I dont technically Have To meticulously prove/justify my stance— people do just. agree with me now! which is insane) but I’m starting to think maybe it’s still needed actually

[calsvoid]

have a sebastian line of a scene i might never write because i never write in general

“I don’t think you’d like younger me very much.”

[icedteaandoldlace]

K, so as much as the rest of season 1 and the entirety of season 2 would suck with Cisco being dead, now that this thought is in my head, I can't stop thinking about how wild that would be if they literally killed him off for just that period of time, with the intention of bringing him back via Flashpoint and keeping him on for the rest of the show, but making the audience think he was gone for good for a whole entire season. That would've been CRAZY, yo.

[sporesnsonnets]

Just finished Good Omens.

I will be screaming for approximately the next three years MINIMUM.

[fiberglassandflowers]

im still conflicted about my placements for the little shop of horrors at the moment

[longroadstonowhere]

so there's this one fantasy high fic i've been keeping up with (Walk This Empty Street by fioment), and it's one where i've been leaving long comments that just basically track my emotions through each new chapter

but i may or may not have just pulled another 'chiaki is a robot' guess out of my ass, and i am so fascinated to see how the author responds to it

[reallytallcat]

My favorite part of fandoms is people's abilities to put together an entire storyline, personality, and intricate details of a character who has 2 minutes screentime and the entire fandom widely accepts it as pretty much canon

[saint-starflicker]

[ #it is insane to me that ppl are still so reactionary abt this #oh you think restorative justice is evil and punitive justice is the only acceptable answer? #what are you a cop ]

"redemption arcs are toxic, you shouldn't try to fix someone!"

actually it is so important to me that being in community and experiencing human connection can save people. thanks