cas' eyes are dark brown/black actually. y'all are not seeing the truth like i am.

I think what gets me about the popularity of mattmello as a ship historically tied to the late 00s early 2010s is that by virtue of how little background we get from the source material it is almost entirely based on 1. aesthetics and 2. speculation/fanon 

which like i understand (very common phenomenon. remember jeanmarco) and i am definitely not immune to fall out boy looking ass anime boys (specially at the time when i would’ve been like 14-16) but imo it is categorically the kind of engagement with a source material thats akin to me to like. coffee shop aus. more about coming in with pre-established tropes you enjoy and assigning them to blorbos than truly intellectually engaging with what makes the characters compelling in the first place within the narrative. which is a perfectly valid way to engage with fandom its just very boring to me

so like coming into the second half of death note for the very first time in my late 20s and having this wealth of more than a decade of fanworks to explore just makes mattmello so funny and absolutely baffling to me because on the one hand you have what is this very sharply written unique set up for this lopsided rivalry ripe with intense freudian issues and sexual tension in which both characters are bizarrely obsessed with each other. whatever crack cocaine they put in that one control room scene. yes yes the picture of you i keep on me at all times. dear mello. near threatening death note murder-suicide at the drop of a hat. the fascinating narrative cycle of juxtaposing a new generation of genius minds that mirrors light & l, separation by death but this time by working with each other rather than against each other, the triumph and tragedy of sacrifice in the name of the greater good, the endless ramifications of being shaped together and against each other for a specific purpose. one of them was always doomed from the beginning and it was never in his hands! it didn't have to be this way but it always was going to. something something about the inevitable downfall of intellectual twin flames.

 and on the other hand you have 60 second best friend anime boy who admittedly races cars and smokes cigarettes. which. to be totally fair. is pretty much two of the sexiest activities an anime boy can do. but my point remains

anyway you may think i am relitigating decades long shipping discourse but my actual real thesis for this whole post IS that i would bet real life money that 00s yaoi history would’ve gone down DRASTICALLY different if near had looked a bit more like a slut. literally. imagine if his character design was, like, a tattered wifebeater and some spiky silver chains. thumb rings. white shirt draped around his elbows (i also think this would solve 80% of the shallow "near is just a secondhand L" takes but this post is already too long)

anyway, tl;dr society if near had shown some shoulder

sorry for thinking it would be sooooooo hot if tim was collared and tied up. as if it's MY fault

"i still say you ain't never been laid" "yeah whatever, you be my first" like fucking HELLO. it's perfect because diogo would 100 percent jump millers bones and miller is the exact kind of pathetic to sleep with diogo. like can we please talk about them i want to talk about them

Mirror Images

dalinar hates pride but he would go for renarin. because he loves renarin very much <3

It began on a random night in 2014. When I learned that you could be transgender, that the dreams and visions I had had were not only feasible but a reality many folks lived. My hrt journey started in 2016 but my trials and tribulations to learn, understand, and mold womanhood into what truly incorporates my identity began in 2021.

It was no longer about what medications could do for me, but the evolution and growth I could achieve by my own hands. I found womanhood as a black woman, fighting against social norms and perceptions that already percieved me as highly masculine and hyper-sexualized. Having to writhe, rumble, and generally fight to be seen and heard is never a reality I would've imagined. However, 7 years later, I am the most beautiful and charismatic black woman I had ever dreamed I would be. I'm wise as my aunt is, navigating social situations with the grace and finesse she bears, I am as confident as a wild storm, bending to the will of no one and carving the path that I am destined.

When I was in my adolescence, I dreamed of becoming a charismatic, influential, and beautiful black woman. I am now 24 feeling as if I finally made it. I'm the person I only ever hoped I would blossom into; the person that I envisioned when I read on tumblr that "things get better". If you are reading this, pre social or medical transition or shivering in fear of what being a transgender woman would mean for you, your safety, and your future, I want you to know that I made it. I survived passed the life expectancy of a black transgender woman and I am fucking thriving despite the adversities and walls set against me. Love yourself, embrace your truth, and let no one dictate who or what you will blossom into.

- Noelle Velora Perera

i’m not going to claim to completely understand what it’s like to identify with any gender that isn’t my own experience as a gnc trans man. But i sometimes notice this weird disconnect where in my day to day life, i am often assumed to be nonbinary, and that’s warranted, i present in a way that makes people question my gender. I identified with being nonbinary for a while, but i eventually came to terms with the fact that despite not totally understanding gender and feeling like i will never be able to know 100% what maleness or femaleness feels like, i want my body to be more masculine, i like masculine terms and being referred to as male- so i identify with maleness more than anything else, which i suppose can be described as binary. I will refer to myself as binary often, but more so because i want to be referred to masculinily and not neutrally and its the easiest way to say that- but i generally don’t consider myself on the binary or not, i don’t believe in the concept that at least my gender experience could be described with being either binary or not. I am not treated in the world as a binary man, so i don’t tend to identify with that as a group i fall into. Gender is the internal sense of self, but my external experiences being percieved still shape it for me. The issue comes up with when some people use the fact that i am a binary person to claim i lack understanding of certain aspects of being nonbinary, despite passing as such actively and identifying with it heavily in the past. It frustrates me when people assume i do not understand the struggles of misgendering and degendering, because i experience both in my life frequently. I don’t want to say that i know it as well as someone who identifies that way, but i just want to be clear that i think that drawing a line between binary and nonbinary experiences can be a bit reductive at times, when a lot of trans people, especially gnc trans people, do share in an understanding of their gender that is also seen as atypical to the cisgender population. The way that i identify with maleness can be seen as so alien to some cisgender men that it is essentially a seperate concept. Gender is not a universal truth, we can only speculate on what it means to be something or not. I just struggle at times with the intersection of having to define myself as being on the binary or not.

So fucking glad to see someone talk about SSS Class revival hunter 😭 I lived it so much and I feel like no one ever mentions it against more popular titles like ORV or even The Lout of the counts family, so I'm so glad to come here and see your amazing takes :>

Thank you for the ask which lets me talk about SSSCRH (the version I read was titled 'Suicide Hunter', which tbh I like more - no beating around the bush).

It's hard to draw an accurate comparison since I'm going off just the webtoon for SSSCRH, while I'm going off both the webtoon and the webnovel for ORV. And I love ORV, ORV is my media blorbo right now, it hydraulic presses my brain, I am writing ORV fanfic - it's, like, funner to enjoy. But SSSRH is just better. In the vast majority of ways it is is better. It's better than the holy trinity by a wide margin. TW talk of suicide obviously.

I can't believe I'm saying this but you need a basic understanding of Buddhism in order to understand SSSCRH. It's not about Gongja's suicides - he doesn't suicide from depression or lack of self-esteem. SSSCRH is about suffering in the Buddhist sense - dukkha. I don't want to make this an essay, so I might reblog this with more information, but extremely shortly:

The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism is the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering, and the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering. You've heard that Buddhists say 'life is suffering'. To put it one way that doesn't require defining a lot of words: the cause of suffering is experiencing the world as we percieve it instead of how it truly is. Suffering isn't just being miserable and in pain, and life isn't suffering because life sucks and global warming exists and people voted for Trump. Life is suffering because we can experience beautiful and joyful moments in this world, but we do not exist in the moment of that happiness or place our ego/'self' between us and that happiness. Living in that moment, accepting the moment as it is unconditionally, is freedom from suffering. The Buddha tries to free people from suffering through teaching Buddhism.

"What does this have to do with the webnovel and manwha about a guy murdering himself thousands of times" it has everything to do with it. Because SSSCRH is about suffering, and it is about using suffering as a tool in order to experience a world unfiltered by ego and break down the artificial boundaries between human beings. Suffering in SSSCRH is not a bad thing. Gongja has the unique capability to (reincarnate.) experience a person's suffering in unity with them, which dissolves the delusion of separation between people and puts us in touch with the reality of oneness.

The Murim arc was fucking insane because Gongja pulls a Big Bodhisattva Move and walks through the suffering of the world in order to achieve full understanding of the human experience. He takes all of the suffering of the world into himself and is liberated. You can tell it's Buddhist because death was not presented as a bad thing - death was an aspect of a happy ending for the Heavenly Demon lady, because she was finishing her life according to her own joy, and because her teachings were passed on she did not truly die.

But the purpose of embracing suffering is to discover the ability to fully embrace life, and that's where Heavenly Demon's teachings were incomplete - as the ghost dude said, Gongja hasn't even experienced his own full life and the infinite capability for his own happiness. You can only feel the depths of sadness when you've felt the depths of happiness. Sadness deserves its place in the world and it can strengthen you, but so does happiness.

Gongja is attention-seeking, envious, and unbelievably petty. When he drills down into his own desires and why he wants the things he wants, you see that he has a very strong sense of justice and right and wrong - he realizes he doesn't want to be famous, he wants to be acknowledged, but on an even deeper level he is desperate for love and to be loved. Everything he does is to experience love, and as such he learns to love others. His love for the Flamey Asshole was purely parasocial and ego-filled, with no concern for who he was as a human. Throughout the manwha, he grows to care for people as they truly are and pierce through any delusions or misleading outward appearances. He has released all attachment to life and death, and as such does not fear death, and as such has taken a step on the road towards becoming a Boddhisatva who frees others from the cycle of samsara, and as a result has learned sick sword techniques and is sooo good at beating people up.

I think the only other thing I want to mention here because otherwise this is an essay: in almost every time loop/regression story, only the final regression matters. In stories with dungeon monsters and NPCs, only the humans matter. The regressor exists in a space where there are no consequences for their actions, so they act terribly and do whatever because none of it matters. In Groundhog Day Bill Murray acts like an asshole because he can. That's not the case here. Everything Gongja does matters. The NPCs are fake, but Gongja never treats them as anything less than real people who deserve life. Once he understands a person's life he never treats them as unimportant. No loop is thrown away and no person or life is disregarded. His choices matter, the way he treats others matters, and Gongja never treats anybody as if they don't matter except for himself.

That was not short. There is a lot more. The female characters are so good and so rich. From a craft perspective it is excellently paced and has a wonderful sense of set-up/payoff and balances tone and maintains a lot of momentum, which is really hard in a time loop story. You have to do a few very specific things to write OP characters well and SSSCRH does it very well. There's more to say from a craft perspective and it's hard to judge accurately from a webtoon but it's good. I was so strangely struck the entire time about how sincere and genuine it was, how it said what it said with no trace of irony of confusion, and I think that's what stuck with me the most.

TL;DR: SSS Class Revival Hunter is good for a lot of very normal reasons, such as excellent pacing and set-up/pay off and characters, but it's also so sincerely and genuinely Buddhist that it blew my tits clean off.

most shameful ask of my life. i would love to hear your analysis of nagito komaeda. you don't have to actually rant about him but know that there's people interested in hearing that

So, I do have an entire google document of my feelings about Nagito I wrote a few years ago, I never edited it, so maybe my feelings have changed, but I'm too lazy to research and think about it again. I made this because I feel like Nagito is never understood by the fandom, and most people just think hes a selfish asshole or completely hypocritical. Just a warning: this is 2k+ words long, and I will not provide screenshots of what i'm referencing ( Because again, i wrote this ramble years ago and am not in the fandom much anymore, so i can't be assed to do it). Anyways, have fun reading! (MAJOR SPOILERS)

NAGITO KOMAEDA, CONTROLLER OF SITUATIONS

Nagito consistently encourages the ultimates around him to create hope and talks about how useless he is but then acts like he is a crucial part to make hope. In the 5th trial, he attempts to kill everyone because he feels like he's the only person there who could create hope.. which in a way is technically true and I will talk about why later, and to many people this can be written off at a one time thing. ... but it keeps happening. As Servant, he manipulates the situation continuously and manipulates the kids into thinking  he will be a help just so hope can get created, and he promises to make Monaca even worse than Junko just for hope. Even through his life as a student, he literally attempted to bomb the gymnasium because he didn't think a good hope could get created. He also tries to kill Junko to create hope because he feels like he can stop her. He takes control of every hope-creating situation that's accessible to him to the point that the people he's encouraging to create hope barely even have the option to be without him, which I don't even think he FULLY notices it's what he does. He brute forces his way into controlling every hope-making situation while saying it depends on everyone else.

I mean, I think even if he's full of hatred for himself, he tends to wish he wasn't, and these cravings of self importance leak through. I think he openly states this to Hajime. In his final message, he says " I should have never made fun of Hajime. Deep down, I always wanted to be a protagonist myself too. " Though lots of people took this as a final way to make fun of Hajime's yearning to be special, people tend to forget that even though Nagito can say very rude things, it is how he's communicating his feelings. His emotional communication often comes out in inappropriate ways, especially in a snarky attitude; and there's no doubt that Nagito sarcastically tormented Hajime in chapter 4, there's always some kind of truth hidden underneath his remarks and undoubtedly he's expressing his true feelings. So when speaking about how he wished he was a protagonist, It's not a complete "final kick" at Hajime.

Nagito is being sincere. He feels as though he wishes he felt like he's more important  in his life, which is the hope and despair cycle.  I mean, he literally asks them to call him the " Ultimate hope " right after ffs.

NAGITOS PERCIEVED ENDLESS LIFE CYCLE, AND CONNECTION TO HIS SELF ESTEEM

Though, I'm not done with that yet. I think that's only his feelings on how he wished he was like in his current time, struggling with his hope and despair cycle. Deeper down, He feels like he wished he didn't hate himself or overly love himself, and instead lived a normal life with no hope and despair cycle to bother him and full of people giving their love to him while he gives that love back.

We know this because of the anime episode dedicated to exploring his deepest desires and wants. World Destroyer AI tells him that he was on the deepest level of consciousness they went to, and everyone's deepest desires were higher up and they were already awake. Though I think this could be a reference to Nagito's sickly state of having cancer + dementia, I think it's more of a comment on how far he's pushed his truest desires down into himself.

Nagito crushed his OWN hopes, because he believes he's stuck the way he currently is. Supporting evidence would be both his monologues about hope among the common people, and also in the same episode he denies that what World destroyer AI saw in his consciousness is not what he wishes for at all, which is almost immediately confirmed to be a lie by AI. Backtracking on what I just said and expanding, we also see what Nagito's true desires are. He wants to have positive social connections with others, and he's tired of being by himself and not accepted for having out-there views. Even outside of this episode, this gets mentioned a LOT.. when Nagito gets the despair disease, and in his free time events. When he gets the despair disease Monokuma calls what he's having " liar disease " which though a very basic conclusion I dont think is completely accurate. Many of the things he says in his state weren't even lies, they were just outright gibberish that made no sense. I think it's a way of showing how Nagito feels when talking to people. No one has ever understood him his whole life, and it's extremely despairing to him. With his free time events, he admits that now that he's slowly dying he realized what he truly wants is someone's love. He quickly covers it up ( speculated it's because he saw Hajime started to empathize with him and wanted him not to, because anyone that gets close to him ends up having bad things happen to them due to his luck cycle ) and claims he just quoted a book.

Soo.. Why does Nagito hate himself? Why does he feel like no one likes him or no one should currently like him? His misfortune and traumatic past. Nagito's entire life, bad things happen to the ones he cares about, including himself. His dog died, his parents died, and he was kidnapped. He had absolutely no one. He says his mother never complimented him and the kidnapper realized he was useless so he threw him in a garbage bag. Everyone in his life saw him as useless growing up, and he feels like if someone did care about him, he'd cause them to die like the others. He can only fly on private jets because of this, because no one he's close to has a chance of dying on a plane like how his parents did.

WHAT HOPE AND DESPAIR MEANS IN DANGANRONPA

Okay now i wanna  talk about Hope and despair in the Danganronpa universe and Nagito's relationship to it! So first of all we're going to have to define key descriptors of what hope and despair is in the danganronpa universe.

Hope: Absolute good, The future, the truth, talent, belief, and luck.

Despair: Absolute evil, Grief, hatred, anger, nihilism, unluck, also the truth, in some cases

Nagito's relationship with talent is actually very unique and directly linked  to his view of true hope. Nagito believes people are born with their talents, you don't  just develop them over time.  I used to actually agree with him ( about talent within the danganronpa universe )  but Nagisa's  backstory I think actually disproves this. Nagisa is the ultimate scholar, but that isn't because he's just naturally good. His father forced him to study almost 24 hours a day, lots of the time to study and see how much you can force such a child to study and excel until they break. This is not a natural development of talent at all, so talent is not something you're born with. I think he just thinks this because his talent is pretty supernatural with how it works and also a little self hatred over the fact he has a talent.

Nagitos talent is SO fucking weird. He's the 2nd ultimate luck we've gotten and his luck works in a way different way than how Makotos does. Nagito's luck happens in a cycle, meaning if he's lucky one time there will be something unlucky following it, with luck following after and so on. For example, when he was a child he went on a plane with his parents and someone hijacked the plane. That's unlucky. but then, a VERY asteroid conveniently showed up and hit their plane, killing  the hijacker, which is pretty lucky. However,  later his parents died because the asteroid sent them into a plane crash, which is unlucky. but AGAIN, he inherited tons of money because his parents were rich, which he considers to be pretty lucky.

Growing up, this cycle has led him into lots of traumatic situations, which made him more dependent on his good luck and hope. He constantly pieced luck +  good together, with his personal experiences as reinforcements, which means luck and hope are together because hope is absolute good.  This is a trauma response for Nagito, he's become so obsessed with hope that  he will take any opportunity to try and create the most powerful hope everyone has ever seen. He thinks hope will save everyone, just like how it "saved" him every time he had a bad situation. He pretty much equates having bad luck to the common people , evident by his episode dedicated to himself. I don't really know why TBH with you. I just know he does by a bunch of examples in the games and episodes.

He has no control over his luck UNLESS he believes in it.  Believing was how he pulled off most of the 5th trial and the final dead room. However, we know he does win games like rock paper scissors and tic tac toe every single time haha, even if he doesn't want to. He apologizes when he does. So the extent of control over his luck is believing in it.  He has no control over his misfortune though, and it usually manifests in it hurting the people he loves sadly. So, it's safe to say Nagito's luck and misfortune cycle is linked to hope and despair . Believing in anything linked to hope makes it stronger as well. 

Now here's where we get into Nagito's moral fucked up-ness. Nagito is extremely morally fucked, he will literally not hesitate to bomb a fucking school  if it means stronger hope will arise. To him, hope is naturally stronger than despair, so any despair you create will be weaker than the hope that overcomes it.  This is why he appears almost not brainwashed at all by Junko  and has ulterior motives against everyone else when coming apart from the ultimate despair.

Nagito still LOVES hope, and hes willing to literally help with genocide because hes so convinced that an even more powerful hope will overcome it. He's never afraid to offer himself up to die for hope. He pretty much controls every room he's in and purposely makes it harder for everyone because he either 1. is testing to see how hopeful they all are and/or 2. making the situation more despairing for hopes sake. 

Because he values talent so strongly, he thinks that since talented people are born that way, anyone who is not talented only purpose is to submit themselves as a target for despair so every ultimate can use it as a stepping stone for a bigger hope. To him, someone with no talent's natural level of hope in them is very small and weak compared to someone with talent. A group of common folks hope just will not suffice to create a future filled with absolute good. Though Nagito only considers his talent an actual talent depending on when he actually needs it. He thinks luck is pretty worthless, but when it's for hope, it's worth a lot. He never thinks that ultimate luck is as low as non-talented people on the ‘hope scale’ though.

I’d also like to add there’s like multiple ways you can achieve  the label of ultimate hope. Makoto, who has ultimate luck defeated Junko who's the ultimate despair, so he's now considered the ultimate hope. In the dr universe the ultimate hope is like the highest rank of ultimate you could EVER  be.  Izuru Kamukura is also the ultimate hope, but this is because he has every single talent in existence and he's considered a godlike entity. 

Random add on, Difference n samesies between Nagito and Hajime

I was just thinking of sames n differences between nagito n hajime n i just think its very interesting their like... characters are showcasing the same thing but different versions of it. they both know very well the harshness of the concept of talent in the danganronpa universe n find different ways to cope with it, yet they still fall under the same category of "losing yourself entirely" ... Hajime does this in a Very obvious way, since he literally signs himself up for a life altering surgery that he knew very well would completely get rid of himself. He knew he would disappear, but he did not like himself so much  that he would rather have disappeared for talent.  However, with Nagito, he does this in another way... he is absolutely obsessed with talent, but except for feeling bad about himself for not being " as talented” ( even though ultimate luck is arguably the most interesting talent in the whole franchise )  he accepts this. He accepts he is seen as worthless unlike Hajime, and he uses this to help bring more hope. he Tries to get people to kill him for hope ALL THE FUCKING TIME, until he eventually decides to do it himself when he finds out everyone is despair. he decides to become the savior for hope and talent. Hajime submits to talent and hope, while Nagito completely dominates the concept.

In conclusion, Nagito Komaeda is a character who hates the cycle he believes he’s been subjected to, but also thinks it is the most useful tool. He hates his life and wants a different one, but doesn’t think it is possible, so he attempts to find self-worth and satisfaction in something that is possible: helping to create hope for the future of humankind.

What if I said that Nagito's luck cycle isn't even real? In a way, because his belief is such a strong force to his luck's effectiveness, maybe the only reason this cycle hes in exists is because he believes its true. Maybe he could have a normal life if he believed in it, but his life long misfortune has cemented this outlook in his mind too much. This is why I think Makoto x Nagito is the healthiest choice for Nagito but that's a rant for another time. ;3

also kendall going all "we're just kidding man" at roman when he made that insane joke about wanting to 'fuck' their dad longer. i am seeing and percieving the roman roy truth

Finally got wind of that "pro delusion" blog and I really encourage all people who have a difficult relationship with reality to stay away from it.

Url is "prodelusion" and they advocate for encouraging delusions, like it is bodily autonomy in practice and not something potentially dangerous and could possibly harm others. There is a difference in not supporting unwelcome reality checks and encouraging reality breaks.

Do not harass them. Just block and report if applicable.

Edit: Found that they consider this transabled/"medpunk". It's ableist. Fuck you.

If anyone who does want to know how to treat people with delusions: Don't encourage them, or disprove them without consent. Both can send someone further into a delusion and can put them in more distress. Stay neutral, and focus on the person experiencing it's feelings and how to not engage with the delusion.

Section below the readmore is going to be why this is harmful, written by me who has stress and trauma based delusions and hallucinations. Please, do not read past that if it may trigger your own delusions and hallucinations. It's going to mention:

- How distressing double-bookkeeping can be at times

- What I call "persecutory erotomania," something I experience where both of those types of delusions collide

- Persecutory delusions

- DMS (Delusional Misidentification Syndrome), like clinical lycanthropy but on a less severe scale, Cotard's

It opens with short descriptions of delusions I have gotten before.

My delusions and hallucinations are stress and trauma-induced. I have to say that and that my experiences do not apply to everyone. My delusions and hallucinations tend to be episodic but it is very easy to trigger one. Sometimes it is getting a hit to the head, other times it is just stress or encountering a trauma trigger.

Some of my delusions are harmless. Being physically a character/doll/cat but stuck in the body of someone else or hexed to never be able to show anyone what I really look like.

Others are not. Believing that something outside my room is here to kill me, my abusive ex is trying to get me back through magic, thinking my arm is rotting and needs to be sawed off due to it, thinking I am a pre-contract magical girl and hearing Kyubey communicating with me telepathically to find it which would make me go out at night alone.

My percieved reality is quite different from the one in which everyone else seems to live because of this. So when I tell people that it's stressful to be aware of this but also be desperately seeking some sort of understanding, a lot of them don't understand and immediately try to disprove it to help. That, along with my delusions often having some little grain of truth to them, makes them more distressing.

So, I stopped telling people. Even when I feel like I cannot take living in two different worlds and once and like it is tearing me apart, I hardly tell anyone.

Encouraging even my harmless delusions will make me more isolated as I dive deeper into it. They aren't exactly always harmless either. As a doll, I am fragile and feel like my body will break if I am not careful. I wouldn't be able to do things.

It is not empowering to encourage delusions, especially those that cause harm or can very quickly if encouraged. It is downright dangerous.

You know watching PPP has completely flipped my interpretation of PP3 and PPFI.I think I am having a delayed heartbreak.Before PPP I definitely saw their interactions at the end of PPFI as romantic/at least something that resembles more than a working relationship.But now with context it looks like two people who understands they have a different understanding of justice and decided to be amicable about it.Funnily enough I don’t think I would even call them friends at that point let alone possible romantic partners.It feels more like they have resigned themselves to the fact their ideals of justice would never converge.That’s a huge deal breaker for friendship let alone romance.The best possible scenario for me would be if they released ppp chronologically.That way I could save myself the massive heartbreak of PP3+PPFI.Also as much as I have tried I just can’t ignore the writers and director.I have always perceived Kougami and Akane as very romantic.The nature of their ideologies.The absolute trust they have in each other .Twin flames who just couldn’t be together because of circumstances of the society they live under.Now that I know as both evidenced by canon and cast interviews that they are supposed to be percieved as platonic work buddies who don’t see eye to eye and they’ll never fall in love I have to go back and reevaluate the entire understanding of their relationship,maybe even pp because pp to me has always meant Shinkane/Kouaka.I feel like I don’t even know the charecters anymore.I swear the loss of romance aspects don’t even bother me quite as much as them setting up Kougami as Akane’s ideological opponent/foil.For me it has always been Akane and Kougami vs Sybil/everything.But now they have turned the tables and the way it’s being set up Akane vs Kougami is going to be at least the secondary if not the main conflict of the series conclusion.Their conflict has been as unresolved as ever.They’ll be in the ideological opposition again.It hurts more than I ever imagined to put things into perspective.Of course they should tell the story they want to tell.But going forward I don’t think Kouaka is possible romantically in canon anymore(in their defence they told us point blank).In conclusion I feel bad about it but I am not sure if I can enjoy PP anymore because how do you reconcile two people who you percieved as soulmates ending up as opposition who will never meet in the middle?I can’t and it’s breaking my heart.Maybe someday I’d be able to be less bitter and more objective about the source material.But right now I can’t.I need to grieve.

I also feel like Akane is alone in her fight for justice and Kogami is constantly being proved right (explosions, fights, etc. No more literary Kogami). He was reduced to violence for violence’s sake.

I was thinking about what he said, that he agreed with Tonami, but that he believed in her because she’s always trying to do the right thing. I wish there was more of that. I wish he really tried to believe in her.

One of the novels, I remember, describes his arrival to SeaUN. There’s a part where people are celebrating in the distance and he asks why are they celebrating? And someone tells Kogami: “it’s the birth of a baby or a wedding.” He says something along the lines of “those are good things. Those are the things she fights for. I’ll fight for that too.” (It was @cleverwolfpoetry’s translation.) And I love that. That’s the Kogami that I absolutely adore.

Him training the guerrillas because these are oppressed people with clouded hues relegated to an inferior caste and with no power to fight back. Him fighting for the right for everyone to decide if they want a corporation like Sibyl to control their lives or not, which is the same thing Akane wants and was able to achieve after talking to Sibyl as Chairman Han. Maybe him being disappointed when people vote in favor of Sibyl. That’s Kogami.

Maybe he knows Akane is right, but her dreams are unattainable. The truth is somewhere between them two, but I don’t know if this is something they want to explore anymore in PP. It seems like their visions have become flat and one-dimensional at this point.

In S1, Kogami is a cynic but Akane reminds him of things worth fighting for. And Akane is naive but Kogami allows her to see beyond and look at evil in the face. Both things are necessary for a detective: protecting people and understanding that people can be evil. Kogami and Akane’s natures remain the same, but being able to understand the point of the view of the other is what made their relationship so beautiful.

I always said that the true resistance to a system like that would be to love each other. To say “fuck you” to the system. At this point both characters are distanced, disconnected. It’s like their relationship hasn’t evolved. I don’t know if what Akane did would make it evolve.

I just know that she’s the loneliest of characters and it seems like she’s leading that fight alone while everyone else is busy shooting each other or playing Machiavellian political games. If the writers are smart or if Urobuchi comes back (he won’t), they would show a real uprising caused by what Akane did. Maybe she’ll even be sacrificed.

She’s the one who’s always asking “what was I born for?” That question still hasn’t been answered. Seeing Kogami fight for her sake, for a better future, would be peak Kogami again.

One can dream…

That heartbreak you’re feeling I had it when I finished the mess that was S3. I don’t know why they went in the direction they went but I was so disappointed that I also grieved for a while. I guess that protected me from heartbreak watching PPP.

WIP Wednesday: What Next

So those who follow my work on The Clockwork Boy may have noticed that I recently finished the preliminary edit of the thing at the end of last week. The question does come naturally, what is next. Now that I'm back in the land of the conscious after floating fundamentally disconnected from the world for a few days, it's time to answer the question, and it's Wednesday. Isn't that convenient?

Truth be told, I'm kind of dragging my feet on the next step on TCB. I know the end goal is to get published, but the steps between that and now seem a bit fuzzy to me. I need to rope in some beta readers, decide whether to try for an agent, or just start bothering small publishers directly. The main problem here this that all of these require being Percieved, and I don't exactly love that. One of these days, though, I'll drink too much coffee and get it done.

Next up is the question of what I'll write next, for there is no doubt in my mind I need to write for my brain to work properly. I plan to participate in NaNoWriMo, but I am struggling a little bit with choosing which novel idea I'll aim for. I could very well write The Clockwork Guardian, the first sequel to TCB in which we meet some new antagonists, Adrian falls ill, and Jake loses something very important. On the other hand, I also kind of want a small Hearts In Clockwork break.

My other two options, as I have alluded to earlier, are the following: The Artist: A slow-burn horror (maybe romance?) following an art critic on an obsessive quest to meet an infamous artist whose art allegedly drives people into violent rage or acts of debauchery. Once he manages to meet the guy he seems almost too nice, although it is admittedly kind of weird that the doors in his isolated alpine home lock automatically at midnight.

Draugr: A young couple moves to rural Norway when one of them inhereits a house from a distant relation. The house is an odd, over-elaborate mansion built on a small island along the shore whose mysteries are almost as many as the required repair jobs. Try as they might, however, our protagonists can't quite seem to fit in with the locals enough to unravel either, seeing as just about everyone view them with apprehension, if it isn't outright hostility. More worryingly, there's a history of violence connected to the decaying grand construction, and on clear nights, strange lights can be seen from somewhere in the depths of the sea.

So it's going to be horror either way, but I haven't decided on which of these to try. Since I have plenty of time, my current plan is to sketch out an outline and synopsis for both and maybe get started on some character profiles, with a little luck one will feel more exciting to me than the other once I've fiddled with them a little.

Also in closing I will mention that I'm working on a little something for the Clockwork Boy fans this spooky month. Without spoiling too much it's supposed to be self-contained and explicitly non-canonical. If it's any good remains to be seen, but it'll probably be good fun for all involved, at least for certain values and interpretations of fun.

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It's as impossible for a male person to know what it is to be a female person as it is for me to know what it is to be male or a dog to know what it is to be a cat. Me being born as a female child set me down a path and gave me an outlook that shaped me as a person. I am a product of both nature and nurture. You cannot change how or where or when or what you were born as, and all of that affects you. Everything I am is this body, other people see me but they won't know specifically what it's like to be me.

You are given a perspective in life based on your material reality and you will always be an outsider to the perspectives of others. You can sympathize, you can listen and feel like you can understand, you can find common ground, but ultimately you will never be able to view life through their lens.

My experience may not be the exact same as every other female human, but we share defining traits that give us common ground and we face oppression which takes different forms across different societies, but still stems from the same root of male people wanting to control our reproductive capabilities. It doesn't matter whether those reproductive capabilities are real or percieved, because from their outward perspectives they see our bodies and make generalizations about us as a class.

Feminism is about fighting for the rights of female people as a class, and since "female" and "male" are adjective terms which apply widely to millions of species, for the sake of simplicity and clarity, we generally call adult female people "women" and adult male people "men". Immature humans are called "girls" and "boys", respectively. My feelings or anyone else's on those words are trumped by the importance of succinct and broadly comprehensible language. We need words to describe the human sex classes. The reality of sex has shaped societal dynamics; any class or historical analysis that neglects that is missing a big part of the picture. The standards placed on women and the rights (or lack thereof) of women in various cultures throughout history did not just crop up randomly, the difference between our bodies was noted and exploited as justification. No one had to ask for identities or chromosomes. Your sex affects every cell in your body, it's a medical and scientific reality. Simplicity allows everyone, including those who may not speak the language or know the cultural associations, to more easily grasp what is being discussed.

Language allows us to better bridge the gap between our perspectives, but they will never truly meet. You can't see inside the minds of others. All you can ever do is form an idea in your mind of what an experience you'll never have is like, but that idea will never be the same as actually experiencing it. Postmodernism in general declares your inner ideas of alien experiences as truth because it values subjectivism and relativism over communication and understanding. That is quite literally antithetical to the idea of living in a society because if all experiences are subjective and relative and reality doesn't matter, coherency and solidarity are lost.

When I say I "can't talk to people," I mean many things. It's a gross oversimplification of a very complicated set of circumstances, some of which are not always present. I'm trying to rid my vernacular of it, but it seems to be what people (those less inclined to understand) understand best.

It would take many things going wrong for me to actively try not to talk to a friend. The extenuating circumstances required for me to not enjoy listening to a friend talk would be not fully understood by me, myself. For people I don't know well or at all, general nervousness about performing for them can get in the way of initiating, but I would only attempt escape from the conversation if I felt they were only talking to me out of courtesy. Of course, I could be wrong in my assessment, but that's always the case. At least I made a judgement, no matter how flawed.

When I say I "can't talk to people," I mean I lack the mental faculties (space, speed, depth of knowledge, experience) to adequately respond to their recent comments with comments of my own which move the conversation forward in a non-trivial manner. That's a mouthful, even for me. I would love to be this verbose, but even this statement "requires" clarification. Everything I say "requires" clarification, including this. By putting "requires" in quotes, I intend to instill a sense of self-percieved falsehood in the word. Whenever I give a statement about myself, I feel "required" to add to it, since I feel that if the listener has not only an inadequate view of me as a person, but could have garnered a wholly incorrect view, too. I value the listener's opinion too much to be "okay" with them having an opinion of me that could be built off misinterpretations.

When I'm nervous about my ability to perform (entertain, be useful, etc) for someone, I slip back into an unfortunate pattern of treating the conversation as turn-based combat. Every word they say becomes ammunition for the next thing i say. I struggle heavily to rekindle or start conversations, since my inspiration is simply extinct. It isn't a skill I have. I don't know where to start, I don't know to just... Think of something to say to them. If I say something random, purely random, that wouldn't work, because all I think about is either things I want to do that I dont think they'd enjoy or just straight up pleasing them. Even if I picked something from our surroundings to comment on, I fear I'll be seen as desperate (which I most definitely am). If I told them the whole truth of me being nervous and not knowing what to talk about since I just want them to like talking to me so that they talk to me more in the future... I dont know, I just don't know if the other person wants me to be that vulnerable to them. They didn't ask for it, and they sure as hell haven't been vulnerable to me.

All of this discordant ranting, just to explain why I'm not trying to talk to people. The view from outside shows someone isolating himself. The view from inside shows too much deliberation to come to an actual conclusion. This isolation isn't on purpose. It's like learning how to walk while your legs change shape ever couple seconds.