I know my last report is so long...and technically, I could've summarized so many of those info in shorter paragraphs.

But it's all intentional. I really wanted to write their dialogues out as far as possible, because I've noticed something in the fandom. I'm pretty sure this is not limited to CLAMP but to 'public figures' in general, especially on the internet.

I've noticed a sort of tendency to dehumanize these four women. Sometimes I come across comments that make my skin crawl. People calling them names, insults, "these old hags", people who think these four women should only live to satisfy the fandom's hunger for content, or their fetishes. They don't consider (and even if they do, they do not seem to know what the words 'be indulgent' mean) these are four human beings who have their lives, wishes, preferences, shortcomings, health problems, or even not a 100% great mental space.

I admit I have "joked" with heavy terms in private too, in the past. But lately, especially after they started to open the Twitter Spaces, showing their more "raw, genuine side" to us, and ever since my JP skills allowed me to understand them better, I can't bring myself to do that anymore. It might be because I'm getting old too and I understand painfully well what it means to begin having problems related to age (for memory or even physical pain), and the love and care (and often pain) that lie behind a piece of artwork, but I just can't help empathizing with them. Hearing them joking among each other, knowing how much they care for one another like sisters, hearing them talking so humbly about their work even after such a long time, getting to know when they're feeling sick and knowing their struggles because on the workplace they're like a machine that can work well only if all the components are in good condition...it really really makes you realize how human they are.

I think the turning point for me was when I heard one of the personal Spaces Ohkawa opened every morning for a week, while she was having breakfast, talking about various topics. In one of the firsts, she apologized because you could hear the noise of the washing machine working on the background. It struck me so powerfully. This is not some kind of unapproachable, inaccessible person living on another existential plane, this is a normal, regular human being who writes stories for a job but who's got to do laundry like every other regular person on this earth. They might drink champagne and go to fancy restaurants (but Ohkawa in particular is a fan of McDonald's too) but that doesn't mean that they lost their humanity.

And I found myself not wanting to partake in this stupid game of dehumanizing them anymore. Actually, with my translations, I want to try to make people see what I see too. Make them feel the "vibe" through their own words, because you can understand so much of them through the words they often use. Ohkawa might look like this merciless and whimsical boss, but she actually just loves the stories she envisioned very much, and she's ready to go through a shitstorm to defend her choices on the workplace.

She just feels a bit guilty that when there's criticism of her choices, the work of her colleagues gets dragged down along, but they're all in this together and they stick to one another tightly.

I can only do these translations when it's about CCS because they're exhausting to me and take me so much time, so my "brainrot" helps me push through to finish them. But at least for that, I want to try to do this, when I can.

yes i'm rooting for m*leven breakup because byler is neat but mostly? i'm rooting for m*leven breakup for the sake of el and mike.

to me, their romance was always a puppy love born out of a combination of social pressures, naïve curiosity, and a lack of true understanding regarding intimacy and romantic love and what it really is. it was real in that they do truly, deeply care about each other and they are close friends, maybe even shared an attraction, but a maturing romance is so much more than that. they've grown up and out of being boyfriend/girlfriend, and that's okay! i think television/film needs to show more often that most of us don't have definite "soulmates" or first childhood loves that we spend our whole lives with. it doesn't mean these relationships meant nothing and didn't impact us, it just means they've run their course and that something else is in the cards, and this is part of life!

i've always felt el was at her best and most confident self when broken up with mike, discovering who she was and what she liked alongside another girl her age instead of just relying on mike for mentorship on how to live in the real world. she deserves more of an opportunity to find herself, her autonomy, and her independence, and to love who she is, and she's made it clear she's felt insecure in the relationship with mike because she isn't being loved and understood the way she wants, needs, and deserves from someone who is her partner.

also, it's okay if mike doesn't love her in "the way he should". he is not obligated to love her romantically and stay in a relationship with her just because she's a girl, because she "needed someone", or because he cares about her a lot. he shouldn't be pressured into a romance if it's not truly coming from his heart. he deserves freedom to find out and honour who he is, too, instead of just staying in his non-functional first relationship — one he got into as a child, essentially — and defining himself that way because it's what's expected when a boy and a girl are close. he loves her in some way, yes, but it's okay if he doesn't feel comfortable or secure being her boyfriend anymore, for whatever reason that is. he's felt insecure too, and that's valid and it matters.

they are their own people and are steadily growing and changing every day. they need time to figure out who those people are, and it's become clear (at least in my opinion) that those people aren't meant to be a couple at this stage.

they deserve freedom. they deserve to grow up and be authentic to themselves and not feel like they need to lie for the sake of a relationship. they deserve to move on from this version of their relationship that isn't making them happy and rekindle the best part of their bond: their strong, beautiful friendship. they don't have to be a couple if it doesn't make them stronger and better and happier people.

i think it would be healthy and wonderful for a show, especially one consumed frequently by young adults, to show a relationship starting, progressing, and ending on good terms in this way. sometimes things don't work out, and that is okay.

I’m rereading Po3 and despite its flaws I really enjoyed the introduction to the three. Jaykit isn’t mentioned to be blind in the first few chapters and instead they chose to show how much MORE capable he is compared to his littermates; until at the end of chapter 3, he brings up his blindness on his own. It makes forcing him to be a medicine cat SO much more frustrating because it really feels like they’re setting him up to be a warrior and choose his own fate (note i haven’t finished the reread this is just my first impression)

I like how you seem to take that path in BB regardless! It makes his arc so much more enjoyable

His arc in canon is super frustrating because he's such an independent character who clearly wants to make his own decisions in life, but then he just gets shoved into the medcat den. I LIKE that he ultimately goes there and that he enjoys it; but it was still really fucked up that they stripped away his autonomy in the process.

Re: they are not real, they are writing choices. Taking away the choices a disabled character can make over their own life, forcing them into a celibate nun role, and then going "awwwww dont worry see? he likes it! This was the best thing for him :)" was fucked up.

And imo it didn't have to be that way! You wouldn't have to go the FULL route I did with big changes, he could just be more involved in the descision to stop being a warrior apprentice and it would be fine. Minor change that would make a world of difference.

I do also have to interject to say though... blindness should really not be an extremely severe impairment for a ThunderClan cat.

I'm dead serious.

Whiskers are built-in sensors that tell you the exact position of everything within several inches of your head, ears swerve to pick up sound, and the jacobson's organ provides a sense of smell so keen that I have an entire Clanmew expansion draft because I needed to make WORDS describing the power of this sense that humans do not have. I cannot stress enough how delicate their other senses are, felines do not rely on their sight like primates do

ThunderClan lives in a mixed-oak woodland, where sight is already often obscured by foliage, objects are close together (for whiskers to feel), and nearly every movement makes noise against the leaf litter. RiverClan and (moor-running) WindClan cats would have a harder time with this disability than Thunder or Shadow.

Cat sight SUCKS to begin with. It sucks BADDD. They don't have color vision, they're significantly nearsighted, and they can't track up-and-down movements well. WC doesn't write realistic cats (more like small fuzzy people really) and I also work with more humanesque eyesight, but the only thing Jay should really lose is an ability to rapidly track a small animal swerving fast. Blind cats are often still excellent hunters in spite of that!

So it's an extra big waste that they railroaded him into a position he didn't choose, saying he couldn't be a warrior. This is the perfect disability to write, if you want to explore how ableism can impact the characters in this society who ARE legitimately still capable of nearly full independence, but still need to find accommodations for what they can't do.

In the same arc they're doing the dumb Cinder Reincarnation Plotline, no less!! Where SHE is also feeling like she has no choice over her "destiny," and gets a conflict over a potentially disabling injury

"Oh nooo if cinderpaw breaks her leg she wont be a warrior!"

"What the f-- Im Jaypaw and im reporting live from the scene where a Category 1 Idiot Moment is taking place. Woman breaks leg, suddenly everyone believes she is a horse, more at 11."

One of these days I should really make "herb guides" just covering how various sensory disabilities impact the lives of Clan cats and some tips for writing them as warriors, especially between Clans. Stuff you wouldn't usually consider, like how much noise deaf cats tend to make, how RiverClan would get a ton of sinus infections and lose their sense of smell, being blind in Sky vs Thunder, etc.

thinking about todd and his resolve toward… not quite isolation, but being alone in a room full of people again. he goes along to the study room to sit on his own and do his homework, he sits at the poets table and follows along with what’s being said while keeping quiet, he goes to the meetings at all but doesn’t necessarily contribute (in fact, if you watch him when cameron is telling the story ‘from camp in sixth grade’, you can see that he recognizes it before any of the other poets but doesn’t voice it until they all have). he’s not alone, necessarily, if you want to get technical about it, he’s just lonely, and he’s generally okay with that. he doesn’t have friends and that’s fine, he doesn’t participate in class and that’s fine, he doesn’t have a relationship with his family and that’s fine—he could live without any real connection and he’d have been, more or less, fine.

the thing about when he says “i can take care of myself just fine!” is that he isn’t really wrong, you can infer that he’s been doing it his entire life anyway, it’s that ‘taking care of yourself’ isn’t the same thing as really living or being happy. todd’s an introvert, certainly, and even as he gets closer to the group he defaults to sitting quietly in the background, but he’s also denying himself community out of fear not introversion. todd isn’t friendless because he’s an introvert, although that definitely plays a part, he’s friendless because he pushes anyone that might want his company away. if anyone has every wanted for his attention in the first place. (neil’s unwavering interest in him is unique (even when it comes to the rest of the poets, who are fine with todd coming along and joining the group, but aren’t really hellbent on him being there in the beginning) and his refusal to accept it is a direct result of being so lonely growing up.)

there’s obviously something to be said about the implications of his parents neglect, and the more than likely fact that he grew up friendless, and how those both play a part in in him being so skilled at dodging social interaction/being so avoidant of it, but by the time we see him in the movie he’s all but accepted his fate as being alone his entire life. he’s already accepted being the family disappointment, and he’s already accepted he’ll never amount to anything, and he obviously doesn’t like it, but he’d have managed living with that knowledge without the confirmation that it was all wrong. would he have been miserable? almost certainly. but he’d have managed. he’d done it for that long already, anyhow.

Baldness is holiness <3

What Deacon thinks: what did that mean? did he want me to wear a collar too? why else would he mention my neck? i mean, if he /asked/ me i would wear one but he didn't so would wearing one be weird?

What Ymber meant: It's nice to be near someone who isn't tethered to this world to serve it with a physical reminder for all to see.

lately i've been finding it so so hard to be positive and hopeful. and it's making me so bitter and hateful. i hate it but i dont know what to do about it

the people in the tags understand me. starembers art is super pretty but also weird at times.

Could Johnnyboy fans tell me about the ship’s appeal (apart from they’re besties and cute together) because I really want get into the ship but it just doesn’t click for me

i am so unexplainably sick of things being called basic as if that's a bad thing. so what if someone listens to mainstream music and makes aesthetic instagram posts and watches popular tv shows because if that makes them happy then it's no one else's business. focus on yourself rather than putting other people down for doing what makes them happy.

How we feeling Beatles people?

when will aot fans stop saying hange’s death was a s*icide

just say you have the media literacy of a grain of sand from idiot island and go

Apex literally gave us another trans character

AND THEN gave their non binary character a boyfriend

This is all I've ever wanted in this game!!

Sometimes I wish my “friends” or whatever who ghosted me would talk to me again just so I could bite their fucking heads off

everytime i think about the new chapter the more and more i like it, it really consolidated yuuta and gojo's characters. the revelation of how the higher-ups were taken down and the set-up for the scene with gojo and yuuta's conversation about what their plan was for gojo's body, in case he lost, might just be the part i find most interesting. all in all, the chapter really highlights the underlying difference between the violence of oppression and the violence of resistence and revolution.

when it comes to yuuta and the archetype of his character he is the pure embodiment of love in the series. if yuuji is able to reach sukuna because he was one with him (love as oneness), yuuta's entire exitence has sorrounded love and, specifically, love as a curse. sukuna's surprise at yuuta's antics come from a place of not understanding love and therefore being unable to conceptualise that yuuta would go so far as betray his own humanity for it. he can't conceive how love can drive a person like yuuta, who's sweet and kind-hearted, to a place as cursed as this - emphasised by the sheer horror and heinosity that is seeing the usage of gojo's dead body with yuuta's innocent expression. but we know that yuuta's journey has always been marked by this concept of love as a curse, starting all the way back in jjk 0 where yuuta's unwillingness to let go of a deceased rika caused her to linger in the world in the form of a cursed spirit. one that yuuta learns to let go of by the end of the story. a lot of what he learns in that moment is about consent and mutuality in love (hence his domain expansion name), and although rika's soul passes and gets freed she is able to manifest her will into her vessel that continues to protect yuuta until this day. yuuta asking gojo for consent to use his body not only consolidates this mutual exchange and respect that he has for those he cares for - which are his main driving force - but is also exactly what separates him from someone like kenjaku, who body hops with total disregard for who they were originally. so there's that layer of irony behind yuuta having rika consume kenjaku to copy his technique and make use of it in a equally disturbing but more compassionate way. which in itself can serve to both question if intent plays a role in absolution and introduce, once again, the idea that humans and curses are not so different, as explored between mahito and yuuji in shibuya with them mirroring each other.

in regards to gojo i think his aknowledgement of his own inertia when it came to the revolution that he was leading was the cherry on top to consolidate who gojo really was as a person. gojo's greatest character flaw was arguably that he simply wasn't radical enough, allowing his students to be targets under the influence of the higher-ups. he had reasons not to kill them, as he explained before in the series, but he still failed to weight the consequences of his own actions and how no one is rewarded by working under a broken system. and i feel like having the youth he guided watching as he killed them is also quite significant as they're followers of this new revolutionary ideology.

i think the shock or impact these violent or twisted acts by the hands of those forced to survive within the status quo (like maki slaughtering her clan, gojo killing the higher-ups, yuuta taking over gojo's body) as a reaction to the violence they're subjeted to by this same system serves some purpose. and i think this is the reason the higher-ups are these anonymous faceless figures, barely-there personalities who have such a big influence in the lives of so many people. even in the real world, and we can think of systems like capitalism and how it exploits people in such a casual way and it relies on that exploration to survive, we sort of take for granted that violence coming from those institutions, having our attention driven away from the minority that's upholding these systems to other things instead. that violence is more "acceptable" because we've been conditioned to it whereas the violence in response to those acts is always met with more scrutiny. and that kind of contextualises why shoko and nanami, for example, much like gojo, aren't really revolutionary with their ideals either - or rather, do not get that priviledge. the difference being gojo was someone these higher-ups were actively afraid of, because if he wanted to, he could have done more. and that's exactly why the instant he was sealed it was the perfect opportunity for them to do whatever they could to prevent him from coming back and place new-drawn targets on the backs of the people gojo was protecting. the gruesome nature of maki slaughtering her clan or the off-putting way people react to yuuta discarding his own humanity and going against what he believes is right to make sure gojo's legacy continues is almost forcing this question of what are people willing to stomach in the name of survival and change.

gojo remembering geto in that crucial moment ("i was falling behind" or "i have to catch up") and just having in mind how they were both so young and naive is so incredibly bittersweet. geto had radical ideals, no matter how misguided. he looked at the world and he had this unshakeable conviction that things couldn't continue to be the way they were. he reached incredibly misplaced conclusions, yes, which came from a place of great pain and alienation, but gojo finally stepping forward to follow that same path, to be more radical, also sort of confirms that things could have been so different if only gojo had the same level of consciousness back then; that they could have found a way better solution together instead of the tragedy that ensued. the parallels between them add an extra layer of wistfulness to their bond, too. their fates have and always will be so intertwined, in such a beautiful and tragic way. and i think geto's unwillingness to force gojo to take a certain path will always be one of the biggest proofs of his love towards him. at the end of the day, even knowing gojo was who he was, geto always seemed to want to protect gojo's path from being stained like his.

at the core, jjk really is a story about revolution and humanity; a story about love and curses and how love is the most twisted curse of all (which has been reinforced over and over again). the fact some are rewarded and some are punished for taking certain paths under the same system is there to convey a very specific message. i really love the incorporation of eastern philosophies within the story and the role horror plays, too. the usage of the genre to deepen the impact of these themes and the way things are introduced with the intention to provoke almost visceral reactions in the readers (much like yuuta's own reaction) also makes the message much more impactful. i think this chapter was great!!!

HolyAdhhrShert IT'S ACTUALLY OLIVINE??@!!,,,,?@,@?@@?@,??

I ffidid not expect that either what is going on over at nuca HEAdquartees