#what a dad response lmao

[bi-writes]

love when i tell my manager i need a mental health day and he replies with 👍

[bumpylines]

More dad!BBJ for you folks 😌

Kaede’s friends are probs like “wow you’re so lucky, Barnaby picks you up and you get to ride in his cool car~ Kyaa doesn’t it make your heart pound 🥰” and kaede’s just like “….hes… just a regular human being like everyone else 😫😭” the illusion is shattered for her

[amedetoiles]

listen i was all ready to rank dfqc’s father as worst father of the year right up there with jiang fengmian and now what am i supposed to do with this knowledge that he actually loved his son and played kick ball and gave him hUGS?? that in order to save their people it seems, he had to make dfqc powerful enough even if it meant dfqc would have no emotional connection that’ll prevent him from killing his father to ascend the throne. that dfqc might still love his father and their people even if he doesn’t understand what that means anymore. and their tribe? loves him too????? enough to be angry that he unintentionally abandoned them??? LET ME LIVE

[etherealspacejelly]

HURRICANE KATRINA????,

MORE LIKE HURRICANE TOR-TILLA!!!

[lesbegays]

sometimes i remember the time that a professor told me my essay was the most interesting and insightful in the class and then i started skipping that class and couldn’t bring myself to turn in any more essays to her and i’m like damn i should go back to therapy and deal with that

[stairset]

One of my toxic traits as a superhero fan is when adaptations make the villain connected to the hero’s origin I sometimes like it and sometimes don’t and either way I usually have no specific reasoning for my opinion other than Vibes.

[littol-bun]

i love being an age regressor ૮ᴖﻌᴖა ♡⁠ tonight it feels very affirming and comforting. I've kind of always had to look out for myself and be my biggest supporter, and there are a lot of strange ways this feels like a second chilhood at times.

like i regress to being younger, but I'm also a girl now in a completely different place with completely different circumstances/social circles etc. yk?

but when i feel rly small and my reality feels so big, it makes me happy that older me is there for me to make the important decisions and guide us there :3 it's like i am holding my hand through this, i haven't had an adult rly look out for me like this and it's so nice to have one now!!

i don't have to be scared of big changes, I'm doing good and I'm here for me and i can take it easy. i have someone who is helping me ♡⁠ i have someone who is keeping me safe. they work hard so i can be little ^.^ thanks big sis hehe ✌🏾

ouggghh im not little anymore but (⁠｡⁠ﾉ⁠ω⁠＼⁠｡⁠) ♡⁠ yeah. when i am little i can still like.. function as an adult n talk to ppl n stuff. but it's also like, well like i said before ig 0:

like im smaller but different‚ subtly. still me‚ but someone else since I'm like.. a teen?? that i never was. my childhood was nothing like my adulthood so this rly is a whole new thing little me has needed to learn 2 navigate emotionally/mentally.

but as i become more aware of when I'm in a little headspace and not, the difference in perception stands out to me a lot more. i can't articulate it very well... oughh. this is giving me very specific questions, but on that note — i am happy to feel so safe and looked out for when I'm little 😌💕 i used to feel scared and helpless but it's different now. we're doing this together 👩🏽‍🤝‍👩🏾 i got ya lil sis

[notamean-greenbean]

i go to college and spend time actively unlearning the idea that my worth is linked to my ability to provide for others and then i come home for the summer where my worth is quite literally only based on my ability to provide for others 🤩

[br1ghtestlight]

WAIT LMAOOO i had a stressful ass dream last night where i learned that my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and she needed to do chemotherapy and radiation but We all knew she wasnt gonna do any fuckign chemotherapy or radiation bcuz she's late for everything and doesnt give a fuck about her own life

and my dad was telling me about this and ALSO how he's in his 60s or whatever now and he's unhealthy too and he had like another disease that was probably gonna kill him if he didnt end up murdered in prison. anyway my mom was gonna die in like...... 6 months and my dad is already an older parent so he had maybe 5-10 years left and i was supposed to tell my sister our mom was dying she was like ^_^

and i just ended up ACTING OUT at her bcuz i was so pissed that in a few years i wasnt going to have any parents left and she gets her dad and his stupid ass young family and wife in the suburbs and their happy lives and her kids will have grandparents while mine never will and i was like fully sobbing. What was that about. was my subconcious telling me my parents are like about to die???

[snazum]

i hate that i get the biggest surge of creative energy and Do Stuff motivation between the hours of 2am-5am. Like i’d like a normal sleep schedule.

ALSO! It’s I want to Do Stuff with Others. Like everyones asleep as they should be! But I’m over here like “oh I should ask this person what they think of this idea. Lets make this thing together”

Also! Wish capitalism would fucking die. Everyones busy and has jobs (and school but thats important stuff so please do it) and I’m over here being a NEET. Actually it’s embarrassing but moving on. (got a school advisor app thing this week super excited and nervous <not for reasons you’d think>) But like, I /know/ friends who’d want to create and do things but unfortunetly are burned out by work and school and shitty fucking people.

Can’t wait to get into the film program. Little scared cause I don’t want to have to deal with the whole “Oh u don’t watch movies? What was the first marvel movie budget” or smth. It was really fuckin annoying in highschool. And it felt like it was cause I was “fem presenting” (I wasn’t. I was p masc. Just higher voice, small, quiet and all around fem socialized) So idk, the way I react and read the situation is an attack on my knowledge <Which I’ll always admit I live under a rock>

[monty-glasses-roxy]

Hsjdhjs Meteors AU post Ruin just like. Cassie's dad has to leave for a few hours so he tells Cassie quietly and asks her to take care of Roxy. He then says it louder to both her and Roxy and pretends to put Roxy in charge while he's gone and it's like a funny little secret that Cassie's secretly the one in charge every time

Roxy's only been in the real world for a few weeks maybe months okay she doesn't know what she's doing

[anghraine]

I really enjoy GW2 as a game, obviously, but I'm not sure anything gives a purer enjoyment than this specific brand of player whining:

Oh no, not everything revolving around your personal preferences at all times!!!

Anyway, just a few minutes later, I passed this:

:D

(Note: Delaqua & Meade = Marjory Delaqua and Kasmeer Meade = the canon f/f couple among the main cast who kissed onscreen. Cry more, lol)

[smol-tired-binch-blog]

Sometimes I think I must consume media wrong because I don't remember The Lottery by Shirley Jackson fucking me up

Like sure I read it and was like 'wait hang on, what- oh dear.' but I didn't have the 'Dude That Was So Fucked Up I Am Fundamentally Changed As A Person' experience everyone else apparently had

And that ain't a flex btw this ain't a "oh I can read the most fucked up stuff and feel NOTHING" kinda bullshit I just. Wasn't that deeply affected lmao

[todayisafridaynight]

Right??? Thanks so much! I actually first fell in love with Jo's character when RGGJo's voice lines came out haha, so it's super fun to be able to share them.

But I can think of a couple of reasons for the wild personality gap, and for me it starts at their respective roles. Obviously main antagonist and major supporting character are going to draw different levels of attention to themselves, but I think it's chiefly that RGGJo is not just Jo, but he's both Jo and Masato as one character.

RGGJo is much, much closer in age to Ichi, and though they're not "twins" like Ichi and Masato are (RGGJo is a little more than 2 years older), it's thematically there I think. The whole "twin dragonfish," dark and light, two sides of the same coin kind of thing.

And just as Ichi was initially conceptualized as a sort of "greatest hits compilation" of the previous protagonists' most compelling traits, I think there's a strong case for RGGJo being the same for the previous antagonists--specifically Nishiki, Ryuji, and Mine, who are pretty clearly Yokoyama's favorites anyway lol.

I have a feeling casting has something to do with it as well. RGGJo's actor, Hiroki Takahashi, is actually the exact same age as he is, and he's voiced his fair share of fun, flamboyant villains. If I wanted to speculate, he's also voiced his fair share of BL, so that may be why RGGJo's voice lines have a Certain Slant to them; directing his delivery to capitalize on his established appeal (although he has quite a range) makes sense.

Tsutsumi is also only a few years off from Y7Jo, and he was cast for having the dignity and screen presence to "make every word feel like it might have a deeper meaning." Yokoyama (and Takeuchi) wrote the games, he and Nagoshi handled the casting, and Yokoyama generally handles the voice direction for the main story, so a lot of it's specific to his vision.

Within that context I think it's relevant that he wrote Y7Jo while picturing Tsutsumi specifically. RGGJo was more malleable and less "consequential" in terms of the franchise, so, y'know, why not have a little fun with it? I think that's reflected in their designs as well. RGGJo's is larger-than-life while Y7Jo's is relatively subdued.

Overall, I get the sense RGGJo's role is more akin to "son" and "brother," (aniki, if you will), like Masato, whereas Y7Jo's role is more akin to "co-parent" and "father" and I guess "Evil Stepdad" in a Cinderella kind of way. It's not exact across the board, it's not literal across the board, but it's the archetype, right? And I think that does, exactly like you said, have far-reaching consequences for their backgrounds and who they've become as a result.

BTW, you actually are up to speed on Ichi's story, because uh… that's where it stops lol. It was discontinued at roughly the equivalent of the start of Chapter 12 in 7; the rest of the story was written, but not published. It Kills Me.

But I think, despite any concrete backstory, the implication for RGGJo is that (if I assume he joined earlier than Ichi, which would make sense given he's captain), he was at most 18 or 19 when he joined, and he's exactly the same kind of Arakawa fanboy Ichi is. The 15th anniversary book goes on to say he "was purely in love with [Arakawa]'s greatness" and so cannot tolerate the idea of allowing him to live and die in obscurity at the bottom rungs, of Arakawa being in a position not equivalent to his "greatness" in his eyes.

But Ichi thinks that's regardless of what Arakawa himself may want, since RGGJo is apparently not going to stop until he makes him chairman, which the Arakawa Ichi knows wouldn't really care about. I think there's an interesting mix of selflessness and selfishness in his desires that reminds me of Mine.

And that's explicitly as opposed to Y7Jo, whose loyalty remains the same, but whose feelings and motivations are complicated by the existence of Masato; the usage of "purely" before is notable here, as another suitable translation would be "uncomplicatedly," which to me would suggest that degree of admiration is a component of his loyalty in 7 as well.

So I think you're absolutely right the circumstances with Masato are a major aspect of what's going on with Y7Jo. It's inextricable because he's got this immense gratitude towards Arakawa for raising his son and also a need, a primary driving force, to be a part of his son's life at (almost) all costs. The natural result of that is going to be reluctance to do anything that tips the balance.

I think that's one of the things that make him so compelling, he's forced to make a lot of tough, meaningful decisions and there's often (but not always) no right answer. And that's really clear to see with Aoki, as you say.

(Kind of a side note, but somewhat contrary to the above, Masato may actually have existed in RGGO's timeline. There was a comment from Yokoyama or Takeuchi suggesting he's not in RGGO not because he simply "doesn't exist, but specifically because Arakawa may not have opened the right locker or may not have made it to the lockers in time. I guess the other implication would be that Masato would've been Arakawa's biological son in RGGO instead, since RGGJo would've been too young and there was no need for a switcheroo? It was just an off-hand comment, but it's interesting to think about.)

Also, loved your tags haha. It's SO funny you start off like you're going to say something crazy and then it turns out to actually be something I wanted to write about in the previous ask, but that I cut out because I couldn't make it flow. I guess it might just be the case that I'm crazy on the same wavelength?

But yes! I think a lot of the time, impressions of that aspect Jo's backstory sort of begin and end at Evil Stepdad Perpetuates Cycle Of Abuse, perhaps understandably, but there's genuinely so much that's established in both his and Arakawa's backstories that have clearly stayed with them that I'm positive your take on it is at the very least least true to the character, whether or not it's intentional.

Because like, Arakawa and Jo both came from abusive households. And they're both affected by Aoki's "parental abuse" (although Aoki doesn't know it himself, I guess he doesn't need to). But the way Arakawa has always dealt with abuse is defiance; I think the implication of one of the first scenes is that that's how he got his scar. Jo, on the other hand, has always dealt with abuse with avoidance. Running away. Brushing it under the rug, like he says he and Ikumi had done all their lives; I think that statement's fairly clearly linked to abuse and neglect.

And I think that shows both in Arakawa and Jo's respective responses to traditional authority figures and in how they choose to handle things with Aoki. Arakawa defies Aoki's plans in his own way at every turn, and he ends up getting killed for it. Jo, on the other hand, ignores it until there's nothing left to do but sever himself completely, in the same way there was nothing left to do back then but run. IT'S SO. Ugh.

Each Jo's respective role in the overall plot of their stories definitely plays a part in why they turn out different from each other the way they do; it's interesting to see how RGG decided to handle Jo's character to sort of 'adjust him' to fit better as more of a background figure than The Big Bad, and to especially see how his relationships end up is spectacular. Choosing to divide that devotion between his son and his boss in Y7 is something I'm just positively obsessed with: it's clear he joined the yakuza predominantly for Masato's sake, but the concept of Jo gradually coming to genuinely respect Arakawa as an individual opposed to someone that he just happens to have to follow after because his son's involved heightens him as a character for me (I might have to write a side piece on the psyche of Jo- there's just a bunch of aspects to him that I want to explore better and really intrigue me, but I refuse to try and squeeze any of that into this long-as-is answer lmao).

I definitely recognize Ryuji and Mine the easiest in RGGJo (Mine's influence still persists a bit in Y7 to me, if not solely for his devotion and his own version of The Knife Scene existing as The Eye Scene; though Jo's anger wasn't purely due to Arakawa's death in that scene like Mine's was due to Daigo's 'death', it was clear Arakawa's passing was a sore subject). Jo's dedication to Arakawa in RGGO really is totally reminiscent of Mine's devotion to Daigo: both willing to take drastic measures to secure the ones they idolize the spot they feel they deserve and to exterminate any opposition to that dream (if I'm remembering Mine's RGGO story right wherein he partakes in the Okinawa deal as a HUGE ploy just to secure Daigo remains chairman should he wake up, but I don't have to clarify how that didn't go as planned).

As for Nishiki, it's clear Jo borrows his 'position' in the story, just as Ichi obviously takes Kiryu's. To yoink a phrasing from another ask I got, they're 'dark parallels': though they both clearly want the best for Arakawa, they're going about it in different ways (in that sense, Y7Arakawa's line about him seeing the Arakawa Family as his 'sons' makes this situation a little funny: just two kids fighting each other for what's best for their dad lmao). It's a shame the story didn't go on any more after the Millenium fight, but I'm a little happy knowing in that I'm not missing anything (what I will scratch my head over is what RGGOMasato would've been like. I guess it's not exactly certain whether or not he survived The Locker Incident or he was just so considerably normal he wasn't worth bringing up, but regardless I'll have a ponder about it..). It'd be rad if RGG ever decided to release at least the drafts of the rest of the story one day, but I won't hold my breath.

I've peaked over at Takahashi's past roles (I didn't realize he's voiced so many characters I know omg), and I think that's a fair conclusion to come to: he repertoire combines characters with sort of 'harsh' tones to their voices/dialogue, but as you said he does benefit from having voiced some 'lighter' characters! As for Tsutsumi, I think I've made it a little clear on my blog that I've taken time to look at his past projects, and though I haven't seen all of his roles, Jo's an interesting inclusion to his list (but by no means an inappropriate fit. If I were to compare him to one of Tsutsumi's past roles, Nobunaga Oda from Honnouji Hotel is similar in being an intimidating man with a violent reputation but still having a 'soft'/deeper side). It gets more fun when I think of it: Tsutsumi, from what I can gather, is a tad renowned for playing loving fathers (whether they're perfect fathers depends on the character, but they all absolutely adore their kid/family- this might be the only time I've seen him play a father and he isn't doting on his kid, lmao). Yokoyama and Nagoshi are definitely masters at deciding who should play who and how to utilize their talents efficiently, and having prior knowledge to Tsutsumi's roles, I feel as though audience members would have been able to get a hint at Jo's whole character early on (just as RGG had capitalized on Takahashi's reputation) which I personally find to be a fun tidbit, if not just grateful that they chose such an excellent actor to play such an intricate character. Ergo, his ability to give 'deep' performances and have that sort of presence and give his character that type of atmosphere definitely helps enhance the human aspect of Jo's character.

It's a great blend into Jo's otherwise cold demeanor, and going off the idea that RGGJo was a combination of Masato and Jo, the decision to have Jo be a committed father to Masato (as much as he's allowed to be, anyhow) while Masato became the power-hungry villain (even if RGGJo's motivations were ironically centered around Arakawa succeeding moreover himself), it's somewhat of a roundabout way to have them still be connected: though they're not the same character anymore, there's that bond that keeps them stitched together that I find neat.

AND THANK YOU ABOUT MY TAGS I can't sugarcoat it, I'm not a very confident person, so I'm glad you've gleamed there's some validity to what I'm saying. And I'm glad you've expanded on not just Jo, but Arakawa's upbringing as well: though they both come from abusive homes, they do handle it differently, and I feel so blind for not even having wholly noticed it in how they react to Aoki- it's so brilliant I almost want to scream. It's a tragic irony that despite Jo resolving to not 'half-ass' things anymore and to face things head-on, to 'take responsibility', he incidentally falls back into trying to avoid the problem for as long as he can. It's poetic really, and I'm positively going to go insane over the fact.

[windandrose]

Daeron II is better person than me because unlike him, i will abolish House Bracken for 1) actively belittle my mom and trying to replace her as queen, and 2) strongest backing of blackfyre rebellion

[nexus-nebulae]

just realised that the first media we consumed that made us REALLY sympathetic for the monster was that fucking point and click Mystery Case Files Ravenhearst game. bc that entire game i was legitimately fucking TERRIFIED of the ghost lady in that game but the second i found out her husband was abusive i doubled down on trying to help her escape. and the ending of that game Did make me cry out of fear but hey at least i did in fact help her escape