(second post) extensively noted im RLY unclear on a lot of endgame gintama. i am disabled and it makes me a bad reader and im irritable abt it and i dont really want anyone to explain things to me on this Specific post lol. im just thinking things thru to myself.

hard to hold a lot of sugi's gayass trauma mental processes in my head all at once. the elisions between destroying the world [math symbol] destroying gintoki who stands in the way of that as a universal constant [math symbol] destroying the political foundations of the country from the inside using connections with the same forces (this guy does NOT understand the larger background plots of gintama and isnt sure if this is correct ->) that in part got his teacher killed and set this whole thing off* [math symbol] destroying himself.

(*side note i think there was a real missed opportunity to bookend all of sugi's political maneuvering which was treated by the plot as. SIGNIFICANT. and extensive. and effective. and one step ahead of all the chars we see pre-utsuro reveals. by revisiting it after the utsuro reveals and coming down on his schemes as either ultimately fruitless and really just getting him in over his head bc he didnt understand the real forces at play OR still effective bc sorachi wanted to retroactively say he and katsura understood all the shadowy background shenanigans. but zura kind of takes over the role of political maneuverer. but worse and stupider.)

(not a WHOLE lot under the cut its just getting unwieldy as a post.)

like if he just wants to kill himself why does he have to take the world down with him (katsura planning a beautiful death seppuku line). if he's doing this out of love for gintoki (canon fact.) why does gintoki need to be broken.

but if i stop trying to untangle what materially he means by all of that then i can understand sugi's actions post-execution as kind of in parallel with my understanding of oboro and utsuro's, which is to say, they are acting on behalf of what they think are universal laws of nature both because they believe in them and also to push the world to the breaking point to test their immutability and prove their fatalistic worldviews right or wrong. [with gintoki as the main tool to do so.]

sugi's inability to reconcile gintoki's decision to save them over sensei bc he cant understand how he'd possibly deserve it + resents gintoki for going against their understood mutual sensei as number one priority + grieves for gintoki having to bear that cross. um. turns into the desire to. destroy the world that made gintoki cry -> gintoki is an unshakeable barrier of protection in front of that world -> prove that the world sucks and isnt worth protecting by making it into sugi's own most pessimistic conceptions of it from childhood that shouyou had started to prove him wrong about -> push gintoki to a point where he will realize that he chose wrong and sugi was meant to die instead

and in parallel. avenge the death of the man who had shown him a better path in life -> throw away the life that man had sacrificed himself to protect -> um if i go down this path i just start rewriting reductionisms' proofs on seppuku and bushido again. waves hand. take the contradictory tragedy as laid out.

like utsuro trying the open mind+open heart gambit for one life and then immediately giving up. and oboro. well oboro is harder to unpack and summarize for me. but he serves utsuro's goals in service of his own goal of. proving rebellion like he and shouyou tried is futile? takes it upon himself to destroy shouyou's legacy to prove it's okay that shouyou-the-concept died. idk a lot of layers going on in oboro its not important to focus on here.

the. making a half-step of progress into a better world that you're having to pioneer and imagine into existence. and then, when u fail under the world's pushback, deciding to undo all that progress with your own hands. and one guy says no, it's still possible, and im going to do it. and you're like. what if i made it as hard as possible so that if u succeed despite that u realize my dearest hopes with IRREFUTABLE proof so that i dont have to face how scary it is to try without knowing if its even possible.

WHIIIIIIIICH. i find all of that incredibly sexy on all of their parts. i enjoy it a lot i like it when humans act out of irrepressible existential fear bc fuck man. living is scary. thats basically the backbone of every gintama antagonist and gintoki [who carries on shouyou's desire to fight and win against his own nature, and thus is himself an antagonist].

whiiiiiiiiiiich. makes it so interesting that these three specifically. other than bansai lol. are the ONLY!!!!!! real casualties of the story conclusion. that gintoki DOES carry thru and realize all their hopes of the world for them by beating them as obstacles. AND they dont get to live and see the fruits of it. but im not prepared to unpack what that means narratively at this point in time.