#but I wrote it bc I misread the ask so I figured I’d post it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

shandycandy278 · 1 year

Text

HAHA look it’s that AU thing i talked about in the post before the ask when I misread the ask for the drabble haha oopsie anyway here have angst for an AU I’ve kept to myself

---------

Geno was tired.

Because there was, simply, no escape.

No matter what he tried to do, no matter what he did, no matter how he gave up… this would always happen.

He didn’t know it, but he knew it. It had to have happened before. Chara was not surprised by a “glitch” in the save screen, and he hadn’t been brought up to the kid at ALL until Sans said something.

He was certain following Gaster into the void wouldn’t stop anything either. He was the only thing keeping Sans from trying the DT again to somehow send another part of them here.

… how many times had this happened?

Geno stared blankly at the grass in front of him, scarf tucked over his skull. Had anyone else been around, they probably would have seen that his eye lights had vanished- making him look as dead as he really, really should be.

But he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

How many versions of him had tried the same exact thing and then given up? Clearly there had been no real solution found. But how many had tried? How many versions of this fraction of his soul had split? How many went mad with their first runs? How many lasted longer? How many let themselves dust out of depression, how many had accepted Gaster’s proposal?

Because Gaster had also said he wasn’t the first.

A tear fell down his cheek, dripping down to land onto the floor of the save screen.

… but he felt nothing.

How many times had Chara won? How many times had they failed?

A shudder shook the save screen. Geno looked up.

Another reset.

Another timeline gone because Geno was drowning in the hidden messages of meanings of timelines past.

Another tear fell to the floor.

Another.

The human once again walked up to Flowey.

All the rage Geno had once felt, all the pain and agony…

Did it all even matter, in the end? Would it ever lead to anything, was there anything he could do that no Geno had tried before?

Geno didn’t know.

He…

He didn’t know if he wanted to know.

Geno looked back down at the grass- the same as it had been since he had arrived, no matter how he tried to destroy it in anger or tried to dig it up to see if something was hiding under it.

Always.

The.

Same.

Had someone else been there with him, they would have seen the glitches that rolled over his body. They would have seen how they changed him, how he appeared bigger than he had been. How his melted eye light was visible and actively melting. How it looked like DT was flowing down his cheeks and arms like blood, how it stained his fingertips and feet. How his eyelight was a single red ringlet that stared into your soul, how the hood that had been made of the scarf shadowed his skull, his body decorated in pixels.

But then it was gone, like it was a simple blink of an eye.

Geno sighed, having not noticed anything wrong- not seen that he had changed.

How much longer would he last…?

#writing #basically #it’s a mash up of Aftertale and Dusttale #kiiiiinda #it’s very complicated #but I wrote it bc I misread the ask so I figured I’d post it #this AU rotates in my head once every few months #lil blorbo in my closet #his name is Pesticide #or at least that’s what he changes it to when he manages to glitch out of the save screen #feel free to ask me about him #he is very much a little baby man guy #Geno #Geno sans #Geno!sans #genocide!sans #genocide sans #genocide sans gaster #UTMV AU

14 notes · View notes

marshmallowgoop · 5 years

Note

Satsuki meta anon here again, apologies, but I was reading some meta that you wrote surrounding Soichiro/Isshin and his relatively necessity to abandon both his daughters, and wanted to contribute my own thoughts on the matter, specifically around the matter of difference of the nature of how alone both of them are. You nailed it completely with Ryuko. Isshin left Ryuko alone, wounded by his severance of their closeness in her early years and making it nearly impossible to bond with others. But-

-my reading of Satsuki’s situation is one of equal isolation, if of a different kind. Soichiro introduced her to a world where she can’t even trust her own mother, usually one of the, if not the most, strongest bonds a child could have at that age. Coupled with the fact that she was likely taught early on that being a child of a family with the wealth and power meant that people would try and use her for a piece of that, and you have a recipe for a grieving child incapable of trust without major investments of time and effort and frankly, some testing.

Soroi is in the employ of the family, paid by the family to serve Satsuki. In the beginning, while she accepted his attempts to comfort her via tea and an introduction of one of her closest friends, its very likely that she didn’t trust him right away even if she desperately wanted to bc of how closely money could play a part in that kind of trust. Yes Soichiro asked Soroi to look after her, but is that something he could have easily conveyed to her at that junction and have her believe it? I think the trust they attained by the time Satsuki went to middle school was very hard earned on Soroi’s part.

When it comes to Nonon, the light novel confirms that she didn’t find Satsuki interesting until she was very deeply troubled, a change that Satsuki very likely noticed the difference in her interest beyond that of two children of powerful families associating together. They may have been friends since preschool, but arguably Satsuki did not trust her until Nonon followed her away from a school that suited Nonon’s tastes and into a rougher one. Iori likely suffered from being placed in a similar boat as Soroi, not to be trusted for the sake of his uncle’s employment until proof otherwise (obviously earned as well, considering just how central Iori was to her plans and inner circle).

While Ryuko was utterly alone because of a broken ability to bond from separation anxiety turned to abandonment issues, Satsuki found herself alone among others who might very well sell her out for power or money, regardless of their true intentions. Both are very isolating situations. And I’d argue that trusting people with plans and secrets and perhaps your life are markedly different than fully entrusting your heart to them, which has been played up by the anime as a large difference between Ryuko and Satsuki. Where Ryuko opens her heart to Mako and Senketsu, Satsuki’s heart remains closed still until far later.

In fact, because of this, Ragyo saying ‘give your heart over to me’ (Netflix subs, I think I’ve seen it translated as ‘entrust your heart to me’ as well) has always stood out to me as understanding Satsuki doesn’t trust like that, which is what separates her from Nui and Rei.

Apologies for the length of this, and that I keep doing this your inbox, but this interpretation has been sitting inside of me since 2014.

Oh my goodness, Anon!

I hope this doesn’t come off wrong, but I think you really ought to be posting these analyses under your own name. You deserve credit for your excellent work! As much as I’m thrilled that someone would want to discuss these topics at such length with me—seriously, you do not have to apologize at all for engaging with my content so much because that is literally my goal—I feel that you should also be getting recognition for what you do. I know how much time and effort goes into writing stuff like this.

Of course, I do understand that there are valid reasons to wish to be anonymous. I just want to say that these are good, detailed posts that could stand very well on their own, without any input from me.

Regarding my input here, these asks remind me of a line from “KILL la KILL Digest -Naked Memories by Aikuro Mikisugi-,” a quick recap “episode” that was included as a DVD/Blu-ray extra. Narrated by Aikuro, the short briefly explains the entire plot of Kill la Kill and then sets up the OVA with its final lines: “As for Satsuki Kiryuin, who led such an intense life ever since she could remember, totally alone… What kind of clothes will she choose to wear from now on? That’s the one thing that intrigues me.”

As you might expect, I always disagreed with the sentiment of Satsuki being “totally alone.” In the tags of one post, I even wrote, in response, “Nah man you’re thinking of Ryuko” and, “Satsuki had Soroi and Shiro and her Elite Four.” As I argued in the essay that you’re probably referring to, Isshin/Soichiro left Ryuko alone—and drj2008 even opened me up to the idea that he perhaps very purposely created and utilized Ryuko’s loneliness so that she would be so desperate for love that she’d bond more easily with Senketsu—but Isshin/Soichiro did at least assure that Satsuki would always have someone by her side when he told Soroi to look after her.

And I think that’s the key point of difference here. I’d never before considered that Soroi would need to gain Satsuki’s trust because I assumed he had it from the very start. My interpretation was that Soroi had to be a dear, close friend of Soichiro for Soichiro to ever ask him to look after Satsuki, and Satsuki—who adored her father, arguably to a troubling degree—wouldn’t question her father’s judgment. From the moment Soroi and Satsuki met, I believed that she would know, just by understanding Soroi’s relation to her father, that Soroi was someone to be trusted.

But I see now that my reading makes a lot of assumptions. Who knows when exactly Soroi told Satsuki that Soichiro had asked him to look after her? Satsuki might have been informed that Soroi was her father’s choice in some way (which is… actually quite curious, honestly), and Soroi might have told her that he knew everything early on, but you’re right—we don’t really know. I think your reading is very fair.

Concerning Nonon, I agree completely. I found Nonon’s part in the light novel to be absolutely tragic. Talking about the story, I once said, “It just shows how Satsuki did not trust Nonon at all.” Nonon was head-over-heels infatuated with Satsuki, but Satsuki didn’t even bother to tell Nonon when she was moving schools. That’s the exact opposite of trust.

I swear I don’t normally talk about my fanfiction in my essays as much as I have been in these responses, but I explored Satsuki and Nonon’s dynamic in a short Satsunon Roman Empire AU. In my piece, Nonon learns that Satsuki is going away by hearing some chatter, and to prove to Satsuki that she’s worth trusting, she runs to Satsuki before Satsuki leaves, declaring that she’s coming with no matter what. At the end of the fic—and this is the relevant part here—Satsuki meets with Nonon again after the world has been saved, and Satsuki finally opens her heart up, noting that she wants Nonon by her side, as a friend and equal, and she’s done with being treated as a goddess to be worshipped.

And I think that’s a big thing you’re touching on here, Anon. Satsuki may have had all these people around her, but many of them considered her to be something more than human. And that is lonely. It’s difficult to reveal your insecurities and doubts and fears to someone who sees you as a god. After all, they’re probably not going to listen; they think you’re “above” all that. Satsuki was very much isolated, just like Ryuko.

However, I still disagree with Aikuro’s assertion that Satsuki was “totally alone,” mainly due to Soroi. Regardless of how long Satsuki took to open up to Soroi, I think she most certainly had trusted him with her heart at least by the events of the series. The moment where the two converse about Soroi’s tea in episode 17 is probably the most telling example within the show itself; Satsuki smiles genuinely for Soroi and even reveals her hidden emotions, readily admitting that she may have been more compassionate in the past.

I can’t definitively say how much Satsuki let Shiro or the Elite Four in, but Soroi? There is complete and total trust here. And while I dislike comparing Soroi to Senketsu because I feel this too easily lends itself to the interpretation that Senketsu is a father figure to Ryuko (which is my absolute least favorite reading of Kill la Kill and one that I consider to be a complete and total misreading of the text #PleaseStopSenketsuIsRyuko’sDadTheories2k19), I do have to admit that Soroi is, for the majority of the anime, the one person whom Satsuki seems to truly be herself with, just as Senketsu is for Ryuko.

Concerning the episode 17 scene mentioned above, I think it’s also pretty telling that Satsuki’s moment with Soroi occurs just after an intimate conversation between Ryuko and Senketsu that the script even emphasizes as a heart-to-heart that Ryuko deliberately wanted to have with Senketsu and Senketsu alone. Sure, I’ve argued in the past that the real connection between the scenes comes from Ryuko’s later chat with Aikuro and the fact that both Aikuro and Satsuki are discussing Soichiro/Isshin, but it’s also true that both Ryuko and Satsuki have very vulnerable, humanizing moments here. Soroi knows Satsuki’s heart, and she reveals it to him, just as Ryuko (quite literally!) shares her heart with Senketsu.

Of course, I think it’s clear that Ryuko’s relationship with Senketsu is one among peers while Soroi takes on a fatherly role for Satsuki in the place of Soichiro, but Soroi is still someone whom Satsuki trusts with her whole heart and soul. As pointed out, it may very well be true that Satsuki didn’t have that kind of trust in Soroi immediately, but I figure it can’t have taken too terribly long for the relationship between them to become close. After all, as noted in the aforementioned episode 17 scene, even young Satsuki smiled for Soroi when she had stopped smiling at school. Satsuki wasn’t being genuine, yes, but she was still breaking her hard guise for Soroi, and 18-year-old Satsuki is even surprised that she wasn’t honest back then, implying that she feels they’ve been as close as they are since practically the beginning.

I know this got terribly long, but I don’t at all disagree that Satsuki had also been subjected to an isolating situation. It is lonesome to feel, as outlined in an early advertisement introducing Satsuki’s character, that “humans are clothes-wearing pigs” whom she must “dominate,” “rule over,” and “destroy,” all while “relying on no one.” It is awful to believe that you have to do everything all alone, without sharing your true self with anyone.

And it’s sad, too! Satsuki’s struggles to truly trust others lead her to inadvertently hurt the people she cares about, and there’s something especially tragic about how Satsuki used and manipulated her own sister—whom Satsuki was fighting for all along!—rather than tell the girl the truth and trust her. As I’ve written in the past, “While Satsuki is not truly against Ryuko, her plan prevents them from being close. The thought of Satsuki fills Ryuko with hatred… when they could have been allies and friends. Satsuki’s tired, sad frown as Ryuko returns to normal [after going berserk in episode 12], juxtaposed with the Mankanshoku family’s shock and Nui’s bemusement, does well in hinting that maybe Satsuki wishes she had Mako’s power herself… and she’s sorry that she doesn’t.”

But more than all this, even Ryuko points out how alone Satsuki is after fighting Satsuki to a draw in episode 15. Ryuko only gets as far as she does by putting her complete and utter faith in Senketsu—and notably here, she follows through with his strategy even without knowing exactly what he intends to do—and she recognizes that Satsuki… doesn’t bond like that.

In pushing a point like this, I think the show definitely wants viewers to notice that Satsuki is stuck in a hard, isolating situation where she feels she can’t entrust her heart to anyone.

But I think the show also wants viewers to notice that Satsuki is more than capable of loving and trusting in the same way that Ryuko does. Ryuko doesn’t have a clue about someone like Soroi when she accuses Satsuki of being by herself, and as I’ve emphasized all throughout this monster of a post, I wholeheartedly believe that at least Soroi had fully earned Satsuki’s trust, even if it took a moment. Satsuki just about always had someone she felt safe with, whereas Ryuko… lost all that when her father abandoned her and didn’t find it again until she met the Mankanshokus and Senketsu. There’s a reason that one of Ryuko’s defining features is her loneliness, pointed out in her character introduction with the line, “Ever since I could remember, I was alone,” in her (and Senketsu’s) theme song “Before my body is dry” with lines like, “But I’m all alone,” and, “Don’t wanna be all alone,” in her fantasy world in episodes 20-21, and even by the cast, such as when the Mankanshokus note that Ryuko has to be super lonely to talk to her clothes or when even Ragyo tells Satsuki to go join her “lonely little sister” in death.

Ryuko gets a lot of heat for not being as strong as Satsuki upon learning her true origins, but I argue that you can’t really blame her. Even if Satsuki closed off her heart to most people, she undoubtedly grew up with a support system that Ryuko did not have until practically adulthood. Satsuki manages to keep her head up and carry on not only because of her immeasurable resolve and ambition, but also because she has a lifetime of love and support. Satsuki is not as alone as Ryuko claims (and I’d really like the Satsuki-centric Kill la Kill the Game: IF to elaborate on Ryuko understanding as much), and I feel that Soroi is genuinely an unsung hero of Kill la Kill. Could Satsuki have been nearly as strong without his influence?

I guess this is maybe a bit off topic, though.

In any case, I definitely agree that Satsuki struggled to open her heart to others, and I definitely agree that this is a hard, sad, awful place to be in. Part of what makes Satsuki’s team-up with Senketsu near the end of the series so sweet to me is that it is here that Satsuki really begins to open up. She doesn’t look down on Senketsu, she acknowledges his feelings, and in a cut moment from the script, she even outright tells him to wear her, thereby fully and completely trusting him to work with her and save Ryuko. Senketsu noting that his and Satsuki’s “hearts are as one” in episode 21 is one of the most heartwarming things in the entire anime when you consider everything that Satsuki has gone through. She’s been afraid to trust and afraid to show her true self to anyone, and yet… to save her sister, she opens up her heart to someone she had once considered evil and incapable of love.

And after this? Satsuki, despite saying in her introduction that she will be “bowing down to no one,” bows down to Ryuko.

And she smiles openly.

She laughs.

Satsuki was absolutely stuck in this lonesome, isolating position. But just like Ryuko, she gets out of it—and just like Ryuko, it’s so incredibly, incredibly sweet that she does.

#kill la kill #satsuki kiryuin #mitsuzo soroi #ryuko matoi #isshin matoi #soichiro kiryuin #senketsu #Anonymous #replies #ramblings #klk meta #gifs i made #whoops sorry this got way more out of hand than i expected ^^;#also dang i never realized how many 's'-names are in this show

68 notes · View notes

makeroomforthejolyghost · 7 years

Text

trying 2 articulate a Grievance i have long had, or like. a thing that makes me kinda uncomfortable. about most fandom portrayals of joly. (so, u know, nothin outta the ordinary here.) this... may take a while haha

so: i know it is the duty of every conscientious les mis fan 2 remember it would contradict historical accuracy 2 insist that joly’s owning one necessarily means he requires use of a cane in 1828-32. but frankly? as a 23-y/o [ex-]hypo who walks w/ a cane, not bc she Can’t Not, but bc to stand unassisted is for her an enormous waste of spoons? i’m just glad i’ve never seen anyone suggest joly “just thinks he needs one.”

like. 4 my current purpose, anyway, the author’s pretty dead? since if u asked me point-blank how victor hugo intended joly i’d admit i doubt the question whether joly’s a Real hypochondriac entered his mind, and that he most likely didn’t intend for us to read joly as needing his cane since probably if he’d meant it that way the subject would’ve come up again--would have been relevant to the plot somehow, &c. &c., since for-no-reason representation wasn’t rly a thing back then. but the objective of for-no-reason representation, re disability, is to assert that ppl like me n joly need no excuse to exist, so. i recommend factitiously misreading victor hugo’s intention! this is just a disclaimer, beggin ur permission to Read Too Much Into Everything

but ngl, i feel kinda threatened by interpretations of canon-joly as physically but not mentally ill/disabled. my philosophy here is “LET’S HAVE BOTH,” but headcanon joly is Basically Me, so before i understood myself as deserving to be called physically disabled/chronically ill i projected that self-doubt onto him as well. and that’s still my favorite reading of how joly sees himself in canon? whereas jolys who’re fairly self-possessed n confident re being disabled and whose illness-experience includes no sign of ocd-spectrum anxiety seem 2 me neither accurate nor like the pinnacle of Good Representation.

of course on the list of “joly headcanons that make me uncomfortable” these fellows trail waaaay behind abled jolys, or, god 4bid, the ones that keep his canonical team-mommishness n proxy-hypochondria re his friends but drop the self-defensive sword-clanking he also does in canon. the modern AUs where he’s a perfectly successful doctor?--yeah. i can’t stand those, cane or no cane. but i guess what i’m trying to say is that i rly like the gesture of solidarity implied by headcanons that insist on joly’s being physically disabled/chronically ill, but rly don’t like when this smacks of a wish 2 reassure him that being sick means he isn’t bats. i doubt his illness respects this dichotomy

and plenty of people do write him that way--sickbats, i mean. but i wish the fandom was more cognizant of what that would imply! canon-joly’s aberrantly vindicated by physical proof that he’s For Real Sick; if u read him as [physically] disabled/chronically ill then the tone he takes in preliminary gaieties suggests joly fears and yet risks the imputation he’s faking (or imagining, exaggerating, milking) disability, by daring to acknowledge it in public. because, as every abled-passing person knows who’s ever gone too long without diagnosis, “physical proof” promises ur only escape from the imputation you’re Faking It, but also, seems a harbinger of certain doom, since, when you don’t know your problem is, nothing bad can happen to you without your figuring ah yes. clearly, the end is near

my point is, if joly uses a cane because disabled rather than just because 1832 i don’t think this can/should be left unconnected to his, uh. “somatic symptom disorder,” i guess? that fancy dsm-5 term kinda creeps me out, for a bunch of confusing ineffable reasons, but i employ it here instead of plain ol “hypochondria” to drive home that for most of us it’s not about fear of being or becoming ill; it’s an ocd-spectrum disorder characterized by unexplained ailments + health anxiety. and unexplained doesn’t mean imaginary–whether molière thought so or not. it means undiagnosed. so if med school’s made joly more a patient than a doctor the fact his anxiety got him there does not make that less true. it’s difficult to tell what ur body won’t let you do from what ur brain won’t let you do when these mutually reinforce each other; if you believe illness prevents you from doing something, then even if you’re mistaken about the nature of your illness, it’s still true that illness prevents u from doing that thing. even if all this amounts to is that you’re too scared to try. bc to have prohibitive anxiety around it still means you can’t do it. and that’s... not unpathological.

AND IF THAT’S WHAT’S UP. if his cane compensates for these unexplained ailments. then he would need it symbolically as well as physically? he’d need it to walk, and also, to end the argument over whether he Deserves xyz. and maybe he’d pretend it was an aesthetic choice in order to evade reproach about malingering or playing for sympathy! i think [in canon era] he’d pass it off as affectation until/unless other people implied as much, at which point he’d defend himself as needing it without even knowing anymore whether he gets to make that claim, bc at this point even to him it seems Too Convenient. probably he’d end up with warped gratitude toward his own debility just for reflecting what he already knew; why else would you check your tongue in the mirror when you know you’re about to die, right? a joly who forgets he’s not faking it and compulsively reassures himself of his… in/validity is my favorite joly and, i think, the most accurate. but i am projecting 2.

however i think this is more of a representation/aesthetic-philosophical complaint than one about accuracy. bc i get the sense that to portray joly as physically disabled and, if also mentally ill at all, then in ways unconnected to said physical disability (i.e. to believe him implicitly and thus take away the need for his self-doubt and resulting health anxiety) is, like. the Responsible thing to do, as a sick-both-ways person. and i don’t agree w/ that at all? it seems both equally-important and equally-interesting to me to acknowledge that self-doubt/impostor syndrome and ocd-spectrum anxiety are inextricable parts of the diagnostic process, esp. since that’s... the point joly is at. in canon. and idg why the idealized wish-fulfillment version of his canon position should be the one the fandom prioritizes. i want both, is all i’m sayin.

#joly #les mis tag #i require diseases of importance #and the other hamburger will also be made of your lungs

5 notes · View notes