#people say things that aren't true all the time for various reasons. and those reasons...... are interesting!! aren't they?

[croakings]

SO. sorry this is going to be deranged i'm not proofreading this

so i've been writing a lot recently, and this particular project involves a language and culture i'm making up. and it's got me thinking about language, and communication, and lying.

and this is probably a very autistic realization, but it's hit me that usually when people lie, what they are trying to convey— and like, we're ignoring the ethics of it, this post is devoid of judgement one way or another, i'm just examining this thought— is a request for an emotional response from someone that the truth is less or unlikely to get across as effectively or as easily.

like, normal example, totally excusable: "my wife is in the hospital," when it's your girlfriend in the hospital. factually untrue! but what one wants people to hear is "someone i love and want to spend the rest of my life with is in dire straits and therefore so am i, please excuse anything in my behavior that may be caused by this," essentially. or like you can swap wife/girlfriend with sibling/best friend or aunt/neighbor or whatever. what you're trying to get across is the magnitude of the relationship rather than communicating the nature of the relationship itself.

we have words for that! like, yes, it's lying to use the wrong words, technically, to "trick" someone into understanding how close whatever given person is to you, and how much their condition is affecting you, but! also, i do have to say, in that particular instance i do have to say that, the primary goal of language being communication...... it's interesting! the facts are untrue. but the gravity of the circumstance was conveyed clearly with intention, which is to say, the emotional impact was increased by sacrificing literal clarity. this is basically what hyperbole does!!!!

most lying does that, doesn't it? most lies that i can think of are in some way in service to emotion above like, anything else. someone wanting to spare themselves someone else's emotion ("i'm fine", "i didn't do that", "i don't want this, you take it") and this is....... in a way, strictly speaking, effective communication. it's. hm.

like, for the record, i'm not pro-lying, and also, to reiterate, it's also ineffective communication, because it's factually untrue, which means again that however much an aim was achieved or a meaning conveyed you do it at the expense of one whole half of the venture. but it's interesting, isn't it? how much lying is usually angling for a specific impact, or to gain some form of ease and/or expediency.

i feel like i'm probably getting this across poorly which is also like, really funny, but what prompted this is like......... language is an imperfect tool! we know this. speaking (or whatever) is always an act of translation, and in translation something is always lost. like, even if that thing is only time. one is never able to express anything exactly as quickly as the original; thoughts take time to parcel up and deliver, or come out poorly if not mangled if at all recognizably. when going from one literal language to another, you have to decide whether you want to be more accurate literally, in impact, or in delivery, so respectively and with the simplest example you have to decide if when you translate an idiom you do so verbatim, or with an equivalent, and then whether or not you explain your choice and/or its value. because like, in an unattainable "perfect" translation, you could communicate both the meaning and the trappings of its delivery seamlessly and simply in about the same space as it was originally given more or less immediately. instead, because we can't do that, you can sacrifice to some degree either the original words, their original impact, or the original delivery, by again respectively changing the words altogether, losing the impact (generally also altogether), or losing the directness/straight forward nature of the communication by inserting an info blurb. and of course any kind of translation needs some extra degree of time, even just in its delivery. you lose things! you have to decide which things are most valuable to you to allow you to be "truest". like, which part of any given sentence is most important ? it varies, right? and sometimes one can affect another, like, what if brevity is important to the impact? or conversely, what if something specific has to be communicated in a long-winded and round about way to have the same impact, but it's tricky to manage doing so without losing the clarity? what do you sacrifice? the meaning, the impact, or the delivery? does that make sense? and you're probably always going to lose time.

so, lying!!!!! it's sacrificing meaning for the other two, is what i was trying to say earlier. it's an imperfect translation!!!!! in one sense!!! but it is a translation!!!!! isn't that interesting?? actually no, sorry, most ethically speaking it's 2 sacrifices; meaning and delivery. like, as i kept saying, the facts are untrue (meaning), and at some point for the sake of clarity it'll be necessary to be like "oh no, sorry, actually it was [the factual truth], i just said [x] because [some form of expected expediency/ease], [explanation of that choice]." (<- delivery.) but y’know with lying with ill intentions you do get to skip that part, and in that case the lack of correcting by revisiting/extending the delivery is part of the communication, whereby you are implicitly saying something like "fuck you, also". or possibly "fuck me," idk, lying can contain multitudes. which!!!!!!!! isn't that interesting??? talking!!!!!!!!!!!! communication!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! how and why and in what ways we say things........... the choices we make and the reasons we make those choices....... the sacrifices that are and are not acceptable to make, and in which contexts, in order to come across as you intend to...........

idk i'm just turning this around like a shiny rock in my hands. like, also, i do know that lying is done with the intent to deceive, and also that lying (derogatory) is done maliciously, with either the intent to harm or at least a lack of intent of care, but. hm. isn't it interesting, what you can learn when you look at how people lie, and how those things can change based on why you think they were lying? they still communicated effectively!!!!!!! they did it on purpose!!!!!!!!!!!!! they made those choices for a reason. that still..... tells something!!!!

even imperfect communication can, in its flaws, tell us something!!!!!!!! does someone sacrifice time, meaning, impact, delivery? why? in what contexts? with intent? for what purpose? isn't it interesting????????????????

#* #chatter #specifically what i've been working on is ftmob is why this happened #and something ehir does a lot (both as someone whose first language no one else speaks and as someone who wants to say as little as possible #at any given time) is he just. arbitrarily uses words he understands to be taken as the vague equivalnces of what he means instead of #entirely accurately conveying what he wants to say. which. not........ that is not lying! #it's sacrificing clarity and muddying impact for the sake of time and delivery‚ which is definitely not lying. but it does mean that a not #insignificant portion of what he says isn't like............... true. lmao. and he does know that!! #which. just to say. it got me thinking about lying isn't like. JUST saying things that aren't true. bc we say untrue things all the time‚ #for impact‚ usually‚ but also usually in those cases again you still don't lose Clarity (generally) #but lack of clarity is also not lying. like. strictly. lying is for IMPACT. usually. or sometimes Lack of impact #people say things that aren't true all the time for various reasons. and those reasons...... are interesting!! aren't they? #and isn't lying interesting???? ftmob isn't the kind of fantasy that has fairies but IF IT WERE #what is the ESSENTIAL component that a makes a fairy-lie untellable? #it is NOT the intent to deceive. universally it's accepted that fairies Can very much trick you. on purpose! #they're free to mess with impact. they can even very deliberately fuck with clarity‚ tbh‚ except in the very strictest of senses #ALL they have to say is something that (they think) is FACTUALLY true. and like. why??? #ik another fact of fairies is they don't have a soul (whatever that means if anything) and often this is depicted also as having the #consequence that they lack imagination or the ability to (independently) create‚ so..... what does that mean for COMMUNICATION? #language is complicated!!!!!!! doing the kinds of mental contortions that let you convey something untrue while only technically speaking #factually is NOT simple. that's like. an art‚ in a way! using what's there to makes someone see what isn't!!! why can they do that?? #they're allowed an imperfect translation. again‚ artfully and intentionally imperfect‚ even!! #they've gotta have fucked up brains in there that's all i'm sayin. that they can have imagination enough for the Product but not its Parts. #that's interesting!!!!!!!!!!! i don't think i've ever seen anyone quite make a point of/with that. #that's a tangeant for another day tbh #ig i'll also slap this w #ftmob #anyway #just rambling. i love writing. i love language. i love people. i love how people CHOOSE things............ #i love making those choices........ communication is so interesting. that's all send tweet.

[neechees]

I'm putting out a scam warning for the user @/sheeyancjoje, also previously @/sheeyanc @/sheeyancjosie, possibly other urls, who claims to be a homeless & asthmatic trans person living in a tent. I have reason & evidence to believe that they are not who they say they are, that their photos/evidence is stolen, and that they are actually the scammer Laura Deramas, who is likely also running the blog @/destrawberry. They exhibit multiple red flags for typical scammer behavior including the following evidence:

First off, who is Laura? Laura is a scammer who was initially called out for scamming & suspicious behavior in 2021, then with some manipulation, convinced multiple people that she was genuine (including me), then it was revealed once more that she was scamming & doing everything she was originally called out for: including pretending to be multiple different people & then lying more when confronted about it, exaggerating how badly her family apparently needed "help", guilt tripping people into giving her money and then harassing anybody who did give her money & demanded they give her more. & then later lied a bunch more including faking an arrest & faking her own death (& later pretending to be her own sister asking for funeral money, & calling any evidence against Laura being alive "hate") despite the fact that shes still very much alive & has posted on her own social media multiple times after her alleged "arrest" on May 30th 2023, & alleged "death" on June 2nd, 2023. We'll come back to Laura & why all that is relevant in a minute.

First off, Sheeyanc doesn't actually ever provide evidence that proves what theyre saying is true. They say they're homeless and living in a tent, and while they keep showing a tent, how do we know that these photos aren't stolen? How do we know that those photos aren't just from some camping trip, or staged? How do we know they didn't just go take photos of an another homeless person's set up? We don't. They make other claims that they don't provide proof for, such as saying their legs were swollen, but didn't provide photos of this. We've also had a similar tactic of someone else claiming to he "homeless" and "living in a tent" & this turned out to be false.

Secondly, Sheeyanc has been harassing people to send them money, either by going into their dms to beg them and sending people photos to guilt trip them, or even literally telling people to open up their askbox or messages when they were closed specifically so they could do this. Laura was ALSO known to do this to various users, & she would send people unsolicited photos of her child or her family & talk about how much she was "suffering" to get people to feel bad for her, which she ALSO did to me. When she pretended to die, she also randomly sent people photos of her allegedly "dead" body to ask for money, which upset many people. If you go into the notes of this post, there's multiple users testifying in the notes that Laura would regularly pester them for money & send photos. Note that people asking strangers for large sums of money as a "loan" is a big red flag for scammers we've seen multiple times, including Laura. Below is Sheeyanc doing the exact same things listed above that Laura did: sending people unsolicited photos, talking about how much she was "suffering" unprompted, and asking for large amounts of money from individual users. Also notice the similarity in language and tone between Laura doing this & Sheeyanc doing this.

Thirdly, Sheeyanc blocked the Filipino user who called out Laura Deramas. This Filipino user was the one to discover she had faked her death & photoshopped someone else's death certificate to pretend it was hers. In addition to this, we also know Laura isn't actually dead also because after she'd been called out for this, the user who called her out very mysteriously started getting anon hate in Tagalog. Below is sheeyanc interacting with them just before blocking

& we know Laura has been known to get sassy & rude with anybody who called her out like here. note the appropriation of aave by itssmelau when confronting people who called her out, just like Laura did in the first callout link with the user lizardamiibo while ALSO pretending to be someone else.

As another major point, Sheeyanc has been seen interacting with another scam blog, @/destrawberry, and verbally encouraging people to give them money. Destrawberry is very likely run by the same person who was running imgonetoofar/imthegonetoofar because theyre claiming to be the same person & using the exact same photos, & before deleting, imgonetoofar was promoting & being promoted by the scammer sassysweetiegirl/zaquaaaablu (who referred to "imgonetoofar as their "friend"), both of whom I called out here. And as I mentioned before, the person behind @/destrawberry is a scammer, either someone who stole imgonetoofar's (another scammer) photos & is pretending theyre recent & to be them, or they're the same person who faked their death and came back again to ask for more money. And who else do we know who faked their own death? Laura lol. So in other words, Sheeyanc/destrawberry/imgonetoofar/sassysweetiegirl are all likely run by Laura pretending to be different people. On the left below is Sheeyanc promoting destrawberry, & then on the right is imgonetoofar promoting sassysweetiegirl in the replies, where you can also see me calling them out.

And lastly, Sheeyanc's banner is of the New Matina Town square in Davao city, the Phillipines. Davao city is where Laura lives. Here's a screenshotted image just in case they change it, and below, here's a comparison between Sheeyanc's banner on the top part of the image, while the image below it is a screenshot from a video of NMTS in Davao, very near where the banner photo would've been taken, but at slightly a different angle/position. You can tell its the same place because of the little circular green grass section in both of the photos, which is surrounded by a metal fence with the same design, both have the exact same road signs in the exact same place, & both are in front of a yellowish-white building with a second floor & balcony & the same design of roof, with palm trees.

& heres that same building but at a different angle (at the front). If you google "New Matina Town Square", you get the yellowish white building featured in the photo, and if you reverse image search sheeyanc's banner photo, you still get results for this Town square. Left is Google results, the right image is the Google reverse image results, highlighted in yellow.

If you want to be more precise, The yellowish building is a restaurant called "The commons at MTS", while the photo would have been taken next to another restaurant called "Taboan". Below is a helpful legend I've created from a Google maps view of the New Matina Square. The highlighted red area is where the banner photo approximately would've been taken, & the yellow area is where most Google search photos are taken at the front of the building. You can see the buildings I've mentioned, & if you don't believe me you can go take a look at Google maps & see for yourself.

And just so there's no confusion that Davao city is indeed where Laura lives, here's my old reblog of a post that Laura convinced someone to make for her where it confirms she lives in Davao city, as reblogged also by Laura and she was fundraising because of allegedly being affected by a flood there.

So to recap: the user Sheeyancjoje is likely the scammer Laura Deramas due to similar patterns of behavior, such as 1. Vague "proof", 2. Harassment of tumblr users in asking them for money, including sending unsolicited photos and guilt tripping or repeatedly asking for more money from people who already donated, 3. Asking for large amounts of money from individual users the same way Laura did, 4. Fighting with and blocking the same user that called out Laura for faking her own death, 5. Interacting with other confirmed scammers, including another one involved in a funeral scam, like how Laura was, 6. Their banner is literally a photo of Laura's city of residence

#justin's scam list #scam #donation scam #long post #alt in id

[max1461]

I really have to say that when I see people engaging in, uh... soft apologism for Israel (I mean like, drawing focus in Israel/Palestine discussions away from Israel and onto how bad Hamas is, or how the Israeli side is being unfairly represented, or so on), it basically always makes me lose a little respect for them. Like.

Obviously Hamas is awful. There's nothing wrong with saying this straight up. I don't believe in the kind of neurotic narrative-crafting bullshit that other leftists seem to. People will call it manufacturing consent for US support of Israel or whatever, but I think this is silly. You can't sway US foreign policy by policing a conversation. I've compared it before to the inefficacy of weaving in traffic. It's like, no matter what your goals are, better (except in various edge cases) to go with the slow and steady strategy of "say what you actually think is true, or don't say anything at all". And what is actually true is that Hamas is an awful organization, and I won't hesitate to say it when I think it's relevant.

But. There is a genocide being committed right now, and it is not by Hamas. The current death toll of the war is ~26,000 Palestinians and ~1,400 Israelis. That's 4,000 more Palestinians than last time I made this exact same fucking post a few weeks ago, and... maybe a few more Israelis? It's hard to tell because there's some variations in the numbers that are being reported. That's not even to mention the people who have been expelled from their homes, the infrastructural damage, the damage to public health, etc., which has been exclusively concentrated in Palestine.

This is not a symmetrical conflict. This is a genocide.

I just... there's no other way to say this, but I've seen some people I otherwise respect on here come into I/P discussion and say things like "well this is all true, but Hamas is still terrible blah blah blah", and I see this in pretty much the same light as someone during WW2 being like, "well, the Nazis are awful, but" or "well, the Rape of Nanking was awful, but".

Like. It's not that there's never a time to talk about e.g. atrocities by the Allies in WW2! Those are actually pretty important to talk about! But when there's an ongoing genocide, when the situation is what it plainly is, and I see people repeatedly redirecting discussions of the genocide in away from the actual perpetrators, it's like...

Frankly it just makes me think they are bad moral reasoners. Like I interact with some of these people, I may not know them personally but I know them well enough to be confident they aren't evil or malicious or bloodthirsty. So instead I think they're blinded by bias, or they're in some discourse bubble with the kind of leftists who say Hamas is great and they're being too myopic to realize that dumbass internet leftists (who have always and will always exist) are not the most important issue right now, or whatever. I think they're engaging in a simple failure of moral reasoning. And, I think, an avoidable failure, the kind of failure that makes me look at someone and go "c'mon, man... really?".

The reason I am not so governed by myopic annoyance at internet leftists is that when I see them be dumbasses I say to myself "c'mon, man... really?", and when I have said this enough times about someone I stop taking what they say very seriously to begin with. And so too I often find myself reading I/P discussions and upon seeing one of these "reasonable" voices enter the scene, say to myself "well, this is probably gonna be a silly contribution". Well, anyway.

[whetstonefires]

“The Justice League and the Avengers are very different teams”

In what respect? Like, how would you say both teams differ in terms of overall function, how they respond to threats, how they’re viewed by their respective publics, etc?

😂 who even are you?

anyway, these two teams have been reformed and rebooted so many times and are the flagships of the two juggernauts of their industry, so their natures have evolved and influenced one another heavily over the decades as you see armies tend to do in prolonged warfare, so there is probably not one single statement you could make about either one that's always true.

it would be crazy to try to explain the difference in diegetic terms, because those aren't goalposts they're hockey pucks. the difference in kind exists at a publishing level.

fundamentally, the Avengers was designed to rest, in narrative terms, on everyone's personal relationships and neuroses, and develop soap opera subplots and office drama around how these intersected with each other and various villains. because in the 60s Marvel was launching the Big New Thing which was heightened naturalism and relatability in comics.

(spiderman and the whole genre of underdog superhero who can't catch a break rather than slyly winking at the audience as the world looks down on his secret identity, not knowing how impressive he really is, dates to this pivot of Marvel's. both Superman and Captain America did the latter in their early days, which is highly dissonant from Cap and Bucky looking at them today, but Cap was retired from print for like 20 years and got heavily rebooted for the new age.)

they had an actual mansion they could all live in, and many of them did, for a solid chunk of time early on. there's a reason people swung so hard for the 'everyone lives in stark tower' scenario foreshadowed at the end of Avengers (2012)--that's how the Avengers are! you bang the action figures together and give them angst and bonding about it!

they fractured repeatedly under the weight of all that drama (because psychology and because stories that don't end are unable to make any narrative sense, and breaking up a team is honestly a half-decent substitute in the Eternal Now of big comics) and at this point the current avengers is much more impersonal and even pays salaries, like basically the commune-underwritten-by-rich-buddy has reincorporated as an NGO.

but it still runs on the same types of narrative tensions mostly--huge epic stuff will be happening, but the Avengers tension comes down to whether everyone really hates T'Challa this month for that thing he did. and what this is doing to group cohesion.

the Justice League on the other hand was not built for character-driven story.

they've done plenty of them, after it became the done thing, and even imitated the Avengers and did the diegetic collapsing and reforming arcs and so on. but it's not fundamental to how a Justice League runs; you could do a super long run where the interpersonal tensions never rose above B-plot status and it wouldn't be tonally dissonant.

it would be weird for many of the Justice League to live together--when a character is shown living in Justice League facilities it is usually to signify that they are isolated and don't have a life and this is Bad. the Martian Manhunter and Maxwell Lord dominated era was deliberately aping the Avengers imo and came out weird as a result, and Lord turning out to be a mind-controlling supervillain was not unrelated to how weird most people felt it was.

the Justice League is like. joining a club rather than a frat. like being on the board of an NGO, rather than taking a full-time job there.

you know? the type of commitment is different. the level of intimacy is different.

cap and iron man's relationship has generally played out primarily in the context of their positions within the Avengers, even though it spills into their own titles, while superman and batman have had entire joint books just for them, and their friendship has not usually been allowed to take up much page time in Justice League issues. because that would be indecorous.

commercially speaking, Justice League is first and foremost an easy-buy showcase for high-profile hero characters and anyone you want to burnish up by displaying adjacent to them.

They've totally gotten messy with it over the years but like. I think the seminal Justice League internal dramas were 1) that time Barry Allen killed the guy who'd killed his first wife and was about to kill his second one and they put him on trial 2) that time Wonder Woman killed a dude who told her under truth compulsion that the only way to stop him from mind-controlling Superman to murder people was to kill him and they put her on trial 3) blah blah Batman paranoia exploited by eeeeevil (barely counts imo) and 4) that extremely oogy time it turned out the Justice League had been using magic to forcible reform criminals and erased Batman's memories of this being a thing when he found out and objected because ethics wtf.

That last one was sufficiently story-breaking they started pretending it hadn't happened as quickly as possible. Which was amazingly quickly considering Identity Crisis was the basis for things like killing off the presiding Robin's remaining parent. They actually soft-reset the whole world fairly soon after by timeskipping over most of a year and being like ahem anyway the past is in the past. And then the universe just kept serially ending for over a decade, so it's been weird.

Justice League has reliably gotten a shiny coat of polish with every reboot tho lol.

(Still not over the way they were like, okay we're wiping Green Lantern back to Hal but now we don't have the token black guy everyone who saw the cartoon expects, let's promote Cyborg people know him because of that other cartoon, ah shit he doesn't work without a partner to do bits with. well we can't put garfield logan in the justice league it's too prestigious, he's from the doom patrol for a reason, yeah i know we've had folks like plastic man shut up this is a Cool Sexy new reboot where Superman and Wonder Woman are fucking, we're not using friggin beast boy. how about Captain Marvel? yeah ok shazam is An Silly Joker now and besties with this 20 year old who may or may not know about his elaborate cognitive situation. i don't actually think they put even this much effort into it but otoh maybe they debated really hard and this was the compromise.

........actually vic could probably work up a decent oppositional patter with eel o'brien ik they were never gonna use plastic man but i don't hate it.)

Right. There was a point.

Obviously I'm probably missing a few big dramas here, but the point is DC was trying to keep up with the fantastic dysfunction of the Avengers because if it bleeds it leads, but even in the Dark Age they could not dive in groin first without tarnishing valued brands. The Justice League is simply not built to tell the same types of stories that the Avengers are.

In Justice League stories the narrative will typically be split in focus to a varying degree between the problems created by the villain and the personal emotional situations--the problems--of the heroes. Usually the villain leads and provides the emotional stakes. Only occasionally, overall, do problems between the heroes rise to the same level. Even when they're having them canonically in some other book Justice League tends to be ruled not the right place for that.

Secret identities are traditionally kept to a minimum in the League and League stories, though what this means in practice has gone through some shifts.

This is not just the difference between DC and Marvel house styles, though of course that's part of it, nor is it the League being older, because it isn't by any significant amount. It replaced the Justice Society of America in 1960. Other teams, even the Titans to an extent which was just the junior wing of the League at first, were allowed to get more into the grit sooner, and have the experimental story of Speedy's career-ending heroin problem happen and intra-team dating drama take the foreground, and all that. Doom Patrol was all about the dysfunction, god.

But the Justice League is simply not designed to be that kind of a team book, and when it's occasionally written that way the seams usually creak.

#ask #hoc est meum #Anonymous #despite racing to the bottom of the pit in many ways #dc has never stopped being fundamentally more conservative than marvel #somehow even now that marvel is disney owned #like partly that's just dc being in internal meltdown mode #but also like the incredible hulk got to be a hellacious horror comic under disney etc #soon i will be out of quarantine and these asks will stop working #comics #damn i spent so long writing this shit i almost lost my duolingo streak #i need to make different life choices #i'm putting away laundry and going to bed

[ystrike1]

Your Majesty, Please Spare Me This Time - By Eclair (8.5/10)

Would you like to see some genuinely evil characters with layers? Get ready because there's like ten of those in here. This cute looking story is what some people would call grimdark. There's alot of taboo stuff in this, including everything from necrophilia to animal abuse. You have been warned.

Lariet. She was innocent, spoiled and stupid. She didn’t care sbout politics, because her father pampered her way too much. Her father is, however, a good man. His family does not live lavishly. Their citizens taxes go directly into public programs. He is a great man. Her mother was a prominent and beloved singer. Her brother, Lehane, is a promising knight. They all adore her, even though she is mousy and quiet. Sometimes, she does wish that she could wear lovely clothes like the other girls but...that's about it. She loves her family too much to complain about stupid things like that.

Stupid, naive Lariet dies. She dies believing that her loving family is innocent of treason. When the new Emperor, Rupert, kills them all one by one she hates him. She wants him dead. Everybody agrees. He's evil. The next Emperor is a demon who kills without remorse. He executes her under completely false charges. Before she is beheaded she calls him several foul names, and then darkness consumes her.

When Lariet awakens she is twelve, not eighteen. She knows her beheading wasn't a dream. She has the most awful memories. The details of the Emperors rule are too foul to be fake. Before her execution Rupert married a woman named Tori, who was his lady in waiting. He killed her the day after their wedding, with a shotgun. The Emperor is a monster. A demon. An unbeatable one. His siblings don't stand a chance, so Lariet chooses to serve Rupert.

For the first half of the story Rupert is a woman. He's cross dressing for various reasons. He doesn't have alot of power, at the moment. He is moving in secret, because the current Emperor has promised to make him Crown Prince.

We find out why later. Currently, Rupert is pretending to be a princess. He is selling magical weapons illegally as well. He is insanely smart and good at magic.

Lariet loves her family, so she pretends to be loyal to Rupert. She says she will be his completely. Rupert is lonely, so he likes that. He accepts her offer and he treats her like an object for a while.

Lariets brother, Lehane, is very handsome. Lariet's best friend Riche loves him. However, Riche and her family abandoned Lariet when Emperor Rupert targeted her. Riche is a fairweather friend. A weak woman who doesn't care about her family or her responsibilities as a noble. She wants Lariet to pity her, because she cannot marry the man she loves, but Lariet doesn't get it. Lariet is an odd protagonist. The strict rules of noble life aren't an issue for her. She is responsible and quiet. Willing to suffer under Rupert, who is almost certainly a sociopath, to protect her family and territory. It's very...noble. Riche soon reveals her true colors. Riche actually hates Lariet, because she's in the way.

Incest is kind of acceptable in this setting. It's not common, but it's not illegal, so it is possible for siblings to marry. Riche was never Lariets loyal friend. Riche was just watching, and waiting for Lariet to approach her beloved. Lehane does love Lariet, and that makes Riche completely turn against her lifelong friend.

Lariet is adopted, but the incest stuff was still quite uncomfortable to read. Lariet's father even considered betrothing them to each other, because he wanted to make his adopted daughter legitimate. Lariet doesn't know she's adopted for a long time, but it is relevant. Lariet might be special or magical, which would explain why time turned back when she died.

This is Tori, the future Empress...or not? Now that Lariet is in the picture things have changed. Tori the handmaiden is no longer the only woman who knows Ruperts true self. Tori actually isn't human. She is a homunculus created with magic. The material used to make her...is Ruperts mother...yeah. Rupert never loved Tori. They have a very toxic relationship. Tori exists to make Rupert Emperor, because that's what his mother wanted. Tori isolates Rupert. When he starts raising a pet racoon Tori continuously tries to kill it. Lariet has to keep it in her room to protect it. Tori also wants to be like Lariet, because she wants to know what being human is like. She wants to grow. She is stuck in the body of a child. Tori was (most likely) given the body of a woman in the pervious timeline so she could marry Rupert. But it was a sham and Rupert planned to kill her because she was too meddlesome. He might do it in this life too. Tori is kind of Lariet's friend, but Tori is definitely not human. It is very likely that Tori will turn on Lariet, when they both finally realize that Rupert has fallen in love.

The Empress, Eva, is very loved. The Emperor stole her because he loved her so much. He treats everybody else like shit. He is obsessed with her. Sadly, Eva was a spy. He had a husband she loved, but the Emperor abused her until she forgot his face. The Emperor is infertile, so Eva gave birth to a bunch of children out of wedlock out of spite. She decides to use Rupert to destroy the Emperors bloodline. It is her final revenge. A boy with no imperial blood will sit on the throne.

Is the Emperor stupid?

Why hasn't he killed any of his illegitimate children? Haha what a dumb...

No...

The Emperor loves Eva. At least he thinks so. When she killed herself he refused to accept it. Rupert has been "resurrecting" his mother to keep his father (that is not his father) happy. The Emperor has a Queen. He makes her do all the work while he plays with his corpse doll. Rupert is crazy and cruel because of the things he has seen, and he is tormented by what he had to do to become Crown Prince. The Emperor tells Rupert to fix Eva every time she breaks. Rupert has held, repaired, and handled his mother's lifeless body countless times.

After Lariet hears this story she realizes that Rupert was never the most evil man in the palace. She doesn't completely forgive Rupert, but her heart opens up. She matures and learns that her father wasn't faultless too. He didn't save Eva from the Emperor, even when she came to him begging. Also her father totally was going to commit treason. Rupert had every right to execute him from the beginning. Her family was never innocent.

Lariet has to accept that the world of nobility and power is morally grey.

It's a hard process.

Rupert chooses Lariet as his Empress. A couple of spoilers imply that there will be a happy ending, but it'll be bittersweet. I really do think alot of main characters will die before the wedding. Rupert considered killing Lariet about a thousand times, but there's a tipping point. He starts going against his mother's will (also Tori's will) just a little bit. Just so he doesn't have to be alone on the throne. Lariet becomes special to him because of her tenacity.

He knows she hates him.

He just wants a sliver of the love she feels for her family.

Then that's not enough, and the sight of a bruise on her face makes him murderous.

#yandere #male yandere #yandere male #yandere boy #recommendations #recs #rec #recommended #webtoon #otome isekai

[genderkoolaid]

Ngl i dont really get 'feminist' mens rights activism. Are men hurt by the patriarchy? Yeah... but they benefit from it too, and more than they hurt. Straight people are hurt by homophobia and transmisogyny too, but no one is out here doing 'pro lgbtq rights straight activism'.

So, first of all, while I personally don't know of any queer liberation-based cishet activists, there are plenty of cishet activsts for queer liberation. And honestly, if some cishet people wanted to use queer theory and queer activism as a lens to examine cishet issues in solidarity with queer liberation, then good for them! That sounds like it could be really cool and really helpful for dismantling homophobia, transphobia, gncphobia in cishet relationships/spaces. I think that could be really beneficial for a lot of people, especially cishets who still don't fit perfectly in patriarchal gender roles.

Second of all, and to actually answer your question, I don't feel there's a minimum amount of suffering needed before someone deserves to be helped. I don't see the point in acknowledging that men are harmed by the patriarchy if we aren't going to try to address those harms. Why are these issues used as a rhetorical argument but then actually critically examining them is seen as bad? If we agree that the patriarchy is harmful to men, and that men would, as a group, benefit from it's destruction, why shouldn't we encourage men to seek liberate in solidarity with other genders?It feels to me that at least one reason this is viewed negatively is because it's not punishment-based. It doesn't suggest that men need to suffer or that their suffering is deserved or "their own fault", and it's focused on redemption and connection. If we agree that men are harmed by the patriarchy, why shouldn't men want liberation from that? Do you think that the patriarchy should be dismantled without ever critically examining how men are harmed by it? That kind of thing is what brings more men into gender activism and makes feminism stronger. It helps further collective healing from the damage patriarchal gender roles have done. And on top of all this, I'm not sure we can make any sort of assessment of how much men benefit from the patriarchy vs how much they are harmed, especially since the benefits can vary from situation to situation and person to person. Trans men are men who benefit little to none from the patriarchy, and I can't imagine many of us would appreciate being told that we are helped more than we are hurt by it. There are also many people who were AMAB who live mostly as men, regardless of their actual gender, who are severely hurt by the patriarchy. Some die because of it (through various things, not only issues caused by emotional repression but things like gaybashing, bullying, child abuse, etc.). And personally, I don't feel I can say that none of this deserves active concern and treatment until women's issues are resolved, morally- and I think it's unlikely that women's issues can be perfectly treated in a way completely detached from men's issues. The idea that we can only fight for one struggle at a time is a fallacy. We don't have to "choose" between men's issues or women's. I literally cannot- both affect me personally, and I cannot live in peace without fighting both fights. Even if it weren't personal, I don't want any group of people to be suffering if it can be helped.

Plus, men's issues intersect in the same way misogyny does. I got into men's liberation through transmasc-specific activism, because I realized that so many issues trans men faced intersected with other groups because of a shared antimasculism problem. In the same way that a lot of other issues intertwine with misogyny, and that can't be ignored when studying non-gendered forms of oppression, men's gendered experiences with bigotry matter too. Gender roles are sticky, they get everywhere. It's foolish, in my opinion, to think that women's gender roles intersect with everything (true) but that men's gender is a non-entity that has no bearing on the other issues they experience. When Black men (as well as butches and studs) are viewed as hyper-aggressive, hyper-sexual, hyper-masculine, that's the intersection of patriarchal male gender roles (men are aggressive and sexually active) with anti-Black racism. The idea of "savage" men being cartoonishly violent and sexually aggressive (making them a threat to White women) is pretty common in various forms of racism, as gender roles are played up to demonize or mock another group. Disabled women are often painted as failures if they are unable to have children, or cook & clean, because of misogyny. Disabled men are often painted as failures if they cannot do manual labor, or impregnate someone, because of antimasculism. I don't think we can analyze other forms of oppression without looking at how gender plays into it, and we can't do that only focused on women & especially cis women. We need the trans perspective, and we need the male perspective. And "male perspective" does not mean "patriarchal perspective".

I hope this was a good explanation of why I feel men's liberation and studying of antimasculism is important.

#m. #ask box #antimasculism

[thesixthcavalier]

I want to rant for a bit here about some of the gameplay elements of Stray Gods that advance so much of the story and character choices that make this story so amazing. Others have probably noticed these things and put them in better words than I, but I've been listening and relistening to various versions of the soundtrack and have an obsession to feed, so here we are.

Much has already been made of the madly impressive fact that the songs are a complex and winding series of choices, where distinct instruments and styles are made to flow neatly from one choice to the next, and each choice you make can drastically change ones you get down the line. And for good reason, that is crazy and amazing and I love it. But what I want to talk about is the way the choices you have, and how they aren't as simple as you might first think, builds characters and relations throughout the game and enhances the story.

To start with, we all know you generally have three options, or flavors, to choose from: Red/Blue/Green. At the start of the game you choose on of these colors to be the sort of core personality of your version of Grace. Green is charismatic, friendly and well meaning, Red is tough and willing to be brash and bold, and Blue is clever and cunning. The nature of this matching of colors to personality is reinforced with several early choices in your interactions with Caliope, Hermes, and the Chorus.

But as the game continues, it quickly becomes apparent that these options get a lot more meat on their bones and that they are not as cut and dry as it might seem on first glance. Yes, Green tends to be more about being friendly while Red is more about a fighty Grace. But the key thing I think, and what really fascinates me, is that it goes deeper on each of these options in relation to who or what Grace is interacting with. Red choices are often confrontational and direct, but that doesn't mean antagonistic. There are several points throughout the game where Red options are definitely cutting through the bullshit or trying to start a fight, but there are also a lot of times where it's a direct and measured response from Grace to try and cut to the heart of an issue.

Blue meanwhile often presents plainly as the clever, thinky option. Again often very true, but I think it also represents the restrained and strategic option. Several blue options are about weighing what is going on, or Grace stepping back to take in her different paths. Green meanwhile has a lot to do with empathy. In my first playthrough I often found myself leaning towards Green options solely because they were instinctive, gut reactions on how to handle people going through something difficult, or to try and mellow out a situation.

All of this is to say, it is utterly fascinating how these choices interact in different scenes in ways that immediately lean into both the character you are choosing for Grace to be, and those she is interacting with. Take Medusa for example. The pure Red track of that fight is all but an actual fight. Grace is taking this in a very hero vs. monster direction and throughout is almost eager to get to actual blows, meanwhile Green leans much more into the angle of Medusa as a victim, a tool being poorly used by the woman who first wronged her anyway. And Blue is manipulative. It sees the paths before Grace and says "I don't need to fight this person, I can use her hurting to get what I want."

We see this even more clearly in Aphrodite's song, and in your first meeting with Persephone, but in different forms. In those songs, while Red is still extremely antagonistic, it takes on much different contexts. With Persephone, Grace is still spoiling for a fight, but a lot of it comes off as less heated. Yeah she is trying to rev up Persephone and cut her down, but it feels a lot more like a poetry slam or rap battle than lines preceding an all out brawl. Meanwhile with Aphrodite it's Grace trying to cut through flowery words and get to the heart of what she sees as the problem with this whole situation.

And to top all of this off, and not go on forever since this is already more than long enough, the way the latter half of the game has you choose another personality trait for Grace, the story not just telling you she has changed and grown but actively making it an element of the game by expanding your special option choices, is brilliant. It naturally, on a first playthrough, leads you into picking a secondary option that is most in line with the way you have been taking Grace as things unfold. If you started the game eager to fight but have since seen the story unfold and feel a calmer, more empathetic approach is warranted, you'll naturally pick that option because it feels appropriate, and same for any other combination. It not only opens up more gameplay, but entwines gameplay with story, and allows you as the player to feel the journey Grace has been on. As yet another link to classical epic poetry it is a slam dunk, and as a gameplay mechanic that reinforces your connection to the character, it's a double slam dunk.

#Stray Gods #roleplaying musical #gameplay #it's seriously excellent in so many ways #the way music art style and gameplay choices come together to make the story more impactful? Fire #No one will read this and that's fine #I just love this game so damn much and need to throw my thoughts to the wind

[bewires]

sometimes I see posts going around about various life skills, asking "why don't we teach this in schools????"

and they give me such complicated feelings

because the answers are long and complex imo. like, people are not wrong to demand they get taught how to cook or file taxes or build a shelf or fix a car or whatever, but it's not a cut and dried issue of "this thing should be taught and schools won't do it". and because this is my blog I will proceed to enumerate the reasons I see for it.

schools do actually teach most of these skills. maybe not how to file taxes but many life skills, there is a school class to cover it. Home economics notably teaches a lot of skills not only surrounding cooking but also literally household economics and working with money. However, these classes tend to be electives, so not everyone has the opportunity to take them.

why are such important classes electives? well, I can only speak to the german education system, but it's because the core classes required for different degrees are different. If you want to go on to university someday there is no space in your schedule for life skills classes like home ec. Although if you are in an integrated school you will at least get classes specifically on resume building and work etiquette.

A secondary reason these classes are electives is a lack of qualified teachers, because skillsets in the home improvement and home ec area are universally viewed as being "low skill" areas and teachers trained in those areas tend to learn less.

This is bad. It is a bad thing. It is also a thing no one in educational policy seems at all interested in changing, currently everything is about expanding digital education and enabling more students to learn more and achieve higher degrees. Home ec and home improvement classes are currently seen as the last vestige for the academically ungifted. This is the only place where students with learning disabilities flourish; this is where "unteachable" students go. The skills learned in these classes are utterly undervalued by the state as a whole.

actually, a subject of MUCH debate in the german school system currently is "how much education on basic life skills can we reasonably assume happens in the home?"

Because, you see, as educators we are in the awkward position of both educating and, to a certain extent, helping to raise young people. And when we help to raise young people, we aim to work with their parents cooperatively. However, in recent years, a frequent lament in staff rooms and in actual teacher training seminars is that "parents aren't raising their kids properly anymore" and "we're having to teach them basic social/life skills". To some extent I think these conversations have always happened, but there is a microdose of truth in there somewhere, which is that over the course of the last forty-fifty years we have gone from an economy that allowed for a single-earner household with one parent raising kids full-time to an economy that does not allow for that, meaning the role previously filled at home teaching home life skills often goes missing

This is not to say everyone always had a parent teaching these skills, obviously that is not true. These days we just have a lot more kids with less teaching happening at home in a statistical sense.

Schools, however, were founded with the sense that their dance area is everything academic while family covers life skills, and to take over that area might be presumptive/create conflict.

tl;dr "we should be teaching cooking in schools!!!" - yes, we should, but in order to do that we have to a) dismantle years of prejudice against practical learning as not academic and not rigorous, and b) institutionally clarify that this is an additional skill schools are responsible for teaching, and provide funding and time because I cannot stress enough that we do not have the funding and time for everything we're already doing

#education #cooking #idk rant about the state of education

[ramshacklefey]

As sympathetic as many of the characters in the League of Villains are, I'm frustrated by the number of people who seem to view them as a righteous group of plucky underdogs. This isn't about people who just think a character is hot and make horny art of them. It's about sincerely trying to argue that we should be rooting for them because they have some genuinely good points about flaws in their society.

Thing is, these characters do reveal serious flaws in their society. Shigaraki was able to be adopted and manipulated by AFO because everyone assumed that a lost child was someone else's problem. Touya was abused and pushed to a mental breaking point as a child because of Enji's relentless pursuit for a power that would make himself feel better. Toga was ostracized and treated as a freak because her quirk is deeply alarming to people. Jin fell into homelessness and despair because his boss fired him for something that was an accident. Spinner grew up smothered by anti-heteromorph prejudice. We don't get a lot of details about Magne's backstory, but knowing she was trans, we can guess at a lot. The members of the League are all deeply damaged, traumatized people who have, in various ways, been let down by society.

It's easy to sympathize with them because we can all see how, in that position, what they decide to do might seem like it made sense. It's easy to sympathize with them because the problems they face (neglect, abuse, and bigotry) are all things that affect our own society. There's a sense of justice in wanting to tear down a system that's caused you to suffer that much.

But however much we can sympathize with their pain, we shouldn't forget the choices they've made or the actions they've taken. And we shouldn't ignore the fact that their choices and actions are moving them further from the things they really want.

Shigaraki isn't trying to reform society. He doesn't want to tear the current system down so that he can build something better. He wants to tear things down for the sheer sake of destroying them and taking out his rage and pain on everyone else.

Jin's death hits hard because the reason he ends up dying is that he won't give up on his friends. Hawks sees Jin's loyalty and kindness to his friends and realizes that he has a good heart deep down. But Jin's final act is to brutally murder a hero for trying to apprehend Toga and Compress. Their lives weren't in danger.

Touya wants revenge on his father. Understandable, but one of the first things we learn about him is that he's responsible for several random murders. We see him kill a band of petty thieves simply because he decides they aren't powerful enough to be useful to the League. Those murders have nothing to do with his relationship with his father (well. Everything he does has to do with his relationship to his father, but you take my point). And his desire is specifically for vengeance. It isn't enough for him that Enji's crimes and cruelty be exposed. He's not just trying to say, "This man is not the person you think he is, and you shouldn't hold him up as an ideal figure." He wants Enji to suffer. He wants to inflict as much pain as he can.

Toga just murders people because she likes them. Her idea of loving someone is to literally consume them.

And their end goal isn't a better world. It's chaos and anarchy. They want to destabilize society and then provide the arms and ideology that would turn it into a libertarian dystopia. Thing is, that wouldn't actually get them what they want or need.

Take Spinner for instance. We know that in the chaotic times just after quirks appeared, heteromorphs faced intense and dangerous discrimination and hate everywhere. While it's true that heteromorphs still face discrimination and even violence, especially in rural areas, we've also seen that knocking out the social order only makes that worse (think of the woman who Deku saves. She couldn't get into any shelters because she's a heteromorph, even though she was in the middle of the city).

Touya is certainly getting his vengeance on his father, but it isn't getting him what he actually wanted which is acknowledgement from Enji that he is good enough. Having Shoto fight him instead of Enji is one of the worst outcomes he could have gotten, because it is still a refusal to acknowledge him in Touya's eyes (Strictly speaking, it was actually an acknowledgement of the fact that he is probably stronger than Enji, but Touya clearly doesn't see it that way).

Toga, I think, really wants acceptance for who she really is. Her quirk frightens people, and it seems inherently villainous. But the actions she's taking only make her more terrifying to others, and I think she's also mistaken to think that her violent and murderous actions are an expression of her "true self."

And Shigaraki... well he's probably the most difficult case. All he wanted at the beginning of the story was destruction. But it's hard to get a read on him in any accurate way because of the extent to which he's been molded and manipulated by AFO into his current state. I think we can get more insight into him by looking at what desires and motivations AFO played on. As a small child, Shigaraki was angry (and rightly so) about the way his family treated him, and then at the way the rest of the world ignored him. AFO fanned his anger and resentment and actively twisted his experiences until now he can't escape the idea that there's nothing good in the world at all. But we also know that he's wrong about that. The only hope for him at this point is that Deku can show him that he's wrong.

The hurt and anger that the members of the League live with are real and valid. They've each experienced things that would turn most people bitter and angry. Those things make them deeply human and sympathetic. But it's possible to sympathize or even empathize with someone's pain without giving them a free pass to become violent murderers and terrorists.

One of the most important themes in the story is that people aren't defined by the things that happened to them in the past, but by the choices they've made in response. The League serves as a vital foil to the main characters because they've made opposite choices at nearly every turn. Trying to wave those choices away and make these characters out to be basically good people whose actions are justified by their situations (as opposed to being explained by their situations) destroys that theme.

#ramshackle thoughts #mha #bnha #my hero academia #league of villains #spinner #shigaraki #dabi #touya #twice #jin bubaigawara #toga #toga himiko #mha analysis

[justatalkingface]

Unsure if I mentioned this here but I do think Izu and Shig backstory dont make whole lot sense.

Izu wants to be a hero bc...bc why not? I know you said how he may he brainwashed to propaganda but the thing is we dont know for fact. Yes, Izu saw one video of Am saving everyone but thanks to Hori...it seems only Izu is a fan of AM.

And he was abused for no reason. Now, I like heroes who come.from the bottom and work their way up but usually it has a sense, a logic here. For example. Naruto wants to be a hokage but the village hates him bc of the ninetail fox who is sealed in him. Its works as to explain people in the village dont like him and why he wants to be hokage.

Izu wants to be hero bc.....who knows?

Izu is abused bc .....why not?

Shig is the villain of the story. Was taken by afo and trained to be a big deal...except not. Afo gives 0 fucks about shig and seems to loathe Nana for some reason and he ignores Shig.

He let Shig lives in a bar(a seedy one) and we, as a reader dont get Shig. He speaks "I will end all the heroes" but we see him chilling and gamming. Why? Why not?!

He gets an army out of nowhere.

He has no real conviction and all he has is a sad backstory (which I think it is lazy) and a cool power.

Thats it.

I do see Shig in canon as a npc who waits for afo to follow instructions. The part I say it makes no sense is why Shig obeys afo and why he is so dead set in destroy all heroes. Why?

Why not?

And he has no real developement same as Izu but the villain stans love to pick fights with others fandoms to say "Shig is the most complex character ever"

(Legit! I'm not making this one up. Some fans do picked up with the JJK fandom bc of the Shig's speech in the war that was aired at the same volume as a character from JJK who made a speech akin to "I care for my friends")

Izuku wants to be a hero because a mess of things: part of it is he simply wants to help people. Part of it is that he wants acknowledgement from others, to be deemed as 'worthy'. I'd bet actual money that there's more than a few dreams of just being strong for once in his life there as well, as compared to feeling weak all the time, because the costumes we saw in his notebook were as much fantasy (all All Might, all the time!) than anything realistic.

All of these things are things that can be achieved outside of heroism, true, but there is where the propaganda kicks in (along with more than a little learned helplessness, more fantasizing, and so on): Izuku thinks, emotionally, that being a hero is the only way he can achieve them.

It's interesting, because that first chapter shows him putting aside those dreams, so he's intellectually aware of the impossibility of them, among other things, and since he's not an idiot he probably realizes that he can save people without being All Might, but it's clear that's settling for him all the same, and on some instinctive level those facts aren't clicking for him.

In all honesty, Early Izuku's dream of being a hero is just that: a dream. Something unrealistic, something that isn't going to happen.

(And, yes, I realized that with what we've seen of heroism for most of the story, a Quirkless person could actually perform all the various heroic duties as well as most Quirked individuals; that's not the point. The main reason he can't is the systematic prejudices about the Quirkless and heroes that say that they can't, to the point where such a thing is literally unpreceded. On top of that, said prejudices have been used to beat down Izuku so damn hard that he doesn't have the guts to actually try for it, which, again, isn't actually his fault; when the world tell you, 'fuck you for living', over and over and over and over again it makes it hard to do anything, but if Izuku was actually trying for heroism in a real way, he would have been in a lot better shape then he was at the start of canon.)

It's something he realizes, but the point of Izuku's dream of being a hero, for Izuku, isn't about achieving it, per say, it's about getting through the day. It's the fantasy he falls back on when his life is shit and horror and he has no real hope left, that dream of being a hero, of standing next to the greatest of all, All Might! It's not a goal, it's a mental escape.

All of this, of course, rapidly gets complicated for him when he meets the real All Might, who in the span of a few hours both destroys and then reaffirms said dream.

Shigaraki, on the other hand, is a completely different animal. It was complicated, at first, since we didn't actually know what AFO's end game was with him; he did seem to be pushing for him to be an actual successor there for awhile, and him ending up as insane all-destroyer if said plan failed probably amused AFO as a sort of back-up plan.

The thing is with Tomura, though, is he was never meant to actually stand on his own two feet and be a villain properly; he was there there to be AFO's vessel, with some snazzy upgrades. Thematically, he's supposed to exact opposite of Pinnochio: rather than a puppet raised to be a real boy, he's a real boy raised to be a puppet.

The reason why he's kind of a clusterfuck of a person, why he doesn't seem to know how to function normally, why he doesn't earn so many of the things he has rather than having them all handed to him, is because doing all those things right, achieving them, means he'd have a stronger sense of self, a will, a foundation to stand on as a person and a human being.

All For One doesn't want that; he doesn't actually want an heir, he wants an NPC, one who will mindlessly say, 'Yes, Sensei', and hand his body over when the time comes.

For almost the entire story, AFO has kept him in a very controlled environment, feeding him only the information he wants to grow his hate, strong and yet unfocused.... and this, admittedly, is where his plan's logic falls apart, because honestly the idea of, 'If I hate hard enough I can hoover up OFA' is kind of nuts in and of itself, and the idea this guy can no longer feel real emotions is a both a cop out and also nuts, but that is the stated logic of the plan.

I cheerfully ignore late-game stuff for my meta when it feels right, because so much of it is bad, but I'm keeping it here because it puts Tomura's entire situation in perspective in a needed way; I've never felt AFO raising him as his actual heir makes sense because, as you've pointed out, Tomura's situation is fucked up and ineffective for just about anything other than random violence and murder, much less a criminal overlord to rule over all crime and bring down society. His raising doesn't work for that... but at the same time, he also put a lot of work into developing Tomura emotionally, which, for a future vessel that he's supposed to inhabit, sounds.... unideal, to say the least. Giving your future body ideas is exactly the reason AFO is in the situation he's in in canon, after all, so it made me wonder; is he actually going to be his heir? Is this not a trick after all?

Trying to figure out what he/Hori was going for with Tomura is something that frustrated me with MHA for the longest time, you can't even imagine.

But, if he has a reason for that, it clicks: the idea behind how convoluted and bizarre Tomura's situation is is that AFO is threading that line; he needs that raw emotion, he needs it to be grown and to fester in on itself, so he can get OFA, which is something he apparently wants so damn bad he's willing to risk control of his future body over (and yet doesn't count for the emotional requirements...? Honestly, this shit sounds like something the Sith would do in Star Wars (and we know he loves Star Wars) (...or maybe Kingdom Hearts; this honestly gives me some real Terra and Xehanort vibes, if done by a fucking amateur), but Hori is trying to explain why the hate is needed without the Force... badly), but he needs a hate that's hollow, so there's no resistance to him.

Think of Tomura like... a bonsai. A bonsai is a fundamentally unnatural thing for a tree to be, but with careful, careful nurturing, and a lot of time and patience, you can get this tiny tree in a shape no real tree would ever grow into. There's no natural way to have a body that is both strong enough in desire to get OFA and pliable enough to be used to house AFO's mind, so AFO decided to make one instead, carefully growing and neutering him, while making sure he stayed within his designs.

TLDR: the whole point of Tomura's everything is he wasn't actually raised to be a person, he was raised to be a mass of unfocused resentment in the shape of a person (which is why I'm inclined to give him a break the way I do no other villain when it comes to questions like, why don't you do literally anything else to achieve your goals, or why don't you approach things from a less aggressive angle, and so on: the man literally doesn't have any context for that kind of thing.)

(I'm going to digress a little here, because I've complained about how late-game Tomura worked, and yet here, I'm saying that it makes sense. Well, that's the thing: broadly, it works. But, with so many things, both in general and in MHA, the devil is in the details.

If the overall goal was always to make Tomura a vessel, than literally his entire arc after AFO's fall, until the War, doesn't make sense, because he was guided into all these situations, left alone to have confrontations and challenges, often in a controlled kind of way... but the thing is, all of those things helped him grow as a person. This is, remember, the exact thing AFO didn't want, and presumably Garaki knew about that.

This begs the question, then: why did it happen? Why did Garaki lead him to fight again Gigantomachia? Why did Tomura have all this time to roam about on his own, largely unsupervised beyond some doctor given objectives, if they didn't want him getting those pesky ideas?

If the goal was to give him hate, give him a stronger body, then yeet AFO into him, then after AFO fell they should have made plans to do that shit right the fuck then. If he needed to be stronger physically, rather than fighting a giant to get a minion, and again, being out and about, lock him in a training room somewhere and say, 'AFO said so'.

Tomura's situation before AFO fell makes sense for the Hate Vessel idea, mostly. Tomura's situation after AFO falls makes sense for the Heir concept. The fact they did development for the heir idea, only to pivot back into the vessel concept out of nowhere, is why it works so badly for me; they developed his story in the wrong way for that to make sense.)

#ask #bnha critical #mha critical

[unmotivated-student]

"No, no, no, it has to be a fucking joke" He muttered, clenching his fists trying to contain his anger.

Something had to be wrong, it was impossible, he just refused to believe the green team was dead.

They have strong members like Etoiles, Fit or Forever, they also have Bagi, his sister who, although not very strong physically, is mentally strong and...

They also have Roier...

Oh Roier, his husband who is strong mentally and physically and is always willing to show a smile even if he is not well, one of the few people he cared about on that island, probably the only person he trusted 100%...

He couldn't be dead, he couldn't, he couldn't, Cellbit loved him and needed him, Roier couldn't leave like this forever.

That thing was lying to them, right?....

Right?...

"Aren't you happy? Your team won, YOU won "

The voice of that fucking entity echoed in his head again interrupting his thoughts.

"It's not true right? You just want to see us suffer" He wanted answers but in response he received nothing but silence.

"Answer me!" Cellbit shouted, but he didn't get any response this time either.

He turned his gaze to Jaiden and Foolish looking for some kind of support or encouragement but both of them were looking at him with a combination of pity and sadness.

"I know this is harsh, but it seems like it's telling the truth" Foolish said resting one of his hands on Cellbit's shoulder.

"Maybe we have to accept it" Jaiden also tried to calm him down.

Cellbit wanted to yell at them both, telling them how wrong they were, that they didn't understand anything because they don't love Roier as much as he does, that they were idiots if they thought he could be dead, but... Cellbit knew it wouldn't be fair.

How could he say something like that to Foolish? Roier's father. Despite their various "fights" Cellbit knew how much they both love and care about each other.

And Jaiden, she was Roier's partner, they lived together for a long time, they raised Bobby together... Cellbit knows very well that those two had a special relationship, which was born thanks to Bobby.

He would truly be a heartless being if he let out his anger and frustration in any of them.

"You never told us anything about this!" Cellbit shouted to the entity"Why did you do this?!"

"Me? I didn't do anything, you are the ones who are fighting to win here, aren't you?"

"But I wanted to win to save my son!, I didn't want to..." He couldn't finish the sentence.

"In my opinion it is quite obvious that in a competition the weak lose and this time you were the strongest, congratulations, enjoy your sweet victory"

Had he contributed to the loss of the only family he had left? just by blindly following the instructions of something they didn't even know if they should trust?

He, who had told him "take care" before being sent to that place, was now part of the reason why Roier was no longer there.

If only he had thought things through better, if only he had not gotten carried away by everything that had happened on that island, if only...

That wasn't a "sweet victory" at all, it was bitter.

Whether Roier is alive or not, the entity won, Cellbit is suffering without knowing the whereabouts of his husband, perhaps he is dead, perhaps he is somewhere else suffering worse things. If it is the second option, he only had to trust more than ever in his husband's strength.

A little thing that occurred to me when I read about the elimination.

I don't think anyone dies and maybe it just means that the team "dies" as a concept but I wanted to explore the implications of the loss of a team or at least the implications of the ones left believing it died.

And that's it.

I guess we'll find out soon what happens to the losing team but for now I just wanted to practice my writing 🫡

#qsmp roier #qsmp cellbit #qsmp purgatory #qsmp #qsmp guapoduo #qsmp rambles

[pinkverbena]

[My english is not the best, sorry, it's a little frustrating]

//CAUTION!: sensitive topics, violence, use of alcohol and cigarettes, depression, lack of mental health, abuse, other themes.

I had thought that this oc would not appear in the main story of F&H 2, but as a deuteragonist for a extra story (takes place in the year 1946) after a hypothetical ''Ending B'' of Pavel Yudin - Pav, in which the main theme happens in an Europan neighborhood. I've abandoned the whole concept because it was just an unfinished story and i lost some motivation to continue.

⇢✎ ɪᴍᴘᴏʀᴛᴀɴᴛ ɴᴏᴛᴇꜱ ༉‧₊˚.

''Bathing with soap...makes me happy'' (possibly the most insipid person you will ever meet)

----------------------------------------------

Sho Seimei, is a pathetic and insecure person from Kingdom of Edo, who works in an office, generally has functions of organizing data and information related to work and various tasks, calm, awkward and sometimes scold the coworkers who tend to slack off.

This office worker is a neighbor of the former lieutenant Pav, on certain occasions they tend to annoy each other around, the other residents of the neighborhood believe that there are hatred involved. Both are certainly sharp in their conversations, despite that there is no hostility to the point of fight to death. Pav finds it funny that he doesn't pick up on some of his jokes or harsh comments, considering Sho as a ''bitter brat'' and one occasion criticized his office shoes (Sho doesn't like those either).

They don't share many things in common, except that at certain times when the neighbors aren't gossiping, Pav and Sho share a pack of cigarettes. These two have barriers against showing their true feelings so they don't usually say much of what they think, Pav tells little about his experience in Prehevil and his deep hatred towards the Kaiser. Sho realized that Pav didn't care much about his future after killing the Kaiser and then leaving his position as lieutenant. Sho expresses to him that he could think better about what he wants to do since he was alive, although Pav is pessimistic about it and his revenge was one of the few things that comforted him in the past, without a new purpose now.

As the months go by, certain strange behavior and even some things like marks on the skin that Sho tries to hide, indicate that something was out of place and Pav know, so confronts him. Reluctantly, Sho confesses that he has been under threat from his boss for a long time, since the man himself not accept that he tried to quit the job, for now Sho has no a better place to work. Pav give a pistol he's been preserving for a while, telling him that maybe putting a bullet through that guy's head wouldn't be a bad idea. Sho feels strange about all this, but finally accepts because is conflicted about what decision to make and the police would do nothing if he tells them. Sho doesn't believe much in vengeful thoughts, Pav just joking...right?, or that was before he grabbed the pistol with trembling hands.

The next morning, Sho and other coworkers found out that the boss is dead in the basement of the office building and apparently his corpse has been used for ritualistic reasons, which this and other ''small events'' would cause a great series of disturbances in the neighborhood, while the authorities try to dissuade them by saying that absolutely nothing out of the ordinary is happening.

--------------------------------------------

˚ ༘♡ ᴏᴛʜᴇʀ ɴᴏᴛᴇꜱ ´ˎ˗

●Quiet childhood (or from his perspective), didn't adapt well with other kids, he was a lonely child, spending more time with his parents.

●After his graduation and when Edo's borders was reopened, Sho traveled to Europa to seek new opportunities (around 1942).

●Since Sho became independent, his life has been quite complicated, even until now he tries to tell his parents through phone calls that everything is fine when that is not true.

●Nothing relevant but he is not attractive to other people, especially he has been singled out for his freckles, even in Edo, where they had more expectations for him to have perfect skin.

●Likes any type of alcohol, although if someone give him vodka, Sho will be happy.

●Sho has a skeleton toy in the closet, he found it in a trash can on a night of drinking and delirium, he misses his parents and is distanced from the attention of his neighbors and does not have good work relationships, the skeleton was his only company, until he got to know a certain ''eccentric shoe picky neighbor with vengeful impulses'', he uses his skeleton toy to annoy.

●Accepts feminine pronouns too, doesn't make much drama either but there is some shame involved in commenting about this topic, since many have questioned and mocked why is so versatile with pronouns, it can generate some anxiety.

●When his boss did...certain things to him, Sho didn't leave his apartment for days and refused to get out of bed, he looked more tired, tearful, shaky, the desire to bathe was distant. After the grotesque death of his superior, Sho found it difficult to move forward and face the horrors of the neighborhood.

#fear and hunger #fear and hunger termina #fear and hunger 2: termina #shoseimeifungeroc #funger #yudin-seimei post

[femmesandhoney]

Genuinely asking why are Americans all talk and no action. Like theres sooooo many ppl just complaining about wages,health-care but then yall aren't protesting or doing anything?????? Like in my country we complain but we also protest. Why aren't the most affected states doing anything fr

this question involves a lot of components you might not even care about but sure okay ill try

a lot of americans are very apathetic to our institutions and/or think the institutions are fine as they are. a lot of right leaning and conservative americans legitimately think anything that minutely resembles a social safety net is socialist commie bullshit and oh why can't everyone just work hard and pick themselves up by their bootstraps. then theres a general american climate of people just not caring about politics, local or national, for various reasons. people often do not pay much attention unless its big buzz event stuff, often pointed out for them by their party.

a lot of people are sick of seeing nothing getting done (generally) in our government, but also people who are tuned in may get burntout from how obviously lobbied to hell everything is. a lot of stuff that gets passed often goes against a lot of american citizens wants or interests. you can see how over time the american public gets apathetic to this.

also notable, you act like we do not protest anything ever, which just isn't true. social movements often come in waves with peaks occuring when prominent events happen. theres always political movement and protests in the states when big shit happens, but there's gonna always be less activity for stuff thats gruelingly slow to change and doesn't really have "large" events attached to it, such as healthcare or minimum wage. not saying no one is fighting for those things as i type this, but most americans usually cannot agree on the best ways to solve these things. these issues are actually nastily hardliner issues that protesting would be...interesting for sure. i think most people think protests wouldn't change many minds and thats likely why we don't see more of it tbh. everyone is set in their red or blue corner.

continuing with the party talk, americans often put the responsibilities of those issues on their representatives, not ourselves. our job is "vote". its their job to go fight for those issues in congress. and i already stated americans are quite lenient about how much they pay attention to their local or national politics in the first place, so you can easily see the downsides to this. "put pressure on ur reps!" you say, well yeah duh, but that would require a majority to care or pay attention to their reps enough to do that. again, i think a lot of americans have a dejected attitude towards government and politics and very little interest in personal civic engagement. the reasons why to that particular element are outside the scope of your question though, but i think it helps explain why you don't see massive nationwide protests for all of our hardliner issues. not to mention protests occur more often at a local or state level rather than national since state interests can vary from national on most issues, making it difficult for outsiders to see the actual social protests or movements occuring within states, so i wouldn't ever say we do not do anything ever. theres lots of active and wonderful politically engagement americans nationwide.

also this is a tangent but you ask why states most affected don't do more and its likely, depending on the issue, a lack of time, energy, and resources. people who are struggling to live and go about their daily lives will find less time, energy, and resources to invest into going out and physically protesting shit. i think thats kind of obvious. and in a country with very little traditions of strong protest culture such as in, say, France, and one that also has strong cultural values of individualism, capitalism, and classical liberalism to a point, well, it all very much explains a lot about what americans prioritize or actually see as a problem or threat.

[epicspheal]

So something that's been popping up on Twitter about disliking Carmine, Kieran and/or Nemona...and I'm going to at least address the Carmine and Kieran plotline later in an analysis But I just wanted to say that the community needs a friendly reminder that people can dislike any character of a franchise. Not every character is going to be everyone's cup of tea. Sometimes they may remind them of an experience IRL and that sits with them. Maybe they wanted different from the character's arc. Maybe that character archetype just doesn't vibe with them And it's okay Yes, there are numerous instances of characters being hated because of bandwagons or having massive double standards and stereotypes heaped on them as justification for why they're disliked. No one is denying that. And yeah sometimes people dislike the characters because they weren't paying attention to their story line at all. Or maybe they didn't care for the character but chose to make a bad faith "this character that isn't actually problematic, is actually very problematic" take to justify their dislike of the character. These are all very real things that happen in fandom, and it will unfortunately eventually happen to character you dearly love. And it sucks to see, trust me I've been there. But also sometimes none of that is the reason. Sometimes people have reasons for disliking a character that aren't steeped in bandwagon hate or double standards. And maybe they did pay attention to the story line and understood and still didn't like the character or story because it really isn't their cup of tea. And they just simply dislike the character without going into bad faith takes. This is also very true, and way more common than people like to admit when it comes to dislike of their faves.

Trying to make every instance of dislike of a character "nitpicking", "media literacy", "contrarian" or "double standards" doesn't do discussion of characters any favors and is a bad faith assumption of people to just go straight to that every time you see an instance of people disliking said characters. Yes it's good to push back at certain narratives to offer a different perspective especially if certain narrative perpetuate harmful stereotypes or are in bad faith. That's one of the reasons this blog existed to begin with, but that I doesn't mean I don't recognize that someone could look at the points I talk about with various characters and still come away not caring for the character. And I get, it hurts to see dislike of comfort characters, or characters you identify with, especially with the latter as it can feel more personal (if they don't like this character, then they won't like me). But also you have to realize that with 8 billion people in this world...we're not all going to vibe with each other. Obviously some people we're not going to vibe with because of pure differences in morals...and sometimes we find certain people flat out annoying, or boring, or awkward or whatever and it's not that these people are morally bankrupt we literally just don't vibe. And it's okay. There's always other people who will enjoy you and your comfort characters the way you/they are.

I just had to put this out there before I even touch the Kitakami sibling discourse because I want to make it clear that I am sympathetic to people who dislike either character (even if I personally like both of them) because while yes there are some absolutely wild takes on them, also there's been plenty of valid expression of negative views that are just getting lumped into "HATER" territory. And if seeing someone dislike a character you really like gets to you...you can always block them. I cannot stress curating your fandom space enough and if you deeply resonate with a character and seeing the takes (no matter how mild or wild they are) gets to you it's okay to not engage with those people.

#pokemon #pokemon sv dlc

[koorinokujira]

Ok this is just an idea, but who do you think would suit the trope s/he (reader) fell first, and s/he fell too late? it's just such an angsty idea i can't comprehend this gosh 😭😭

Oh, such drama! Such angst! But of course, I'll gladly deliver, Anon. Now, this actually made me think pretty hard, because let's be real- most of these people are probably very touch starved, because, you know, war. But I eventually came to the conclusion that it could be a few of our "less approachable/romanceable" leaders. So, our dearest Magoichi, Mitsunari... and honestly, I also decided to include Shingen (not saying he's unapproachable, we love our warlord dad). I chose him because he has great angst potential. So, happy reading! Well... not really happy, but hopefully enjoyable nonetheless.

💔 Too Little, Too Late - SB Imagines 💔

Ever since you met the one you fell so hard for, you felt nothing but affection. Sure, there were flaws, but you were willing to accept them, or try to help fix them if they could be fixed. You were loyal, devoted, and always willing to lend a hand. Hoping that maybe, just maybe, your efforts would be noticed and your love reciprocated. But it wasn't. Not until it was too late... but you aren't the one left to pick up the pieces.

💔 Magoichi 💔

Magoichi was always... fond of you. She didn't even realize it herself for the longest time- after all, relationships weren't exactly her forte. She had the Saika Faction to run, and even when she had time for herself between all those battles and price negotiations, she preferred to remain in solitude. Alone, as she was supposed to be. In her mind, at least.

She found you a bit strange, perhaps. Too good to be true. When she gave an order, you never hesitated and went for it. When she scolded you, you never complained and used it to become an even better soldier. Your skills with a rifle also weren't anything to scoff at. Really, you were a model member of the Faction. Always there, always willing to lend a hand. She appreciated it, as any superior would, though she rarely ever said anything out loud. Actions speak louder than words, after all. And she couldn't play favorites, nor allow herself to be anything but the strong leader everyone needs her to be. She had a legacy to carry.

But now, things are different. It all started innocently enough- she's been getting reports here and there that no one could find you. Of course, you always made sure to have all your tasks completed before sneaking out who knows where. And it happened only every once in a while, so there was no reason to worry. But slowly, it became more and more frequent, to the point where she just had to find out what was going on. Why would you sneak off like that? You were always more than content to spend your free time either alone or with the others- the Saika Faction was like family to you.

She feels your absence most of all, she realizes as she watches you leave from the encampment again, thinking that no one can see. It was like things got... grey, whenever you left. Dull, without that trademark friendly grin you gave her whenever she sent you out to do one thing or another. The way you'd pat your fellow warriors on the back and gave them uplifting words when they needed it. And the way your eyes softened when you talked to her- well, there weren't enough words to describe the feeling.

She hates this, hates this realization. That someone somehow bypassed the walls she built around her heart, and she didn't even notice. And she hates it even more at this moment, because the very reason she plans to follow you now is to check if you're not compromising the Faction somehow. Why else would you sneak off? The chances of you being a spy are small, of course... but never zero, and she owes the Faction at least this much.

Screw it all.

Magoichi makes sure to follow you at a good distance- your senses are not to be scoffed at, of course. You lead her across various paths, through a small forest, over a wooden bridge that's barely stable to walk on, and then... you get to a farm. A village is nearby, too. Everything around it has seen better days, but clearly, the place is still being tended to. There are crops, and Magoichi swears she hears some animals in the distance. But that's not what she focuses on, no.

She focuses on him. The kind looking farmer who looks to be only a bit older than you. You chat and laugh, with you giving him the same look you used to give her once upon a time. And he looks at you the same way. There is a certain... tenderness in the way you move, and the leader of the Saika Faction feels a strange ache in her chest.

You look happy.

And she has to turn away, feeling like a fool for the first time in a long while. Of course she missed all the signs, all the times you passed by her and "accidentally" brushed fingers with her, all the times you made a point to stay nearby after your tasks were finished. She never reciprocated... and so you eventually found someone who cares about you as much as you do about them.

It is a bittersweet feeling, this love. She looks at you one last time before heading back towards the hideout. It hurts badly, to finally let down her guard only to realize it was for nothing. But at the same time... it is strangely reassuring to know that despite her harsh exterior, someone still developed feelings for her, fleeting as they may have been. She knows they were true, this wasn't like that foolish vagabond that pestered her for affection. And she hopes that maybe, just maybe...

...there will be another who will disarm her with such ease. She will be ready this time.

💔 Mitsunari 💔

It's all so... stupid.

The war, the way he has to constantly fight to be respected, the fact that every single day he feels like he loses himself more and more... he hates it. He wants to scream, but how many times did he do that already? How many times did he lose his temper when someone even dared to think of going against him? And where has that gotten him? What was it all for?

Nothing.

If only he had a shoulder to cry on right now. Someone to tell him that all hope is not yet lost. He used to have that. But he took it for granted, and now it's gone. He would like to believe otherwise, of course, but as he stares back at your grave, he is reminded of the painful reality he's found himself in.

He knew these feelings before you died, of course. The deaths of Lord Hideyoshi and Lord Hanbe were more painful than a blade in his heart. The grief and thirst for revenge was what propelled him forward since then. And he'd keep going until he took Tokugawa's head, and everything would be right in the world. It was terrible, painful... but also simple. To him, at least.

But this... this is different. It started with rage, like before, but then it changed into something new. This pain, it's quiet. Instead of a raging tempest, it's a gentle breeze, bringing back the sweet smell of what he once held in his grasp. A soft requiem instead of a battlecry. And somehow, that makes his heart bleed more profusely than anything else before.

It was spring when he first met you, he remembers. He didn't really have time to appreciate the blooming flowers, though. His lord was already dead by that point, and it was all he could think of. And then you showed up, dragging him back to reality by force. You weren't like the others, walking on eggshells as to not upset him even further, no. You fearlessly locked eyes with him, introduced yourself and told him it was an honor to be serving in his army now. He was upset that someone interrupted his moment of quiet, of course, but something compelled him not to unsheathe his blade this time. He still remembers how he just grunted in annoyance and dismissed you without a word. Why even bother?

But you were hard at work, nonetheless. Fighting, doing as you're told, even showing an aptitude for strategy. With each battle won, you rose through the ranks, until he had to see you basically every single day. He would never admit it, but he found your presence refreshing. You were honest - too honest at times - and he never felt like you had some ulterior motive, unlike with a certain someone that acted as his right hand. Terribly stubborn, too; once he showed that he at least tolerates your presence, you refused to leave his side, taking it upon yourself to guard him.

No matter how much he ranted about how he wants to kill Ieyasu, no matter how unfriendly or harsh he was, no matter how much he was falling apart and being a terrible leader, you stuck by. Watching, listening. And more often than not, you had something to say, too. Usually something uplifting. Oh, how he hated you for not letting him wallow in misery back then. How you tried to get him to move on and fight for something else than revenge, that he had potential to even surpass those he missed so dearly. How dare you say such things?

And so he constantly dismissed you, belittled you for your naive hopes for a better tomorrow, for trusting in him so blindly. However, that was just his fear talking. The idea of having hope and it instantly getting shattered by this war, by his enemy, seemed much worse than the pain he was already feeling. He knew that pain, at least.

Mitsunari kept refusing to acknowledge you, despite the mounting feeling in his subconscious that he cared. And before he knew it... you sacrificed yourself. For a wounded brother in arms, despite being wounded yourself. You bought him time and lost all of your own by that deed. He wasn't even there to see it... he just saw your body getting carried into the castle and heard the story from the other soldiers.

Only when he picked up your bloodied blade that day did he realize how much he's really been holding back. He didn't just care, he... he loved. And it wasn't just about the comfort you provided, it was about... well, you. Your smile, the way you'd tap the hilt of your blade whenever you were thinking, the entertaining anecdotes you told him about the time you were still training as a warrior. Oh, and rain, you loved the rain. You'd stand in the middle of the courtyard during thunderstorms with the biggest smile on your face and come inside only after you looked like someone threw you into a lake, shaking with the cold. It makes you feel alive, you told him. Like you can finally breathe.

He kept that blade, using it instead of his own since then. The blade is a warrior's soul, after all. But it doesn't make it much better. He still feels that ache in his chest, even though it's been months. When Lord Hideyoshi died, he could feel angry, he had something to work towards. But there's no Ieyasu Tokugawa to blame this time. Only a battered blade of someone dear, a heart full of regrets and affections unsaid...

...and the flowers he could only place near your headstone now.

💔 Shingen 💔

Hindsight is 20/20, as they say. Not that the Lord of the Takeda clan would know such a phrase. But that doesn't stop him from feeling the crushing weight of its meaning. He's not used to such emotions anymore. When he loses someone, he's sad for a while, and then he moves on. As a leader, he can't afford to dwell on such things. He needs to move forward, lead his clan and help it thrive.

Except this time, he can't seem to shake it off.

And so here he is again, on the battlefield where it began and ended in what seemed like seconds. There's still a few places where grass hasn't really grown back yet after the ordeals of battle, but nature has mostly reclaimed it. There's a soft breeze blowing, and the sky is fairly clear. It's... peaceful. And yet, there's an ache in his heart that not even nature's beauty can cure.

As he sits down into the soft grass, he can't help but think back on the first time you two met. It was thanks to Yukimura, he remembers. You and his young mentee had become friends, and so it didn't take long for you to be dragged over to meet the Lord. Yukimura ranted and raved about how amazing of a fighter you are, while you just politely stood behind him. He remembers how respectful you were the entire time. And it didn't take too long for him to recognize your loyal, honorable ways, either. You were a great soldier.

But there were things he didn't notice fast enough. Like how your clear, formal tone started to soften whenever he discussed strategy with you. How the first thing you did when coming back from battle was to go see him and report personally, even if anyone else could have done it. And that one night when he couldn't sleep and found you in the courtyard, staring wistfully at the stars. You gave him such a kind smile that day, and invited him to join you. So he did. And it was a night that brought great comfort to his weary mind.

Why did he take it for granted?

Time went on, and the day of that fateful battle came. It seemed just like any other that the Takeda clan faced. Armed with both wits and weapons, the troops were ready. Yukimura was getting riled up, while Sasuke dropped his casual attitude and braced himself for the upcoming fight. And you stood proudly right at the front, ready to break through the enemy lines. However, no one expected how wrong it could get.

An ambush. They tore into the left flank, and the situation turned an organized battle into a chaotic bloodbath. There was confusion, screaming, and soldiers were dropping left and right. And as Lord Shingen tried to get a hold of the situation again, he didn't even notice the bow aimed at his back. But you did...

...and the arrow that should have hit him hit you instead.

He won't forget that terrible noise, followed by the thump of your body dropping on the ground. Seconds turned into eternity as he spun around and saw you, clutching the arrow in your chest. He didn't even notice how your fellow soldiers went after the bowman right after as he knelt down. The world seemed to go silent, interrupted only by the sound of you struggling to breathe. There were tears in your eyes and your hands trembled like they never did before. But it wasn't fear of death he saw in your eyes. It was regret.

And then you spoke. It was hard to understand... but he managed. You finally confessed. How much you admired him, and how his very presence made your days brighter. How you loved all his little quirks, and just... everything about him. How much it hurt that you were so close and yet so far. And then you just... apologized and begged him to forgive you for such dishonorable thoughts. But that if you were to die that day, you wanted to die with nothing left unsaid.

He remembers how your hands were still warm when he gently took them into his, realizing with horror that... he didn't want to let you go either. When did you become so important to him, and more importantly, why didn't he realize it sooner?! In his mind, he cursed whatever god made him so oblivious.

But on the outside, he simply shook his head.

"There is nothing to apologize for. I couldn't stop such a feeling even if I wanted to. But I don't. So please... keep it close, until we meet again. And then let me share it."

He still doesn't know how he spoke so calmly. Perhaps he hoped that those tears would stop running down your face, or that the wound in your chest would close with his comforting words. But all he got was a look of relief, before you took a last, shaky breath.

He looks up at the clouds lazily drifting above him, letting the memories flow. He hears birds chirping in the distance, and a white butterfly lands on the nearby flowers.

If only you could enjoy this scenery with him.

---

Whew, finally finished it! Many apologies for the delay. I felt super burnt out because of schoolwork, and these imagines gave me a bit of trouble.

Originally, Motonari was supposed to be here too (so the stories would be two scenarios where the reader lives, and two where they due), but after I wrote almost a 1000 words, I decided I hate it and that I need to practice writing him more before I do any scenarios with him lol. Our cold-hearted tactician will get his spotlight later, don't worry!

I have two more requests lined up right now, so I'll get to work again tomorrow.

Thanks for reading, and as always...

...have a spectacular day!

#sengoku basara #senbasa #ishida mitsunari #mitsunari ishida #magoichi saika #saika magoichi #takeda shingen #shingen takeda #senbasa fanfic #senbasa imagines #i am so sorry for bullying mitsunari like that but it's so easy #not me making myself sad by writing these

[toxicanonymity]

Do you ever struggle with feelings of discouragement or inadequacy if your fics don’t do as well as you had hoped?

I’m struggling with that myself. I try not to get so hung up on it but it’s very hard, especially when something I’m so proud of doesn’t do as well as my other works.

I don’t even feel motivated to write bc I don’t wanna set myself up for disappointment

Discouragement, sure, I think that's natural sometimes. But I really don't feel like stats have anything to do with adequacy. Baring my soul, yuck. But fuck it we ball. Sorry it's a long answer.

I don't think I've ever answered a serious ask aside from the time i created Dr. rock which hardly counts but I've seen a lot of people struggling with this lately and hope this might be idk comforting to a person or two without leading to debate/discourse.

You mentioned something you're proud of isn't doing as well as your other works, and I can see how that would be disappointing. For laughs, I'll compare 2 of mine. These fics are impossible to compare (as are most, I think) but I def understand the urge to measure yourself against what you see as the potential. Aches: <1k popular trope I banged out in no time, wasn't sure about it, literally thought "people don't have to like it" before I hit post. >4 notes per word. Left in Lincoln: >22k posted so far, challenging, writing it for months. Has possibly driven me crazy bc I had this passing thought the other day and not about TLOU. (I didn't feel like re-reading it all): "I should just rewatch the movie. . .wait." 🤡 The whole Lincoln series combined has fewer notes than Aches lmao. But it's far more rewarding in getting to see it come to life, quality of engagement, and stretching myself 😏. It's not for everyone, for various reasons. Surely would have better stats without the twist I went with. But at what cost??

-------

Often, if people don't read or like something, it's a reflection of their own interests, limitations, and assumptions. And the right "fit."

I don't rly read much in general, but specifically, I rarely read long stuff (if I do I prob scan a lot tbh). I normally only want, if any, just enough plot/premise to build sexual tension. I don't read fluff or angst. I don't have the attention span / commitment to get invested in original characters. I tend to avoid stuff similar to what I'm working on. I make assumptions - If there's no word count, maybe it's too long. I know a lot of the fics I skip for these reasons must be fantastic. Assumptions I experience - I've seen very popular fics in the wild that strike me as dark, creepy, or pervy but aren't tagged that way. So some things that are tagged dark, etc., including plenty of mine, might not be dark in the way people assume based on their own ideas, or based on what others do tag. Also some people think I only write dark when sometimes it's just horny (see master list).

I've sometimes found myself thinking "It sucks more people don't read this bc i bet they would enjoy it" (not just my own fics). It might sound egotistical but I think it's often true.

------

Of course I want engagement because that means more people reading something which can mean more interaction, discussion, learning what you liked, what you think, etc. that's what I love.

But notes aren't rly near the top of what I care about, even though it does feel great to get them and I truly appreciate every single one.

Night walks doesn't get nearly as many notes as some of my other stuff, especially these days, but it's fun to write and I like to feed his feral fans who only get more into him with time. Same with raider: among those who do read and engage, I sense rising enthusiasm, thirst, and rate of falling in love with him (my bad). That's all worth more than 1000 likes to me. I have a good time writing these guys, so I write them more than other ones that get way more notes 🤷. I'm not saying notes don't matter at all, I know they affect exposure and engagement. But if just did what gets notes, I don't think I'd have such high quality engagement bc I'd just bang out more stuff with the most popular tropes instead of our fave Joels and those destined to become our faves bc they offer something special.

My outlook was the same before I had so many followers btw. Rock Bottom (22k) was what I felt like writing, still more ambitious than anything I've done in the Halloween fandom. I was disappointed it got way less attention than my one shots, but I know it's a banger, just certainly not for everyone lol.

-

I'm sorry for what you're experiencing and feeling, but I think it's very common and hope you can reframe it to not feel inadequate. I especially hope it doesn't discourage you from writing. ❤️

#ask #how the sausage is made #toxicanonymity writer's room #this doesnt mean i answer serious asks now lol