#wow this post rambles

[himebushou]

Let's talk about the timeline of Episode 8.

At the end of the episode, Ogino hands Kyuu an envelope. The photo within shocks Kyuu:

However, at the time this photo was taken, Rei hadn't even set eyes on his father yet. While Rei was just entering the Suwa residence and reflecting on the three years...

Kazuki was in the supermarket, telling Miri about Rei's 'diabolical dad':

This indicates that Shigeki was keeping tabs on the family even prior to Rei answering his summons: Shigeki was having someone keep watch, take photos and report back. It's possible that he knew a fair deal about Miri and he certainly knew about Kazuki.

However, during the meeting with Rei, Shigeki appears (pretends?) to be only vaguely tuned into his son's living arrangements. "Kurusu Kazuki, was it?" he says, before adding a backhanded compliment:

Their meeting continues. Shigeki brags about the Suwa name before saying:

From Shigeki's perspective, I think he meant this sincerely — and, if you think about it, a mob boss allowing his son to abscond for three years, live with two total strangers and fail in his work is... pretty lenient. In Shigeki's eyes, giving Rei 'space' was an act of mercy and kindness — but, ultimately, an investment that would pay off.

Then, Shigeki regrets his 'boon'; he can see from Rei's face that Rei does not want to return to the residence and the old man receives the first clue that his control is slipping. At that point, he expresses anger at the connections Rei has formed — and here, I think there's a distinct possibility that Miri is part of the equation.

In that instance, Rei is undone by the same flaw he usually ascribes to Kazuki. Rei fails to act; he is unable to keep his cool. In a panic, he blurts out:

Rei is afraid because he understands the implications. If Rei has formed useless ties, if he is at risk of showing weakness, then that which prompts Rei's weakness — Kazuki — must be eliminated. Rei believes, here, that Kazuki may go the same way as the dog from Episode 3.

What's interesting, though, is that Rei believes that he and Kazuki have been secretive enough about Miri for her to not even register on Shigeki's radar. In Shigeki's eyes, the fact that Rei didn't mention Miri was probably a huge relief — it suggests that Rei doesn't actually care for the child and she's a side problem that comes with Kurusu.

So I guess my main questions are: just how long were the family under surveillance? And what exactly did Shigeki know about Miri?

Tangent: There was some concern following Episode 11 and the fact that, when Rei pleaded with Shigeki, he only mentioned Miri; however, from Rei's experience, the last time he mentioned Kazuki, Shigeki's murderous intent got more murderous and the surveillance started. It's understandable that Rei tried to use his bargaining powers — the same skills that had somehow got him out of the residence in the first place — to try and save Miri's life. "I'll do anything; I'll kill anyone," said Rei. By that point, unfortunately, he'd already lost too much negotiating power for Shigeki to consider Rei's compromise a viable option and, in any case, Shigeki had already seen that giving Rei leeway led to unnecessary complications.

[flame-shadow]

hey did you know??? that if you stop stretching and maintaining mobility in your body then it goes away?? things get tight and you can't move the way that you used to??? and when you decide to try getting a stretch routine going that the first week fucking sucks because you keep going 'damn i used to be able to do this no problem' and then you have to switch gears and be kind to yourself and just focus on getting better from here instead of berating yourself for dropping the good habits in the first place??? and your body never stops aging so you gotta keep taking care of it and sometimes you gotta take care of it extra in certain areas because of things that happened when you were younger and it's boring and sometimes hurts but it's so necessary???

i am yelling this at myself right now i am going through An Experience (trying to get into a routine of body maintenance again for my physical and mental health)

[liauditore]

do you guys ever think about that time she said her backstory was that she was only partially zombiefied and was fully conscious mentally while she ate and killed her family. and that she was a princess. i do alot.

[chellychuu]

Mew Ichigo 🎀

[glitterghost]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like there is a particular kind of sadness (or loneliness, if you will) that ace/aro folk feel.

[myokk]

🥺

[legobenkenobi]

the way Obi-Wan writes about Cody in his journal is so tender for a lot of reasons but one i’m thinking about a lot is how it’s probably one of the very, VERY few remaining pieces that preserves who Commander Cody ACTUALLY was, outside of the chip and being forced into Order 66.

Obi-Wan is memorializing Cody along with all the people who were important to him for Luke and anyone who comes after to see because he knows no one else will and also that no one else spent the war with Cody like he did and got to know him in that strange, intimate way of being on the front lines together.

he’s keeping Cody alive in those pages despite everything, despite not knowing the truth about the chips. ohhh im so ill

[aingeal98]

I love writing about female characters I love making them silly and flawed and hypercompetent and moral at the same time and watching fandom's brains explode because they're not one dimensionally chill and supportive or mustache twirling evil and are allowed be jerks and overreact and make mistakes and still be good people worth rooting for or not even good just Interesting. This is very fun to do in male centered fandoms because sometimes they get so confused and scared like no she's supposed to be Nice to my fave guys why isn't she validating them and being supportive? Why are you letting her exist like that? She's being mean to my blorbo she needs to either be written as evil or erased from the narrative.

And every time I see that I get more determined to either make her meaner and have everyone support her or erase your blorbo from the narrative. She doesn't think about him at all actually he's irrelevant to the story now. Yeah sorry to break it to you she made him cry and everyone told her good job so he left the country. Also she's got a girlfriend and they're going to fuck in his house which is theirs now that he no longer exists.

[omnxnom]

shipping can be awesome at times. you could show me a picture of an eldritch horror next to some guy and tell me that creature is his wife. like fuck yeah! that’s rad!

[wasabi-gumdrop]

thinking about modern au Kabru

ivy league college student, probably studying law and political science on a full scholarship. first time living away from Milsiril so he has to promise her, yes mom i’ll call you at least four times a week, no mom i don’t need your amex black card, yes mom the normal credit card is fine i need to learn how to budget like a Normal Person (it has a limit of $20k — that’s not normal Kabru).

Milsiril insists for a long time that she’ll just get him a house off campus so he can have his own space (aka a place she can drop by anytime and possibly live a few months out of the year just to be close to him) but Kabru puts his foot down and tells her the best way he’s gonna make friends is by living with other students (bye mom).

his floor in the coed dorms is the party floor and he always makes sure to invite everybody (his nightmare is accidentally leaving anyone out and having them think that he doesn’t like them). somehow it’s always a good time, everyone leaves with more friends than they came with, it never gets totally out of control, and plenty of girls who are interested in him (and a lot of guys too tbh) bring tons of baked treats so there’s always free food. Kabru is the RA’s favourite person to have in the building (even though Kabru himself is messy but most of the people he’s friends with are nice and clean up after themselves).

he has a porsche (Milsiril gift for his 16th bday) but he’s adamant about not driving it unless he absolutely has to (because he doesn’t wanna look like a douche). BUT he never says no when his friends ask for rides (so he ends up driving all the time anyway). he actually contemplates selling the porsche and going for a more practical car but Mickbell is like ‘dude you are not taking this away from me.’ Kabru sighs and decides to keep it because his friends (Mickbell) like being chauffeured around in a fancy convertible (Rin, Holm, and Dia don’t care, they’re just glad they don’t have to walk to the grocery store).

he’s probably on a casual texting basis with most of his professors and you know he’s going to all their office hours, grabbing beer with them just to keep chatting about life outside of school. and that’s how he winds up in some super secret faculty group chat where he’s now privy to all the college administration gossip.

Kabru is elected for student council during his freshman year and he’s probably the favourite to be sc president one day.

he doesn’t really date (gets too in his head about how he doesn’t wanna ruin any friendships) but he does hang out one on one with a lot of girls and treats them all really well. he probably goes so far out of his way to be platonic that he flies a little too close to the ‘Just Like One of the Girlies’ sun, he kinda forgets that most people interpret it as flirting coming from him. which leads to a few awkward conversations. people feeling led on, a few angry jealous boyfriends, scathing dms about him being a girl stealing homewrecker.

it’s such a nightmare for him and he needs it to end right now. so he begs Rin to ‘date’ him for a week or two and then publicly dump him just so the entire student body gets the message that he is Just A Friend.

Rin stares at him for a few seconds. then she laughs. she laughs and laughs. she laughs for a crazy long time. and then eventually she goes, ‘wow you’re an asshole, Kabru. no i won’t be your fake girlfriend. you’re gonna suffer and i’m going to enjoy it.’

and that’s when Kabru has a moment of enlightenment. ok yeah. asking for that is probably really selfish and mean. maybe he needs to think about girls’ feelings more and that’s maybe more important than his deep seated need to be liked, and when has Rin ever been wrong about anything.

he apologizes. and so begins one of the more serious talks he’s ever had with Rin about being okay with not being liked.

he thinks he can really turn over a new leaf. the whole ‘not worrying about what other people think’ thing goes pretty well — up until Kabru meets the aloof professor for his Monsters and Myths class who keeps forgetting and mispronouncing his name.

Kabru has never needed someone to like him So Bad, he needs Prof. Touden to like him as a matter of life and death, and he’s willing to look stupid for it (fails a midterm on purpose to justify begging for one on one tutoring)

[missholloween]

the fact that even in the finale toh kept adding non binary characters... This show has been a great step for genderqueer representation and I'm so excited to see what will come next

[ghastlyaffairs]

for something as trivial and simple those feelings sure are hard to get rid of

also made a gif a version for fun + alt version with no tears under the cut

the gif is in very low resolution...this is a feature (i could make it bigger but that would require saving each frame individually and than glueing it all together. also i feel like low resolution suits it better. aesthetically and fits the mood)

[beeqisch]

very self indulgent timkon doodles

[natsmagi]

its like these two cards combined n they swapped signature items oh my gosh................ Chuunibyou galore

[sophsicle]

[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

♡ handwriting analysis: alex turner and miles kane ♡

as promised, here is the analysis my wonderful friend (who used to work as a professional handwriting analyst) did of miles and alex's handwriting! a couple of important points to read before you dive in:

my friend analysed these blind - to avoid bias, she always makes a point of never knowing whose handwriting it is she's looking at, so she had no idea that these samples were from alex and miles while analysing them (not that it'd have made much difference if she had, she can't even name one am song lol)

she stressed that her analysis should NOT be taken as fact - it's just one person's interpretation of the material, and handwriting analysis is ultimately always subjective

the two analyses below are based on notes i took while she was talking and is pretty much verbatim - none of the wording is my own and i have changed as little as possible in typing it up

she noted that it was harder to provide a full and accurate analysis just working with photos of handwriting, as you can't see things like pressure on the page etc. she also stressed that context is significant when it comes to interpreting someone's writing, and it's important to bear in mind that how someone writes in one context, e.g. signing autographs or writing something for the general public could show quite different characteristics to how someone writes in another context, e.g. personal letters to someone they're close to. in an ideal world she'd have access to samples from a different range of contexts to provide the most detailed and accurate analysis. in other words, this analysis is quite rough

alex's handwriting:

(samples taken from roughly 2011 - 2018)

block capitals suggest this is someone who don't want to show themselves, makes it hard for people to reach them

someone interested in thoughts and ideas, would engage with these in a way that's intelligent and very original

a lot of emotional and social inconsistency, suggests someone pulled in different directions. they might show very different sides of themselves with different people and probably have complex and/or conflicted feelings about identity

very creative, someone who'd make interesting and unusual connections about the world around them

highly intuitive but also lacking harmony from an emotional perspective. lots of internal emotional conflict and changeability

someone who fluctuates a lot socially as well as emotionally - might go from being quite sociable to withdrawing completely. ultimately struggles to reach out socially and holds back a lot, but there might be certain situations or people they feel particularly at ease with where this is different

really hard to read, don't give much of themselves away

thoughtful and enquiring, interested in ideas

someone who feels things very strongly

signature:

implies someone hiding themselves or presenting as someone they're not. they want to look confident and exciting, but they're actually much less confident that they'd like to appear. lets their creative and artistic tendencies hide them and take centre stage.

miles's handwriting:

(samples taken from roughly 2022 - 2023)

a little sharp, could suggest humorous wit and/or being critical (either of self or of others)

ambitious and incisive, intelligent and enquiring mind

fearful or wary about opening up and reaching out to people, emotional inconsistency. potentially quite restrained - looks like someone used to hiding a lot of hiding of emotions

has an enquiring mind but isn't particularly interested in abstract thought, more grounded in reality and social/emotional things

someone with strong feelings, they get held in and confused. could be warm and open on a surface level, but looks like they'd be reserved about their innermost feelings

could be sharp tongued to avoid dealing with their own feelings

lower zone suggests someone who might not be completely comfortable in their own body and/or sexuality, or have a complex relationship with these things

someone with a tendency towards strong feelings and devotion/worship (could be religious, or could just be to do with the way they relate to people or ideas)

signature:

someone who wants to look more confident they feel. sense of changeability and flashes of insecurity, but ultimately suggests strength of character, not someone who's a pushover. they know what they want and what matters to them.

interesting extra notes:

the wonderful @ballad-of-what-could-have-been managed to find this sample of alex's handwriting not in capitals from when he was much younger (from what i can see, it looks like it was early fwn era):

so i showed this to my friend too (after her analysis of alex's usual writing) and noted that it was probably done when he was a lot younger. she said that all her points from the original analysis still stood, and that despite the fact this writing isn't capitalised it was actually still very hard to read and definitely someone not comfortable with showing themselves. she also said that it was more emotionally conflicted and uncertain than the later sample of their handwriting. the phrase "emotionally all over the place" was used, and she noted a greater sense of inconsistency with identity. overall though she said the earlier sample confirms that this is someone with a high level of intuition and originality, and she said they're someone she'd be fascinated to have a conversation with!

thank you for reading! if you have any questions, please feel free to comment/drop me an ask and i can always pick my friend's brain again the next time i see her!