#this is strictly about his character

[mxmarsbars]

made a little analysis thread on twitter and thought I’d share it here too if that’s chill ^_^

anyways traffic!impulse using self destruction and the destruction of others as a way to cope with his own frustration and resentment throughout the life series: a messy ramble-y post because I’m crazy.

most of this behavior really only starts after third life. his destructive behavior before then is usually outward and not with malicious intent. instead, he hurt others in third life because he was asked to. it was a part of a greater plan he was undoubtably loyal to and that would later get him killed and tarnish his reputation for seasons to come.

that’s why in last life, he’s much more open to antagonistic behavior (which he barely partook in before and only would if asked of). this mostly includes all the stealing he did that season, the numerous break ins, and of course, spawning the wither. this could also include his personal insistence on becoming the boogeyman and even planning it out in advance (which would later get him killed, his own hubris). he was itching for it to be his turn.

it’s such a huge shift from how he acted in third life, and why? personally, I think it’s because of all the strain and pressure put on him by others and their disdain towards him. specifically the rumors spread about him and the reluctance of others to believe and trust him after what he’d done the season prior. which for some people is justified, like ren and etho, but for others, like bdubs, is not. and this was shown to upset impulse a lot, given how it resulted in him being thrown under the bus, even by his own teammates.

but he’s supposed to be nice and considerate and smart to make up for all he’s done, right? that’s why he sticks with his alliance the whole time and makes a point to be loyal to them and them only. but that doesn’t stop the resentment and anger boiling, and he can only take so much before he has to let off some steam, and destructive behavior seems to be a means to do so.

it turns from him doing bad things because he’s asked to to him doing it because he wants to, to cope. which is why when all else fails and the southlands fall apart, despite him taking the measures to prevent it earlier on, he helps grian spawn the wither, even with the risks and deaths. and he insists on doing it at best’s base, because they ruined him. it gets him killed. he should’ve been smarter.

it gets worse in double life, specifically when homewrecking is proposed. while he’s not the one to bring it up or start the rumors, he soon grows comfortable enough to start talking smack himself. him and bdubs deliberately try to ruin the relationships of others, and they tell themselves it’s to steal away half of each pair for their own benefit, but maybe there’s more to it. maybe they ARE projecting, just like joel had said.

it doesn’t help that impulse is having his soulbound questioned and bdubs “needs” a clock and the horns won’t shut up. when they’re exposed, he takes his destruction to the deep dark. he throws snowballs, he spooks unsuspecting people, he yells into the dark when he finds out his voice can trigger the sensors. throughout the season, he makes multiple efforts to cause distress in the deep dark, malicious intent or not. and maybe it’s to cope with the fact that bdubs keeps sending him down there or etho won’t stop yapping about how bdubs doesn’t want him or how bdubs put a major target on their backs.

and this is when self destructive behavior really starts, too. impulse gives away valuable resources when he realistically could’ve not, he takes risks he absolutely doesn’t have to take (despite how much he values his and, by extension, bdubs’s life), when he’s linked to the fishing rod sequence of death, all he says to bdubs is that it was fun while it lasted. and then he loses their first life trying to get a music disc.

whether he means to or not, he’s slowly killing himself and his soulmate, too. and eventually, by the time he’s red, he just gives in. he starts blowing horn (surely there’s some symbolism there), he terrorizes those better off than him, he wants to cause problems. yet there’s always still some humanity in him that shines through, regardless of his destructive ways of coping.

but this isn’t about that. before the final fight, he even grabs the golden apple him and bdubs had been stashing away, saying if they can’t win, no one can. he would’ve ate it. he should’ve ate it. yet he didn’t, and he died by bdubs’s hand again. more resentment grows.

by limited life, it’s obvious he’s open to dabbling into more chaotic pastimes. bdubs’s ignorance and unwillingness to see his flaws and apologize only fuels the fire. when he’s chosen as the boogeyman, he has a time with it. but he still has the mind to know not to hurt his team, even refusing to use skizz’s accidental death to cleanse himself. but he bombs bread bridge freely, somehow even getting tango and skizz to help him. it’s almost concerning how much fun he has with it.

then of course there’s the complete destruction of bread bridge, which he happily takes part in. and tango’s boogey kill on bdubs, in which he lures bdubs to his demise (something he had been itching to do for seasons). he amasses a huge kill count over the season, his first time murdering anyone since third life.

most of his behavior this season turns more outward, and he grows more keen on sustaining himself the more faith his team puts in him. he is also shown to hold other alliances much less dear than ties, even if they benefit him. this results in the betrayal of many, most notably mean gills in the finale. he fights like hell, he gets his final revenge on bdubs and ends his season, and yet it still isn’t enough.

he begs martyn to kill him, because he’s alone, and he’s scared, and he did all he was asked to do. but they keep him around, despite his pleas. he’s given the illusion of free will, a chance to win, to be given a fair fight. martyn slaughters him in cold blood. a cruel betrayal.

secret life feels like a reset, and most scores are settled, and secret tasks heavily dictate how the sessions go. he isn’t given the chance to cause mass destruction like he could the season prior. he’s not sure if he wants to. most of his mistakes are honest, no self destructive or malicious intent, same with his tasks.

he’s with a team he can trust and confide in. they help him. they care about him. his first two deaths are consensual and willing, something’s he’s never known. the season is rough, but he’s happy. he tries to use his trap as he’s being chased, risky as it was, a final act of stubbornness.

he dies, alone and scared, hearts quivering. nothing’s new. he’ll just have to be ready to cope again tomorrow. get some blood of his hands, whether it’s his enemies or his own.

[puppyeared]

wanna see a magic trick? 🪄🎩

[fear-no-mort]

favourite thing: his new habit of saying uhuh/mhm and also this

[sskk-manifesto]

Bungou Stray Dogs: Dead Apple and how “ability users” (opposite to “normal people”) learning to accept themselves through the acceptance of their own abilities is a queer metaphor of acceptance of own's sexual orientation and gender: an essay by me

[razberrypuck]

holding finn tidestrider in my hands. why are you SUCH a whore.

[nartml]

my glorious dreadhead king ekko, i will die loving you

[hauntingblue]

CAUSE THIS IS THRILLER (bark), THRILLER (bark) NIGHT

Usopp's outfit is so funny for reals

He got the whole squad laughing

Luffy enablers at it again.... (Robin.... I know.....)

The humor panels so far have been so good!!! God this arc is so funny

HE SAID IT‼️‼️

They look like birds 😭😭

It's just too good... luffy taking cerberus and zombies what can't he do

It's just banger after banger what can I say

Franky feeling for other people because of his guilt complex and sanji lying through his teeth and pulling out the women excuse to seem unaffected... yeah

Look at them.... look how they ate

Omg joyboy reference?? (No)

Sanji is rubbing off on usopp.... also chopper noticing that is sogeking's weapon akdhaksjak

ANOTHER SLAY!!!!!

Their priorities: I'm not strong enough, there isn't enough food, and nami isn't here

Franky going from wanting to kill brook for his jokes to making a joke like his after he hears his backstory... exactly (Robin was already enabling him before the backstory even fdagjsfha)

Sanji is altering his body and actually being on fire to communicate to us how fucking mad he is..... I need more of him going insane I do I do

My god what is he doing ALDJALAJALA

AHSAHAHQHAH THEY ARE THE SAME!!! naaah sanji wouldn't force a woman to be his wife

You cant see me but I am nodding my head in agreement over and over

You don't understand he altered his body to communicate to us how mad he is. He inploded himself and then reconstituted again. Those germa 66 genes are insane

You tell em usopp!!!! The first of many girls you've scared into defeat!!! Akdjqknql

Zoro zombie regressed to not trusting robin akdjaks he's still in there

ROBI-CHO SUPLEX??? HELL YEAAAAAH

There is zosa- [GUNSHOT GUNSHOT GUNSHOT GUNSHOT]

Super frapper gong.... he is doing combo shots with frobin... omg.... parents....

Everything is so fun I'm having such a good time reading.... and then zosan angst like damn I am being fed well here

[bidokja]

I was joking a while back that the actor they have playing KDJ for the orv movie was too handsome for him and a friend who's read orv was like "KDJ is actually secretly attractive!!" And I just felt my soul leave my body right then

SIGHS...

Okay. Buckle in. I'm gonna finally actually address and explain and theorize about this whole...thing.

I'm not gonna cite any exact chapters cause it's like 11:30 and I've got an 8 hour drive in the morning but I'll at least make an approximate reference to where certain things are mentioned. Also, this post is just my personal interpretation for a good bit of it, but it's an interpretation I feel very solid about, so do with that what you will. Moving on to the meat of things:

There is one (1) instance in the web novel that I know of which describes specific features of Kim Dokja (especially ones other people notice). This takes place when members of KimCom are trying to make Kim Dokja presentable to give his speech at the Industrial Complex (after it's been plopped down on Earth). This is when they start really paying attention and focusing on Kim Dokja's appearance since they're putting makeup on him; I still don't think they can interpret his whole face, but they can accurately pick out and retain more features than usual. If I remember correctly they reference him having long eyelashes, smooth skin, and soft hair. These features can be viewed as (stereotypically) attractive.

Certain parts of the fandom have taken this scene and run with it at a very surface level, without realizing (or without acknowledging at the very least) that this scene is not about how Kim Dokja looks. This is, in part, due to not realizing or acknowledging why Kim Dokja's face is "censored" in the first place, and what that censoring actually means. I think it's also possible that some people are assuming the censorship works like a physical phenomena rather than an altered perception.

I'll address that last point first. The censorship of Kim Dokja's features is not something as simple as a physical phenomena. It's not a bar or scribble or mosaic over his face. If that were true it'd be very obvious to anyone looking at him that his face is hidden. But his face is not hidden to people. They can look at him and see a face. If they concentrate on his eyes, they can see where he's looking. They know when he's frowning or grinning. They see a face loud and clear. But what face are they seeing? Because it's not really his, whatever they're seeing.

No one quite agrees on what he really looks like. And if they try and think about what he looks like, they can't recall. Or if they do, it's vague, or different each time. We notice these little details throughout the series. Basically, Kim Dokja's face is cognitively obscured. Something - likely the Fourth Wall, though I can't recall if this is ever stated outright - is interfering with everyone's ability to perceive him properly. This culminated in him feeling off to others; and since they don't even realize this is happening, they surmise that he is "ugly."

Moving on to the other point about what the censorship means: To be blunt, the censorship of his face is an allegory for his disconnect from the "story" (aka: real life, and the real people at his side). The lifting - however slight - of this censorship represents him becoming more and more a part of the "story" (aka: less disconnected from the life he is living and the people at his side). The censorship's existence and lifting can represent other things - like dissociation or depersonalization or, if you want to get really meta, the fact that he is all of our faces at once - but that's how I'd sum up the main premise of it. (The Fourth Wall is a larger part of the dissociation allegory, but that's for another post).

So you see, them noticing his individual features isn't about the features. It's not about the features! It doesn't matter at all which features got listed. Because they could describe any features whatsoever and it would not change the entire point of the scene. Because the point isn't what he looks like. The point is that they can truly and clearly see these features. For the first time. They are seeing parts of him for the first time. Re-read that sentence multiple times, literally and metaphorically. What does it mean to see someone as they are?

This is an extremely significant turning point dressed up as a dress-up scene.

---

P.S. / Additionally, I'm of the opinion that Kim Dokja is not handsome, and he is not ugly. He is not pretty, and he is not ghastly. Not attractive, nor unattractive. Kim Dokja isn't any of these things. More importantly, Kim Dokja can't be any of these things. The entire point of Kim Dokja is that you cannot pick him out of a crowd; he is the crowd. He's a reader. He's the reader. Why does he need to be handsome? Why must he be pretty? Why is him being attractive necessary or relevant? He doesn't, he doesn't, it's not. He is someone deeply deeply loved and irreplaceable to those around him, and someone who cannot even begin to recognize or accept that unless it's through a love letter masquerading as a story he can read. He is the crowd, a reader, the reader. He's you, he's me. He's every single one of us.

[the-obnoxious-sibling]

Reading your post about buggy and shanks. I get a lot but why guy like shanks would care about guy like buggy?

Their interactions in marine ford for me were just nostalgia with using buggy for what he needed. The way he talked about him with white beard also seems just nostalgia vibes. He doesn’t even know if he is a pirate or not.

Shanks seems so much more open to others. He parties with Mihawk. Drinks with Whitebeard. His crew interactions. All of them are much better. More honourable. Have courage.

Let’s be honest, buggy is one of the worst people. He is greedy and selfish af.(( I think it’s good he gets some shit from cross guild) I don’t see any reason other than my childhood was with this guy so I have soft spot but nothing special here.

well, if you don’t like buggy, i can see why you’d have trouble imagining what shanks might see in him.

but one of the worst, really? the guy who lied and stole to get a devil fruit is on the same level as the guy who murdered a decades-long ally for a devil fruit? like, yeah, buggy’s greedy and selfish… he’s a pirate. i know most of our heroes are Good And Noble Pirates, but it’s not strange to see pirates in one piece who have more ordinary motives.

imo buggy’s worst trait is not either greed or selfishness, but his two-facedness. he’s got a very very small number of people he actually feels loyalty towards, and everyone else is one bad situation away from getting metaphorically stabbed in the back. he tells himself it’s their fault for thinking they could trust someone like him—or in the case of his impel down followers, that they admire him so much they’d want to die in his place. sometimes he feels bad about it! (he wouldn’t bother trying to justify his actions to himself otherwise!) but self-preservation is always buggy’s highest priority.

he’s made himself into a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy of untrustworthiness, acting like this… and i find it kind of funny, because buggy takes other people at their word even when they’re obviously manipulating him! a very trusting, very untrustworthy guy. these contradictions are a big part of what i like about buggy as a character.

as for cross guild… i might enjoy the shit buggy gets from them more if it was for anything he did on purpose. like, beat him up for making unilateral one piece-hunting announcements, sure! but he didn’t design that boat. it just feels like punishing him for having followers who buy his hype… who mihawk and crocodile are also taking advantage of, so it’s not like they have any real moral high ground there. they’re just embarrassed to ride on the clown boat.

anyway, you aren’t really asking about buggy’s qualities, you’re asking about shanks’ feelings. and as i’ve mentioned a time or two before, we don’t really have any insight into those in present day! my big shanks/buggy post is about their thoughts and feelings in the past, because those do seem a bit more transparent to me, so i feel more comfortable speaking on them.

but present day shanks…

he says natsukashii when whitebeard brings up buggy, which is usually translated as “nostalgic” or “fondly remembered.” he’s not like buggy, when they parted ways he didn’t linger over any hurt feelings and let them grow bitter. that’s good! that’s healthy behavior! and his knowledge of buggy’s current status is kaze no uwasa de mada kaizoku wo yatteru to kiita, “heard a rumor on the wind [he’s] still being a pirate.” shanks has been on the grand line, in the new world, for years, why would he know anything concrete about a minor east blue pirate? he only learns about luffy’s first east blue bounty because mihawk brings the poster to him; i think we can assume shanks doesn’t have the time to search through newspapers from a distant ocean in the hopes of maybe seeing a one-line reference to an old friend.

i do find it amusing that the verb he uses to describe their separation is also used to mean “break up/divorce” but i’m sure you don’t care about that.

as for being more open with others… it’s not like they reunite under good circumstances. ace and whitebeard have just died, along with who knows how many others; massive bloodshed is only being held off by shanks’ presence and attention. shanks uses buggy to keep his old promise with luffy from being broken because that promise matters to shanks but he cannot afford to put in the time himself, he has to keep the marines from starting shit while they sort through their dead and wounded. it’s not exactly a “let’s get a drink and catch up” moment.

and that’s the only time we’ve seen them interact as adults!

claiming that because shanks wasn’t open with buggy in that moment he would never be open with him in another time and place is an ungenerous interpretation of the character. even if you don’t think the chapter 581 cover is canon, one of the few interests we’ve seen the buggy pirate crew and the red-haired pirate crew have in common is their love for a party. (probably taught to their captains by roger back in the day!) why wouldn’t they hang out and get day drunk if the opportunity presented itself?

and saying “my childhood was with this guy” and “nothing special” in the same sentence cracks me up—it’s not like they were in school together with dozens of other kids! buggy is the only other person who went through that experience. everyone else on the oro jackson was an adult, many of them 20-30 years older than those two. their experience of those events was inherently different. sharing an experience like that with one other person is special, even if that’s all there is between you.

and that’s what your question is ultimately about, right? is that nostalgia for their childhood all that exists between shanks and buggy? i don’t know. i don’t think we’ve seen enough of shanks around buggy in present day—or heard any of shanks’ present day thoughts about buggy—to make a definitive claim one way or another.

sure, on paper buggy seems like the kind of person shanks would look down on at best. but he smiles when buggy chews him out for saying hisashiburi (long time no see/it’s been a while) like he didn’t just lie about having a treasure map for buggy. now, maybe that’s just shanks being amused by a tiny yappy dog who’s no real threat to him. maybe it’s a real, sincere affection for this dumbass who still doesn’t see shanks as a threat. or maybe it’s nostalgia for the dumb fights they used to have as kids, with a hint of disbelief at how little buggy has changed.

even if it is, i don’t think that’s all their relationship has to be. an old fond feeling is a fine place to start from, to build something new—if that’s what they both want.

[lord-squiggletits]

"IDW Megatron got a redemption arc and Starscream didn't it's so unfair--"

Do not slander Metalhawk, Bumblebee, and Windblade's hard work trying to fix this man they didn't work for half the continuity (and in 2/3 of their cases) literally die and come back as zombies/ghosts for y'all to be out there saying no one helped Starscream get redeemed and have friends and be a better person

[erstwhilesparrow]

hey does it ever make you kind of crazy that post-reunion, c!owen introduces himself to us as owen agarci? agarci as in the name of the demon he shot in the chest during his trial? we know that's not c!owen's real last name -- he tells us so right then and there -- but i think it matters that of the last names he could have chosen for his lie, he took this one. his last name might have been the only thing he still carried with him of his family, of his past before the attack, and he refuses to use it or admit to it.

because it is an introduction, y'know? his narration, after the reunion, is a way of remaking himself in our eyes -- he is not the person we thought he was, so he needs to introduce himself again. and here, the thing he claims as his originating point, as the moment from his past he wants to carry around with him in something so fundamental as his name, is the moment he first killed a demon. this is the most important piece of his past. this, he is telling us, is where he comes from.

i think a lot about how we never actually see owen's parents. i don't even think we get their names? we get their voices in flashbacks over shots of empty fields and unpopulated streets. there is a kind of blankness to owen's past, or to what owen will reveal to us of his past, that forces us to take on faith that he is telling the truth when he talks about his own history. there is no one who could say otherwise; all the people who might have known him before he was a soldier and then a general are almost certainly dead.

it grants owen a fascinating degree of control over his own history. of course he can remake himself in this way, of course he can tell any story he wants of himself in this way; there's no one left to dispute his claims. in a way, he is his own origin -- as he tells us the story of his life, he is also creating that story. he came out of those woods with nothing but a bow on his back, no history, no one still living who could call to him by name. whatever life he lived before that point doesn't matter -- the thing that fundamentally made him the person who walked into town and demanded to join the army wasn't the life he lived with his parents, it was the violence he'd been exposed to and the violence he'd discovered himself willing and able to engage in. or so his story goes.

do you think when he woke up at the bottom of that elevator, memories wiped, nothing left to him of his past, there was some strange sense that he had done this before? do you think he rose up toward the light of the clearing above, empty-handed and alive, his entire life before this point a history waiting for him to tell it, and wondered why it felt familiar?

or maybe it's that he's refusing us. because following his turn during reunion, there's almost a sense that he has tighter control of the camera now. he addresses his 'voices' nearly antagonistically, wishing we/they would go away, responding and talking to us/them in a way that feels harsher than how he's addressed chat in the past. he's frustrated with us/them: why are you still here, i thought i was done with you. he accuses us/them of only pretending to care, of lingering not so much out of concern or any desire to do something as out of some morbid curiosity. there's a degree of access to him that we seem to have lost. it's as if he's finally certain that there is an audience, and what he's willing to show us shifts.

there's something really lovely and horrifying about a lot of the more scripted sections of owen's pov after the reunion. how it shows us things only he knows (the knife in his hotbar for much of his dinner conversation with guts, the beat where he grabs his backpack and reaches for a weapon when it seems like ayngel is about to recognize him, the interaction with puddy in the second clearing when he visits with krow), but we are nevertheless shut out of his interiority as he starts talking less to others, starts favouring third-person camera shots and narration where he gets to step out of the moment and talk to us directly. you can even think about the 'scripted by owengejuicetv' segments after each kill as signalling this: he has such visible direct control of the story we get to know now. he is the one who gets to tell this story, who gets to move the pieces on the board. here's what happened, he says to us. this is how it went. this is what i do and who i am and here are the parts that mattered. do you ever think about how rasbi's ending wasn't streamed from her pov? do you ever think about how the only witnesses to rasbi's death were rasbi herself, and owen?

[lucaonthropy]

Overheard someone saying T*re Liy* is the best author in my country and subsequently took psychic damage

[taylorswiftshipsbyler]

I love explaining gay people to my dad without explaining gay people to my dad

[hana-bobo-finch]

a strange trend in my favorite characters I realize is that I tend to heavily gravitate toward somewhat obscure, antagonistic forces

[leatherbookmark]

Also I've been in this fandom for like 2.5 seconds approximately and I don't respect a single one of y'all BUT cmiiw the girlypop high femme lesbian mommy etcetc whatever PSH is a fairly new development isn't it. Like my first bias was Sanini but then I realized HJ is a diversely creative fairy prince who wears half-skirts, paints his nails and talks about fashion for men AND women and I was like O YES HI HELLO THIS ONE'S MINE HI. It's fascinating that apparently there's a whole genre of fans who see Joongie as the masculine dom to Hwa's willow-waisted femme omega bottom when like... They both have "masculine" and "feminine" traits. Above all that they're cool fun guys and I like them a lot (assigning gender to personality trait is finest grade dumbassery, not to mention gender essentialism. I don't recommend doing that)

[joy-jpg]

re:tags, stone top Tarquin... you are so big brained for this

im so serious about stone top tarquin. especially in the context of like, tevinter imperium homophobia-misogyny as its presented in inquisition. in my beautiful roman empire coded tevinter mind palace even if tarquin had penetrative sex as a man he would always also be seen as a Lesser Man for it. tarquin is very aware of the social expectations of being a man and a soporati and also! dysphoria! and i think its fun for him to turn that on its head a little. because no one who saw him and ashur together would EVER assume ashur is trying to be the victor in a power struggle or something. he's too busy whimpering and probably praying. what was i talking about