well my abigail hobbs hot take is that she understands alana as a shade of her mother (kind but blind, ineffectual and powerless), hannibal as a shade of her father (the monster who protects her and kills her in equal measures), and will as a mirror of herself (which is why she is repulsed and frightened by him despite all his efforts to connect with her)
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hot take ??
the only reason people say that "mafuyu and tsukasa have nothing in common" when presented with mafukasa parallels is because they equate mafuyu and tsukasa being similar to "tsukasa has depression" because the fandom equates mafuyu's personality to being depressed and nothing else.
it doesn't help that people (primarily younger people in the fandom) who DO believe in mafukasa parallels end up making the mistake of portraying tsukasa as depressed because as of right now he is not (although it's possible he was in past because of his Very Unclear Middle School Backstory but that's irrelevant)
anyways, mafuyu and tsukasa are narrative foils because their core personalities are built off of the concept of wanting to make the people around them— especially their families— happy.
they both developed personalities at a young age based on someone they looked up to. for tsukasa, it was seiichi amami's performance that inspired him to be a star— a hero that could cheer anyone up. for mafuyu, it was her mother taking care of her that inspired her to be a nurse— and you can see the similarities from there.
for mafuyu, her identity would first come into conflict when her mother expressed her want for mafuyu to be a doctor— suddenly, "everyone's" happiness didn't match what she wanted to do, leaving her in a state of disorder and eventual depression.
for tsukasa, his identity was something he nearly forgot in its entirety at the start of the main story— becoming arrogant and fully absorbed in a hero persona, forgetting the kind person he truly is. furthermore, his current character arc seems to be foreshadowing that what "being a star" to him is going to be called into question— maybe it is something more than just being the main character that saves everyone.
their insecurities are incredibly similar.
in mafuyu's first mixed, mafuyu feels insecure towards ichika because unlike ichika, she feels as if her lyrics have no genuine meaning to be expressed to other people— despite them being her very real feelings. this is brought up again in her second mixed as well.
in tsukasa's third focus event, something similar happens. when watching seiichi's performance, he thinks that his acting is "real" and feels inferior towards him, which is ironic because tsukasa has been method acting this whole time. when tsukasa is acting out rio or bartlett or really anyone at this point in the story, it's not just those characters— it's a reflection of his traumas.
just like mafuyu, tsukasa undermines his passions he's poured his feelings into because someone else's work is more genuine in his eyes.
now, then, foils have many similarities and parallels (and i could honestly list a lot more), but how i define them is that they usually have some kind of major branching difference that MAKES them foils.
for mafuyu and tsukasa it's pretty straightforward.
mafuyu's people pleasing behavior comes from external expectations and pressures— her mother's demands.
tsukasa's people pleasing behavior comes internally, from himself— if he can't meet his own standards, if he can't be the perfect big brother or the perfect star, then he is nothing.
and even then, there's some overlap.
tsukasa's behavior was indirectly encouraged by his mother praising him for being a "good big brother" over the phone instead of asking him if he was okay while home alone.
mafuyu's terrified to be herself around other people because she doesn't want to worry or bother them— she doesn't want to be a burden— and projects her mother's expectations onto them, not realizing that they would prefer the real mafuyu if they knew the truth.
and the concept of mafukasa being foils is most perfectly and blatantly portrayed in these two cards.
mafuyu, the marionette, sitting limp on the floor— puppeteered by her mother's demands and donning a mask to hide her true self.
tsukasa, the jester, standing above everything else— puppeteering silenced plushies— his feelings. he's not being completely honest with himself, and he doesn't even realize it.
mafuyu has cut her strings and ripped her mask in half. she has acknowledged her true feelings and expressed them to her mother, even if she had to run away in the end.
tsukasa has not yet cut his.
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mom avoids dead anime mom curse because he transitions. he’s always had a complicated relationship with pregnancy because of how woefully little people are told about potential complications and aftercare, and also because of how gendered it is, so after the birth of his second child he’s finally had it and decides to transition
he joins a local community group for mothers and at first it’s played for laughs how often they fall to the dead mom curse, but soon we find out more about how society has failed mothers and people who give birth, from information being withheld, procedures being carried out without consent, lack of accommodations and maternal and paternal leave, racism…
it also turns out that becoming a man doesn’t help with this, not really, because being a pregnant trans man brings its own problems. follow along as he learns more about being a parent and a mother, and maybe even… finding love???
coming to you never because I can’t write!
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I’m thinking about how administrative leave requests would work in starfleet and it’s gotta be a huge pain in the ass right. vulcans would probably need a special expedited leave request process for pon-farr, because they become violent/die if they don’t excuse themselves to have sex asap, but this is probably a narrow accommodation only granted to vulcans, so if they were dating a non-vulcan who had to go through normal, slower leave request procedures that would cause logistical issues cuz emergency pon farr admin leave only works if both parties can do it at the same time, so if you’re a non-vulcan dating a vulcan you would have to probably apply to get that accommodation extended to you, and because I’m assuming starfleet operates on the same punitive logics as contemporary bureaucracies do, they’d be paranoid about non-vulcans “cheating the system” by falsely claiming they were dating a vulcan to get their leave request expedited, so they’d probably require proof of marriage or long-term cohabitation with a vulcan in order for a non-vulcan to get approved for that kind of thing, meaning casual or otherwise non-normative vulcan/non-vulcan couples in starfleet would be administratively marginalised and (re)produce a culture deriding interspecies dating, especially because humans seem to be kinda default racist towards vulcans in star trek in general, so they would probably view a human dating a vulcan as getting “special privileges” for administrative leave even though it’s just a basic accommodation. this is a classic example of how administrative apparatuses operating on a liberal conception of equity can reproduce systems of racial discrimination
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Thinking about how Will Graham views his anger as righteous which of course extends to Hannibal. A lot of his anger in s2 is over the fact that he finally trusted someone only for that person to betray him but it’s more than that. It’s more than just what Hannibal did to him. What he’s truly deeply angry about is that Hannibal knows his dark nature and not only knows it, but wants him to embrace the very nature he’s desperately trying to suppress.
He’s supposed to be the one that’s perceptive. He’s the one who is supposed to see it all while remaining unknown and unseen. And yet Hannibal recognizes what kind of person he has as soon as they meet. It’s not supposed to be that way. He hates that Hannibal is the one person he can’t hide from. Who will always see through the facade he puts on for others who buy into it. That’s why when Hannibal essentially tells him in s3 that he hasn’t changed, he’s fuming. If just Hannibal can believe he’s changed, maybe he himself can believe it too.
But he doesn’t. And deep down Will knows that’s just what it is too: a facade. Hating Hannibal is really just him hating himself at the end of the day. He takes a lot of his displaced anger out on him. He has these violent murder fantasies about Hannibal that symbolically can be read as him trying to kill off this part of himself. He can’t kill them off. Suppression only works for so long. The fantasies only grow stronger.
It’s only when he gives in at last during TWOTL. When he stops supressimg who he is. When he stops hating himself for it and overthinking about the act of violence. When he allows himself indulgence. This is when he experiences being at peace with himself possibly for the first time ever. At last, the internal battle that rages on inside him calms. The voices in his head go quiet. Even though this is brief, he knows that what he and Hannibal experienced on that cliff is a moment of peace in a lifetime of unrest. He doesn’t take it for granted, which is why he says what he does. When he stops fighting Hannibal, giving into the violence and also his touch as they embrace, it represents that he stops fighting with himself too. And isn’t that the most beautiful thing in the world?
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