#what the fuck . i'm dying here

[vaguely-concerned]

are. are you telling me that if the romanced mage warden dies and alistair is king, he deadass stares greagoir down over her dead body and grants the circle of ferelden its autonomy after ordering it rebuilt somewhere safer. first you have to deliberately leave him behind so he won't die for you and then he does that for you once you're gone, even when you're broken up??? absolute and literal king behaviour of the highest order????? the actions speak louder than words of it all??????? I think I hauve covid

[princyvish]

day three! Domestic modern fluff because I cant angst for the life of me

[cacw]

super splashfrost times

[pa-pa-plasma]

always funny to me when people complain about animation dying out as a medium & then they proceed to not watch anything animated ever like you either love animation or you don't pick one

[dragonflyxem]

Heyyyy so I just finished binging Supernatural and um

WHAT THE FUCK

[akai-anna]

Round 6

Round: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

[skrunksthatwunk]

idk if i've discussed it before (i have certainly THOUGHT about it) but someone on my kuwa suffering ep 89 comp mentioned it and i just had to go off about it like. ok. sensui tells yusuke something along the lines of "you heard itsuki" when itsuki's inside the uraotoko, implying that not only can sensui hear those inside the uraotoko, but that he expects yusuke to be able to as well. which means that yusuke Almost Certainly Heard And Kind Of Ignored kuwabara's prolonged mental breakdown and wailing about how much he needs yusuke to live etc. which. guHHH i hate him yusuke you ass but also listen.

the only acknowledgement yusuke gives to this (if any) is when he says something like "sensui you're sooo fucking cooked this plan's going perfectly (my friends are going to get strong and kill you when i die)." he's trash talking to sensui, ignoring the others because, i think, he doesn't want to acknowledge what he's doing to them.

yusuke is explicitly recreating the experience he had with kuwabara's "death" at the hands of toguro, complete with the announcement of intent (and power) to kill, the inability to impede the threat in any way (barring a power-breakthrough), and the target in some way racing towards/volunteering for their death. yusuke learns through doing, and through tough love-style approaches. it's only effective if it hurts. watching kuwabara die like that was devastating to yusuke, but it sure as hell fucking worked. he beat toguro because of that maneuver. so even if he has to (re-)traumatize his friends in the process, this method will make his friends stronger, and he feels confident in that. but he never had to live with the consequences of kuwabara's death, not really. that's something hiei makes clear before they enter the cave as well, that there are no fake-outs ready to make him or anyone else stronger. the only deaths here will be real. the only power gained will come at a high, permanent cost. hiei's warning is an attempt to keep everyone alive, to keep yusuke from being stupid. and then yusuke decides to take that fatality into his own hands, but it's kind of his friends who would pay the price. he's going to make them live through the days, months, years without him, the actual permanency of loss (assuming they survive for that long), something he never experienced with kuwabara (a new facet of that traumatic scenario), AND he's escaping the emotional fallout of this choice through death. he doesn't have to see them mourn, won't get yelled at, won't watch them fail to move on. he's tapping out and choosing to believe they'll be fine.

but i think he feels guilty. just a little. i mean, yusuke couldn't even believe that people cared about him enough to want him alive in episode one. he's staked everything on his friends, which means he still kind of... doesn't value his own life, at least not compared to theirs. but he believes his friends love him and want him around, and we know that because he has to, or else he wouldn't make a plan that depends entirely on that love. he is actively leveraging the care he doesn't think he deserves, trying to hurt them in a way he is intimately familiar with (only worse), for.... what, exactly?

this is kind of my sticking point tbh. i don't think the answer is... super clear, but let's start with what it's not.

yusuke is not doing this because it is the most practical way to save all of humanity; that would be the mafukan, which he stopped. it could be a gamble to save all of his friends? the mafukan strategy would guarantee koenma's death/eternal imprisonment, whereas this strategy gambles all of humanity on the chance that his friends come out of the Easy Break Oven strong enough to avert the end of the world. if the sacrifice of even one friend is completely intolerable, perhaps he'd accept those slim odds and their steep consequences. yusuke tends to take risks like that, especially when he's got fight-induced tunnel vision. he doesn't think things through too much; his schemes are usually dependent on surprising his enemy enough to oneshot them. truthfully, i think this is the closest we'll get to an answer, and it's a more conventional one for this kind of story. but there is another layer i haven't been able to get from my mind.

i think yusuke is gifting each of his friends an honorable warrior's death.

so, in case it needs saying, yusuke, kuwabara, kurama, and hiei all (at least once, if not several times) exhibit a desire to die in combat in a way they deem noble to give their lives purpose (usually by self-sacrifice, but sometimes by another metric of honor, like hiei's duel with shigure and his desire to die in mutual defeat against an evenly matched opponent; or even kurama's decision to fight shigure in his human form, displaying a sort of passive suicidality via placing being true to himself in this (somewhat symbolic/inconsequential) way over survival). they need to make their lives count for something, because they feel guilty for being alive (kurama and hiei feel guilty for their past actions (hiei's is most evident in his distance from yukina, though that's not its primary reason), hiei, kuwabara, and yusuke have all been ostracized and made to feel like burdens on/unwanted by their caregivers and general society; all four of them have felt profound isolation even from their loved ones (yusuke and hiei are rather obvious; kurama can never tell his mother about the majority of his life nor what she truly means to him in the context of it; and kuwabara is separated from his peers for his spiritual awareness and his "stupidity" (plus his parents aren't around? and he is Desperate to define manhood/manliness through a broader pop cultural one which includes the warrior sacrifice thing bc he has no male role models BUT that's for another post) (i will admit kuwa's the most tenuous one here irt isolation)). they want to die for a cause so badly it's actually physically painful to me. it is passive suicidality, and they define their lives and identities by their relation to, engagement with, and skill at doing violence, etc. they live to die by the sword. anyway. nobody talks about it but i think it's very important to understanding what yusuke's doing here.

because i think he knows that about himself and his friends. they're kindred spirits. at the very least he knows this about kuwabara, who literally made a speech about this before diving into toguro's fingers In The Event That He Is Recreating Explicitly. he is dying nobly like they all want to on the chance that they'll get to break out and fight sensui rather than dying without even getting to take a swing. it's about his pride and theirs. but i don't think yusuke necessarily believes they'll win. he knows better than anyone how strong sensui is, and how wide the gap is between sensui and team urameshi. his stated position that humanity is doomed and that he doesn't care about its fate is, i think, not completely genuine, but if we take it at face value, he's not killing himself so that his friends can survive the end of the world. something's going to come around and kill them eventually. he's doing it so they can survive long enough to fight sensui. he needs them (specifically kuwabara) to be strong enough to free themselves to begin round two. but he's given up on their side winning, on humanity surviving, on his own victory---why should he think his friends are capable of winning? this could be another case of yusuke's fight-blinders. it could be another gamble, more blind faith put in his friends. but honestly it reads more to me that yusuke's giving them a chance to die together on the battlefield. them winning would be great, but it's not his goal. it's a pipe dream.

he knows he's going to be killed. they're probably going to be killed, too. but to make it so they last a little longer against sensui, to make the odds a little more even, so they are killed not like livestock, but like worthy fighters, he'd die a little faster. it's the best kind of death someone like them can have; and he'll deprive himself of it just to make their ends a little sweeter. even if the road to that is far more bitter.

but it's not like yusuke's friends know what he's thinking or agree to it, and he can't exactly make his case for it in the moment. he's making that choice for them. whatever his intentions, whatever odds he thinks they have of beating sensui, he's kind of sealing all of their fates. so how the hell is he supposed to acknowledge kuwabara screaming at him not to die, trying desperately to express what yusuke means to him in what could be their final moments together? this plan is going to hurt his friends terribly. it is already doing so, and he can hear it. his choices to stop koenma from using the mafukan and to die for his friends' strength are both selfish in some way, no matter how you read the scene. if yusuke comforts kuwabara, he might not get strong enough. if he twists the knife, well... how could he forgive himself? and either way by responding he would have to face them all and say yes, i'm doing this regardless of your feelings (with the intention of hurting you). so i think he does what he often does. he avoids it. he lets that emotion glance off him and his bravado and his one-liners so he doesn't have to deal with the fact that he's hurting people, that he's scared and guilty and unsure of himself. that he's about to die again, about to put kuwabara through the grief he saw at his wake again, only worse; about to put his quieter friends through something similar.

yusuke is confronted with the responsibility one has to the people who care for them, and he runs from it in an attempt to give them some small peace. just like when he died before and thought hey, at least my mom and keiko won't be burdened by me anymore. because the only thing he can really do for them is die.

[rubenesque-as-fuck]

I just want it to be tomorrow after work so I can get unfathomably high on edibles and turn off my brain for at least a few days

[dreamlogic]

aye can i get a fuckin uuuhhhh

break. on my burger

[b0nelessdoodles]

You alive man?

Just wanted to check as it's been bout a month or so since your last post

no i'm dead but don't worry about it. tis the season and all that shit ya know?

(all that shit includes, but is not limited to, seasonal depression, art block, retail and food service worker hell, the election, 5 stress induced nightmares in the space of a week, managing a new relationship [first time], living in a capitalist nightmare, etc.)

[more rambles in the tags, as i am often to do]

[necrotic-nephilim]

ok so sending my question here bc this is more marvel comics than mcu related so im like. sliding you a note in class about an somewhat related but mostly tangential topic here 😂

so i've been wanting to get into bucky comics (and winter soldier comics) recently but as a dc fan now whose only marvel comics background is reading matt fractions hawkeye (the best ever, currently rereading it to feel something again actually) and part of wilsons ms marvel run back when i was in high school i have no idea where to start. you said that you have read comics for bucky; do you have any recommendations?

hello i love being slid notes this is so sweet <3 bc luckily Bucky is one of a small handful of characters i can *actually* give good recs for on the Marvel side of the fence! so i'm MORE than happy to give recs bc i actually already have a list i'm happy to share. also, BIG agree on Fraction's Hawkeye run, oh my god. that comic means *so* much to me and though i haven't really read Hawkeye comics outside of it, i love it a lot. 10/10 taste <3

so when it comes to Bucky, he has a *lot* of Golden and Silver Age comics as Captain America's teen sidekick and all. skip them. they're not worth it and they're not the version of the character you want to read. honestly, you should just start with his return as Winter Soldier, and go from there so

Captain America (2005) - this is Ed Brubaker's run, it's fantastic and it's the run that brings back Bucky as the Winter Soldier. i will warn you if you're used to DC comics, Marvel does this really confusing thing called legacy numbering. (DC sometimes does it but not as much) so you're gonna notice it'll jump from issue #50 to #600. you did not somehow miss hundreds of comics, it's just numbered that way bc it's the 600th Captain America comic overall. this run is super good though.

Captain America & Bucky by Ed Brubaker - once again numbering is weird just don't mind it. but this will give you a primer on Bucky's backstory as Cap's sidekick without you having to read all the Silver Age stuff and it's a great comic.

Captain America: Forever Allies (2010) - if you want to read where Bucky was Captain America for a bit, this comic is good for that. it also briefly touches on Secret Allies, a team he was on as a teen during the war. i'm not the biggest Cap!Bucky fun, but this is decent.

Winter Soldier (2012) - by *far* the best Winter Soldier solo run. Ed Brubaker my beloved. this is just amazing. this was where i started with Bucky and tbh if you vaguely understand his comics backstory and don't want to read all the Captain America stuff, i think you can start here. you get to see his relationship with Natasha, his spy work it's just. everything <3

Winter Soldier: The Bitter March - if you want to see a story that takes place during Bucky's time brainwashed under Hydra, that's what this one is and it's pretty solid

Thunderbolts (2016) - this comic is most known for the relationship between Bucky and a young girl who's a cosmic cube named Kobik and it's just so delightful. the whole team is really fun and explores moral greyness in superhero work, but mostly i love this one for Kobik.

Winter Soldier (2018) - i really enjoy this mini-series, it has Bucky trying to save a young boy who's forced to be a weapon and there's just a lot of good stuff. always have a soft spot for Bucky trying to do right by kids.

Falcon & Winter Soldier (2020) - a good team up mini-series. also Bucky has a cat so yk, that's delightful. <3

there are other Winter Soldier comics and comics he's in but Marvel's comic world is big and fucking confusing (to me as a DC fan, anyway) so these will be the easiest to start with. my top recs are probably Captain America & Bucky and Winter Soldier (2012), though i'm incredibly biased to any comic written by Brubaker for Bucky. i love Bucky so dearly. he is everything to me. i hope you enjoy!

[thousand-winters]

It has always bothered me, but after watching Arcane I keep thinking more and more about how much the framing of the narrative in Fire Emblem Fates bothers me.

Because the thing is we have very similar situations: Hoshido and Piltover as the privileged parts of these societies, with Nohr and Zaun struggling to get by. But where this unbalance is very clear in Arcane, it's framed SO differently in Fates.

Nohr is in the wrong for doing whatever they can to survive, despite the fact (iirc) they did ask Hoshido for help because they get no damn sunlight in Nohr because of the light and dark dragons or whatever and there's only so much cattle and crops you can get like that. People are dying everyday over there and Hoshido doesn't give a damn, but Nohr is in the wrong for being desperate enough to try and get territory on their side of the continent because they need to feed themselves.

It's insane. The retainers of the royal siblings in Hoshido are all children of nobles. The retainers of the royal siblings in Nohr are all like "oh, this was an assassin trying to kill me to get money to survive so I ended up taking her in", "this boy was trying to rob us to be able to eat and he was going to get executed so I took him under my wing", "I saved her from a gladiator wing and took her under my care", like ???. The difference in conditions is just insane.

Even the royal siblings aren't escaping this because despite being the ones who get the best standing, they had to murder a whole lot of their half siblings because of the sheer amount of women who became Garon's concubines in order to try and ensure themselves and their children a better life. And then they had to kill each other in order to have a chance. THEY WERE CHILDREN. THEY HAD TO KILL THEIR HALF SIBLINGS AS CHILDREN.

Meanwhile in Hoshido the biggest problems the siblings had was that they were insecure or shy or whatever.

And you're expected to go "you're right, Nohr is evil, Hoshido is good". Like... I don't even know, man. What were the writers on, it's insane. And the amount of stuff about Nohr that got censored in localization because it was too heavy due to how dark it got is also like... jesus fucking christ, these people were living in misery and you want to blame them for trying to get themselves a better life since Hoshido won't help? Be for real...

Fates, you would be so good if you were good 😞

[impala-dreamer]

is this too romantic? am I going too far? is there any other way to write romance than all in, all encompassing, perfectly magical? no. this is fine.

[sherlock-is-ace]

.

[reggieblk]

i finished reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt yesterday and i have a lot of thoughts and feelings about every single thing about it, but what I would like to address here, and it speaks for itself;

"8R, two keys and a combination padlock, 7522, the last four digits of Boris's home phone in Vegas."

- The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt, IV, chapter 9, X, page 532

and and and.....8 yrs later, the passcode is still the same.....it's the way Theo, 8 yrs earlier, didn't hesitate a second....it's the way Boris's home number guards Theo's dearest possession, the remnant of his mother, his very heart....it's the way it isn't Pippa's bday, or anything like that.....it's the way i sobbed when reading this line

(not to mention....not to mention....how "Popper" is "Popchyk" for as long as Theo gets back to NY and is with Hobie, never once Popper always Popchyk until.....until Boris comes back, and calls him Popchyk, and then, immediately, for the first time since Vegas, Popchyk is Popper in Theo's mind....because....because the rightful person who calls him Popchyk is back, and Theo no longer has to fill in for him, and, and, and--)

[emmodii-mode]

Here we observe Gabriel's descent into madness.