"i can make them better!" This, "i can make them worse!" That. Oh yeah? I can give them a hug while gently kissing them on the forehead and telling them that it's not all their fault

i think the reason why i gravitate towards belos on a deeper level a lot more than any of the other characters in toh is bc my preference in characters and stories is in how they are affected by institutions and the messiness that results from understandable character flaws exacerbated by those institutions, whether they are the oppressed or are enabled to become the oppressor. belos is a mix of both in a way that i like — it's possible to read him as nd & left handed (both heavily stigmatized in his day and society) yet both are possible to hide. in the demon realm he yet again had a trait that made him a possible outcast, as he was a lowly human, yet he transformed himself into a magic user through painful mutilation of his skin all so that he could conform to that society, even when it was one he couldn't stand. his conformity in the demon realm supports the idea of him having to conform in the human realm. but because he was enabled for being a white man in the human realm and could reasonably hide anything that made him a nail to be hammered down, he clung to that power and dominion over others that it gave him for the rest of his life like a security blanket, represented literally with him lording his magical prowess over other witches and demons. it's a lot of layers that i think are very fun and i'm 90% sure are unintentional when put together into this cohesive of a picture for reasons i will state later.

compare that against almost every other character in toh (w maybe the exception of darius??) — every good guy has flaws that can reasonably be blamed on other people as a freudian excuse or that are downplayed by the narrative (eg. amity going from an active bully in her debut to a passive enabler of bullying in understanding willow). there's a dire lack of messiness in them all, from their appearance (all the witch kids could easily be mistaken for humans, fairly good looking ones at that, if it weren't for the ears), to how they deal with pain, etc. it gave me the impression that they really wanted only the villain to be allowed to be messy and ugly because those are traits for villains, when i think it's a lot nicer to see stigmatized traits (ugliness, childishness, hallucinations, mental illness, etc) in everyone. i really wanted the heroes to get in on that kind of action too.

another thing that drew me away from connecting with and trying to deeply understand most of the characters in toh is the lack of meaningful bigotry on the isles. i'm not criticizing the race-, queer-, and gender-blindness of the demon realm on an objective level bc the writers wanted to accomplish a v specific thing w that bit of world building and that's ok and it's a wonderful aspiration for usamerica. it's ok if it's not for Me and the world can't have a million yasuda sayos (i say with difficulty through tears). but because there is a lack of bigotry in what's supposed to be an oppressive society and there's no highlighted underclass in its place (covenless witches should theoretically be the underclass, but the show tends to undermine this aspect of its society, eg. letting wild witches like eda and luz roam perfectly free and having the government-funded school allow witches to study multiple covens without pushback from said government funding them), it becomes just another part of the show that makes it so much more squeaky clean and made me disinterested in a lot of the characters — i connect so much better with characters when i feel their pain and struggle against a world that can't find it in itself to care about them, witnessing all the ways they try to fight for their right to be happy frantically and imperfectly, and that is what makes their happiness so meaningful to me and makes me care abt them deeply.

contrast that w belos: i really love that he came from a society infamous for its conservatism and religious extremism grounded in the real world, and it's so thought provoking for me to think abt the layers of that society and how he interacted with it. which parts he rejected, conformed to, wanted to conform to, etc. that's a challenging character to understand (and then, after having fully understood them, condemn with so much more feeling) and i adore the idea of that being intentional if it wasn't for the fact that almost every other character in toh is boringly easy to understand because they lack enough material in the layers that can make them feel like real, messy people to challenge the viewer in a meaningful way. (side note: a lot of the layers created simply by belos being from colonial connecticut also disappear if you're solely looking at his background based on the text in the show, bc you're expected to fill in the gaps with, like, wikipedia basically lol. similar thing w luz where they show very little of her being bullied/outcasted bc of her adhd and you're mostly supposed to fill that in w your own experience & irl knowledge of adhd.) it results in the show being weirdly liberal about the bigotry/lack of bigotry certain characters have and only being able to halfheartedly say "idk some people are just evil i guess", instead of examining the material conditions that shape people to act the way they do. Bigot Phil vs Weirdgirl Luz could've been "these characters are shaped by their circumstances and have been encouraged to respectively become their worst/best selves through ideals instilled in them" but instead it's "some people are bad and we won't attempt to look at what made them 'bad' in the first place" and then pretending this is a groundbreaking message and not the laziest takeaway they could've possibly written.

basically i like my characters messy with hearts that you have to go out of your way to understand and sympathize with who come from understandable circumstances and i think all girls should be allowed to kill freely. i hope you can understand my position.

"I'm drowning in debts up to my ears. I'll have to pay for myself with my self, give up my life for my life." - Wislawa Szymborska, Nothing's a gift

Amanda Grayson with her Hubby and Stepson

Garde gem au continues (Idk how I got all three of these done today)

Five: brown stone placed on back where he can't see or reach it.

Six: purple stone on right bicep that makes sleeves a must.

Marina (I forgot to draw her name instead of #7): smooth, blue stone on chest that's covered up with less revealing clothing.

also while I’m bleary and talking things I’m laying on the floor once again thinking about how Mineru was wasted as a character and really could’ve been complex if she was aiding Ganondorf by being puppet Zelda and then you could’ve either had a boss fight with her or let her redeem herself by helping you depending on a choice you make in the game but instead they were just like ‘what if this dope character design got overwritten to be a Gundam’

.

remember when matpat was like "BY THE AMOUNT OF MINIMUM WAGE MIKE IS MAKING WE CAN DEDUCE THIS GAME TAKES PLACE IN 1987" youre fucking INSANE dude. THE CHECK LITERALLY SAID "20XX" ON IT

Fanny, my sweet, beautiful girl

17.11.2012 – 14.04.2019

in other news I’ve been spending my commutes day dreaming up a fic where we just drop s3 Klaus in the middle of s1 and let him run riot please add your own suggestions to this scenario below <3

Sohei 🤝 Kazama: Bad dads

who even IS a good dad in this series like who even is a dad that we can all look at and go 'now THATS a good dad right there'

and you know i’ve always thought that it’s such a shame that all the big name examples we have of “filing the serial numbers off:” like, turning a fanfiction into an original work are ahem. not neccessarily the greatest works of literary fiction BECAUSE LIKE. and maybe this is because of my love for the wonderful “expy” (we should put kaworu in more anime. we should do it more) BUT I FEEL LIKE it can be done awesomely. sometimes i see people’s heavily-AU’d and tonally shifted fanfiction and im like damn man. i’d love to read this as ur original book. i feel like the key is twofold: 1) remember to reintroduce the world and characters properly in the text because you won’t have the fanfiction tags and original property to do that for u and 2) get SILLAY you dont need to keep everything about the original characters..... u can change their hair colours.....their names....anything u want......................................................

then again i have a theory that we only notice these serial numbers being filed off when it’s done sloppily so maybe we do have some good stuff out there....hidden in plain sight.....

One thing I've learned in scent work class is that Tassie can count and we follow the same turn order every week for every round, and today she was REALLY digging the sniffing game and as we ran through the last search the Irish setter that goes last (we go first) finished his search, so Tassie started getting amped, tugging on the leash, and BOY the temper tantrum she threw when I told her no more, all done!

"You're on your own, kid. Yeah, you can face this. You're on your own, kid. You always have been." -You're on your own, kid by Taylor Swift

for the fic prompt 'five-centric, any.' this is not three sentences and it's more nive than just five-centric but that sign won't stop me because i can't read

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"You should write it down," says Nine from across the room, lounging on the bed. Bap, bap, bap goes the rubber ball as it bounces off the wall. He's casual about not looking at the sketchbook in Five's lap; he never does unless he's been invited, and Five is grateful for it. "I'd read it. It sounds badass. And you can keep it this time, now that the old fuck's not around."

Five stares down at the page. The only thing on it is a smear of graphite from his thumb.

"It doesn't matter," he says quietly. "I forgot how it goes anyway."

who ever made those playlists on Spotify (i'm not naming names) for number five from the umbrella academy

thank you for making it always hard to go through ever minute through each over popularised tiktok song, great job! (cautiously said in the most nicest way possible)