#were made to stop this sort of thing

[zarohk]

People like OP are the reason why Master-Stranger protocols were invented (complimentary)

I didn't manage to finish everything in my costume before this cosplay event, but even with what I managed to do, I'm generally satisfied.

I had fears that the security might not let me through because of the telescopic baton: the knife was dull (I ground off the cutting edge with a grinder), but the baton was in working order. I don't want to spoil a good thing that has already helped me out a couple of times.

As a result, I decided to pull one trick. I packed my things in a certain way by tying metal parts - helve and chain for attaching my fabric cloth that depicted a swarm of insects - to a backpack with cockroaches.

The backpack was divided into two compartments, one external one, which contained cockroaches, and another internal compartment, closer to the back, for personal items. And that’s where I put the telescopic baton, as well as my other things, including a tin container with food.

Thus, I had a plan consisting of several steps and when the metal detector at the entrance triggered, I went to execute them one by one.

Firstly, I arrived almost at the very beginning of the performances, and the security knew that they were about to start, which created certain time boundaries for me and them.

Of course, they could have resisted and searched more thoroughly, but in front of them was a person who looked like a cosplayer and a participant in the show, who was loaded with a bunch of equipment, and did not look threatening (of course I thought through my civil image and behavior).

People usually tend to think stereotypically, and if your appearance and behaviors generally match their idea of a certain group of people and if this group is perceived by them as not posing a threat, then they will easily attribute you to it, without really thinking about some discrepancy in details.

I needed them to perceive me as a harmless, slightly weird cosplayer (which in general is true, but it wouldn't hurt to strengthen this impression so that it reduces the chances of a more complete search and the discovery of a baton, because they definitely wouldn't let me through with a baton).

And my plan worked.

The guards looked at me condescendingly when the metal detector beeped, looked at each other, and in a bored tone they asked me to show what was in my backpack.

(to be continued a little later)

[dykedvonte]

You ever just see a Mouthwashing take that makes you want to bang your head into a wall? I literally just saw someone claim Curly couldn't have been emotionally abused by Jimmy before the crash because he was in a higher position of power than Jimmy.

-Shrimp Anon

The mouthwashing fandom has shown me that people genuinely do believe that certain types of abuse are not as detrimental as other types especially when they deem those immune/resistant, ergo, believing one is objectively worse no matter how it affects the person nor the intersections of power, history and dynamics at play.

Get ready cause this is a yap session:

Cause like it's heavily implied that Curly and Jimmy's friendship was toxic and abusive, pointedly in the direction of how Jimmy uses Curly's belief/comfort in him. Curly wasn't forced to enable Jimmy but he was emotional and mentally on edge around him in almost every scene in some way. Mental and emotional abuse are not contingent on what positions you have at work. Yeah, he's Jimmy's boss but he was Jimmy's friend first and it's like getting into Psych discussion to talk about how social power tends to overshadow any perceived organizational power in the human mind. People are concerned about their jobs ofc but they tend to hang onto and put more value/investment into their personal relationships, hence why there tends to be laws and restrictions around mixing the two.

I always see the sentiments that "Curly is a grown ass man", "Curly is bigger than Jimmy", "Curly is Jimmy's boss", "He just needed a backbone" as criticisms of Curly and while I do agree that on the surface level all of these to be true and viable ways Curly could've taken more control of the situation, I often look at the parallels of Anya and Curly as victims of Jimmy pre/post crash.

The way Jimmy talks to Anya post crash is how he talked to Curly in the pre-crash segments. It's hard to pin-point mainly because we know he hates and wants nothing to do with Anya compared to his contrary but similarly handled obsessions with Curly. It's a weird sort of "honey-moon" effect of abuse Jimmy does in terms of emotional and mental victimization. He is always horrid to Anya, always talking down or questioning her abilities and thoughts in a situation, this of course includes the harassment and assault. However, he has a moment of attempted gentleness/conditioning when he question her about the mouthwash when she's contemplating drinking it at the table. The key difference is he has no personal investment in Jimmy outside wanting nothing to do with him, meaning there is no sort of romanticized version of him that he can condition her off of. He knows this, hence, why he always reverts to trying to make her to scared to oppose him.

This sort of give and take of "kindness" doesn't work on her because she knows he is just doing it to take more from her than whatever he could possibly give but it reflects even the "softer" scenes between him and Curly where he always rewords or rephrases Curly's sentiments and concerns to sound more shallow. He is feigning a deeper understanding by reworking Curly's emotions into something bad and needing to be hidden. Everything is laced with envy and resentment, an outburst just around the corner, I mean he even slams the table in the birthday party scene, a tactic in emotional manipulation to set the victim on edge and cloud their ability to respond. Even if Curly knows Jimmy won't get physical in that moment, the physical actions is intended to make him back down in the confrontation in case it does. This is something that is just not person specific. It ingrains itself into how you interact with the world and life and it shows in major and minor ways with Curly.

Post-crash, the abusive nature is more in tandem to the physical victimization Anya went through and the stripping of voice and autonomy we see take place. Like the parasite in HFIM, Jimmy speaks for Curly most of the time and puts words in his mouth, similarly to how he takes Anya's plans as his own. He very commonly, with the both of them mind you, supplements the worst aspects of himself into them; pettiness, selfishness, lack of understanding... And tries to cover himself with their best qualities; kindness, planning, initiative, etc...

These parallel are just to say that positional power has little to do with if a person can be abused and how it can even be flipped to further the abuse. There is no doubt that Curly could've picked up on Jimmy's envy of his position hence another reason he never confronted him as a Captain but as a friend as doing so would immediately put Jimmy in a space to be confrontational/combative.

I think the disdain some people have when they talk about the heavily implied if not implicitly stated emotional/mental abuse Curly experienced being Jimmy's friend is when treating it as an excuse to why he didn't do more. I can understand that completely because it is not an excuse to why he didn't do more but is a very real reason people in his position in these scenarios can experience whether in the context of a work or social environment. However, I also think the way people talk about it really does demonstrate a bigger problem when talking about abuse when somehow who is/was abused is either part of the issue or enabled it.

Harkening back to the sentiments about Curly's inaction regarding Jimmy, I think the exact phrases I used/have seen show how there is an inherent belief that it is easier to overpower the effects of emotional/mental abuse that go in tandem with the perception of Curly as someone who should be able to. There is not an age you suddenly stop being susceptible to abuse nor a set point or low where you realize how it has affected you. You don't suddenly know to stand up or put a face on to face your abuser nor admit that you inadvertently enabled them to subjugate someone else to the same treatment. Maybe it's my psych brain but their is this growing belief that direct action is somehow easy or always the best method with the game shows you instances where it is not always the case. In real life that rings true too. He should have done more, but it's not impossible to see why he struggled to find a way or didn't even if it makes us mad.

It's not easy to suddenly gain a "back-bone". You don't immediately want to resort to aggression, especially if it mirrors the type you were a victim to. You don't want to believe you allowed yourself to be treated this bad, let it get that bad or allowed something bad to happen to someone else. It is easy to be in denial, to retreat to your thoughts or make excuses to avoid the painful truth. It's frustrating but in a way we know is relatable. It why we both hate and love Curly for it. We know we'd be better, we think we'd be better, we like to think we wouldn't falter in the same ways but it's always easier to say that from the outside looking in. It's easy to see what he was doing wrong because we are seeing it, not him, but the game really does make you picture what you would do if this was your raw reality and it's why this debate about Curly seems so never ending/contradictory. We can all say what we'd do but bottom line is that's much different when you're in the moment with all the emotions and human feelings attached.

I personally think Mouthwashing tackles the themes of rape culture, enabling, toxic masculinity, types of abuse and patriarchy in ways that are meant to deconstruct the typical straightforward views we mostly have of these concepts and how little subtilities of them are just as, if not more, detrimental than the overt/obvious parts. The game deals with the idea of little details and bigger picture in a way to show that sometimes the bigger picture is not the issue but the little details that make it up. It's why I have a personal dislike of depictions of Jimmy as the typical horrible person who would of course do something like this because the game is about noticing the little warning signs, the foreshadowing and foresight.

It's why I dislike the typical discussion of "bro code" and "boys will be boys" for the game because the game makes a point to avoid the standard depictions of such. It is about the type of men who still enable despite not condoning, agreeing or even perpetuating harmful beliefs because they can't see the little details or the ways it seeps into their everyday. The severity is not obvious to them as it was not obvious to Curly, Swansea or even Daisuke the way it was to a woman like Anya. There are little details about Jimmy that should ring alarms but if you are too naive like Daisuke, too distant like Swansea or too conditioned like Curly, they are just off markers.

There is 100% more constructive/concise ways to say "Curly was a victim of Jimmy's abuse on an emotional and mental aspect that clouded his judgements and perceptions in the scenario" while also critiquing on the side of "Curly still had a responsibility to protect Anya as a crew mate and Captain that he failed to do due to biases and stigma's he failed to surpass" without the weird condemnation people give him about should've knowing better than to let himself be manipulated by a person he considered a close, if not family/best-friend and had his own reasons to trust initially. Also stop being weird about victims of abuse in general with this fandom, like sorry not everyone has a like social epiphany the moment someone's nasty to them. People are treating it like you immediately know when you are in a toxic relationship immediately or comprehend when a person is actively dangerous and either it's your fault for not knowing how to leave/cut them off or you deserve it. Like the hypocrisy of people believing how certain fans treat the story reflect their irl views but not their own is crazy.

End statement is: I honestly don't even know man, I've been writing this too long and just like no man on that ship was perfect or really helped Anya when it mattered and I feel like pitting them against each other in discussion on who did the least or most or how it was justified sucks cause in the end Anya always did the most and best thing for herself.

[restinpeacesensei]

traditional style 💖

[deoidesign]

just to inquire, what’s your favorite thing you sell in your shop?

i love your comic!

Oh thank you!

And my favorite thing... That's hard to answer haha

I like selling prints because I get to use my nice printer (which I love to do) and I especially love selling custom panel prints, because then I get to see people's favorite panels from my comic, which is double nice...

The most fun items to pack are the merch bundles which are themed with my books, I LOVE coming up with packaging design like this so much...

But my favorite design has gotta be one of these... Probably the patch, there.

It's really hard for me to pick!

I actually genuinely just am really passionate about product design and merch themeing, it's not only extremely fun for me but it also just really engages my brain. I love coming up with items that fit a theme, and there's no theme I love more than my own comics haha

So there's not much I could enjoy more! That's why I chose to do a merch club on patreon, it lets me get out my merch-y feelings but without overloading my storefront... Plus it's just really fun for me! I get to experiment, make little packages, and enjoy making new things.

Thank you for asking!

[reapersmarch]

remember what the dormouse said.

[ganondoodle]

been able to keep both my fear and hype about totk in check by watching nothing but elden ring videos for weeks but now i read something on accident and my anxiety is going through the roof again

[thedrotter]

I have a gift for y'all today !!! 😊 Ever wanted to find a line in Re:Kinder in a single place for the sake of reference?? How about multiple chunks of lines. how about all the little variations that arise in the text with it's many endings, item descriptions, text that comes from interacting with the enviroment, and character info from the menu without having to boot up the game and go through it at long minutes!!???

well i sure did😊 Since I do a lot of fanart and think up my own silly theories and thoughts that need me to reference the game lines a lot, i have made a transcript for it for convenience's sake. A weirdly thorough transcript handwritten and proofread by me including all character lines available in-game. And I'm sharing it with you all today for anyone that wants it !!! :3 To use as a reference for creative fanworks or a quick search for a line in-game, whatever you wish to use it for!!

It uses the english translation of the game by vgperson. So naturally all credit for the game lines available in here is to her and Parun who made the game.

I did my best to organize it in a way easy to digest. Do note that I'm still human, and there's still the chance for mistake in it no matter how much I've proofread it, since I'm not even an english native speaker ^^. But I hope it serves you well nonetheless if you wish to use it.

That's my gift for today!!! Not the usual art, but still a project I'm proud of. Enjoy!!! 😊

[lurking-latinist]

.

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

i love you expanding on the zenin’s & megumi’s dynamic because like — there had to be so much more than gojo just getting megumi. it had to involve more politics, more manipulation, etc & you added to that.

( i always like that detail about gojo teaching megumi everything from the gojo playbook. like it made me realize that megumi was more gojo than zenin, which probably pissed off the zenin )

what made you expand on the great custody battle between gojo & the zenins for megumi? like the visitation rights? did gojo know how badly megumi was going to be treated? also how would you describe megumi dynamic with each prominent zenin clan member (ex. naoya, mai, naobito, maki.)

I am sooo convinced there’s an entire child custody battle political drama lurking beneath canon but gege denies me

Visitation rights:

The decision that the Zenin clan briefly got visitation rights was a combination of where Gojo was at that point in life and what a sheer, unmitigated shitshow adopting Megumi must have caused.

The thing is that the Zenin and the Gojo clan are established in canon as rivals at best and enemies at worst. Gojo swanning in like "I have discovered the Magic of teenaged fatherhood and want to teach this spunky, angry little dude how to Throw A Baseball. Btw he's zenin and the clan already sort of “”””””purchased”””””” him, meaning they already consider him property even more than they usually do with their kids. i will be keeping him tho. xoxoxoxoxo" must have been insulting to the Zenin. It must have been even more insulting that he could legitmately do that and overpower their entire clan without having to even try. It's bad even if megumi is just like, the run of the mill sorcerer. But he had the most powerful techinque in their bloodline. I legitimately think that Gojo almost started a war when he decided that his boyfriend had dumped him and he needed to immediately adopt a child about it.

The thing is that I think gojo really must have been committing the ultimate taboo for a society he was raised within. Older, traditional mindsets tend to think of children as property, and the clans are established to be almost exclusively self governed. Gojo making a Zenin boy his business would stomp right over that standard. Add in the complication of inherited techniques being viewed as almost a highly treasured clan heirloom within the invidual families, and you have a perfect recipe for the entire world being very very angry at Gojo for doing this.

And the thing is that present-day Gojo would have absolutely told everyone to get fucked, he does what he wants.

But this isn't present-day Gojo. This is seventeen year old Gojo. And he's just coming off three of the biggest failures of his life: 1) Riko's death, 2) Haibara's death and 3) Geto's defection.

Gojo has always been extremely self-assured as a character, but teenagers tend to be a little bit more uncertain and vulnerable than their adult counterparts, and Gojo, again, had just been hit by failure after failure. If there was ever a time in his life where he would have been looking for outside guidance, it was this one.

And the number one most likely candidate to guide him in this was Yaga.

I've talked in other posts about how Principal Yaga's dynamic with Gojo suggests he's not in the inner circle of trust the way that Nanami, Shoko, or even Ijichi is. I've also discussed how I think he compromises too much with the higher ups, why that works with his character but ultimately comes to the detriment of the students, and how he ultimately fails to protect the students in his charge.

The thing is that if Yaga was making the decision, he absolutely would have compromised with the Zenin.

Yaga very consistently is shown to care about the students, but to not protect them. It's also established that the most likely cause of that is the fact that he panders to the higher ups, even if he is more progressively minded than someone like Gakuganji.

In the past arc, geto and gojo have a throwaway line in a conversation about how Yaga's busy campaigning to be principal with the higher ups. we also have him 1) excluded from the people who know about Yuuji's survival, which 2) he later punishes Gojo for, albeit partially because of the disrespect towards Gakuganji and for hiding his survival.

That being said, if I was the principal of a school where my sister school's principal set up my entire first year class to die, i would not be punishing a teacher for disrespecting that man. I would be too busy beating him to death with my bare hands. Good luck trying some shit with my fucking students again you dead fuck.

i would simply not make it as an educator in this world.

Gojo would have had the entire world up in arms at him when he took megumi and refused to give him back. The Zenin, for obvious reasons--but also the higher ups trying to preserve the status quo and the other clans, who want to maintain their ability to rear and keep their children without outside interference. He would have most likely said to give Megumi back entirely, but I don't think Gojo would go for that complete of a surrender of him, especially after Megumi asked him to keep him with Tsumiki and to keep them in a place she could be happy.

But very limited visitation would 1) at least somewhat soothe ruffled feathers, even if they are still furious, 2) give megumi access to information on his technique that he could not possibly get otherwise, and 3) supposedly cause minimal damage, since they only get him for a few days a month and are supposed to love him more than anyone. It's the sort of compromise I could see Yaga pitching in the best possible faith--and it's the sort of compromise that I see blowing up spectacularly, because the Zenin are fucking insane.

When I'm dealing with past versions of characters with very defined personalities, I sort of like to trace in the roots of their present-day selves in any backstory i make for them. Gojo of the present day is completely uncompromising when it comes to protecting his students and their youth. He is not afraid to butt heads with the higher ups and ruffle feathers to do it. So i decided to make that because he compromised when he was seventeen and doing his best, and Megumi paid the price, and he is so, so goddamn sorry for that. He doesn't let Yaga into the inner circle by the time we make it to canon because he was in the inner circle, and taking his advice directly resulted in Gojo's absolute biggest regret, which was letting the Zenin have unsupervised access to Megumi.

I think Gojo as a character is someone who refuses to repeat old mistakes, and what happened when Megumi was a child is something that he won't ever forgive or forget. A part of him still blames Yaga for convincing him to compromise with the Zenin and iced him out by the time we hit canon as a result.

Gojo and Megumi's treatment:

He had absolutely no idea how bad it would be for Megumi.

The thing is that Gojo approached it with the severely biased mindset of someone who thought he knew exactly how Megumi would be treated when he was with the clan, because it was supposed to be how he was treated growing up. The Six Eyes/Limitless user and the Ten Shadows were supposed to be corollaries. Megumi was meant to be to the Zenin what Gojo was to his clan, and if anything, the issue with his clan was that they treasured him too much. Gojo get up as this much beloved, much revered godling who was put on a pedestal and had all the distance of it.

In my mind, the issue with his childhood was that he was indulged to the point of being deprived of actual human connection or intimacy that he didn't truly get until Geto and Shoko.

In Gojo's mind, the biggest danger was that Megumi would be treated with too much reverence and distance, but he was spending the vast majority of the month with his big sister and the teen parenting trio. He would get plenty of normal interaction and intimacy from them. He thought that there would be no one in the Zenin clan who would dare raise a finger against him, because no one would have ever done that to him as a child. He never imagined that the Zenin would be legitimately dangerous to Megumi, and there were a lot of red flags he overlooked when the worst of it was going on because he assumed he already knew what was happening. When this was happening, he was completely burnt out, overwhelmed, mourning more than one friend, and struggling to meet the burden of being the strongest alone. He thought Megumi was acting out because 1) megumi already was getting in fights at school, and he made the mistake of thinking that Megumi was just a stubborn kid going through a sort of angry phase and 2) that Megumi hated them so much because visitation days meant he couldn’t stay with his sister. He didn’t realize that Megumi was fighting so hard to not go on visits because he was legitimately afraid of what the Zenin clan would do to him when he got there. For a lot of reasons that I won’t get into now, Megumi thought that putting up with the abuse was the cost of getting to keep his sister. He asked for help, told them that he didn’t like it at the Zenin compound and didn’t want to go, but he didn’t have the words to really explain what they were doing to him and gojo didn’t understand how bad it was. Megumi read this as “knowing and not caring” and thought the teen parenting trio knew how bad it was and that he just had to suffer through it or they’d take his sister away from him. By the time they realized what was really going on, it had escalated beyond the point of repair. Gojo has a lot of regrets.

Megumi's dynamic:

Naobito: Disturbed.

Naobito was the one who initially purchased Megumi from his father. And if Gojo hadn't had intervened, he would have personally taken Megumi into his household and raised him as the Zenin clan heir. He didn't really give a shit about Megumi until he realized he was the Ten Shadows, and after that, he felt completely entitled to him.

I think Naobito was always sort of insulted by Gojo's existence. He predated Gojo, is the thing, and he's the most powerful character that we know of in the pre-Gojo era other than Yuki Tsukomo, who wasn't an active fighter for the higher ups. As far as we know, he was the strongest until Gojo and Geto came along. Gojo potentially represented an immediate and violent shift of power from the Zenin clan to the Gojo, and it definitely would sting to be upstaged by a literal child.

The Ten Shadows returning to the clan represented a chance to correct that balance again.

If we accept that the Ten Shadows is a technique that can rival the Six Eyes/Limitless user, as well as the idea that the universe introduces “balances” to the birth of beings of power, then we at least have an environment where the Zenin may believe that whoever is next born with the Ten Shadows would be Gojo Satoru’s equal. Considering they value strength above all else, that gives them major incentive to desire the assimilation of whoever has the ten shadows technique into the clan.

But this was made a lot worse by the fact that the last ten shadows died.

The timeline in this is generally:

Second to last ten shadows: the one who got in the duel with the six eyes that gojo discussed in canon (~500 years ago)

Last ten shadows: child that was killed within months of discovering his technique (~200-300 years ago)

Current ten shadows: Megumi.

So they had just come off an overwhelmingly powerful Ten Shadows user, only to hurtle into the shame and humiliation of not being able to protect the next one. I like the idea that the six eyes and the ten shadows tend to pop up at the same time, so that means that the last six eyes got to grow and gain power while the Zenin were still licking their wounds from their heir being offed at a very young age. It’s insult to injury.

In the modern age, Naobito is coming off the humiliation of having been replaced by a literal child as the strongest sorcerer. He’s still harboring the ancestral humiliation of having lost the last ten shadows. And then gojo hits the humiliation of taking the new one right out from under his nose. Naobito bears that humiliation personally, because he’s the clan leader who should have brought Megumi into the fold and didn’t.

As a result, he’s just about obsessed with Megumi. He absolutely refuses to give up on bringing him back into the clan and grooming him to be the perfect, promised heir whose idea he’s been clinging to since before Megumi was even born.

There’s just something about how, in canon, Naobito had a clause in his will locked and loaded to make Megumi heir if anything happened to take gojo out of commission. I think that losing Megumi to gojo was personal to him, and that he’s almost fixated on Megumi as a result.

For his part, Megumi hates him and is a little afraid of him, though he’d never admit it. All of his interactions with the Zenin clan are skewed through the lens of “he was fucking six and just thought they were crazy motherfuckers who were weird about blood.” Megumi legitimately does not understand how important his technique is to them—he thinks they’d be possessive with any inherited technique, and he has sort of explained away any weirdness particular to him as it being because of what went down with gojo.

The Zenin view what they do to him as love. He’s the inheritor of their most treasured technique, and the only good thing toji did was name him blessing. It’s like Maki said—any resistance he has to them is attributed to Gojo’s influence, and they’re banking on overcoming it one day and returning him to the clan. Things like wearing the kimono and being called the ten shadows is a sign of genuine honor for them.

Megumi views it as a constant, persistent humiliation that’s probably just meant to spite gojo. They bought him because they’d buy any kid who inherited a technique, and then gojo saved him, which embarrassed the clan, so they’ve been getting back at him for it ever since. They can’t actually hurt gojo, so they hurt the kid he saved.

He’s dressed up like a doll in the kimono to mock him. Being called the ten shadows isn’t an honor to him—it’s dehumanizing. He has a name and they refuse to call him anything but his technique, which is why they bought him to begin with. From his perspective, it’d be like if you were hired for being Microsoft proficient and your boss refused to call you anything but “excel spreadsheet” because that’s all you were to them.

Naobito is the one who had “custody” of him as a kid in the clan, and he’s the one who called a lot of the shots with how he was treated. Megumi remembers him as the source of some of his most painful moments in childhood, and it’s undercut with this growing fear that Naobito won’t let him go. He’s sort of picked up on how obsessed Naobito is with him, and it scares him even if he doesn’t want to admit it.

Naoya: about as bad as can be.

Megumi really hits all of naoya’s inferiority/superiority complex hard. The thing is that Naoya kind of is sour he didn’t get the ten shadows. He was born right after gojo satoru, to the heir of the clan. He wants to be strong more than anything, and the ten shadows is supposed to be one of the strongest things in the world. Megumi is toji’s son, who he’s got that weird obsession with. And everyone sort of presumes Megumi would be heir if gojo hadn’t stolen him, which is a position Naoya would kill for.

In my mind, Naoya was one of megumis biggest abusers as a child. It made him feel strong to be able to hurt him. It made him feel strong to be able to make Megumi feel weak. His father was obsessed with Megumi, but Naoya was just cruel to him.

Megumi is legitimately terrified of Naoya. There was a time in his life where he genuinely thought Naoya would kill him one day.

Mai: A missed opportunity.

Megumi does remember Maki and Mai. Playing with them was the only good memory he has from that part of his life. He thinks of them as fondly as he can think of anything that happened in that place, and occasionally hopes they're okay, but he doesn’t really think of having a relationship with her ever. That would require going back to the Zenin, and he won’t ever willingly do that.

I’ve talked about how Mai thinks of Megumi in other posts, but he really does occupy a slightly less bitter version of the space Maki occupies in her mind. He was kind to her when no one else was, and it really was something that meant the world to her. There was a time in her life where she wished desperately he would come back and be her friend again. He was the ten shadows and the presumed heir to the clan, and he didn’t let anyone hurt her or Maki and agreed that they could all be friends. He sort of fueled her hope that things would get better one day, and when he went no contact, it sort of crashed her into a realization that it never would.

Maki: potential for growth

Maki turned her back on her entire family so she wouldn’t be crushed down, and that’s not something that didn’t hurt her. She convinced herself she would be absolutely alone for the rest of her life, but it would be fine because she would be strong enough to stand alone. It wouldn’t hurt.

(It did hurt.)

The other first years actually started to pull her back from that. It’s that moment after her talk with Yuuta, where she tells herself that she shouldn’t fall for it and go thinking she’s actually been accepted. She thought she would be alone and suddenly, for the first time, she’s not.

Megumi was a half remembered child she played with one time growing up. He didn’t mean the same to her that he did to Mai, because she didn't consider him a source of hope that things would get better the way that Mai did.

At the beginning of the fic, he was a bit of a sore spot, but not because of anything about him. I tried to very lightly hint that she had a bit of a sore spot around the Ten Shadows because there was a time in her life that people used to think that maybe she'd get it.

From birth, people knew Gojo would be the six eyes and limitless user. I like to think the Ten Shadows is the antithesis of the Six Eyes in almost every possible way, so in my mind, the ten shadows is notoriously hard to spot.

And i think that there is some canon to suggest this. Namely, the fact that they didn't know Megumi would have the ten shadows (or they wouldn't have been waiting to see what technique he had), the fact that megumi's cursed energy aura canonically changes with the shikigami summoned (re: his entire cursed energy output changing when he summoned mahoraga for the first time), and the fact that a huge part of his technique is stealth. With Gojo, you feel him from the other side of the block, but Megumi can be hiding in your own goddamn shadow and you don't know it.

I also like the idea that the Six Eyes and Ten Shadows tend to show up within the same lifetime. So from the second that Gojo Satoru was born, the zenin had an eye on the ten shadows finally returning to the clan once more.

Maki is from a branch of the clan that appears to be pretty high in the zenin clan hierarchy. By the time that she would have been developing a technique, if any, Naoya would have been confirmed as having not gotten it. Maki and Mai were the only other kids in that upper hierarchy that we know of. Canonically, it's implied you don't see curses from birth (if i have the right translation, Gojo at one point asks Megumi if he's started to see them, implying it doesn't happen right away, and when the Zenin buy megumi, they talk about how they think he has potential, implying there's an uncertain period where you don't know if a kid will be able to see curses). The clan probably had a lot of hope for them.

At one point, Kamo mentions that it would have been better if maki or mai had inherited Megumi's techinque, and I like to think that was a shared sentiment. Gojo was seventeen and had already usurped their clan as the strongest. They were getting desperate for the ten shadows to return, and a lot of people looked to maki and Mai for potentially inheriting it. And out of the two of them, Maki is the one that came off as having power (because she did--it was just a heavenly pact). Maki was certain, and confident, and moved like someone strong. People really, really wanted it to be her for a while. When she talks about how her dad used to take her to see the kimono a lot, it's because he was hoping she would wear it one day.

Maki was never jealous of Megumi. She's better off without her family anyway, and she's confident in who she is. But at the start, he was a little bit of a reminder of the sort of fall she had from the Zenin clan's greatest hope to their biggest disappointment. She never held any of it against him, but he reminded her of bad memories and set her on edge.

That turned on a dime while talking with Tsumiki in chapter 5, when she started piecing everything together. And megumi sort of became this chance to heal from old regrets.

Megumi will never be what Mai was to her, but a part of Maki still hasn't healed from leaving mai behind and losing her. Her sister hates her, and probably always will, and maki doesn't regret what she did but she does regret that it blew back on mai. She couldn't stay for mai, but she doesn't have to stay to help Megumi. She's sort of been ushered into a perfect opportunity to protect him from her family the way she could never protect mai, and he already means more to her than she really wants to admit out loud. She genuinely wants to protect him from her family, and a bit part of that is so that way she can finally protect someone from them, instead of just... failing and losing them.

For megumi's part, it's the same as mai--he barely remembers Maki, but he did think of her as the source of the only good memory he had in the clan.

He ran off with Mai, and Maki tracked them both down. He stomped his stupid clan clothes into the mud, and they didn't hurt him for it, not even a little bit. They played together, and playing is something he never had time to do anymore. Mai was the damsel, and Maki was the brave warrior coming to save her, and megumi's dogs played the part of the terrible monsters who had stolen mai away. Maki bullied Megumi into carrying her "swords" for her, and megumi honestly didn't mind, because all people did was make him fight at that stupid compound, and he just was relieved no one was hitting him for once. it was one of the greatest days he can remember from that phase of his life, and Maki has since been one of the only two zenin he missed. He hasn't thought of her in a while. He'd be glad to hear she got out.

[sonknuxadow]

tbh i do think that more violent/dangerous takes on werehog sonic COULD work but it depends on how its handled . once you get to the point where youre portraying werehog as inherently dangerous or not really sonic anymore youre kinda missing the point

[bmpmp3]

i do think its kinda funny when i see someone in the year of our lord 2024 talk about vocal synth music like its all gone downhill since like 2010 because like dont get me wrong i love a good niconicodouga-ass 2008 ass vocaloid joint BUT also like. the past couple years have had the most fascinatingly creative and expressive uses of vocal synthesizers ive ever heard in my life DJFSKHJDFS dont write it all off just yet!!

[maxellminidisc]

My thing is if you're friend with people who you can't rib a lil over stupid shit they say or even more importantly, address/confront ignorant to harmful rhetoric that they come out with without them guilt tripping YOU for having principles than it's not a friendship worth cultivating imo. And same goes for them if you're a person who can't handle being checked maturely. People have told me I'm pretty cold for cutting ties with people who I've know for years like its nothing but it's like idk when someone shows you who they are, they really do feel like dead weight to me lol

[happyk44]

It's kinda funny because w/ my Zeus kid OC (who I've been thinking about renaming as Araceli, 'cause it means altar of the sky, apparently, which I like 'cause sky-themed-ish but also like. A little bit I wanted something that meant cloud the way Coral's name means... Coral) the implication is that she takes after her father to an almost mirroring degree because I developed her and my other PJO OCs (who also all got retconned into an OG work) at the same time I was playing around with my ideas on the Big Six, and the gist at the time was supposed to show how the Big Six could've turned out if they weren't so weird.

So the dynamics of the friendship was supposed to be very similar to the dynamics of Big Six's relationship to each other (e.g. Mary having a major crush on Hera's "representative" but also being attracted to literally every other person that walked by, Nico being the soberminded big brother figure, etc). It's also one of the reasons Mary would get angry whenever someone would compare to her dad, because similarly I think Zeus would get angry if someone compared him to his dad.

And then eventually as I got older and the daydream moved around with whatever obsession I had at the time, the characters and general storyline began to change away from that in some ways but core features sort of stayed and so I ended up with a version of Zeus that ignores his daughter's pleas for help because he loves her but her pain hurts him because he can't do anything about it and it's his fault she's suffering.

She got this intensity from him, it's ingrained into the way it's ingrained in him. But he was able to rebuild the world according to his own needs and wants and beliefs. And she can't really do that. So he doesn't have any advice he can give her when she's on her knees begging for help with all the noise and pain in her head. He doesn't know what to do! It's like he can just go and rip it out of her.

But she's suffering because she's different and she's weird and she knows it and she knows it's his fault which is why she's asking but he just doesn't know and he can't handle watching her suffering and listening to her cry when there is no helpful answer to give her because "I don't know" isn't going to fix it.

He's supposed to fix things, he's supposed to have the answers. He's king of the world, by damn! He's a problem solver. He supposed to have a solution, and a million backup solutions. But he doesn't! There's nothing he can do to make the noise stop because truth be told, the noise never really stopped for him! It just got easier and quieter. So he turns away from her because he loves her and he's failing her and he can't handle that.

But also in the same breath, I think he recognizes similar aspects of himself in Jason, who isn't even asking for help, and fucking despises him for it, lol.

✨ Girl Dad ✨

[arklay]

MR. & MRS. WESKER 🤍

i was able to commission the lovely @rcehb-art on twitter for this piece of diana and wesker during their strange after-the-fact reception for their very private wedding. i am just so in love with this and how it turned out, and i can't thank rc enough !! she is so kind and amazing to work with and i can't recommend her enough if you're looking to commission artwork ♡

[face-breaker]

fighting the urge to mix a lil' honey badger into sett —

[ishikawayukis]

i do find it hilarious when whoever is adapting a thing says that they're not gonna do it play by play but rather a reinterpretation of the story in a way, and then people get mad because it's not a play by play but a reintepretation of the story