#then about how awful her brother is

[mangoofthesea]

I'm realising maybe the reason people generalise is sometimes because if something is general, if it is all of one gender for example that does something, then it's natural that x person in their life hurt them by doing that because 'it's in their nature' and to have it not generalised means that someone you love did something which hurt you and they could have not done that. Therefore they decide it is easier to decide all of one gender is bad because it reduces the hurt you feel. 'My dad left because that's what dad's do' 'my mother antagonised and made arguments worse because women are like that'

And when you generalise like that, you learn to not treat any situation with nuance, and every story must have 'horrible people' and 'the poor people trying to do the right thing' even if in another story the poor right people become bad, because that's a different story, and someone else can be the bad guy today

[smeraldo-heart]

Cal and Trilla are such an underrated comedic duo and it’s a damn shame we didn’t get to see them work together

Like hello?? Trilla asking Cal about the holocron, hearing him just ignite his lightsaber in response and giving the most deadpan, sarcastic “outstanding.” Not a day goes by when I don’t think about this. Fucking. Hilarious.

They would be such an immensely funny sarky duo of Star Wars just had the balls to give them to us.

We were ROBBED I tell you. Robbed of the most sarcastic, scathing comedic duo of the century. The sassy padawan siblings we deserved but never got.

The similarities in driving too?? 💀

IMMENSELY funny.

The annoyed big sister vibes and annoying little brother vibes I get from them are so good godammit. I deserved nightmare siblings Cal and Trilla.

[aroanthy]

i love how fraught and complicated discourse around various utena characters ‘dying’ is when anthy is literally stabbed to death eternally by a million swords imbued with human hatred. and then utena gets stabbed to death by them also. like. ‘death’ is incredibly interesting in rgu because most of the time it’s this ambiguous figurative thing that has interesting implications re: ohtori as a closed-off world one can escape. we are all trapped in our coffins. mamiya is the only named character with a grave. nemuro memorial hall functions as one all the same. ruka is implied to have died in the hospital— was he dead all along? who was the boy we saw for these two episodes? is this dead boy the same boy, or is this just another coincidence from the shadow girls, cutting like a knife? it’s heavily implied that akio and anthy murder kanae by poisoning her, adding to the previous implication that they were poisoning mr ohtori too, but there are no perceptible consequences of this. kanae’s absence is not felt. she’s fed an apple slice. what happens to the bodies? we know what happened to the 100 boys, but what about everyone else? and so on and so forth. ‘death’ is a tricky thing in utena, i think it’s constantly functioning on figurative and literal levels in very different ways for very different purposes. dios died. dios was dying. dios didn’t die. he grew up. etc etc

[trash-can-sam]

What happens when your coworker kills your other coworker but both of you are in a relationship (kind of) with the same ethereal woman who had an admiration for said dead coworker.

+bonus Evandrey because it’s funny to me (I’m sorry Eva.)

[orangerosebush]

Butler learns of Grindr and then decides it is not for him on the same day. The whole "collects [one's] location info within a 100m radius of accuracy" dimension is, perhaps, Not Great for a bodyguard. However, Juliet discovers that Butler deleted the app before he even attempted to make an account, and she sighs. Beseeching her brother, she tries, "Look, with the whole... 'compromising our position', or whatever we're calling it: Artemis has lived a good... longish life. Maybe... it's time to let go," while Artemis makes a face at being discussed in much the same tone one deploys when euphemistically describing a pet about to be put down due to a terminal illness.

[naivety]

okay i need feedback from the autism mentall illness website um. this is going to read like an AITA post. brother vs half-sister (who are currently my dependents do to their own individual disabilities + ptsd/depression) spat i will skim the details on but i'm worried my sister will discount my take since i'm not autistic myself so. am i crazy to call it ableist to look at an autistic person (23) who is clearly going through it dealing w long term depression, a world that doesn't give a shit abt him, unemployment, very self-isolated and burnt out barely leaving his room because the world is an ableist dumpster fire with zero opportunities for him, and then bring up childhood abuse he's suffered and his diagnosis as reasonable factors on top of this to worry he'll [checks notes] abuse my cat just to hurt me or even worse have a breakdown and kill me and his other sibling in a violent episode, a train of thought i probably wouldn't even be having were he not [checks notes] mad at me for the first time in my life?

like i don't have any other read on this kind of fear-based characterization other than ableism. like those are very real things in his life but she never points out any current violent behavior, of which there are none, only the one (1) instance of him lashing out when he was like 14 and Officially Diagnosed Low Empathy she thinks is a concern and Hateful Looks toward her since he stopped getting along with her, that's it. i tried explaining to her why i, someone who's lived w him his entire life, can vouch for how unlikely he is to do anything like that, especially when it's again not based on anything he's actually currently doing except for isolating in a way that is much more indicative of him potentially being a danger to himself than anyone else, and being cold towards her specifically, and i thought she had let it go, but when i brought it up off-hand in a conversation tangentially related, she continued to defend and justify her Concern about the potential directions his behavior could lead to because [checks notes] other people in similar situations have lashed out and killed their entire families according to. true crime books or videos she's watched on youtube as far as i'm aware. ignoring the fact that her and i have had the same or Worse childhood abuse and have acted similarly isolated in the past, or for her literally just as currently as him, and she's not expressed any worry past or present about either of us doing anything like that, in my opinion obviously because i haven't cut her off due to our differences like he decided to. like am i big sibling biased because this is pissing me off so bad.

[the-woman-upstairs]

Favorite Horror Novels I Read in 2023:

[arohuacheng]

k sorry i’m legitimately so insane about pei ming and shi qingxuan though. pei ming as someone who’s not just a womanizer but someone responsible and dear enough to shi wudu for That Man to essentially appoint him as qingxuan’s guardian should anything happen to him… for pei ming to take that responsibility on whole-heartedly, trying to protect shi qingxuan and keep them out of trouble and lead them on the right path even from the very beginning of the story… he’s trying to keep her out of the whole mess with pei su he’s trying to make sure that she does what she needs to do to survive in heaven (she has never learned that one needs to be cruel and unjust to advance because her brother has done all the unjust cruelty for her) he’s trying to make sure that he fulfills that trust that was placed in him and that’s all before there’s even a hint of anything that would incapacitate shi wudu. and sqx sees this and she must know at least some of it but she hates him. just doesn’t like his personality. i am out of my fucking miiiind

[dannybobany]

Fnaf au where William figures out how to actually resurrect cc and then the aftons just have to live with that— not only is cc undead now but dad is freaking victor Frankenstein !! (like, literally, I imagine William discovered how to harvest remnant from recently deceased corpses rather then killing anyone himself, thus the mci doesn’t happen and Charlie doesn’t die either)

They just have to pretend this is normal and fine

[lesbianleonardo]

read the michaelanglo macro issue and ohhh my fucking god ojhhhhh my god

anyway. this page was really cute

[professorjirt]

not to be bitter about the Durins again but it will never stop pissing me off to a burning degree that in the movies Kíli dies off in a little corner with no one but one elf he met two days ago around, and she’s nerfed to the point she’s utterly helpless until RIGHT AFTER he’s killed. It feels so bullshit and unfulfilling. I remember me and a friend were huge fans of the Durins (her even more than me) as well as the little Kíli and Tauriel side story back when the movies came out, and we watched it in theatres and she literally said she would never watch that scene again bc it disappointed her so badly. She skips it to this day. Bc why the fuck did they have Kíli die for an elf he barely knew (I like Tauriel but it is true— they’ve known each other for maybe two or three days total) over the family he ran out into battle to defend, the family he set out on the quest with and the family that he was so proud of. Why was he not with his brother, or trying to defend his uncle who was still very much alive and in danger? Tauriel literally just serves to get Kíli killed in that scene, bc they nerf her (CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD. Even against a tough orc she should be holding her own) but have Legolas out there holding his own, and it is nowhere NEAR as emotionally devestating as the single sentence we’re given in the book of how Kíli and Fíli went down defending their uncle. I can almost excuse the change in how Fíli dies bc it does hold emotional weight, but Kíli’s death going from the devotion of family even to his own doom into dying for an elf he has puppy love for while being totally cut off from the other dwarves fucking killed the scene for me. And there isn’t really even a good payoff for Tauriel afterward either. We just leave her there regretting she ever loved him. It hurts me so damn much, and not least of which is because for every video someone does as a tribute to Thorin and his nephews, it always takes a sharp left turn into Tauriel watching Kíli die all by himself and it doesn’t even feel related to the other’s deaths. I think it would have felt much more like the best of both if they’d kept Kíli dying defending his family, and then have Tauriel come to him as he’s dying. But that’s not what happened. It fucking sucks. I promise I do like the movies but I will stand hard by saying that it’s weakest writing is the latter half of the second and the former half of the third movie. It only really picks up to consistently good scenes at Thorin’s battle with Azog in my opinion. Sorry for another brief hater moment but man. Man.

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

friendly reminder that self harm is lying to you

[tayloralisonswift]

i won't be on for more than a minute because i still have a ridiculous amount to do but i am once again thinking about how cruel it is to look your child in the eye and say to them "well, God wants you to be alone forever. you'll never experience romantic love the way the rest of your family gets to. if you do, we'll never accept you. but a life with friends is enough! not enough for me and my spouse, but you'll figure out how to make it enough for you. hey! there's always more books to read, think about that! that'll keep you busy when you're lonely."

and i think at some point i'm just going to say that to them. that it's cruel. that it's fucked up. that they would never under any other circumstances tell me i should be single my whole life, that they don't say that to my brother, that it's so evil and joy-destroying and if this is how they feel i'm going to speed up my moving out plans

[m4ndysk4nkovich]

debbie, worried and upset over her brother’s illness, talking about how she feels in a way that a dumb teenager would: “he’s totally monica.”

carl, worried and upset over his brother’s illness, talking about how he feels in a way that a dumb teenager would: “what’s it like to be crazy?”

the response we get for debbie: what an insensitive, annoying, bratty bitch.

the response we get for carl: aw, what a good brother. he really cares.

[trashlie]

Considering the latest fast pass episode, I can’t help but wonder what comes next. Q-tip realizes not only how badly he mis perceived Nolan and treated him like as ass, but yui’s been drugging q-tip to keep him in control.

What will happen now that q-tip’s at Nolan’s door? Will Nolan return that beating he promised q-tip for assaulting him?

Will there be a sort of switcharoo in behaviors where q-tip does and gives up so much to tell Nolan he’s sorry? Only for Nolan to say f u over and over again?

How will yui even control q-tip, now that he’s aware of what she’s done to him? At most, it seems she’ll have to make him regress, unless he keeps this grim discovery from her.

I wonder if yui will even try to continue sabotaging Nolan, especially if she learns q-tip’s currently dead to the boy.

There’s so much to ask and talk about.

I actually think things are going to get so much worse for Kousuke now because of what he has figured out and because Yui is not going to just... simply give him up, you know? Because his predicament is that yes, he knows what she's done to him, but also: he knows that Yui's reach extends far beyond what his own can and he has no way of knowing who is in on her manipulation. Even something as simple as the realization that she refused to allow Hansuke to run the tests he wanted to do and had Kousuke discharged even though he was not well and should not have been is enough to show him that he has no control in any of this. It's her family's hospital, of course they'll do and say what she calls. But even that she threatened Hansuke's career over doing his role and duty as a doctor! That's above the law.

How does he know who he can trust? How does he know when he's been drugged? Obviously there are things like drugging him to make him pass out, but it reads so much deeper. What about the night he went to the club with Hansuke and Yujing? He barely drank but he was behaving and feeling as if he'd been drinking all night, with the auditory hallucinations, becoming aggressive and fighting people, leaving all of those voicemails, arguing with an imagination of his brother. What was already in his system before he began drinking and how did it get there?

Kousuke lives on his onw, not at the family home, with a hired chef. That one day he called Hansuke over because he was stressed out and nothing in his normal routine - including eating desserts - were helping him to calm down. Ordinarily the crepes would help him! But the crepes he prepared, because his personal chef was out?

There's all these little clues that show him he can't even trust his own hired help. What is possibly safe for him to consume?! Who all is in on it?

And that's just the drugging. He doesn't know yet that Yui threw out Rand's gift and replaced it with something subpar, something so out of Kousuke's tastes that it makes it seem like Rand doesn't know him or care about him at all. What happens when he realizes she did that? When he remembers every event Rand missed, or arrived late to, arguing with Yui about how she didn't tell him anything? Will he start to realize that she has been driving that wedge all along, that every time he moved closer to his father, to his goal, she got involved and ensured that gap was further widened?

When he starts to see for himself that dissonance in the way he views the world vs how others do? Will he be haunted by Yujing's words, that at no point has Nol ever fit the violent, unstable character Kousuke has attributed to him, that at no point has she seen that character in him - but rather that it appears to fit Kousuke more?

Something that we must keep in mind regarding Kousuke is that the way he treated Nol was not without reason. Yui has ensured that Kousuke always perceived him as a threat, and it appears she's gone to great lengths to discredit his character, the way he is perceived, the way Kousuke remembers him.

Does Kousuke even have a specific incident in mind that he can concretely recall to back up his claims? I think if he was pressured to tell him about a time, he'd fail to, because possibly no such event exists. What he believes is based on Yui's influence, what she told him in the aftermath of an event so traumatic he seemed to dissociate or white out as it was happening, that he has no actual recollection of, because of the drugged tea that has blurred his memories. The thing is, he absolutely believes Nol is violent and unstable, not as "someone told me this" but because he's been so very convinced of it.

But at some point he's going to become fully aware of that dissonance. We've already seen it coming up a lot, but every time it does he doubles down, because obviously if he realizes, acknowledges, that his accounts are falsified, it brings us back to that territory of "what can he trust, what is real"? And he's so close to that. The realization that he's been drugged is showing him that, and I think we're going to touch a little on it with his visit to Nol.

I absolutely do not think this visit is going to go well, not because I think Nol is going to fight him - I think besides the fact that he's heavily injured, it's clear that he's just tired and done. He promised a beating at the time because he was pushed to his limit, he was angry and in the moment, but that's not where he is right now. I think more than anything, Nol is just done with him, and if Kousuke comes in with this realization that she drugged him, too, that he denied Nol every time he reached out to him, what's Nol going to do? Say congratulations you figured it out let's be brothers? Of course not. It will probably be more something about how it took this long for him to figure it out, after he nearly killed him? Something about how he doesn't care, he's done, just leave me be, I don't want to be a part of your life anymore.

I don't think it's going to be bad in that it's going to be an altercation, but rather it's just going to be bad in that I think perhaps Kousuke is reaching out for help, or even reaching out because he's realized how much Nol needed him, and it's too late. Because he's finally faced the truth and it's too late, because Nol doesn't want to be a part of it anymore. And in that way, yes, I think we're very much going to see that role reversal, where Nol is done with all of this and wants nothing to do with him, even as Kousuke finds himself in Nol's position, alone and vulnerable with no one he can trust no one he can turn to, and Nol will refuse the assistance.

At this point, there's still a lot Nol doesn't know about Kousuke's circumstances and I do one 100% believe that is going to change in the future, that Nol's feelings towards him will change when he comes to understand how much Kousuke was manipulated, how much they were pit against each other by Yui - that Kousuke seeing Nol as a threat is as deeply psychologically ingrained in him as Nol seeing himself as a monster. Perhaps once Nol can begin to see the way he was manipulated to see himself as this horrible monster who brings nothing but pain, once he realizes that Kousuke was very much a victim of Yui, he'll see that he, too, was manipulated in a way that altered his psyche so much that Nol was never able to get through to them.

But for now, I think we'll see Nol shut the door on Kousuke and leave him completely alone and vulnerable. And frankly, that's painful for me, because I'm really glad Kousuke is finally getting to this point, finally starting to see the dissonance and realize that so much of what he believes is falsified or manipulated, but it's so regrettable that it's too late. 212 made it so clear that despite Kousuke's fears and desire, despite how his addled views warped the way he treated Nol, he still knew that Nol was the only one to really see him, to have ever offered him unconditional love. He sees in Nol so much of what he doesn't possess, the kind of person he isn't. Kousuke never had the option to be that kind of easy going, laid back, easy to befriend person, because he was taught to perceive everyone as a threat, that everyone wants what he has, and they only like him for his money and influence. And to some degree that wasn't actually wrong! Nol is one of the only authentic people Kousuke knew, who wanted to like him for who he is, but that perception of him as a threat was something he could not undo himself. It's agonizing for me, to watch these tragic brothers fight and hurt each other, and to watch Kousuke start to make these steps and reach that state of vulnerability and know that he's going to be (rightly) pushed away, that it will now be his turn to sit with his fear, to be so alone with no one he can trust, and fall apart.

And I think that's very much how Yui will be able to further control Kousuke - because she doesn't NEED to drug him to control him. He's alone, isolated, all she has to do is box out Hansuke and Yujing, all she has to do is ensure Kousuke has no idea who he can trust. If anything, we're set up for a worse potential where Kousuke's mental state falling apart allows for Yui to be more of a caretaker, to be more involved in his roles and duties, should it reach such an extreme.

Consider even if he was to evade her drugging following this he's still going to deal with the withdrawal, and how he handles stress as a result of what they've done to his system, as a result of what he thought was his normal base of operation being a version of himself that's been drugged. How do you cope? How do you deal with the stress, how do you handle that? And again, the withdrawal!

That future hint in the anime expo poster really shows us that Kousuke is going to be having A Very Bad Time in the future. Will he turn back to the drugs, because detoxing is so difficult? Drinking? He's going to struggle so much and I think that works to her advantage.

As for Nol, it doesn't matter what Nol and Kousuke's relationship is, she will never give up on destroying him. Nol's existence is a threat, that much she was right about, even if he never wanted what Kousuke had in the first place. Supposing the muko-yoshi theory is true (and at this point I strongly believe it is), Nol very much is a possible contender for heir as a direct blood relative of Rand. The theory goes that Rand would have been adopted into the Hirahara family and is treated as a blood relative, and that is is through his blood lineage that the company can pass. As Rand's other son, this makes Nol more than possible . It brings us to two important points: a. if Kousuke is not actually Rand's biological son, it means he was never able to be heir in the first place and b. if Kousuke is incapacitated for whatever reason, Nol is next in line.

Everything Yui has done to Nol has been a long game, taking every effort to ensure that his image so is far ruined no one would ever consider him as a possible candidate to lead the company, to inherit the company and fortune. Kousuke's inherent, psychologically driven belief that Nol is violent and unstable is not without reason. He was sent away for it and locked away for nearly two years. There are news stories about him hurting Kousuke. At school a reputation of both violence and mental stability follow him. The media had no problem subscribing to the story that he was a violent person who was slipping roofies and assaulting people. Whatever happened that night Nol was taken away, that Kousuke cannot actually remember, as 300% in some way orchestrated by Yui, something she'd been building up to. It was the way she manipulated Kousuke to see Nol as this threat, it was how she'd commodified his familial love and made him believe he needs to become good enough to be loved by his father and took advantage of Nol's existence to further Kousuke's drive. Everything has been carefully orchestrated to encourage Kousuke to blindly chase his father, to become the perfect heir that she could puppet, and to ensure in no capacity could Nol ever be considered a possible contender.

Everything Yui has done has been because Nol exists. It has nothing to do with how Nol and Kousuke feel about each other - it has always been about undermining him at every opportunity, and encouraging Kousuke to do so as well, so that any of Nol's potential was diminished, never had a chance to grow.

As long as Nol exists, and certainly as long as he shows potential, as long as anyone believes in him, she will never let him go. There is no escape for him.

[ilovefredjones]

i wish i had more collected and intellectual thoughts on jim and la’an. instead my brain just screams about them all the time