#the relationship between these two has the capacity to fuck a guy up like no other

[thelilylav]

GOD the way Chase really is the prodigal son. The injured leg, the stubble, the lost love over a mistake that ruined the relationship. The way he self-isolates, the way he tries to use sex to escape emotion, the complicated history with faith and god.

The way House could see it all before it started. Re-watching s8 e12 and thinking about how House fired him the second he saw a glimpse of himself, trying to keep Chase safe, and how he genuinely thought Chase left only to find out he stayed in the hospital. The second he did, it was done. He didn't take his chance to leave, and then he couldn't bring himself to again.

[tobiasdrake]

what do you think of the most important relationship in all of dragonball? I speak, of course, of the world champion Mr. Satan and his pupil, mr. Buu

The entire Satan and Buu plotline is delightful, and it's not without reason that their bromance has become an ever-enduring part of post-Z materials.

Story-wise, this may be the best decision that the Buu arc made.

Toriyama sets this up in advance with the little boy whose blindness Majin Buu heals.

While flying around and slaughtering people for funsies, Buu finds this kid that's not afraid of him because he can't see Buu. He heals the boy's blindness so he can be properly afraid, but the kid is grateful rather than scared.

Buu finds himself enjoying that.

So Buu decides to offer his new friend a little more help, even while he's killing and blowing up everything else.

This moment demonstrates that Buu has a capacity for kindness; He just hasn't learned better. Like a child, he craves attention and validation from others but doesn't know the difference between negative attention and positive attention.

He's acting out because he wants to be noticed. Which brings us to the Earth's response.

The man who defeated Cell is here to slay Majin Buu and restore order to the world! Hail Satan!

He's fucked. He is so unbelievably fucked. Even he knows how fucked he is.

To his credit, Satan doesn't run for the hills as soon as these two guys leave. He actually did come here with the intent to confront Majin Buu and save the world.

Satan is often taken for a full-on coward because he does typically try to get out of fighting people who could end him in a flick of a finger. He's Pamput tier as a fighter and he knows these people outclass him by an unbelievable margin.

But I think it speaks very highly of him that when the world looked to him to save them from Majin Buu, he didn't try to run from it. He's not going to try and fistfight Buu, hell to the no, but he does make a good faith attempt to slay the dragon, to the best of his meager ability.

Hell, when all else fails, he even does try to fight Majin Buu directly.

It takes a lot of nerve to swing on an invincible god-killing monster who will absolutely turn you into candy and eat you the moment this conversation stops being fun for him.

This isn't cowardice. Satan's an arrogant blowhard who steals glory he doesn't deserve. As he and Buu settle into their friendship, he even makes plans to steal glory for Buu's defeat should it ever come to pass.

But he does want to save the world from Buu. He just has no idea how to do it. This is so far beyond him it's not even funny. Even after he basically moves in with Buu, he's still got victory on his mind.

He's here for the same reason he went to the Cell Games. Satan has the spirit of a hero somewhere under all that bluster, deceit, and glory hogging.

It's the arrival of Bee that changes everything.

This is the blind boy with the milk all over again. But this time Satan is here to see it, and it changes his approach to how he's engaging Majin Buu.

Once Satan sees this nicer side of Majin Buu, he finds himself armed with the greatest secret weapon he could possibly bring to this conflict. More powerful than bombs or poisoned chocolate. The one weapon that can truly defeat Buu: Empathy and understanding another person's point of view.

BOOM. It's done. Mr. Satan just saved the entire fucking planet from Majin Buu. His ultimate technique is asking Buu nicely to stop. No one's ever said this to him before. He didn't know better.

And this comes at the worst possible fucking time, oh my god. Seconds after Majin Buu agrees he won't kill or destroy anymore, snipers shoot his puppy.

This wouldn't be a big deal ordinarily. Buu would just erase these two assholes. But he just promised he wouldn't kill and destroy anymore. He wants to keep his promise. So all he can do is stand there and fume.

Buu has no idea what to do in this situation if he's not allowed to kill these two shitheads. Satan has not thought to convey the correct nuance for how he can behave in this context. So he's trying so hard to keep his promise in a situation where he should rightly be allowed to defend himself and his friends.

Satan's able to defuse the situation by beating the shit out of these clowns himself, and they save Bee's life with Buu's healing. But when Shooty McDickface shoots Satan in the back, Buu fucking erupts.

The contradiction between his promise not to hurt humans anymore and his furious need to waste these bastards is too much for him, allowing the darker aspects of the true Majin Buu an opening to seize control over Daikaioshin's innocence, which had up to this point resulted in this childish demeanor of his and made this friendship possible.

It's noteworthy that the first thing Evil Buu does is resolve the contradiction.

He does not care what he promised Satan. He's going to kill. And then he's going to resume killing. It was a mistake to have ever stopped.

The other really noteworthy thing, after he becomes Super Buu, is his behavior during his Human Extinction Attack.

God, what a horrifying image. This is the darkest fucking moment in Dragon Ball history. This is somehow worse than blowing up the planet. It's so horrific. Buu is really living up to his function as a god-killing horror whose very existence is a slight against the heavens.

Super Buu uses God's Temple in Heaven as a vantage point from which to fire billions of homing shots down into the Earth precisely targeted to kill every last human being remaining in the world. In a matter of minutes, he purges all human life from this world.

All human life except Tenshinhan and Chiaotzu, who were able to evade the shots aimed at them. Look, if you're going to shoot billions of ki blasts at once, there's a limit to how powerful they can be.

And Mr. Satan, who Buu skipped. Even with his innocence restrained and chained inside of him, Buu still can't escape his feelings for the one man in all the world he can call a friend. Even in this moment as he purges life from this world, Buu simply couldn't bring himself to do it. Not this one.

Even at his darkest, Buu's love for his friend will remain so long as any scrap of influence from Daikaioshin, so long as the thing that makes him sapient to begin with, still lives inside of him. A problem that only Pure Buu would ever manage to solve.

"The surge of emotion that shot through me when I saved your life taught me a valuable lesson: Where Caroline lives in my brain. Goodbye, Caroline." ~Majin Buu apparently

Such a weird resolution to their developing friendship, but Majin Buu is a magical creature unbound from any physics whatsoever so it works.

And then, for good measure, Satan legit saved the Earth from Majin Buu for real by convincing the totality of the resurrected Earthlings to contribute as much genki as they could muster to Goku's Genki-Dama, because there are genuine advantages to being a publicity hound.

Mr. Satan's greatest martial art is PR. He may be a glory-stealing publicity shill sitting pretty off the achievements of others, but goddamn is he good at getting his face out there and being a household name.

People underestimate the value of PR. He might just be a figurehead, but he's a damn good figurehead.

And he got to keep his new bestie too.

This is so unexpectedly sweet. Satan's relationship with Buu was the highlight of this arc. It gave a lot of depth and personality to both characters, turning Satan from a funny joke at the Cell Games to a powerhouse MVP of a protagonist.

It's just. Y'know. Shame about his daughter who basically drops off the face of the plot never to be cared about again. Videl's basically a cameo now, existing mainly to be the mechanism by which Gohan has a daughter.

So. Y'know. That sucks. But I've already talked about Videl and how screwed she was by the narrative.

Looking at post-Z materials, however, you can feel how much of an "Endgame, we don't have to go anywhere with this" sort of thing Satan and Buu's friendship is. GT basically wrote Mr. Buu out of the plot by having him fuse with Uub, while DBS goes out of its way to not let him participate in anything. The one arc he's featured in replaces him with Daikaioshin directly.

I don't think anyone really knows what to do with Mr. Buu now that he's one of the gang. Instead of writing plots and thinking about, "What can Buu do to contribute to this?" the vibe is always "Oh fuck me, what are we going to do about Buu?"

But even when the writers are struggling to find something for him to do, his ironclad friendship with Satan never wavers.

[artbyblastweave]

Thinkin’ about The Siberian

I was sitting on a draft that said something to the effect of “Worm AU where Manton pulls an NBC Hannibal and moonlights as The Siberian on top of being a globally respected parahuman studies researcher. Is this anything.”

Then I thought about this a little more and realized that this might not be far off from what actually happened. There’s a throughline in Manton’s interests, in his trajectory through life, where he’s trying to figure out what you can use powers to get away with doing to people- about identifying constraints and overcoming them. 

He’s the guy who somehow credibly catalogued, and got his name associated with, the fact that powers generally can’t be used to pop people like balloons, and he did so reasonably early in the timeline, in the nineties at the latest. That’s.... an interesting direction to take your research! When people are just coming to terms with the fact that parahumans are real he’s out there taking careful note of whether they can manifest their powers inside people to instantly kill them. How did he test that? What capes did he collaborate with to test that? What did those conversations look like? Did the IRB at a minimum issue any revise-and-resubmits?

And then, of course, he gets picked up by Cauldron (also known as the infinite untraceable victim depot) to work on improving the vials- gaining a sufficiently in-depth understanding of what they are, how they’re made, and what they can do to people that when Cauldron told Legend that Manton had gone rogue and was the one creating C53s, he found this plausible. You’ve got the guy who’d later become the backbone of the Slaughterhouse 9 basically systemically cataloging every conceivable way a power could violate someone’s physiology- first from without, and then, at Cauldron, from within.

Then, when he pulls the trigger and gives himself powers, the resultant ability is essentially a distilled refutation of the Manton Effect- a minion that can obliterate anything, eat anything, delete any material from existence, viscerally dismember people in a unity of conventional and esoteric, power-enabled violence. And he’s insulated from the consequences of his actions on two levels- in terms of Siberian’s invulnerability, but also in the discrepancy between his form and that of his minion. He mixed the vial that gave him that power himself.

Essentially- I don’t think Siberian is something that just happened after a psychological break following a messy divorce. I think Manton basically pre-committed to becoming something like The Siberian, spent most of his career working towards some form of transcendence through superpowers, and the messy divorce was downstream of the cracks starting to show as he got closer and closer to what he’d been chasing.

Now to segue into a complication that’s more directly supported in the text- it’s Worm, it’s always complicated- Master powers spring from loneliness. My theory is that while Manton wanted apotheosis, and while he’d probably been gearing up for a rampage for a while, he genuinely didn’t want to do it alone; he wanted a sidekick. Hence why he bothered pursuing a family in the first place, hence why he fed his daughter a vial, hence why his own projection ended up looking like his daughter after he accidently made her explode or whatever with the bad vial- a monkey’s paw restoration, giving him back a facsimile of the person he wanted to take along for the ride, and making his capacity for violence inseparable from her presence.

This is why he joined up with the Nine rather than remaining a solo act; it’s why he engages in a bad imitation of the Parent/Child relationship with Bonesaw; and it’s why he seeks out Bitch as a candidate. His interest in her candidacy parses to me as genuine- Even moreso than Bonesaw, even moreso than Jack, Bitch has arrived at a no-frills fuck-you-I-do-what-I-want outlook that’s very appealing to Manton. He wants to have a murderer-daughter relationship!

But Rachel got where she is the hard way, by having a life that sucked a lot, by getting near-constantly kicked around! She has a clear reason to be so angry! Even if all my postulations about Manton having a long game are complete bullshit, there are several stages at which Manton had to actively opt in to the same lifestyle and reputation that Bitch was forced to adopt as a basic survival tactic. He didn’t have to start eating people! He’s a tourist! His “freedom” is inseparable from his distance, his disguise. Rachel’s “freedom” is just the freedom of having nothing left to lose.

All of this to say- In an interlude in which Bitch has an extended internal monologue about how people with families have the opportunities to be assholes and monsters to a captive audience, it is absolutely not a coincidence that she’s scouted by a would-be parental figure who proceeds to be an asshole and a monster in front of a captive audience, before trying to buy her affection with a puppy. In rejecting Manton, Rachel dodged an esoterically-packaged but ultimately very familiar bullet.

[denimorigami]

You ever think about how Horikoshi gave us like five seasons/however many fucking chapters to build up Bakugou’s relationship with Jeanist and then when there was a really great opportunity for an emotional payoff he just didn’t do that. Like okay I am a big Edgeshot fan, I like Edgeshot for a lot of reasons, and I think his character was very underutilized throughout the series, but I also don’t think this needed to be his moment. I understand that the general intention with choosing Edgeshot to save Bakugou was to go “look!!! This is a hero acting heroically and it doesn’t even involve an emotional attachment to the person being saved!!!” but… this is immediately undermined by the Edgeshot-Jeanist flashback sequence. He doesn’t have an emotional attachment to Bakugou, but this is still being done with personal motivations not solely related to heroism for the sake of heroism. In some capacity, we are being suggested that it is partly out of his bond with Jeanist that he is making this sacrifice in order to save someone he knows Jeanist cares about. Which is fine, and I enjoy the flashback scene for a number of reasons, but again, this undermines the point of making it purely selfless. So, if the sacrifice being made is not truly from a purely selfless motivation,

Why was it not Jeanist ??

Again, five seasons of build up on this relationship. Yes, most of it happens in the background/side plots, or it is vaguely implied offscreen, but it very much is the case that they have a relationship. This is Bakugou’s non-teacher mentor figure in the series, and it is clear that in spite of his standoffish “I don’t like anyone ever” attitude, Bakugou does actually seem to like him. He seems to have learned some things. The two have some neat parallels with each other. It’s a good, solid relationship even if it isn’t the most deeply explored thing in the series.

So… this was the opportunity for an emotional payoff. A culmination of their relationship with something that actually matters to happen between them, which really hadn’t happened in the series since they first met. It is a bit harder to come up with something equally impactful to a literal sacrifice of one’s life, but again… this concept was also immediately undermined with the original scene as well which really removes any of the draw of including it in the first place. It’s great that, in theory, Edgeshot was willing to die for him. This did not actually happen, though, which cheapens the entire thing and, in my opinion, makes it pointless to even include. Either actually kill the character you are killing, or don’t bother fake-killing them if you don’t want them dead. I’m perfectly fine with a death fake out (Jeanist has multiple of these that I actually enjoy), but in a high stakes emotional climax? Bad time for that and just feels pointless.

I can think of at least two good ways to get that payoff I’ve been talking about, and if I can come up with alternative plot lines, I really feel like Horikoshi could too. Edgeshot being willing to do a heroic thing that ultimately has no consequences for a generally vague reason (because Horikoshi doesn’t choose to really… explain much of anything about who Edgeshot is or why he does fucking anything ever) doesn’t really add anything new to this story. He’s a pro hero who does the heroic thing because he’s a pro hero, and also that’s his best friend’s weird little surrogate child figure, I guess. It just doesn’t feel satisfying so much as “here’s a guy with a quirk that maybe could solve this situation if you squint and suspend your disbelief really hard.” It just seems like such a missed opportunity, not only to explore one of the deuteragonist’s important relationships, but to have a scene that really adds something to the themes of the story.

[auberge13]

These two moments are taken from the conversations Jon has with each of his parents before joining the Legion of Superheroes. There is one particularly interesting difference between how Lois and Clark each view the decision.

(Lois Lane 2019 issue #4 and Superman 2018 issue #16)

"doesn't leave you much of a choice, does it?" vs. "I am jealous of... the choices in front of you"

Now, if you're like me, this is the kind of thing that makes you very excited about characterization and storytelling so let's get into it.

Clark is a character who never really felt like being good was a choice that needed to be made. He was raised to be good by Ma and Pa and he is so inherently good that he can't imagine being anything else, let alone choosing to be anything else. Meanwhile, Lois intimately understands that being good is a choice that you have to make over and over again, even when it's hard. Doing good the way she does is constantly challenged, particularly by her father. Her choice to do good costs her that relationship with him, and she isn't able to fully reconcile with him before his death, which is explored intimately in this book (read Lois Lane).

As my friend @fae-morrigan put it while we were discussing this, "I feel you could easily read it in a way where Clark is jealous that Jon's been shown he could be Other Than Good and make an informed choice about Being Good. Where Lois knows that choosing to be good often comes at the expense of other good things (in her case, her relationship with her father)"

There's a key moment in the issue after the above screenshot that really showcases this.

(Lois Lane 2019 issue #5)

It's important to acknowledge that there is no part of Clark that would choose not to be Superman. They're the same guy. Clark would do good anyway in whatever capacity he could, he just happens to have a really large capacity. When he says he is jealous of the choices in front of Jon, it is less about doing or not doing good, but rather about how he's going to do it.

(Superman 2024 issue #1)

My friend @ultfreakme explained this really well. "comparing LOSH to college works like that because Jon's going to college (learning to be a hero), but he gets to pick from a million different majors and fuck around for a bit with a support system to fall back on if he fails. Clark went from high school (regular dude) and straight into a job (being a hero) with no ability to like....try something different."

So that's what we can learn about Lois and Clark from this, but what about Jon? The comics do a really cool thing where they break up Jon's complex thoughts about this choice into multiple conversations with different people. With Lois, Jon expresses the sense of obligation he feels. With Damian, he's able to share his hesitance, even telling him that he doesn't think he wants to accept the invitation at first. Finally, with Clark and Imra, he's able to feel his excitement about this new step in his life. It is all very college! I felt all of these things before I left too! But beyond that, this is also a great example of the way Jon will compartmentalize his issues and limit his vulnerability depending on who he's talking to. He has a tendency to minimize his own feelings in order to make other people more comfortable, which you can really see in the different things he's willing to express with each person.

Anyway, I think there's more to be said here and I'd love to hear what other people think about these moments, but I'll call it here. Moral of the story, read Lois Lane 2019 and then create something for the Jon Kent Week Mama's boy prompt- the Jon and Lois in that book are top tier. Also, if you've gotten this far you clearly like this kind of analysis so here's my post about why they aged up Jon. When I posted it Tumblr had put me in jail and turned me into a robot (wow Absolute Power is so immersive!) so it didn't show up in the tag. Sorry for the plug but I'm a little bitter about it lol.

[jonathan-cranes-mistress-of-fear]

Hey! This is Anon from the "love OC's ask". I just wanted to thank you for defending the OC's from idtiots on internet. Like the post Amor made about Scarecrow's work still being used was such fun thing to read. To have someone call it cringe just because they add something about they OC in regard to the post is upsetting. They even added warning before OC part so people can skip it! I adore Amor headcanons either they are about Jonathan or her OC and relationships with them. But why do you think Scarecrow has such toxic part of fanbase? Like they even don't acknowledge his "canonical" comic partners. Like Sherry Squires was big part of Masters of fear! Jonathan or Linda Friitawa and her relationship with Scarebeast! Jonathan? Why are some people so mad that Jonathan has a partner, be it canonical, OC or self insert?

Misogyny and fetishization is your answer, as mentioned in a previous ask. This isn't just Scarecrow, it's any and all shippable male characters. If given the choice between shipping two males who (more often than not) never interact / absolutely hate each other, or shipping a canon male/female ship, they're gonna ship the gay stuff.

Look, I have absolutely nothing against shipping an lgbtqia+ pair, but don't think you're being sneaky when you very obviously ignore or erase canon in any capacity to make your ship work. Note, this isn't just a problem in the rogues fandom, it's ALL fandoms. (it can also be said that erasing a characters culture or skin tone falls into the same bucket of oh fuck no. Ever see people complain about Damian Wayne being drawn to look white? It's a real issue; and not just in comics)

This is a multifaceted issue. The majority of pop culture is straight and white. Obviously we're getting better. I see more gay ships in popular shows, I see more non-white characters with real stories and lives that aren't used for a racist joke ala family guy

I totally get wanting to explore dynamics of different ships, or shipping what you as a person are attracted to. That is always OKAY. Wanting to see yourself as the hero, for example, is okay. Characters like Tiana did SO MUCH for children who previously didn't see themselves as a disney princess.

Let it be known, your average gay male ship isn't an issue. Nor are most fandoms or people in said fandoms. Most people genuinely just ship for fun. Many are multi shippers. Many have m/f and m/m and that's being really general and not mentioning trans ships!

Its when very loud minority send death threats and tell others to commit suicide because they're shipping a female presenting self insert with a popular male character in a fandom dominated by a certain gay ship.I was once told in an anon ask that I should give up talking about my OC because why would Scarecrow love her when he has Riddler? Riddler is SO MUCH better, nobody cares about my stupid OC!

That's not why I stopped, but it didn't help

Not only that, but men in general greatly dislike popular female characters, not so much for shipping reasons but because they can't imagine a world were men are not in the spotlight. And then there's the problem of straight women blatantly creating fetish content about gay men.

it's a huge can of worms, there's so many strings attached to this issue. I honestly don't know if I am giving the problem justice.

[souji-upseta]

yo my name is nyx, it's my birthday today (2/3). my birthdays have sucked SHIT the past few years for reasons that are depressing—

—cringe is also dead, i killed her myself, and i'm still grieving her loss. its been very hard for me—

—since i am the protagonist of Me and can do st abt this, this year i turn 31, and i will at some point turn 31.4, with all of this in mind, what do i want for my birthday? i'll tell you:

to talk about homestuck.

i'll do that, anyways, but you'd be doing me a gift by giving me a prompt to follow, and to feel slightly more validated in my inability to shut up about my hyperfixation.

so i'm asking YOU to talk about homestuck with me.

talk to me abt homestuck? ask me my headcanons. my thoughts. my relationship to the work. tell me yours. expect nothing that's profound, and plenty that's stupid.

i'm even turning anon on, for the first time in 6 fucking years. where making this happen.

this never expires btw. today is my birthday, but, for story purposes, let's say that it's still my birthday after it isn't, bc i will still want and, if i am honest, NEED you to talk to me about homestuck for years onward. i'm very metatextual like that.

i get the feeling it's going to be a long day.

>Nyx: Be the other guy.

You are now the other guy! What will you do?

>Web Tumblr User: Inbox Tumblr user souji-upseta?

>Mobile App Tumblr User: Do that, but hyperlink is unavailable?

=(n×∞)>

FOURTH WALL BREAK!

you are now nyx again, and i am now me, and i need to exposit some lore.

as in, some starting points to get u going, since "homestuck" is a very broad subject:

•i'm a massive massive slut for the epilogues and post canon content/hsbc. pesterquest is too good for this gay earth.

•dirk is my fav, ALL of the dirks, all of them, and it isn't even close. my fav relationship is the canon platonic/familial one between dirk and dave. i fucking love the striders. dave is my 1.5th fav.

•im more invested in dave's relationship to corndogs (and corn dogs) than you even know.

•mspa reader is my second fav after the striders, bc they are a good thembo friendsimp and also bc they are me and they are You. i might be biased. i love You. i love me. i love us. we're fucking gr8.

•im pretty canon-compliant, so my fav ship is dirkjake as exes (for now), and my fav ship as not-exes is panquadrant (canon) davekat.

i'm also really fascinated by rosemary and would welcome more opportunities to learn abt and talk about them but if homestuck makes a statement about anything it's to let the women and the sapphic characters tell their story (thats a joke, talk to me abt them too)

•june eg(g)bert real.

•i'm fascinated by classpects and the applications of paradox space's classpecting and extended zodiac system when applied to real life, since our only experience of those fictional systems is in linear dimensions of spacetime, and our only experience of astrology is as a species that in-universe cannot experience the sign caste system the same way the fictional aliens that created our species in their own image do. skaia knows, but we sure as fuck don't.

•i'm a former prince of heart (2012-2020) and a current knight of space, and my aspect is light. that is a thing that actually makes perfect sense for the reasons i just said.

don't ask me about vriska serket or (vriska) serket. not bc i'm not willing to discuss dark or problematic characters (hello, lanque bombyx) but bc:

for one, she can speak for her damn self, and has, tyvm.

for two, talking at length about a problematic character in any positive capacity marks you as an enemy of the state if that character is a woman, and being an enemy of the state is way too much fucking pressure for me for reasons i already explained as soon as i told you i'm a knignt of space. i wouldnt make a very good enemy of the state. it'd be an unhealthy blackrom relationship to the detriment of us all.

for three, i can just give you all my opinions/headcanons on vriska that matter:

•JOHN HUGGING VRISKA IN HSBC YESSSSSSSSSS

•she's greasy and gross and unkept af but not unclean or unsanitary, like, she bathes, she smells fine, she changes her clothes, but she's got the troll crust punk aesthetic absolutely on LOCK. she doesn't comb her hair.

•it would have been funny if she did even more bad things

•aradia did nothing wrong. vriska did but the meme is funny even if someone needs to take that meme out back and shoot it for the good of humanity.

•she should beat up ultimate dirk, and my reasoning for that is bc that would, also, be really fucking funny if she did

•john has both punched her in the face and hugged her, and now that john has punched aranea in the face, all that's left is for june—i assume she will have come out of her egg(bert) by then—to hug aranea and complete the circle of stupidity.

•she is trans yeah but she doesn't wanna get into it, she doesn't have to, and neither do i.

•vrisrezi most important relationship in homestuck.

there. you already got me to talk about vriska at length, and you didn't have to try. moot issue.

[kivaember]

Random question: How jealous do the guys in your ac6 ships get?

Okay let's see:

VIV621 - 621 doesn't have a jealous bone in his body. Once 621 trusts someone he trusts someone, and it'd never cross his mind to be insecure over Rusty looking at someone else, or to 'mark his territory' if someone flirted with Rusty bc he knows Rusty will reject them. He's very much like "well yeah, of course people will flirt with him he's attractive" and just shrugs things off.

He's also very clinical when it comes to sex and relationships. He knows that relationships are mutually beneficial, and that both parties need to derive some sort of pleasure and satisfaction of it. As such, he approaches it kind of like, an agreement rather than a committment? If Rusty looks at someone else, 621 just shrugs his shoulders and expects there to either be a renegotiation of their terms, or for him to cancel it.

He'll be upset of course, but he's also just used to not having actual input in the making or breaking of contracts, so he'll never say or do anything, which does give off the impression he's a little apathetic. He just lacks the capacity to be jealous of Rusty getting attention or admirers, and he trusts him totally anyways, so it never even crosses his mind to get worked up. He's very chill, zen you could almost say.

Rusty however.

Rusty.

He puts up a laidback front and is good at pretending, but he's such a jealous bitch. If anyone flirts with 621 he will be sizing them up for a coffin and compiling a five step plan on how to kill and hide their body without being caught. He's prone to 'marking his territory' (he's bitey and 621 gets a lot of love bites) and figuratively pisses a circle around 621 if he feels like people are looking at him too much or thinking of making a move.

He's also under a sort of assumption that 621 is a bit naive and oblivious to flirting or people trying to take advantage of him, and coupled with his jealousy, it can make him snappish and overprotective from time to time. It does occasionally irritate 621, because he feels like it's patronising lmao.

HOWEVER, Rusty's very aware that his jealousy is a bit of an irrational beast, so he has a good grip on it and never lets it control him - and when 621 tells him to knock it off he does so immediately. He does trust 621, but as someone who grew up on a planet where people died or left unexpectedly, he's got a lot of unprocessed trauma and attachment issues that he hasn't really unpacked. Deep down a part of him is terrified of losing more people he cares about, so he unconsciously clenches his fists around them and is on guard for any 'threats' that'll take them away from him.

This boy needs therapy. They both do, really.

Walt/Mich - Michigan and Walter are kind of weird. When they first got together it was a friends with benefits kind of deal, and Michigan did keep sleeping around when with Walter, until he gradually just... stopped doing that, because he realised Walter satisfied him enough both emotionally and sexually.

Meanwhile Walter was monogamous but it was more from a lack of interest in other people than him wanting to commit to Michigan solely. As far as he's aware, their relationship has always been open, and so long as Michigan shows him a clean STI test every so often, Walter couldn't care less if he was going to weekly orgies and fucking ten people at once. Walter has a very clinical approach to sex and relationships though, in that he considers sex to be a biological function to relieve stress and tension, and to strengthen a bond between two individuals. As such, Walter doesn't get jealous of Michigan's many partners (when he was sleeping around), but...

He does still get jealous. He knows he and Michigan are """friends""" and that they have a very close bond that he both hates and craves. If he feels like anyone is trying to intrude or muscle in on that, Walter gets vicious and catty and isn't afraid to chase off someone he feels is an interloper.

Some Young Jupiter lore: when Michigan was still in Furlong and Nile was his corporate rival in Balam, Walter actually genuinely disliked Nile for the longest time. Because he saw that Michigan and Nile had some weird friendship alongside their rivalry, and it made him feel threatened even if he couldn't really figure out why. It irritated him so much lmao

(eventually he chilled out with Nile when he realised that he was getting worked up over nothing, but for almost a year Nile was dodging death whenever he ran across Walter on a sortie, because Walter aimed to kill every time lmao)

Michigan, hilariously, is very chill. He gets childishly jealous if he feels like Walter is "looking" at someone else, but he easily gets over it and doesn't get carried away. Unlike Walter who holds a grudge for months and actually attempts several murder plans on the "competition" (sorry Nile, the fear of god (walter) was put into his soul). In the end Michigan knows Walter, and he knows Walter has little to no interest in other people and won't stray, even though their relationship is technically "open". He just gets his moments from time to time, but they're brief and short-lived.

O'Keeffe/Flatwell - hilariously......................... they're not jealous people at all, because they have a deeply warped view of their own relationship, what with being divorced spies on opposite sides. If anyone told Flatwell that O'Keeffe was sleeping with someone else he'd express shock that someone could tolerate his everything long enough to bed him. Meanwhile if someone told O'Keeffe that Flatwell was sleeping with someone else he'd just be like "well yeah, I'd be surprised if he wasn't."

If these two went to couple's therapy they'd end up in a research paper or something.

Freud/Rusty - Freud is. Not? jealous? Except he is. Freud is weird. Freud is the type whose jealousy wanes with his interest in the person at the time, what type of interest, and how motivated he is to get worked up by something (which is directly proportional with his boredom levels). If he does get jealous, though, he will make the object of his jealousy regret they ever heard the name of Freud.

But other times he doesn't feel a blip of jealousy and is like "yeah sure, whatever". He's a weirdo. HOWEVER!!!! BIG HOWEVER!!! If it comes to jealousy over someone trying to steal his skilled opponent that's making his heart race, he'll flip to murderous in a split second. In the realm of love and sex, however? Yeah, it depends on his mood at the time.

Iguazu with anyone: He is the most jealous man alive. He'd be the epitome of this meme:

[secretoreimo]

Hello I can't resist the obnoxious urge to blabber about my feelings so long analysis under the cut!? JHSDHJKJS

Okay, so. Indeed, while I understand that the game couldn't keep them blood-related for censorship reasons and such, I do think it killed the impact of them getting together a good bit.

My suspension of disbelief kind of tanked when Kirino asked Kyousuke to be her boyfriend right after he poured his heart out, expressing his insecurities that something might change between them. The game really does treat it like it's not only a non-issue but also a logical step to take, now, and I honestly have the capacity to ignore that for what I'm here for (them interacting, period), but it was definitely jarring.

I will say though, I did like that this began because they sat down to have a genuine talk about it. That felt much more organic and in-character than the nonsense we got in season 2, with the screaming in public and whatnot. And it did a lot more to stress the lengths they've changed since the beginning of the series, letting them sit down and confess to each other nervously. Well, I'd have liked if it were significantly more nervous, personally.

The thing about their relationship is it is inherently fucked up, like. It is at the center of all of their problems. Kirino has a crippling obsession with "imouto eroge" and this stemmed from the fact that, from a VERY young age, she believed herself to be a freak who had improper and disgusting feelings for her older brother, and eroge was something she latched onto as an escape from that reality. Sure, it did end up just being plain her favorite thing, but it came from that place.

I think if there's one thing I'd credit the anime for, it's that she didn't admit to her feelings ever, not until the very end when it was absolutely undeniable that they were reciprocated. She was repressed for so long I truly don't believe there'd be a reality where she'd say it first. Kyousuke has his own daddy issues, but there's something to be said regardless of a guy who is otherwise pretty normal, but finds himself falling in love with his little sister, however estranged. He's pretty fucked up, himself. Although I wish he hadn't screamed it in the center of the street at the top of his lungs in the most soulless loss for his character ever, I think the only way for them to actually move forward in a relationship would be for him to come to terms with it and say something first, however long a process that may or may not be.

I love the scenario the game poses where their relationship starts to take a "maybe I'll invite her out, just the two of us" turn, and she actually agrees instead of being flat out disgusted and disparaging. Sure, the beach was a little random and the game could have picked a better excuse than "idk why im inviting her to the beach it's almost like i got her route in a video game", but like. Idk, I like it when they interact, it feels natural for the most part. The game feels really good when you scoop out those little moments of "we're not siblings actually we're just a boy and a girl and it's natural".

Even just this scene post-confession, if I were to pretend that part had happened a different way, the banter over how they're gonna continue as a couple is pretty cute and in character.

I'm rambling about all of this not like to bitch I just have so many feelings and things I like and don't like and there are parts that I'd mix and match between anime canon and game canon and things... it's kind of fun. All in all I'd say this feels like an extremely well-written (and well-voiced) fanfiction. I'd accept these things in a fanfiction and move on, just as I'm gonna do for the game, but since it's official I get to be a freak on the internet and write paragraphs about it jhfhjsg

I am ultimately of the opinion that them being blood-related is the better story, it says more about their flaws and their personalities, and tbh I'm a sucker for characters who shouldn't be in love falling in love. Especially when they're as lovingly crafted as the characters in oreimo are. This series really is something special, I think, and it's kind of impossible to describe that to someone who hasn't seen it and just knows it for its reputation as "the anime where the brother and sister get married and kiss on the mouth at the end", which I guess is all anyone was gonna get from season 2

I rambled so long that I don't even have time to continue playing past their confession!! Now I have to go to sleep, but continue I shall soon, because... I love them...

[botanybulbasaur]

one of my friends once had a discussion with me about how he didn’t understand aros and how queerplatinic relationships work. snippet of a discussion we had at ye old lunch table below (i’m blue text, he’s pink text).

”so, aromantic people— at least, how i personally experience being aromantic— is like.. i don’t know, less capacity for romantic love? imagine this.” (i lay out my hands on the table, visualizing two tubes of different lengths) “these are tubes, meters— whatever the fuck. they measure someone’s romantic love for someone else, right?”

“yeah?”

“yeah, nice. stay with me here. one of these tubes has more capacity for love, one of these has less. you can only fill the smaller one so much, but what matters is that it’s full. that’s the maximum amount you can love someone, even if it’s different from tube to tube.”

“okay, yeah, sure, but you still only love them a little. how would someone be willing to date another person who doesn’t love them that much?”

“i don’t know, man. they’re willing to settle, i guess? or they know the other person loves them as much as they can, and that’s enough for them.”

“but you don’t love them as much as they love you.”

“you love them as much as you can. people are all different, including how they love. like how you’re really not capable of liking girls, yeah?”

“no, i do like girls. i just choose to like boys more.”

“but that’s not how it works for most other people. if you’d talk to another guy who uses the gay label, you’d probably find they aren’t attracted to women at all. that’s the thing about labels— they tell people about you. you saying you’re gay is a label you choose to inform people that you’re not interested in dating women.”

“yeah. but what about the topic from earlier??”

“aro is a label too. it informs people that you don’t have the same capacity for love that they might— like a warning, kinda.”

“but you don’t love—“

“dude, i genuinely don’t wanna hear it. you’ve never dated an aro person.”

“i dated [his ex’s name], though, and he didn’t love me like how i loved him! that’s what made us break up, he didn’t love me as much.”

“but he wasn’t aro, and he didn’t love you to full capacity, dude. he didn’t love you as much as he could, and that’s the difference between him and an aro person in a queer platonic relationship.”

“you’ve never dated someone, how would you know?”

“i have, actually. don’t assume things, please— it was a while ago, though. we were both kids, confused definitely. we ended up breaking up because i didn’t spend enough time with him. i loved him as best i could, though.”

“maybe you just didn’t like him enough.”

“(pause, silence)— please don’t say that. please don’t, that’s seriously fucked up.”

“okay, but you didn—“

“[friend’s name], i’m going to cry if we keep this up. touchy subject— horrible subject, even. let’s stop.”

“..okay.”

obviously, some details and context are left out here. what matters the most to me is the aftermath— he ended up apologizing for bringing up his ex, but still held his stance in the argument. i said it was all fine— it actually wasn’t, even if i could keep my shit together at surface level. as soon as i got to the staff bathroom i threw my jacket on the floor, started getting in my head about it. rest of the day was terrible, but i can spare the details.

moral of the story, be nice to aro people. be nice to everybody, even if you don’t understand them. your actions have consequences.

[grodyego]

talk about the relationship between Dove and Vega?

OHHH GLADLY !!!!!

dove and vega kind of take the longest to fully warm up to each other (rakesh is really kind of the binding glue that holds them together. tbf that remains true even after everybody is fully friends with everybody else, hes just kind of the heart of their team that way). they don't start out disliking each other or anything like that, but they are both mutually quite bad at making friends and interacting with other people in a "normal" capacity, for their own reasons (vega's a control freak who struggles to understand other people and dove lowkey doesn't even think of himself as a full human being most of the time), and they're both pretty stubborn by nature and thus naturally butt heads a bit. dove finds vega's apparently flippancy towards others and her only priority ever seeming to be her "work" or gathering data to be irritating at best and actively unnerving at worse. vega likewise is pretty quick to catch and callout dove's bad habit of projecting onto other people and the hypocrisy that lends towards and thinks it makes me come off holier-than-thou and preachy at times, so it causes some tension !

all that being said, given that dove and rakesh are actual partners in the field (and their relationship grows quite quickly), vega reasonably starts to get pretty apprehensive about becoming a "third wheel", which for dove's part he does pick up on, and goes out of his way to do things to reassure that that isn't what's happening (nor could it ever be, frankly). hes pretty good at recognizing that vega is still pretty young without condescending to her about it because he actually sympathizes with her position pretty greatly, he can understand what its like, hes kind of been there. vega for her part appreciates that most people seem to think both of them are creepy and weird, and she has a lot of fun kind of filling in some of the blanks for him on some aspects of the future he doesnt fully understand, cuz like. i invite you, fellow autists, to imagine how amazing it would feel to be able to infodump about everything youve ever been invested in, from scratch and in such a level of detail it was as if you were explaining it to somebody who has just showed up that day on earth

again vega's pretty limited in her social circle and usually insists she doesn't want or need friends, kind of in contrast with how she often behaves, i think she would even maybe initially be kind of. almost mad that not only has dove managed to make her care about him, but to the point where she is like, emotionally invested in his wellbeing and safety. NOT cool of him. she came to highly secretive questionable ethics factory so that she'd never have to do that again and then rakesh already took what was supposed to be her only one exceptions spot, now she's gotta care about two people ???? who both work in the "not only will you die it will hurt the entire time you're dying" department ????? thats exhausting. fuck those guys

[hahanoiwont]

Pretty sure we've had this conversation before but re 'THATS THEIR DAD' Red was there right? That had to in some way hurt. Because to Red Black is the Sans in the exact same no win situation he was but he *won*. He has the close (the *functional*) relationship with his brother, he has happy life on surface, he has his kid. He has *The* Kid, *Red's* kid the kid Red threw everything away for, the kid that hates him because its was the only way to keep them from loving him so goddamn much. That he hurt so he wouldn't hurt them.

And fuck give it a few months and Black will probably have *Red's* brother too. And its *good* that the two of them have someone who can love them *right* instead of just hurting them in the name of it but it's gotta *hurt* to see what your life could've been if you were just a little bit *better*

if ONLY Red were there. That would be hilarious I mean uh. Very sad. Very sad for him. poor guy...

Luckily for Red, he is not there for this conversation. He and Just Sans are having a different conversation on their own, since Frisk asked for Red to not be there at first. Though the first time Red hears Frisk call Black "dad" he's going to go through a lot all at once. He just didn't think it was possible, or that the word held any real meaning for Frisk. Which, to be fair, it didn't. It came to mean something to them, because it's how Black described their relationship, and he's cultivated a bond with them that has the tenderness and support that they need. Red wasn't able to provide that. What he was able to provide he labeled as a sibling relationship, because it was what he provided/wanted to provide for Fell, so he figured he might as well call it the same thing. (and also because he's aware somewhere in his heart that being forced into a parenting role with fell fucked him up really badly, so while he ended up being as much a parent as a brother to frisk, he has complicated feelings about that.)

Black's desire to yoink Fell and dote on/adopt him forever is also going to be a point of contention between Red and Black, though it may not go exactly how you'd think. Fell doesn't particularly want to be yoinked. While he still has a deep hunger for the affection and validation he never got from Red, he's less prepared than Frisk was to accept it from a relative stranger, so that instant bond with Black doesn't develop. He's used to pushing through his own unmet needs and insisting on his loyalty to Red even when Red himself tells Fell to give up on him and live a better life with people who can be better for him. Black seems to Fell like an incarnation of Red's self-hate: he's stringent about his moral code, he fears the capacity for violence that has kept his family alive, and most importantly he's a judge to the core. Fell also sees Slim's normally well-hidden tendency towards brutal efficiency above all else, and correctly identifies it as a lingering insecurity that if his brother is forced to do too much of the dirty work, he'll be lost forever. So, despite Black's best efforts to save them both, Fell can identify him as being vulnerable to moral self-destruction.

He also correctly identifies part of Black's resentment for Red as being a judgement of the choices Red has made, and Fell is sick to death of Red's self-recrimination. As far as he's concerned, he took the burden of the judge from his brother to save him from this belief that, since he's done such an awful job as a brother, he can never be better. He's chosen to forgive Red. He's chosen to give him a second chance, and in his own way, Red has treated that choice as sacred. He's done absolutely nothing without Fell's consult since then, except in dreams where Fell wasn't available to ask, and made intense efforts to at least try to offer Fell comfort and support where it's needed. He still lacks the skills, but he and Fell are trying so hard to repair their relationship that Black's resentment feels presumptive at best. Black knows of one thing that Red did, one terrible mistake that he made, and refuses to see how he's learned and grown from it. He's seeing the absolute nutjob Sans who hurt his siblingchild, and not Red who's trying to make things right, even if he'll never be forgiven. Not even the person who tried to be what Frisk needed, and tried to send them somewhere better when he realized that he couldn't.

So, when it comes to Black and Red having conflict, Fell will normally refuse to engage while passively sticking to Red like glue. The harder Black tries to pry him away, the more firm he'll be that he wants nothing to do with Black's one-sided drama with Red. He would love to get to know Black as a person, and he's intensely afraid that Black and Slim have replaced him and Red for Frisk, but he's not going to achieve his dreams by sacrificing his family. He still wants to have Frisk and Red both in his life, and he won't compromise.

He's petrified that this conviction will cause him to lose Frisk even after all this, but Frisk gets it. They did live with Red and Fell first, so it's natural to them that Fell can't leave Red. They try to convince Black to cool it about Red so that Fell can at least come to family events without feeling defensive and unwelcome, and they also have mixed emotions about Black's Red-hate campaign. They're glad to have someone so firmly in their corner, but there's still a large part of them that needs to know Red is okay to feel safe. They talk to Slim about their feelings about Red a lot more than anybody else, because Slim is always willing to listen and won't hold it against anyone if Frisk has conflicting feelings that they need to talk out.

All this to say: Red may have already accepted that Black is just better than him in every way and everyone is just going to love him and abandon Red for being broken at the first opportunity, but he's surrounded by a lot more love and loyalty than he realizes. And if he ever needs somebody in his corner, Blue fucking hates Black for unrelated reasons (they are too similar), and the feeling is mutual.

[empiriical]

its not sunday for me yet but people are being horny on my dash again, so here are some quick miscellaneous nsfw headcanons for the muses:

jacuzzi. he doesn't have a particularly high sex drive, but y'know. he's a 19-23 year old boy. it's more that he doesn't think about sex that much. when he's in a more stable relationship, he enjoys it. there's nothing particularly spicy about sex with jacuzzi, but he's not bad at it either. it's intimate, it's a way of showing affection for his partner, && it feels good. he does cry, as you'd expect. he is usually pretty timid about it, && needs the other person to take the reins, but that can change as he gets more comfortable.

elmer. i'm gonna be honest, i've been thinking about this for a long time && i truly think elmer is ace. honestly, i don't think he's ever experienced sexual attraction, or if he has, he wouldn't really be able to recognize it — similar to how he is with romantic attraction. that being said, he doesn't shy away from sex either, regardless of gender, other than being cautious about letting the other person see his scars, && even then, he'd likely just leave his shirt on. he'd gladly have sex if it made the other person happy, && he can even enjoy it, but it's a very utilitarian thing for him.

maiza. maiza is... complicated. he's only attracted to men, for starters, && i do think he had sex some in his youth (though probably with women, at least primarily, although i can see a world where he slept with men as part of his personal rebellion), but after coming to north america, he really... didn't. && quite frankly, probably doesn't again until the 2000s (assuming a relationship with ronny; beyond that, idk). maybe a handful of times here or there but you could probably count them on two if not one hand. sex is the furthest thing from maiza's mind, && his sex drive is incredibly low. when he does have sex, it's recreational, && very much used as a way to relax. in fact, there's probably nothing that unwinds him && helps him loose all the tension he carries more than sex. but similarly to jacuzzi, it's more about the closeness && intimacy with his partner. i've said this before but he laughs a lot.

ladd. he needs to be in control, all the time. he loves a good power struggle, but he'd gonna be ticked off if he loses. that's not necessarily a bad thing, && he enjoys it regardless, but if he had his way, he'd be in control the whole time. ladd isn't the kind of guy who thinks with his dick, nor would i define him as hypersexual, but also a lot of things are inherently sexual to him — murder, for one. blood, fighting, etc. he's not above pain && sadism, but only if the other person wanted that... though it's unlikely he'd go for someone who didn't, at least a little. he knows his limits, && takes care to know his partner's limits too. that being said, he's fantasized about killing his lovers during sex... whether he'd actually do it is debatable, but it's a nice thought.

berga. he can be fairly gentle, despite his strength, but there's a lot of spirit — that's just kinda what happens naturally between him && kalia, even in their day to day lives, so naturally it continues into the bedroom. bickering, && a bit of a power struggle as well (kalia usually wins). things tend to get pretty feisty.

claire. he's similar to ladd in some ways, though less extreme. claire has the capacity to be extremely gentle, but he definitely enjoys some liveliness, && a little bit of competition. honestly, he's not that experienced. his personality tends to be too off-putting to get to this stage with anyone, && i don't really see him as the kind of guy who just hooks up with people.

tick. this man has not fucked, does not fuck, && probably will not fuck, although it's not that he wouldn't... it's just not on his mind. if he did, though... he'd probably be a little into pain (on the inflicting end), out of curiosity more than anything else. it's not something he'd do without his partner being equally enthusiastic && on board, though.

esperanza. well. ok. honestly, like tick, he has not, does not, && probably will not. sure, he would have sex if a woman very directly asked him to, but the truth is, he's afraid of engaging intimately with women, for fear of disrespecting, violating, or otherwise being unintentionally harmful or predatory toward them. as much as he reveres women, he would prefer to keep his distance. && frankly, i don't think he has an especially high sex drive or even interest. there's a world where eventually he does get married, && have sex out of obligation to produce an heir && continue the family line, but otherwise, he stays staunchly unattached. he would never initiate anything, not even romantically. the only time i can see this changing is in an immortal/modern au, after he's come to terms with his complex gender identity, but even then... honestly, given everything that happened to monica, i don't see a world where approaching a woman in a sexual capacity wouldn't make him horribly uncomfortable.

aging. she fucks so much. i mean, maybe she doesn't have a lot of opportunities — being an assassin among other things keeps her busy, but this is a big hell yeah. she's very enthusiastic, has a lot of energy. she likes to show off her strength in bed. she's the kind of person people would be like "step on me!!" to. not saying it's happened, but that's just the energy she gives off. she's not the type to settle down into a monogamous relationship, so she has a lot of one-night stands, friends with benefits, etc. she's just here for a good time tbh.

jean-pierre. he's one of the people we know has canonically fucked a lot. which is honestly really funny to me. anyway, i wish i could say he has all the charm, charisma, && seductive allure of a stereotypical bard, given that that's more or less what he is — as far as poetry && storytelling goes, anyway — but he does not. he's like one of the most pathetic guys around. he's incredibly boring in the bedroom but also just like... good at sex, && he's a local celebrity, so... yeah. he's not even particularly horny. idk. he's an enigma to me.

[titleleaf]

ooh tell me some things about process for "jacob's dream" the jophickey noncon one... characterization thoughts would be especially interesting but really anything

First of all THANK, second of all, here is so many words that are probably totally incoherent, I really appreciated getting to revisit this fic!

Fic is here @ AO3 -- Jopson->Hickey noncon for AMC's The Terror s01e08. CW: discussion of #sexual violence and general violence behind the cut

This fic felt so mean to write -- I love writing about dark!versions of characters and it never comes from a position of disliking or hating that particular character, it's more about turning them inside out and figuring out a different aspect of them. Jopson has a steely streak in him and his capacity for patience and care doesn't negate that -- I can't imagine him ever getting to such a point of extremity (even his enthusiasm for knocking Hickey around at gunpoint in this fic, let alone the noncon part) without serious external pressures but the combination of (correctly) perceiving the captain to be under threat and reaching the absolute end of his emotional resources, feeling like they're on the very fringe of "civilized" behavior already, has him doing something he would never have done aboard ship or before they departed. It's a really weird desperate campaign to shore up the captain's authority (and through him by extension the whole vertical structure of English society as he knows it -- the captain, the admiralty, the queen, God) that brings Jopson himself to a worse place than he was before. It's fun showing the harder, tougher, steelier side of Jopson but it's in the context of something fundamentally fucked and morally degrading. I had the idea of "hey what if Terror Camp Clear-era noncon" first -- the way Hickey acts so fake-casual just sparked something, idk -- but I ended up digging in trying to figure out how to get these characters there.

I'd forgotten until rereading this how blatantly I have Hickey just say "Jopson is mad because he's sold his soul to an uncaring power structure", lol -- that's a jaundiced take given Hickey POV and Cornelius being like, one bear attack away from screaming about Queen Victoria, but Jopson is a lawful kind of guy, a caretaker, and he's highly attuned to any threat of instability. Hickey acting against their captain poses a catastrophic threat to the whole system of hierarchy that Jopson puts stock in and Hickey does not, and the extremity of Jopson's response is as much due to that as it is due to a personal dislike of Hickey and his goading. I really wanted this to come across as very physical and ungainly, very much like a beating where the sexual contact is Jopson using his dick the same way he's using his gun or his fists. He's just trying to degrade Hickey in a way he associates with Hickey already, not just sex but brutality and dirtiness -- I hadn't thought of this, but Jopson as a steward must have some thoughts and feelings about whatever he may suspect about Hickey's relationship with Gibson -- and hoping it'll break him down to size. On the flipside, Hickey's twisting his position around to be an empowering one, where he's in control by forcing Jopson to sink to his level and compromise his own moral convictions. Lots of stuff in the show between the two of them as characters about dirtiness and cleanliness, slovenliness and tidiness, laziness and diligence, and it makes them great foils.

There's a weird push and pull here where Hickey absolutely sees rape (specifically being raped) as on a continuity with all his other experiences of sex -- in a calmer moment Jopson would find what he's doing in this fic abhorrent, and he really does try to hide it, but Hickey doesn't view it as qualitatively different than being beaten and he's got a ton of rationalizations in play to keep him from ever having to sit with his emotional responses to sexual exploitation. Unlike his nasty gnome book counterpart, or even a character like Henry Drax who's indifferent to consent as long as he gets off, I think Hickey has a preference for and enjoyment of consensual, pleasurable gay sex that is at odds with his weird conviction that he can scheme and fuck his way to the top. (god, do you think I write too many fucked-up characters... having to say "strangely, Hickey enjoys consensual sex more than nonconsensual sex"...) He always sees the power play in any sexual encounter and the ways even mutually pleasurable sex can be fraught, and while most of the time I think he's projecting sexuality on cross-rank interactions where it's not necessarily there (or willing it into being, like a self-fulfilling prophecy -- Crozier's drink, news of the Marines) I think he's pretty right here that Jopson is doing what he's doing to reassert the power structure that places him over Hickey and Crozier over both of them. (Which is why he goes right to "btw I fucked the captain, did you know that, I fucked the captain and got his uniform dirty too" -- he construes Jopson's attachment to the hierarchy aboard ship as sexual both because he's a gadfly and a shit-stirrer who wants to sully Crozier and demean Jopson, but also because he sees sex and power as inherently intertwined. And if you loooove the captain so much, why don't you marry him?)

Even though the context is really bleak, I loved writing attack dog Jopson -- he sees himself here as doing for Crozier what Crozier can't do for himself, invoking how Hickey's transgressed against The Rules(tm) to justify what he's doing to him. Jopson🤝 Crozier

It's also just fun to write about the rough, dirty, whiskery, seamy side of Jopson, someone who's got a face like a haunted doll despite his incredible beard-growing abilities and is easy to paint as kind of wispy due to his clear trauma and his moments of great gentleness. (Neither of which Hickey can understand.) Jopson's a mess by the end of the season, and his misapprehension that Crozier has abandoned him perversely fulfills Hickey's nasty little dig about how Jopson's sacrificed so much for the hierarchical order and it's not giving him anything in return. (The flipside, maybe, of none ever wanted nothing from me. Hickey has to give Jopson's position the sour-grapes treatment to preserve his own self-image, because Jopson very much is a wanted and valued crew member.)

Also wow, a lot of scurvy stuff in this, I think I tried to make it tangibly nasty given how Jopson's physical deterioration is so agonizing in those last episodes but even Hickey is feeling the malnutrition woes. I do *not* know how Hickey thinks a person would lose their testicles (or a testicle, singular) due to scurvy. Maybe he thinks they drop off.

[lovesickeningly]

pulse (2001) review

★★☆☆☆

──── ♱ ────

likes:

- ryosuke. he kinda reminded me of ryuji from p5, and I liked his outfits, but of course I’d watch a horror movie and be thinking about the outfits. it was funny that he had to write down, “print screen,” or else he’d forget to hit the button that’s right there on his keyboard.

- the overall aesthetic. I feel like this isn’t exactly praise tho, as it’s just what things looked like in that period of time, and not some crazy accurate present day imitation. my partner and I kept pausing to try to see what video games ryosuke had.

- the sound design. this was honestly the best part about the movie imo. the screeching dial-up-internet-esque sounds provided so much tension on what would’ve otherwise been mid or boring scares. I loved the scare that had the sound build up only to go completely silent.

- leave it to japan to still have the trains running during a ghost apocalypse lol

──── ♱ ────

dislikes:

- the relationship between harue and ryosuke. it just didn’t feel fleshed out, and I didn’t feel like there was really a connection between these two characters. harue as a character was a let down as well. I thought there would be some connection between her and the killings or the way they started, and that would be why she was so fixated on this whole thing before it even blew up, but we literally know nothing about her motivations. and why wouldn’t she be the one to tell ryosuke about the maximum capacity ghost realm theory (mcgrt) and not the rando grad student that we never see or hear about again? why wouldn’t she be the one to point out the ghost kid in the library to him and not the random grad student? they literally already had a scene in the library together where it could’ve been added in. I think she just existed to give ryosuke somebody to save or lose, which is lame and lazy.

- the inconsistency. there was no clear, singular pattern to the killings. if we’re to believe mcgrt, then what was all that talk about loneliness, and people wanting to die because they felt alone? if mcgrt is true, wouldn’t the pattern be: ghost leaks into room > room is taped off > somebody goes into taped room > has a traumatic experience because of the ghost > deletes themself days later. this would make the whole internet and technology thing completely irrelevant.

alternatively, if the internet IS relevant to all of this, wouldn’t it be like: the original video (the one shown multiple times of the guy with a bag over his head and writing on the wall behind him) is some sort of cursed video that has set off a chain curse that latches on to people online like some sort of virus. this curse, or virus, makes people feel overwhelmingly lonely until they decide to delete themselves days later. the virus is also watching these people through computer screens. given the time period, with the whole y2k scare and it being the dawn of the internet, I feel like the movie was trying to have some sort of “internet bad” message, and this second theory would fit into that while making all of the loneliness talk make sense.

however, the movie unsuccessfully combines these two things…I guess? I literally don’t understand what this movie was trying to say was going on. the thing is, I LOVE horror media that doesn’t explain itself. I have a whole shelf filled of junji ito’s works. I love ARGs because of the work you have to put in to understand them. being spoon fed a word for word explanation absolutely kills a horror media for me. BUT there’s a fine line between show-don’t-tell and just straight up throwing things at the wall and having the audience make up whatever they want out of whatever fucking sticks. so many good horror movies nowadays do the show-not-tell thing, and because of this, people have started to think that not fully understanding a movie right away = cinematic masterpiece. that’s why shitty writing like this ends up being lauded as a “cult classic” in the grand year of 2024.

- why was the computer lab that harue was working in trashed? it’s literally never brought up.

- there was all this build up for what people see when they go into a taped off room, and then once we finally got to see it from ryosuke’s pov, it was literally just some guy…

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overall

I’d give it a 2.5 out of 5! I don’t think I’d watch it again because two hours is a long time for basically no payoff, but I don’t regret watching it either.

[blindwideopen]

I found out that we were bonded for a time, which is why it hurt so much to be without you. Now that you're out of my life I feel better, more free, but I feel the remnants.

You're still on my mind, whether I want you to be or not. Deimos is haunted by the damage Eth has caused. By the damage you all have caused. He's no longer capable of being host. And it makes me feel terrible since we've done so much for him to continue being host.

All we can do now is just protect him while he's in such a vulnerable, reduced state. It genuinely breaks my heart that such a lovable guy has been broken this much and STILL has hope for you. He STILL loves you with all his fucking broken heart.

It genuinely fucking angers me at how you could have such a good thing and fuck it up like this. What are you afraid of?

WHAT WERE YOU AFRAID OF?!

To HAVE TO HURT HIM LIKE THIS?!!!!

YOU HAD SO MUCH AND YOU RUINED IT.

YOU HAD CHANCE AFTER CHANCE AFTER FUCKING CHANCE, MAN.

AND ALL YOU DID IS HURT AND TAKE AND TAKE AND TAKE FROM HIM UNTIL HE WAS A SHELL OF A MAN.

YOU FUCKED DOC UP SO MUCH THAT HE DOESN'T TRUST RELATIONSHIPS ANYMORE. HE HARDLY EVEN TRUSTS HIMSELF.

YOU LEFT HANK TO PICK UP AFTER YOU TIME AND TIME AGAIN AND THE ONLY REASON HE SURVIVED WAS BY AVOIDING YOU AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.

BUT EVEN HANK HAS A BROKEN HEART. ONE HE STUFFS DOWN SO FAR BECAUSE HE'D RATHER HIDE HIS PAIN THAN LET HIS PAIN BE USED AGAINST HIM.

HE WAS BARELY GIVEN A CHANCE TO SHOW WHO HE COULD REALLY BE BECAUSE YOU COULDN'T WAIT.

YOU DIDN'T WANT TO WAIT.

THEY'RE ALL STILL DAMAGED AND IM FUCKING BITTER. I'M BITTER AT HOW TERRIBLY YOU HANDLED EVERYTHING.

And guess what?

YOU RAN.

LIKE A COWARDLY DOG WITH ITS TAIL BETWEEN IT'S LEGS INSTEAD OF TRYING TO REACH OUT BECAUSE I FOUND OUT THE TRUTH.

And with everything, we were once again left with a broken heart. Feeling like the King's Fool who finally figured out that he's the one who's been played. When all the Fool wanted to do was to see a smile on that man's face. A Fool who wanted something genuine. And got metaphorically executed for it.

Might as well bow to you once more because you did it. You ripped my heart out.

Instead of talking you ran.

Instead of talking, I'd been cast out once again.

Instead of talking, you'd rather watch from afar and continue talking down on yourself for continuing to hold onto the shackles I was trying my damnedest to free you from.

Instead of talking, you would rather accuse me of being who I am not.

You would rather see the past in me, instead of the present that stands right before you.

You probably never even saw us after a certain point. You never wanted to.

You fear us.

We are the unknown.

And naturally, humans fear the unknown.

While I'm still human, I'd rather embrace the unknown.

Where you'd rather stay stagnant to some capacity, I'd rather grow, change. I would rather become myself, rather than some pet. Some reflection of what you, and even my own family think I should be.

See me.

Not someone else.

I want you to see me.

Take the time to know me once again.

If I matter to you in any capacity...

Then see me. Look at me. I want you to acknowledge and accept just how far I've come. And how much work still needs to be done.

I still genuinely love you. The real you. I love the person you were. Who you could have been and will be. I loved you even as things were falling apart. And I still love you now.

I will tell you something I've never been more sure about: it was never wrong of us to love you. Deimos was never crazy for it, everything he did was for you. Even hiding his feelings, stuffing it all down. Splitting himself into two people in an attempt to appease you.

I just hate that what you gave to him, to us in return was so much trauma and pain. Nothing but pain and agony for the entire time he's been around.

Doc was never wrong for loving you. He sleeps more than he ever has now that you're gone. He sleeps with that ring. He never lets it go. No one ever takes it from him either. Sometimes we dream about you because of him.

Benrey actively loved you. He hid himself just to make you feel comfortable. And he still hides. He still fucking hides. He has so much love for life and people and he still hides.

I'd go on but I'm tired.

You're never going to see this anyway.

You've always been a person to us.

I just wish you saw us for us. Not what you fear we were.

You'll never see it.