ik ppl hate fictional deadbeat moms but im an avid enjoyer. my feminism knows no bounds truly/j
like i get it she did a bad job. but shit she still did a job that's for sure!! like. she did it do you understand. 14 year old girl is pregnant. it's disgraceful. a shameful stain on her family. yusuke doesn't seem to have grandparents or anything so besides yusuke's bio dad she's got no one. and then when yusuke is a toddler the father disappears and considering who he is and what he's like that's probably for the best. gonna go out a limb and say that yusuke was maybe 4 or 5 when his dad cleared out so. at 18 and entirely alone. atsuko looked down at this little thing. this baby because he's still a baby to her this is a baby who only has her. Not even 4 feet tall with the biggest brown eyes looking to her for everything because he quite literally has no one else.
he doesn't know she's a failure yet. he doesn't know people will look down on them just because he exists as he is. he doesn't know how hard this is going to be from now on. all he knows is he loves his momma
so she doesn't cry. she just meets his big innocent eyes and goes "it's just you and me kid" and yusuke doesn't know that that's a sad thing.
so she takes care of him the best she can and it still sucks but yusuke doesn't know what the standard she should be held to is yet. for a small time she is the greatest and best person in his world and he's the only one who thinks so
then he meets keiko and her parents and finds out that his normal is actually dysfunctional and that his mom actually isn't all that great. that living day to day in the bottom of a bottle isn't healthy. so she's no longer praiseworthy but this person he's responsible for. just like that the roles reverse. because while she was all yusuke had yusuke is also all atsuko has. he doesn't respect her but he still punched the motherfucker in the mouth that called her a tramp. she taught him how to do it.
atsuko comes to terms with the fact that Yusuke doesn't really need her anymore, probably never did so she doesn't bother to care when he skips school or beats whoever he wants to a pulp or gambles because at 14 she was expecting so what the fuck can she really say about him. he sneers at her as he makes her coffee. atsuko lights another cigarette
it feels like betrayal when her son dies. at 14 she had him so how can he die at a sorry age like that. i wasted my teenage years on you for what? so you can die and leave me here? you fucking brat. how can she recover from this? yusuke was all she had. he hadn't looked up at her with an admiring gaze since he was 7 and stopped hugging her goodbye soon after but still he was hers he was hers and then he was gone
but then he comes back. and she doesn't get much better as a mom or as a person really. she tries harder than before maybe (keeping him in school) but yusuke never expected her to. he's made up of her bad habits and uncaring attitude but he's so much better than her. became something good something strong despite how shitty of a job she did raising him.
she's not proud because she has no right to be but something like it tugs in her chest when she sees him feeding the people he cares about at his little ramen cart looking as happy as the first time she'd taken him out to park.
yusuke's dad suggests taking another crack at the whole family thing and she wants to laugh in his face. the only family she'll ever have is that little boy who's stronger and braver than she'll ever be.
she doesn't want to see him laying cold in a casket ever again. he's meant for life, a soul as bright and durable as his. atsuko hopes he lives to see the sun explode
made it to lvl 100 of the skull caverns for the first time ever in stardew (i made it once before i think but collapsed in that very room bc of the time limit back in the day lol)
severly disappointed with the reward, Qi congratulated me for doing it without crafting staircases likE REaL mEn talking about my farmer and him like they are both so above and beyond 'normal' people-
....................i did craft staircases....................
i think another big thing about the current aquaruby dynamic that oshi no ko fans Do Not See is the fact that aqua doesn’t HAVE any power over ruby anymore. obviously when he was visiting her hospital room as a doctor he held a position of authority over her. he was taking on the role of doctor and guardian for her in a way, and he clearly felt responsible for her and wanted to be there for her in the absence of her parents.
but the last several chapters have made it abundantly clear that the power dynamics between them have shifted to ruby, who as aqua’s twin sibling is now his equal, rather than his charge. now that they stand on equal footing, she’s used manipulation tactics to force him into submission and thereby take a position of power over him. by projecting ai onto gorou, she’s made it impossible for aqua to shed his past self and move on without hurting her. and, she’s taken gross advantage of both abiko and yoriko’s directorial tactics to ensure that she gets to kiss aqua on-screen, thereby sealing him into a relationship with her. aqua has no power here. his own sister and the directors are working against him to lock him into The Bad End (incest route).
which, ignoring my previous tags about the parallels between aqua and ai, also feels disturbingly similar to how hikaru was abused by airi…
it's been so long since i rewatched the Unsaid Emily episode of JATP but holy, shit does it still hit so fucking hard
when luke's hiding in the bushes outside of his parents' house because he misses them- misses his mother- and regrets the way he ran off, but was too proud to apologize. and maybe too full of guilt and regret to come back before he did what he set out to do.
but he missed her and she missed him and he wrote an entire song about it and his band sang it together and im just 😭😭😭😭
maybe after his band played at the orpheum he would have gone back. maybe he could have gone back and said "look! i did it! im sorry for leaving but i did it! can i come home now?"
maybe that would have been enough to start mending the gap
maybe they would have had a chance to play more than one song, and maybe the second would have been Unsaid Emily, and maybe she would have known. maybe she would have been standing by the door waiting for him to come back.
but he dies, and the song is lost for twenty years, and his mother never knew that he was so sorry or that he even thought about her after running away, not until julie.
he gets the chance to finally say everything he always meant to say to her, he gets to see his mother read his old words and read the love in them.
im nearly sobbing from this scene again it's so fucking good. so powerful.
Okay wait hold on do you people actually pay attention to time when you take tests?? As in you calculate exactly how much time you can spend on certain sections instead of just vibing through???
And so I drank one, it became four
And when I fell on the floor I drank more
Nothing's changed
I still love you, oh, I still love you
Only slightly, only slightly less than I used to, my love
hey, ali! i feel your pain about the tbosas adaptation! i cried so much during the movie but not because i felt emotional, seeing MY book comes alive on screen but because we were robbbbbbbbbbed and shot 😞😞😞😞😞😞 anyways, what's your opinion on the music tho? fav/least fav song? (my is the oldtherebefore and least fav the 0livia r0drigo's one)
hey, lollis!
‘robbed and shot’, exactly. i couldn’t have said it better myself because unfortunately, that’s spot on 🥲
I LOVED THE MUSIC! a dystopian reflection of our reality through intentional use of folk/bluegrass music is something that resonates strongly with me. i mean, they knew how to strike the right chord in the hearts of book readers for sure! *the only other thing i wish was different about the music it's the variety of tempo and rhythm because as much as i LOVED the unified sound of LG's songs, i would prefer each song to have its own individual tune and ~aura)
my absolute favourite adaptation that they did was 'nothing you can take from me' (boot-stompin’ version); i am utterly in awe of the powerful passionate energy that they gave to this song?? also i loveeed the similarity of rhythm and tone between 'nothing you can take from me' and a traditional american folk song 'man of constant sorrow', i kinda feel it was a deliberate parallel which worked just great. (also i’m glad they added maude ivory’s 'keep on the sunny side'!)
my least favourite is perhaps 'the ballad of lucy gray baird'?.. and though i did enjoy rachel’s rendition (she copies a young dolly parton in such a warm-hearted respectful manner!), and the respect for traditional appalachian music, she sang it in a cheerful 'to hell with you!' manner which is less intense and intimate that i remember it from the book to be? to quote tbosas here: 'the haunting melody set the tone, and her words did the rest as she began to sing in a voice husky from smoke and sadness' – the movie version really failed to capture both the haunting tune (their version doesn't really tell the story musically because of a major key) and the lucy gray's vulnerability here for me. in the book she did what carrie fisher told us all to do: 'take your broken heart and turn it into art' while in the movie she isn't even angry at billy taupe?? like his betrayal (and her place in the games) is not a big deal? she's openly rebellious and sassy with out of place 'i need no man' attitude and that simply didn't work for me personally.
it took some time for 'pure as the driven snow' to grow on me (i expected it to be more of a waltz-like, similar to maiah wynne's cover), but i'm coming around to it. yet… i wish it was STAGED differently??? they had to combine certain scenes and songs in the film but it was such a SURREAL idea to meld PATDS with 'sell you for a song' setting? and it took away so much from that moment of love and connection and unconditional acceptance, where lucy gray is finally ready to be emotionally unshielded in front of her lover (maybe for the first time ever)?? it was a PIVOTAL snowbaird moment but they needed to blend two songs together because obviously PATDS can't be love confession in form of a song because it should be taken as an ominous warning instead (duh!). 'bitch you better not turn out to be a bad guy even tho i knew you were a villain all along' :??? and it could've worked in its own angst-y way, if there had been any development in snowbaird love story?? but since movie!they are full on survival the whole time (there's no canonical teetering on the edge of an actual fondness/love and survival instinct), PATDS makes no sense at all. so… i extremely frustrated by the use of PATDS on screen but at the same time i love the sound of the full version on the soundtrack album.
annnd i'm actually IN PAIN because they had the audacity to leave so many songs out?? especially given their ties to the original trilogy?? 'deep in the meadow' aka rue's song???? 'the valley song' aka the one peeta mentioned seeing katniss sing at school when they were children???? the festive 'crawling to you' ('that thing i love with') likely performed at finnick’s wedding?? idk maybe it's a musical nerd who is speaking in me but i wish they could have included more of the book songs at least on the album, if not in the actual movie (even tho i'm still sure, it would've been possible to present the whole complexity of this book AND its poetic side too, if they decided to split the film in two).
[the score album wasn't much to talk about but 'snow lands on top' piece tho… vivid, striking, remarkable]