man. thinking about how the survivors all desperately need new hobbies
like. okay. sonia’s a great example. off the top of your head what are her hobbies? probably learning about and researching true crime and the occult, and watching j-dramas/anime, right? but if you really think about it, her fascination with japanese culture very much feels like her just desperately wanting to fit in and massively overcompensating. so while i do think she probably enjoys those shows, theyre definitely not as popular in her kingdom as she claims (not that im saying she’s lying on purpose, just that. well, when you feel embarrassed about someones reaction to you liking something, sometimes you’ll try to make an excuse for why you do yknow), and plus, its not like they have access to a lot of entertainment media for a while post program. as for the occult/true crime stuff…
look me in the eye and tell me junko did not use that against her. do you really think junko enoshima would not see a girl obsessed with the study of serial killers and not try and warp that into a fascination with her?
i think that stuff leaves a bad taste in her mouth now. and after committing and being complicit in the committing of the kind of crimes she used to be fascinated by, its kind of hard to find the joy in that anymore, yknow? the occult stuff could maybe still be enjoyable, but with how often it feels like there are ghosts lurking around every fucking corner and her dreams are filled with screaming corpses its kinda hard to be fanciful about that stuff.
so. girl needs some new hobbies.
its not much better for the others, either. akanes hobbies were basically working out, doing parkour, eating, and sleeping. the first two are downright impossible for the first several months after waking up, and for the foreseeable future any kind of physical activity is going to be, to an extent, difficult just due to how much chronic pain and weakness she’ll probably suffer the rest of her life. she can get to a healthier weight and a stronger muscular build, but its not going to change the fact that she gets out of breath and sore much faster than before. as for eating… well. thats gonna be a sore subject for a while. so all she has left is sleeping, and sleeping all day is, as ive been told by many people, kind of a depression symptom? and theres no way the others would sit back and let her do that.
girl needs some new hobbies!
kazuichi, from what we can tell, had a few more normal hobbies. in game you can find him gaming with chiaki, and he seems to enjoy coming up with schemes and plans for silly stuff, but overall he just loves his tinkering. he may be the ultimate mechanic but first and foremost he just loves fucking with machines and engines and finding out what makes them tick. but even that isnt gonna work anymore. sure, he could game. if they had any fucking consoles. or a working computer network. or any games. but none of that is happening for a while, if ever. as for his tinkering, it’s gotta be a similarly sore subject to sonia’s training and tutoring as a princess. its too closely linked to what he did as a despair, too closely linked to his talent, to not make him feel like screaming when he smells machine polish. i think he definitely could get back to a point where it genuinely brings him joy again, and before that he definitely forces himself to use his talent and knowledge because they need it, but. its a complicated problem.
the guy needs some new fucking hobbies.
and of course… fuyuhiko.
fuyuhiko… doesnt have any hobbies.
like okay can you think of a single thing from the game (or fuck even the anime) that implies that he has anything he actually does For Fun. he has a sweet tooth. hes dedicated to his clan. he went to the zoo with peko one time. he got in fights at school. thats… those arent hobbies. fuyuhiko doesnt have any hobbies!!! someone get this boy some fucking knitting needles or a book to read!!!! please!!!!!!!!!! i think it would genuinely help him a lot to have something to do instead of just sitting and stewing in his own trash fire of a brain speaking from experience. learn to sew, read some fantasy novels, learn to play the guitar, something. im begging you.
and hajime is his own fucking can of worms.
he probably had hobbies before the Horrors. right? he probably played some video games, maybe liked martial arts films, maybe sketched in the margins of his notebooks. rode his bike sometimes. but now? nothing keeps his interest that long. everything becomes monotonous after a while, and sure, sometimes thats the draw. with stuff like fiber crafts the point is sometimes making it muscle memory so you have something to do with your hands. but other times its not. and his ability to basically excel in most things you put in front of him has to be so fucking boring after a while. a lot of the point of having hobbies is that you arent perfect. the draw is learning, is getting better. even reading can become nothing when any nonfiction book has knowledge in it you already know and any fiction book you can intuit the ending from the first few pages. he probably reads Lightning Fast now too, so it cant hold his interest for long.
he probably has to constantly be switching hobbies and outlets. cant stay on one thing too long, or the ennui starts to set in. that sounds miserable.
someone get these kids some hobbies, man
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My Problem With Season 2 of The Mysterious Benedict Society
So I accidentally made quite a little rant on another persons reblog about the show adaption for the Mysterious Benedict Society. It was very long, and so I don’t expect people to read it, but I still want to share my thoughts on it because it’s 12:00 AM and this is really important to me for some unearthly reason. I’ve put an excerpt below that sums up my feelings. It doesn’t list everything I have to say, but it hits the main points.
In conclusion, I think the main fault for season 2 is a lack of willingness to get too serious or too dark. They’re avoiding heavier topics and throwing in jokes whenever a moment starts getting too emotional. The show has been watered down so much, and it’s lack of subtlety shows that it feels the need to explain everything to the audience. Which honestly, just ruins the whole point.
The Mysterious Benedict Society was a series that treated its readers as intelligent people, trusting them to pick up on the themes it showed. It poignantly portrayed a world where bad things happened, even to good and young children. It was an empowering, unfiltered message of struggle and pain, which was overcome through genuinely clever and powerful acts of courage and compassion by the protagonists.
In a world that cast young people away as incompetent, simple, and foolish, the Mysterious Benedict Society looked children straight in the eye and said “You can change the world, no matter how unfairly it has treated you. Your age is not a detriment, but a blessing because it allows you to see things that adults will miss. And it is okay to have complicated emotions and developed minds right now, because you are just as human as any adult.” And to a 10 year old girl doing her summer reading, that meant the world. Because that was the first time she had ever been told that. That was the first time I had ever been told that.
Season 2 of the show, in this sense, is the complete antithesis of this message (in my opinion). It condescends its audience, it waters down its messages to make it more widely consumable, and it misses the entire point of the Mysterious Benedict Society in the first place.
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