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My boy

#maybe i love him #oikawa tooru #haikyuu!!

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A fever.

#haikyuu!! #it's really just a hinata harem isn't it

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:3

#crashes into the hq fandom 10 years late #who would have guessed that my own volleyball kids would be the reason i fell into this abyss #kagehina #kageyama tobio #hinata shouyou #haikyuu!!

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Mone's 4CC FS, beautiful spin positions and transitions

#mone chiba #fs

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Okay I take it back the actual funniest thing about how many people performatively hate on scum villain because they think it’s bad and trashy and irredeemable and Problematic is that they are unwittingly re-enacting an almost perfect impression of the main character, a young terminally online guy who hate read a trashy porn novel and got in so many internet fights about how bad and irredeemable and garbage it was that he died choking on his rage and was transported to suffer the role of expendable backstory villain in the world of this trashy porn novel he hated so much.

And that’s fucking hilarious.

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I think it's an unrecognized practice to allow yourself to outgrow and shed versions of yourself that were more socially successful than who you want or need to be now. Not every new chapter is bigger and bolder and hotter, I think that's a very modern social media "glow up" mindset and doesn't actually have any room for what real transformation looks like. Sometimes we change exactly as we need to and it's not what anyone else was hoping for and that's part of it being important and true.

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What happens to Arikoto is so tragic I had to stop watching Ooku for a bit. It was just too hard to watch.

Spoilers below; TW rape

Eventually I did finish watching Ooku and have too many thoughts buzzing in my head.

First of all, Arikoto is voiced to perfection by Mamoru Miyano in the Japanese version. Just the softest and most gentle intonations reflecting Arikoto’s personality so well. (The voice was so familiar and when I looked him up, I realized he’d also done Chrollo in Hunter x Hunter - another favorite character!)

Throughout the series, other men in the Ooku constantly remark on Arikoto’s shining presence and his dignified mien. There is a divine light about him in the ugly world of the ooku, court politics, and the threat of the plague. Even though he is forced to renounce his vows as a monk, he remains a caregiver at heart. We see this when he tends carefully and alone to Kasuga in her last days (despite everything she put him through). He is also the only one who takes care of the men dying of the red face pox inside the Ooku. He takes care of those who have been abandoned. But I also think this caregiving is a form of penance for the guilt he carries (the monk, sexworkers and others who were killed because of him).

It is his kindness that first draws him to Chie (pretending to be Iemitsu) despite her cruelty (more on that in another post). Arikoto’s love for Chie was such a tragic romance. He is forced into the Ooku after confinement and rape. He is forced to renounce his vows by Kasuga so that he can father Chie’s children. He ends up falling in love with Chie and wants to be with her - in more ways than one. And after all that violence, it turns out that he is …infertile. The universe is an unfair one and this was just a devastating blow. Arikoto is a changed man by the end of the show but his kindness and regard for life and people remains true. He can no longer wear the clothing of a monk but it was his calling to tend to those who needed him and he stays true to that calling to the end.

Although he is forced into the Ooku, in the end, he is chained to the Ooku not out of duress but due to the bonds of love. He stays in the Ooku to be with Chie, and later to fulfill her dying wish to be a father figure to her daughter. In trying to give the men in the Ooku purpose and some measure of joy, he actually ends up formalizing the system that we see as harmful in the first episode of the show.

Personally I found it hard to tell what Arikoto is feeling by the end of the show. His grief over Chie’s death (at a very young age) may be tempered by the fact that she is now free of the roles she was forced into. In the end they can’t keep their promise to die together. Does he care for Chie’s daughter out of filial love, or to fulfill Chie’s wish, or out of his inherent desire to be there for those who need him? Does he find meaning in becoming the chief administrator for the Ooku because he can now create structure and purpose for the other men? Is he at peace with his decision to stay in the Ooku? Is he numbed by everything he has faced in his life? In the end his gentle smile and calm demeanor reveal nothing of his true emotions.

Buckle in if you want to watch this show. The story is well told and heart rending in every episode.

#ooku: the inner chambers #watched for yay feminism and maybe reverse harem #ended up waist deep in redefining power and bodily autonomy #also tears

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who are you when you are not watching tv or movies? when you aren't playing video games or reading a book or fanfiction or listening to music or whatever other kind of media that you engage with? who are you when your mind isn't in another world or story, when you are forced to sit with yourself and the only experience you have is your own sensorial life? can you define yourself outside of what you consume? who is that person? do you like them? can you bear it? can you bear it?

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KOSE

One summer day

#yuzuru hanyu

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Cillian Murphy | Red Lights 2012 | Rodrigo Cortés

#cillian murphy #a certain feeling #red lights #film

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Marguerite Duras, from The Easy Life

Text ID: I was no one, I had neither name nor face. Moving through August, I was: nothing.

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All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001), dir. Shunji Iwai

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墮落天使 | FALLEN ANGELS 1995, dir. Wong Kar-Wai

#fallen angels #wong kar wai #takeshi kaneshiro

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TANTAI JIN + Guide to Troubled Birds (insp)

#till the end of the moon #luo yunxi #do you need a dog i can bark.jpg

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Björn Andrésen in DEATH IN VENICE (1971) dir. Luchino Visconti

Despite’s its lukewarm reception at the time of release, Death in Venice turned 15 year-old Swedish actor Björn Andrésen into an international icon of forbidden lust. Cast by Italian director Luchino Visconti as the film’s embodiment of beauty and temptation, the image took Andrésen hostage from then on, creating a cult following that consumed him before spitting him back out. (via)

#death in venice #björn andrésen

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The Untamed - Episode 42    |    An Oresteia  -  tr. Anne Carson

#it's 2023 and i just saw new bts scenes of cql on dy so... #round 2 of the abyss my good fellas #cql #the untamed