Laios's three Boy Best Friends. And yes, they hate him.

soloing azteca and khrysalis as an ice type beat

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saw alot of comments on prev pages; saying 'i HATE that mean teacher! im gonna FIGHT HIM!!' & i LOVE the energy!! it WOULD be nice. to have that catharsis. but the story of young tidestrider is Not one of catharsis. it is a story of being so small and so special and sucking so bad.

Here’s an upsetting realization to leave you guys with before bed:

Katsuki was kidnapped by the league in July

Izuku left UA in April

It’s an insignificant detail but it was definitely intentional. Hori, you angsty bastard🥲

i try not to think about zangetsu and ichigo too much because. well. they make me scream but honestly, i think about how ichigo doesn't know how to love without setting himself on fire, and that, at the heart of it, he's so afraid to lose anyone that he'd martyr himself for an absolute stranger without question (even if he tells rukia he's no superhero, he goes on to heal his enemies, explicitly tells them to dodge his attacks, looks at them with compassion for their causes – even if their goals clash with his own). ichigo does not know how to shut off the interconnectedness he feels between himself and another, which is insane because his love for others is always to his own detriment. as much as he loves people, he's also punishing himself (almost atoning for his own weakness that cost him his mother). to ichigo, there's a humiliation in being protected, but deep down....he desires it.

it's interesting that zangetsu says "tensa zangetsu is you" here, not just because of how it factors into ichigo's series-long struggle of accepting zangetsu (shiro) as a part of him, but also because of the dialogue that comes immediately after:

we just learned that zangetsu is ichigo, essentially, so zangetsu wanting to protect ichigo isn't just the self-healing quincy mechanism or the self-defensive hollow mechanism....it's ichigo wanting to protect himself. ichigo says his whole "i will protect everyone" shtick so often in the series that it's easy to overlook this, but i think ichigo himself knows this is not sustainable. it's a heavy burden to bear, but the whole time he's screaming, "i want it! i want to bear it!" (<- this will make up for the fact that i am fundamentally a weak and horrible person! look how strong i am!)

meanwhile, on the inside, he conjures up a power that, deep down, wants to protect him. i don't mean to say that ichigo is disingenuous when he says he wants to protect people, but i also think he wants to let people in and he isn't really sure how to do that without taking it to extremes. (notice how he tries to keep rukia, orihime and chad – some of his closest friends – out of the loop to protect them, so much so that he ignores their own takes on the matter and ends up unintentionally demanding that they "prove" themselves to him). he does this to his own sisters!

and all these characters tell him repeatedly what zangetsu tells him: they're here to help him, they want to share his burden, they want to fight alongside him in battle, they want him to lean on them and get their clothes dirty. it might be true that nobody loves his people more than ichigo does, but the opposite is also true: nobody loves anyone more than ichigo's allies love him.

for him to recognize and accept their love for him, and for him to accept his own desire to be vulnerable with those he shares a heart with, he first has to recognize zangetsu. his own soul. the blade IS me, with all its complications and darkness and insecurity, and the surge of that is so powerful it dries up an entire ocean!!!!

I frequently think about how challenging it must be to write convincing antagonists. It's relatively easy to justify morally driven, righteous thinking and good-hearted actions (that is, if justification of something like this is at all needed). Pulling off solid reasoning behind uncompromising, dedicated malice is harder. I think that is because benevolence comes naturally to us -- that's what our evolution as social beings taught us to be beneficial. So more often than not villains come off as cartoonish, false and awkward with their cardboard-thin beliefs and exaggerated petty grudges. And that's why it's always exciting to see characters who are objectively horrible people but still exhibit intricately nuanced and dimensional personalities you can at some extent empathize with.

I guess that is also why I like Toji as an antagonist so much. (Yes, this is a Toji Fushiguro post,, Why do I feel like I should I be sorry?) He is essentially a case study of a deeply flawed, disrespectful and inexcusably violent character with a plethora of other gruesome traits (I mean, the anime adaptation isn't even remotely subtle about showing his nastiness) who's also... just another ordinary human being. He eats take-out food. He overspends inpulsively. He watches sport and gambles. He loves and misses his wife and settles down while he's with her. Toji has harmless basic needs like entertaining himself with a hobby in his free time and having someone to keep him company while doing so. He seems to seek simple human connection (like when he suggests that he and Shiu go eat out in some fancy place after receiving their reward). He gets genuinely amused with the job's destination which is Okinawa and expresses his confusion over the cult's representative's bigoted speech in a mundane, kind of goofy way. He's curious when something goes slightly off a pre-established course of action and asks Shiu about it. He gets nervous and tries to calm himself down by strategizing. He thinks of his family in his last moments.

I'm saying all this with no intention to condone Toji's terrible actions or make them seem more forgivable. I guess it just drives home a point for me that while he destroyed the destiny of entire Jujutsu society he was really just minding his own business by going through another job. Yes, he was in some way taking out his spite on the Jujutsu world by trampling on the 'blessed talents' of both Gojo and Geto, but there was never an emphasis put on it. Defeating two Special Grade sorcerers wasn't a prime event in his life (well, up untill he died as a consequence of it, I guess). Even if there were some strings attached to this job, Toji was in it first of all for the money.

He's mundane. The extent of his cruelty and filth is sickening. He's just like those people you could pass by in the street. He's so morally corrupt it's alienating. He's both unthinkably horrible and still just an ordinary person.

Toji is a walking representation of the duality of man, really, and I find it truly admirable how Gege tied all those conflicting traits into a coherent and convincing character.

at the end of a lot of my posts involving toritsuka i always stop myself from elaborating too much cuz i end up thinking like 'ah everyones knows how i feel about toritsuka' but DO THEY ?? do they.. because ive gotten (and ignored) multiple asks from people who think i fucking hate toritsuka and its so insane to me because WHERE DID I FUCKING SAY THAT?? guys.

he is literally so silly! i lowkey feel like i need to make a masterpost of everything ive ever said about him just so that i can force it down everyones throats and make you all understand my complex feelings on this stupid dumb idiotic little freak!

its a love-hate kind of obsession <3

I remember when I was reading DOTC when I was around 10, and ever since Misty died I had been waiting for the moment where Birch and Alder learned about her murder, how everyone in their lives has kept it a secret. And then it just didn't happen.

I also remember obsessively re-reading the part where Quiet Rain blows up at Clear Sky.

Birch and Alder are two characters that are just so...

I WANT to say they were forgotten about, but that word doesn't feel right for how they're constantly showing up on the screen. Clear Sky occasionally feels guilty about how he murdered their mother, but for the vast majority of the time, that's described in passive voice. So you're not reminded of just HOW cruel he was, and still very much is.

It's like they're not allowed to be characters.

Like, how does Alder feel about Clear Sky, who seemed to be acting as an adoptive father until he beat her as a child? How did Birch respond later, when Clear Sky was so busy thrashing his sister that he was threatened by a dog? How do they feel about the man who took their mother away from them?

They keep getting cited as "Good Examples Of Non-Campborn Cats," dodging around the fact they were stolen and raised by Petal. Like a lot of the other "adoptions" in the series, she quietly stops mattering to them. But even this fact... like, they're being OTHERED when they were functionally raised SkyClan.

How do they feel about THAT? That their earliest memory is SkyClan, and yet, they'll never be considered truly, fully "clanborn."

Their whole life taken from them, by Clear Sky's cruelty, their formative years spent in his violent shadow, and the narrative is just not interested in that.

something I’ve been thinking abt is how many people think Makoto is immune to despair. I don’t think he is. I think becoming the ultimate Hope was BECAUSE he felt despair. He wouldn’t have fully reached that point without Junko. Makoto becoming such a beacon was his last attempt to avoid completely falling and it wasn’t because he didn’t feel despair, it was because he was too damn stubborn to allow everything to go to waste and he refused to sacrifice his beliefs for someone else’s. His inner monologue tells me he DID experience the same new low the other suvivors did in the final trial, but at the point where he had the choice to give up and die, he looked at the others and he looked at Junko and he couldn’t allow it to happen, not out of self preservation, but because the idea that Junko would have control over their lives made him FURIOUS. and that utter refusal to die kicked in, wether luck or otherwise, and he made the concious effort for one last push while something in him was breaking. He had to be broken in order for the Ultimate Hope to come through so aggressively, bc it could only exist in the face of the Ultimate Despair. He snapped the same way she did, but in the other direction. In what could have been his final moments he chose to embody everything Junko wasn’t, and every single optimistic and luck fueled ideal in him suddenly charged forward and pushed him. It was a combination of the final straw and a choice. Makoto isn’t immune to feeling despair, he’s just too stubborn to fall into it of his own volition. I think that’s why I like that scene in DR3 so much. People were SO SHOCKED Makoto actually fell for the tape, that he actually became despair for a moment. I saw people getting mad or disappointed, saying it was pathetic and Makoto seemed to fall from some sort of pedestal for them. Honestly part of me wonders if that sort of mentality, which clearly people had in universe, affected Makoto a bit. Like he started to see himself as less of a person, subconsciously. Prompting him to take more risks, less self preservation, act way more bold. It seems he has to be reminded a lot not to put himself in danger by his friends, to not do something too reckless. All over the place I would see in regards to that scene either this frivolous ‘oh this was just angst drama with no meaning behind it’ or ‘he can do better than that. he’s so weak’ or ‘come on, there’s no way he’d fall into despair, he’s the Ultimate Hope!’ This kind of mentality, which was kind of ironic considering Ryota was there the entire time saying the same thing and treating Makoto the same way. Like Makoto was superhuman. Like Makoto didn’t feel despair the same way ‘normal people’ did. In a way that was also how Munakata saw Makoto. Makoto stopped being a PERSON to the world when he became Ultimate Hope, he became a concept, a belief system, much the same way Junko ascended beyond herself. But the difference is that treating Makoto that way is the opposite of the reason Makoto became such a representative for hope. He wasn’t doing something no one else could. He was doing something everyone had the chance to, he just… was a little more optimistic, a little more stubborn, a little more ‘gung-ho’ about things. He just took the lead where no one else did, where no one else knew they even COULD in the face of Junko’s unstoppable force. She had overcome the biggest threats and obstacles in the world, what could one person do? And the answer Makoto found was, anything. Everything. It doesn’t all rest on Makoto, he’s just the one that was inspired to try to do what seemed like the impossible. But as evidenced by the change in his friends after that trial, it’s clearly not something only Makoto is capable of. The others pulled out of despair thanks to Makoto, but it was their choice to do so.

“But… this world is so huge, and we’re so small. What can we do…? No, we can probably do anything. Yeah! We can do anything!”

third hokage: we hid who your parents were to protect you, we couldn’t let anyone find out the fourth hokage was your father

naruto, spitting image of the fourth hokage and kushina:

Sometimes I just think about Soi Fon. Like that shit was so insane. Easily one of The characters of all time. You’re going to give me a woman who hates the physical manifestation of her soul because it’s loud and explosive and she doesn’t think it’s “proper” that it suits her, but it’s so obvious it does because she’s angry and stubborn and loud and explosive!!! And then the fact that she never ever calls upon that physical manifestation of her soul until things are so dire it’s practically that or death? The fact that in so many ways she lets her emotions build and build and build until they quite literally explode???? And then!!! AND THEN!!!! Add in that she hates her bankai because it’s “inappropriate” for an assassin… for her role as captain of the Stealth Force… the position she inherited from Yoruichi after she abandoned Soul Society for Urahara… She despises the physical manifestation of her explosive nature, the nature she hides until she can’t, just like she shoved down her feelings for Yoruichi, the betrayal, the hurt, the love, until she quite literally couldn’t anymore and it all came back up in a BANG!!! Like god… oh my god, no one will ever do it again and kubo did not deserve such a cool fucking character in the least

i am rewatching feast of friends and i am not fuckin okay about it i tell you that!!!!!!

why are you, as an adult in 2024, still hung up on reylo. why are you still mocking the shippers. why do you believe yourself to be superior only because you dislike a stupid ship from a fucking space fairytale. girl (gnc) get a grip

dazai won't die not only bc it's a shitty writing decision in a story with bsd's themes and the way the story has been going so far but also like as a business decision this might tank bsd enough to get canceled lol. he's the most popular character in every single official fan poll (as in, those run by the magazine and channels that host bsd or the companies that own the rights for it in the west) if he's permanently killed off you would lose like half of the readers. if you don't believe in good writing to get us out of here believe in the power of capitalism, as awful as it is

priest: i don't, ah, quite know what to say to you. if you are in such terrible danger, why are you taking it all so calmly? constantine: hmh! i dunno, father. i had a bloke beaten to a pulp earlier this evening. that sound calm to you? priest: you did what...? constantine: i must've been off me bleedin' rocker. i've never done anything like it before in me life, y'know?

constantine: but there's header gets his guts blown out, and george is stickin' his head in the noose, and helen gets ... jesus, then friggin' sarah bites me head off — ! everything's coming to bits in me hands and it's so easy to just see red and now, shit, they could've killed the tosser for all i know! and now i'm just like the bastards i've hated all me life! kill him! fire him! close them down! piss all over him! screw you, i can do whatever i want! i so much as blink and you're dead, pal! i'm in charge!! ...

constantine: 'scuse me, father. i'm always like this when i don't get me own way. — hellblazer #81, "rake at the gates of hell pt. 4"

babygirl you are just....so, sooooo offputting. (and grieving, and guilty, and terrified, but yeah: offputting.)

anyway, it's issues like this one that remind me why i kind of hesitate over some of the retcons in the recent spurrier runs, like the one with him now having opened dream's pouch of sand and stolen some before they even met. because like, it's easy enough to look at john constantine now — with 70 years of worst possible choices and unresolved trauma crystallizing underneath his skin to cover up all the soft, hopeful bits where he's used to getting hit — and assign him arbiter of ill intentions, magus of wasted potential, saint of shit choices, but man . . . he was new to this, once. he was still new to this 80 issues in.

80 issues in, and he's not used to losing friends yet; he even has time enough between catastrophes to grieve each individual one. still has enough left to live for at this stage to necessitate running and hiding, instead of bodily throwing himself at the problem like he learns to later, or sitting apathetically by to do nothing except smoke and watch the world fall apart when he finally gives up. fuck, he still apologizes.

and you're telling me this guy, this soppy wet cat motherfucker hiding from the devil in a church basement, so guilty over not knowing what happened to the guy that he paid people (paid chas, so chas could pay people) to attack that the bottle he's holding in this scene isn't even his second or third........this guy's past, more innocent self lied right to the face of DREAM OF THE ENDLESS and got away with it?

hm. i just don't know about all that.

i wish jaime’s arc was never this heavily associated with the word redemption bc every single discussion about him revolves around that word and the baggage people have with it. i know george repeatedly used it when it concerns him, but i obv do not think that means his arc is as simple as going from bad to good in a linear fashion. but it is about transformation imo. if it was just about a perspective shift/recontextualization then why would george make him lose the thing that defined him in every way and allowed him to detach himself from everything? it is also not an elaborate trick and a subversion of “redemption arcs”, that is also a reductive and cynical read of it to me. his nuances are never discussed beyond “bad guy is good guy now” or “guy is tricking u he is still stagnant.” imo his motivations evolve, his relationship with the self evolves, his relationship with abstract concepts he craves such as honor, love & knighthood evolves, he evolves: he is one of the characters that is in constant motion, he is always on a journey, he is rarely at a standstill after he leaves the dungeon in acok. it makes me so sad that nothing new is said about him atp other than fandom going in circles about this one word, especially bc i think he is at a key transitional point again right now. i think his arc is about tearing down the “brave golden knight” image in every way until you are left with nothing but harsh reality and a broken cripple. it is tearing apart facades & personas. and then it is the story of what one can make of oneself then. it is about grueling moral dilemmas and the making of choices. and then finally it is about the idea of confrontation for someone who has always been incredibly afraid of it and repeatedly chose to run away inside instead. george deliberately made it so he can no longer do that. that must lead somewhere.