#THEY'RE SO FUCKIGN PRETTY

[cowboythewizard726]

THE TOUDEN SIBLINGS, THE TOUDEN SIBLINGS!!!!1!!!11!!!!!2!1!!! REJOICE REJOICE EVERYONE GATHER AROUND THE TOUDEN SIBLINGS OH HEAVENLY TOUDEN SIBLINGS!!!!!!1!!!!!!1!!!!11!!

TOUDENS TOUDENS TOUDENS!!!!!!! YEAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#THEY'RE SO FUCKIGN PRETTY #i have never seen more beuatifl blonde white people #oh falin oh laios #they're sowonderful and amazing and they're so #did you notice how pretty their eyes are #and how similar they are #its almost as if they share some genetic genes or sometrhing #woow #so cool #the yuri win the yaoi win #lets hold hands and rejoice #maybe there is a god #laios dungeon meshi #laios #falin touden #laios touden #dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #dunmeshi #dungeon meshi spoilers #delicious in dungeon spoilers #dunmeshi laios #laios dunmeshi #falin dungeon meshi #dunmeshi falin #dunmeshi spoilers #falin is genuinely so so beautiful #laios is beautiful in his odd little way #what a pair #they're genuinely really beautiful

[crabussy]

they look like this to me

#life giving magus #simon petrikov #TJIS IS SO FUCKIGN FUNNY TO ME #they're canonically pretty much the same height but every time I draw them both magus just gets taller and taller #not good #not my fault they have like ????? legs #stupid mammal..

[maloosh-baloosh64]

#Quake #maloosh jokes #meme #shitpost #video games #someone please make a REAL sequel to quake 1 #none of this space military bullshit #quake II was so fucking dull and unimaginative #and Quake III just feels random #I need rusty dingy halls and incomprehensible monsters to frag #if they're gonna have the sci fi stuff (which they SHOULD DO) it's gotta NOT look like doom eternal's scifi stuff #it needs to look shitty and old and like it was made in an 80's scifi movie #it needs to look like it could grind your fingers if you messed with it wrong #industrial and mechanical #and bring back mod support quake champions fuckign dropped the ball with that #mod support is part of what makes quake quake #and of course arena multiplayer #with no stupid gimmicks like champions #and bring back quake 1's movement pretty please? i fucking hate strafe jumping give me my bunny hopping and air control

[prodkeiji]

so like. rwby volume 9 season finale

#🏹 #rt im sorry for underestimating you and doubting if you can fix things from ep 7 or 8 #no Bc ?? im actually content with that #ok tbf the thing w summer was way too short imo like girl where did she n raven go .. but then again they're gna give us more just not now #and neo 🥹🫶 NEOOOOO MY BABY MY GIRLFRIEND MY EVERYTHING MY REASON TO WATCH RWBY IN GENERAL #i love her so much i hope she comes back next szn please #i wasnt able to understand what the blacksmith said but i think it was smth like she will find herself smth smth such is balance YEAAAAAAA #idk if that was my delusions on wanting a neo redemption arc acting up though but i think it isnt im pretty sane i swear #no but the way she accepts how roman isn't real in the end like oh my God she is better than me she managed to snap out of her delusions #also i thought they were gna show all of them reuniting with each other 🙁 AND I THOUGHT JAUNE WAS GNA BE OLD AS HELL IN VACUO FUCKEHDJDH #that wouldve been funny honestly but it's understandable #new outfits for v10 pls idt theyre gna last in those long sleeves in vacuo i NEED summer themed character designs #what if renora finally becomes canon soon #oh my god wait i need that actually they were my og childhood bsf to lovers mutual pining slow burn that consists of 40k words #ANYWAY iM SO FUCKIGN HAPPY WITH THAT EP #btw im glad ruby chose cresent rose in the end 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩 my babycakes fr #rwby v9 spoilers #rwby spoilers

[lonelyplanetfag]

i should be able 2 have coherent thoughts when i get excited abt shit. Please

#i got thinking abt desert song & i never told you & the version of desert song they played live & the demo 4 i never told you #and i need to Articulate it all and i Can't cuz. ough. do u Know. do u Get it. #i wish i was a writer man i want 2 say pretty things abt it and i Can't and it Sucks #i have too many thoughts abt it & they're all tangled up & im so fucking. i Missed them i Missed getting stupid excited abt this shit #sorry im just. Ougd #do u Know do u Get it do u fuckign

[kingdomoftyto]

LOOK AT HOW DIFFERENT THE PROPORTIONS ARE

WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO MY BOY

#Tyto plays AA #all his shocked/damaged sprites are awful in 3D but for some reason this one made me especially upset just now gahsdjfaf #giant yaoi hands.......... #like ugh this is making me look way too hard at the original 2D sprites and yes they're also pretty out of whack honestly #but they went from charmingly awkward to just. really fuckign ugly with the jump to 3D lol #most of the new characters look FINE though?? Athena and Blackquill and co. look great!! which is why it's so infuriating to me #it's just Phoenix and Apollo and Miles who look like aliens inhabiting ill-fitting human skinsuits

[candyradium]

fucking love these new shoes btw. they feel so powerful. i feel like i could cause an earthquake if i stomped hard enough

#candy posts #i have been. wearing them for a few hours 4 wearing in purposes #n they r so goddamn comfy dude #like they're pretty heavy cause they got chunky ass soles (i am AT LEAST an inch or two taller now) but im so comfy!!! #normally finding new shoes is really difficult 4 me but i tried these ones on and IMMEDIATELY fell in love #i could 100% full sprint in these too. which is useful #they have a lightning bolt on the tread theyre so fuckign. epic. pog moment #i go to sleep now. but i like my new shoes a lot :]

[mamawasatesttube]

there's a lottt to talk about in sb94 #85 (my beloved), but one small thing that often gets overlooked in favor of bangers such as "haha hey bro your voice drops an octave when you're being commanding haha" and "i feel so... pregnable," among others, is like... the entire reason kon's in gotham to begin with. in #84 he has a ttk surge so powerful he destroys every single gun in the city of los angeles. and he's busy being annoying at tim, but...

before they get interrupted by fuckign. doctor sin's whole thing and cass calling for backup, he's actually seeking tim out because what happened in #84 freaked him out. and because he's kon, he's awful at actually saying "hey, something happened that freaked me out and i wanna talk it out with you," but tim reads between the lines of kon showing up just to bother him pretty easily.

and when he prods about it, kon does start to open up!! hesitantly and while putting himself down while still trying to joke about it, but he does start opening up. they just get shut down by cass calling for help, and then the rest of the issue ensues, but...!

i just think it's a sweet little detail about the degree of trust between them at this point. chronologically speaking, we're not even to owaw here - kon doesn't know tim's real name yet! but they're good enough friends that when kon's freaked out over his own power spike, tim is the person he goes to. they're besties :)

#rimi talks #kon #tim #issue 85 rotates in my mind literally all the time what can i say #its the one issue of sb94 i own physically hehe

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

if you would all allow me to be delusional for a moment - so i went back to staring Very Hard at the neighborhood map and. um. well. im chucking my marbles out the window! as always take all of this with a Hefty grain of salt!

i thought i saw a weird pixel in Frank's window so i zoomed in. then i took a screenshot, and fucked with the contrast/brightness settings. and uhhhhhh

UHHHHHH

FRANK??? HELLO???? HE'S IN THERE? i'm pretty sure im Not seeing things bc that is definitely a vague gray tube-outline with a yellow spot in the shape of Frank's nose. hidden in the dark. and i might be seeing things but in the pane next to his face it kinda looks like his hand is on the window? but! Frank's in there! what the fuck!

so naturally i slowly scrolled through the neighborhood Zoomed The Fuck In. obvi there's nothing in Home's eyes, and Barnaby's & Sally's single visible windows(?) are closed. I couldn't find any out-of-place pixels in Julie's or Poppy's.

but! Eddie's kinda freaked me out a little! look at this shit!

on the top left pane... are those fingerprints pressing into the glass? and in the lower left, is that a fucking Face peering out? a creepy ass face that almost looks like some sort of mask? there seems to be another Shape in the upper right... another face perhaps?

and then there's the weird window shine in the lower right (along with maybe Another face...). it almost looks like a string of letters. there isn't a single pattern/design like that anywhere else in the neighborhood. what's up with that....

oh and also, just went back to double check the post office's display window

there seems to be another face - all the way to the right in the darkness. judging by the shape of the paler (yellowish?) pixels between what must be eyes, i think that's Eddie. and i think i see ears and a hat... not sure though. this one is really tough to see but it's There

(side note: Eddie is totally fucked, isn't he? between the faces(?) and hands behind his door, Home sitting in his display, and the hyacinths by his building, the emphasis on his memory (or lack-thereof) in a project that is, in a sense, About memory... i'm concerned! and eating it tf up! hell yeah lets get funky!)

now i couldn't see any, like, concrete Faces or anything in Howdy's store. but! you can kinda see inside! observe~

in the big open window, you can kinda make out some sort of container on a counter and what might be shelves or a kind of brick pattern. and then above the 100% sign... hold on are those fuckign Eyes? lets take a look zoomed in & without the image adjustments!

yeah those uh. i think those are eyes. Wally-esque eyes peering out of the darkness. though they also mildly remind me of eyespots on insect wings. butterfly eyespots, perhaps. inch resting indeed...

WAIT I LIED!!! there DOES seem to be another string of letter-like symbols in the neighborhood, not just the post office's window shine. now it could be just a wild coincidence, but at the same time it seems kind of... purposeful. like that's not normal shading/coloring.

check out the blue window border on Howdy's Place, next to the apples. the lighter blue pixels seem Arranged. i think i see a clear N, and either an R or a P... along with some other symbols that i don't recognize as anything. the lower ones look kinda like faces? what could the top one be? is any of it anything or am i looking too hard?

in short: they're watching us watch them and there's way more to the map than initially meets the eye....

(edit: i've added a reblog w/ the images outlined! badly outlined but a clearer View of what i see nonetheless! + some notes on more little things outlining helped me notice)

#throttling my laptop WHAT DOES IT MEAN??? WHAT DOES IT MEANNNNNNN #got a little spooked there ngl.... #noticing the faces(?) in eddie's gave me a lil startle. got a little chill up my spine #I LOVE IT! #im gonna be reeling over this all night.... #the implications! the arising questions!! the Choices!!! #frank and eddie being the only ones with their faces in their windows (plus a couple extra) #eddie and howdy having letters/symbols(?) on their buildings #THE EYES IN HOWDY'S STORE!!! #i feel like these are important misplaced pieces of a puzzle i havent even opened yet #god and like. tiny home in eddie's window yeah but that With the eyes in howdy's store? #both buildings - both Stores! - seeming to have hidden letters on them??? WHAT DOES IT MEANNNN #of course i could be just plain insane and seeing things #but some of it.... ough i dont think i am fellas #welcome home speculation #wh speculation #homebogging #ive been meaning to Examine the updated map.... not much Changed or caught my attention but a few things did #why does barnaby have a carton of milk outside his house? something to do with the phrase 'no use crying over spilled milk'? #the flower patch behind julie's house is Oddly green.... kinda reminds me of a body dump #that plus the red thing next to the bowling ball (a ribbon? scissors? something else?) makes me Suspicious #along with a mildly delusional Theory i've had since my first good Examining Of The Map (before the update!) #but thats not what this post is about #theres just. theres interesting things in there! #thank you for reading! i need to go Think about this all.... #im feeling the urge to up the contrast/brightness of Every Single Slightly Dark image on the site <3

[hydrxnessa]

>> second batch of (reimagined) senVerse doors entities !!

no way they're coloured ?? hydra coloured them ?? fr ?????

lil facts about them below vv

those patches of torn skin on figure are mostly from itself. its claws reach deep into its flesh, hence why the scars hardly disappear

the top of its skull can split into two, which can seem incredibly scary if on the receiving end. but it's immensely painful for figure

powerful bite! especially powerful if it splits its top jaw before biting down

its mouth can glow! and its tail is prehensile, useful for shelving books in its library

this mf stomps. and he stomps LOUD.

chitters when its reading. probably a way for it to read the words despite its visual impairment. echolocation bb

dupe hardly ever leaves its doors. but not because its shy. its just fuckign lazy

dupe is the prankster now. with its confusing door numbers, it'll spook anything and anyone. even Guiding.

dupe is pretty tall, but it has a hunch back - so it appears smaller than it actually is. still stands at like 8' or smth

those claws definitely left a bunch of huge scratches along the walls. the other suspect was figure.

don't fucking pet him

halt still has that flight/freeze touch! but it's only if its claws make contact with a being/entity. anywhere else is fine.

outside of its domain, it can't do much. but in its hallway, it controls everything, twisting and deceiving your perceptions. its domain is its playground, and you are the toy :)

#art #digital art #fanart #roblox doors #doors roblox #doors fanart #doors figure #doors halt #doors dupe #doors senVerse #hydrx ref

[idyllic-affections]

hmmm. pantalone's child!reader from my dad pantalone series who goes to fontaine with arle..... and arle, in true auntie fashion, nudges them to hang out with HER children. and they are like. so fuckign awkard. because (1) signora, in their mind, just died bro. even if it was a little while ago, they're still reeling in rage and sadness and bitterness and (2) lyney is lyney yknow...... his vibes are too strong and bright for them. they're still sad about their mother dying man :( i think maybe they would get along with lynette the most. she has a mild tone of voice, and i think they'd be pretty soothed when talking to her. freminet would be intimidated by them. i like to think [name] has a "stare into the very depths of your soul and pick it apart from the seams" kind of look to them. Yeah. idk. silly and fun fatui children shenanigans

#aphelion speaks 🌸 #^ has not finished the fontaine archon quest and is already posting thoughts

[princess-of-the-corner]

Actually, question (mostly CC) but if Toya & Burnin are besties, how did Burnin end up working for Endeavour? Like, I imagine having Toya as your friend means you get the vibes that maybe working for him wouldn’t be GREAT. Did Burnin & Toya have some kind of falling out over it? Did she only take the job after Toya 'died', as a sort of way to be 'closer' to him? Or is this all WAY less dramatic than I'm thinking?

A little but there's some drama involved!

So like.

The thing you have to keep in mind is that Toya only starts unpacking how Enji wasn't a good parent like right before he 'died'. Up until then he adored his father and wanted to be a Hero just like him. And he's optimistic that one day he'll be able to prove that he is Enough™.

Like the friend group kinda catch on that things might not be the best at home, but Toya talks positively about his dad even when he's incredibly frustrated by their fighting over Toya being capable as a Hero or not. So they're really not quite sure what to make of it.

Endeavor does offer work studies in general, and does offer one to Burnin during their third year(and later offers to turn the work study into a sidekick offer). She's hesitant about taking it, especially how Toya would feel about it. But Toya's actively encouraging her to take the offer. Yeah he's more than just a bit jealous, but he doesn't want her to sabotage herself out of some 'principal of the thing' nonsense. Yeah Toya would love if he got that chance, but this wasn't something Enji did to spite Toya. He offered Burnin the spot because she fuckign earned it. So take the shot and go for it.

Burnin is more on the level of like. She doesn't like Enji because she knows Toya, but between Toya's optimism and the fact that even if Enji is a shit dad he's a good Hero, she takes the offer. She's initially pretty distant from Enji and purely professional, and only plans to be a sidekick for maybe a year or two to really get all she can out of the experience before striking out on her own.

Then Toya dies.

And Burnin can just see how much that breaks Enji. Like he's not doing well with coping. It clicks for her that while he probably wasn't the best father, he did genuinely care about Toya and never wanted to genuinely hurt him. So she starts giving him some slack in some places. And as time goes on Enji is kinda. Projecting onto her a bit. Of just kinda seeing her working with him and a 'this is what Toya would be like if I'd helped him more'. So she's starting to like. Get along with him.

Part of her does feel guilty because she really feels like she's replacing Toya in a way and she doesn't want to do that. But she does enjoy this situation and is able to draw a boundary on that where she can.

#amnesia!dabi #tpp au

[donnyclaws]

Ur website so cool!! ❤️❤️ Do you have by any chances coding tips? Been trying to make my own website for a while but adhd won't let me concentrate a second when it comes to learning coding

Thank you! And 100% It is deceptively approachable but also time consuming, I'm familiar enough with html from a highschool class where we did need to write code out by hand, and then soft practice with coding toyhou.se profiles and futzing around with free code snippets. Largely though I don't think you need to know everything or to write everything by hand, you just need to frankenstein code pieces together (As long as they're free ofc).

I used this first, it's fucking insanely handy and lets you make a simple layout with sidebars, navigation, header, footer and a body base ect, and then just generate and copy the code. The html itself also has greyed out little notes about what parts do what!

I'll be real the rest of it after that is just me googling what I want to do or googling html snippets bc I forgot them. So like html image link with size attributes ect ect, how to make a html image gallery. I don't use one site exclusively but w3schools.com has a bunch of common ones and also has a little live code editor in its tutorials.

Like I still get greatly stumped for hours bc code's kinda sensitive and one or two characters out of place will break sections of it especially when ur just frankensteining. Trying out little segments in live code editors is really helpful because you can kinda break it apart and diagnose the issue before putting it into your site html.

Also if it helps this is kind of how I break it down in my brain as another ADHD-er. so fuckign sorry for how this looks im doing it in snipping tool. But code bits love to live in cages even if it all looks the same, iit would also help if you clean your code up mine is pretty horrid but you just want to familiarize yourself with the little "Sections" ig that's where doing things by hand would help because you would 100% know what each chunk is for but yk yk.

CSS is a different beast I barely understand. The parts of code where it starts stacking on top instead of being horizontal is css and it's basically how you do fancier things to your code, it's linked to stuff you already have down. So like changing the background in the body text box or something, you can only do so much in there. Css targetting the body text box is where you can level it up. Again the sadgrl layout builder has notes so you're not completely blind in there. There's also 100% so many resources to explain what all these words mean, my mmethod is incredibly avoidant I don't know what flex is I haven't needed to fight her yet ect ect.

Sorry if this is confusing this is just my hack and slash understanding atm. Be humbled by code I've spent too long trying to fix up hysterical margin issues just because I had a random apostrophe somewhere or because I tried to spell it colour and not color ect.

[cyberdragoninfinity]

S-so uh...does the 13 year old fucked up trauma bot also Do A Murder or is he just a shit. Ik hes a tiny shit in the route but I dont know how it ends. Do they all do a kill. Does aporia do a kill. Ur making me apeshit with these, thank you so much for posting them

YAAAYY TIME TO TALK ABOUT TAG FORCE 6 LESTER!!!!

yeah ok so he doesn't actually kill anyone in Tag Force 5, his personalized route is effectively "WOW this child needs to be medicated" and he psychologically torments Akiza at one point, but it is remarkably murder free (the same. can not be said of Jakob's route Where He Fucking Kills Lester and Primo and You Just Have to Sit There and Watch. GOD) Also sidenote Lester's endroute png is sooo so cute ;__; the text is a little harrowing but don't worry about it.

APORIA only does a kill at the very end of his TF6 route, when he INADVERTENTLY KILLS HIS FUCKIGN HUSBAND AND CRIES ABOUT IT AND I EXPLODE TEN THOUSAND TIMES!!!!!!

BUT ANYWAY. TAG FORCE 6 LESTER. AGAIN, NOT ONE OF THE MAIN TIER CHARACTERS. IN THAT GAME. so like his final heart event starts the same as Primo's, but he duels Yusei and Crow instead of Yusei and Akiza, and he doesn't actually kill anyone like Primo does (though he does threaten and taunt them as the Ark Cradle manifests)

and then when you actually go up into the Ark with him he immediately starts Saying Things That We Get a Little Scared Over

^This is why it's such a pet peeve of mine when people seem to assume the Three Emperors either A.) are humans who were turned into robots or B.) are partially human/flesh and blood cyborgs--it's a pretty fundamental part of them that theyre NOT human, or even really "alive" (in their personal views, anyway!) They're constructs built by some guy who's declared himself God out of the memories of one of his dead best friends. AND THIS ONE IS PERMANENTLY LIKE 12 ! :)

Lester also talks about the despair he personifies and somehow it's even more Oh God, Oh, God than Primo's rant on the subject is.

😀 OK COOL !!!!

like. Primo's endgame story event is horrifying because he just murders Yusei in cold blood and then tells you that youre gonna die with him for a God who doesn't care about you and a cause you will never live to see the benefit of. LESTER'S endgame is horrifying because this permanent child is genuinely so happy to hang out and 'play' with you and sees all of this as a Funny Little Game. he and Primo are both excited about it but in these two very different ways

AND. WELL. I DIDNT KNOW YOU COULD ONLY HAVE 30 IMAGES IN A POST. SO I WILL BE REBLOGGING WITH PART 2 OF THIS SOON !!! STAY TUNED!!

#asks #anonymous #TY IM GLAD YOURE ENJOYING!! sorry this took a while i have been in the middle of nowhere for most of this last week #ygo posting #yugioh 5ds #long post / #lucciano #lester 5ds #tag force madness

[jils-things]

hii jil !! for the ask game, if you haven’t already — i’d love to hear even more about jaide, so; 6 & 10? <3

SARA HALLU 🥺🥺🥺🥺💚💚 I APPRECIATE IT!!

6. does your self insert have any pets? Pokemon?

OK SO. YEAH. everything's pretty much explained here!

she caught them all from her encounters as a trainer but for me personally i like to think jaide's actual token pet is to.gepi (she affectionately nicknamed pipino) she only had him recently from an interesting incident :3c she doesn't want to let him battle because she babies him a bit too much 🥺🥺💚

quick run down!

• galla.de (remy) - her partner pokemon! gallade tends to drags her out of danger because shes too reckless 🔥 also funne contrast to jaide stone having a garde.voir 🔥🔥

• blazik.en (chuy) - big shoutout to my friend who big brain'd on this - anyway, kid!red got a torchi.c for kid!jaide before she left for joht.o. a parting gift for her :3

• leafeo.n (vivi) - i dont have much input, but another contrast to jaide stone who has a gla.ceon :3

• ma.ntine - caught in her alol.a trip. the funniest thought I ever had with this is jaide going waterskiing with man.tine pulling her and she's zooming by so quickly and it scares the hell out of red and blue who's just chillin with lap.ras and gya.rados respectively 😭😭😭

• reuni.clus - i only considered adding this one recently so i dont have much input yet! it also looks like a pkmn jaide would have.... i mean look at the face! (i plan to catch one in my new bw2 save hehe)

extra bit - jaide has... A LOT of 'mons, so this is only one set for sure 😭 she could have several sets of teams because shes a catcher and has been to nearly every region at this point! a few pokemons i'd like to mention however are: cin.derace, decidueye, hatenna and sw.ampert 🥹💚

10. how do the other characters feel about your self insert and f/o’s relationship?

holy shit. its the funniest thing istg.

so blue, blue was the guy who managed to bring everyone together after being away from each other for too long. all he wanted was to be with his best buds and thats all. however him slowly getting the hints that red and jaide MMMIIIGHT BE INTO EACH OTHER IS A BIG WHAT THE HELL MOMENT FOR HIM bro wanted reunite with his childhood best friends but childhood best friends are now having MATCHING BRACELETS WHAT ABOUT ME GUYS 🥲🥲🥲 AKDLFKFJS part of him thought this was complete bs because red willingly put himself in mt. silver for years and suddenly he's gonna get a girlfriend before him?!?!?? what!!!!! dude said i pulled a bad bitch by being au- /JJJ

but despite the initial shock i think part of blue is really proud of red because blue knows how socially awkward he is and he's not the best with people - so seeing him at least be with someone he can fully trust and be in love with is certainly a development that he hopes nothing but the best for. i think blue would try his best to help red out too! blue is quite fashionable, can totally see him helping red find a nice outfit for their casual stroll date :D

as for jaide, i think jaide would just constantly send or tell stuff to blue about how cute red is 😭 shes not immune to being so gushy abt her big bf 💔💔 will probably send pics of red sleeping on her lap and shes fuckign crying on pokemessenger or whatever the hell JALSKSJDJJSKA over all blue says yes i approve ☝️

ethan (jaides little brother) would be overjoyed! maybe a little shocked as well because wait a minute 💀 didn't i battle this guy in a seemingly cold place before 💀💀 JAJDJFHSJJD

methinks professor oa.k (who had been with the trio since they were little) is proud. he has quite literally watched these kids grow since they were preteens and seeing where they are today is just infinitely outstanding to him! they're both very smart and strong in their own fields (she's a pro catcher and he's the living legend) and they're still a young couple. lots of potential in those two for sure!

#satosara tag #THANK YOU SO MUCH... IM REALLY A BIG FAN OF TALKING ABT RED/JAIDE/BLUE they really mean sososos much to me <333333 #~ loreposting #red.rom #blue.plat #color pallet trio

[applestorms]

EVANGELION.

context: i just (as in, within an hour of beginning this post) finished watching evangelion, including both the tv series & the end of evangelion the movie. i have not read the manga, or watched any of the remake (?) movies yet (though i plan to shortly). my brain is thus running at like mach 10 rn trying to keep all of these thoughts in order, so to preserve these initial reflections while they're still fresh, here is the evangelion post. no worries if you're following me for other stuff, we'll be back to regular programming soon enough, but i can't let this shit stew on my own for much longer.

SUMMARY: 7 sections, on agency, sartre, shounen expectations, freud & generational trauma, queer shit, hope, & anime budgets. obvious spoiler warning.

1. agency (does shinji actually have any choices?)

this idea is one of the first to stand out to me while watching, and was also the most personally satisfying to watch develop since it only gained relevancy throughout the series + held major significance in EoE.

essentially: every single time that shinji has a "darkest hour" moment throughout the series, typically revolving around him not wanting to fight/kill/destroy/etc. while piloting the eva, someone around him will tell him that it is his decision whether or not he wants to continue fighting. most often this person is misato, though there is also an instance of kaji doing it in the later part of the show. significantly, while this "choice" is always framed as a decision that shinji himself is allowed to make, to join their forces and fight or not, it is very clearly not actually a decision at all- even ignoring the obvious...emotional stress of telling a 14 year old that he can either get back in the goddamn robot no matter how traumatizing it is to him and fight or single-handedly cause the extinction of humanity, shinji can never truly leave nerv and this only becomes more apparent the more time that passes.

that's all quite obvious in my mind, but what's notable here is the progression, both in terms of how the decision itself is presented to him, and how the continual fake-out of giving shinji any actual agency carves at his psyche.

in terms of the first, it is very clear, above all else, that shinji absolutely does not want to fight in the fuckign robot, which is demonstrated through the fact that every single time he is given the "choice" to leave, he takes it and runs away, no matter how dire the situation is. shinji does not want to be a shounen protagonist, dammit, but time and time again he is dragged back into the same position and, most importantly, taught that his choices mean nothing. from the first few episodes where he runs away from home, to EoE where misato drags him through a parking lot and throws him into an elevator while telling him to fight, time and time again shinji's agency is violently taken away from him in the name of the continuation? transformation? of humanity, and i think that from his complete lack of desire to do literally anything in EoE we can tell he is aware of this.

what's really significant about all of this, then, is the way that this message influences the few instances where shinji actually does have some semblance of agency. in particular, i'm thinking about the gay angel (THE GAY ANGEL) and the ending of EoE.

so, first: the gay angel. kaworu. i say "semblance of agency," since shinji is kind of just given the same decision here as everywhere else, but this one is presented pretty & executed (ouch) pretty differently so i wanna talk about it.

kaworu is a very different character from everyone else in the cast for the primary reason that he is not particularly caught up in his own bullshit. he shows up at a time when shinji basically has no one (the trust "darkest hour" of the whole series, really) and is notable in that he openly and easily gives him love and time when no one else is really able to. this could in part be attributed to his status as an angel, but i think it goes further too- more on this in the section about generational trauma.

anyways, the decision to kill kaworu is phrased very differently from the previous "choices" offered to shinji by misato. rather than telling shinji that he has a choice in the same vague terms as before, to fight or not fight, kaworu kinda just tells him straight up- either he can kill kaworu, the one person who mutually loves and cared for him at a time when literally no one else was able to and thereby give humanity a chance at continuation, or he can hold off and let kaworu live but cause the destruction he has been pulled into staving off for the entire series. loneliness or annihilation- those are shinji's two choices here, and kaworu is very open about which one he prefers, citing the good that humanity has brought forward. i actually think that misato is wrong in her interpretation of this scene (lots of misato slander here whoops, i swear i love her)- kaworu isn't offering up his life here out of a lack of care for himself, but rather an overwhelming care for shinji as an individual and humanity as a collective.

from shinji's perspective though, this is basically the same agonizing moral dilemma he has been forced to "decide" for the last 16 angels, and he knows by this point what the answer is supposed to be. it's what's so truly tragic about this moment to me- even if kaworu meant this to be a genuine decision for shinji to make, accepting the consequences of his choice fully either way, shinji was never going to be able to see it that way after having the "correct" answer forced upon him again and again. he might be able to scramble for a justification in the aftermath, rationalizing it as his own (supposedly) disgusting need for validation, but he was never actually allowed to decide any other way and he knows it. even if shinji would ultimately choose in favor of the continuation of humanity & continue fighting, the decision itself is so tainted* by this point that it doesn't really matter, since no one could ever really know the truth.

*(this lack of a decision could also be attributed to an inability for anyone to truly trust shinji- see section 2 on sartre for more on this dissonance.)

there is, however, one instance where shinji truly is given an actual choice, which coincidentally also includes kaworu but also rei at the end of EoE. here the choice is a bit different though, instead being between the continuation of humanity in its collective, gelatinous blob state or broken back up into separate entities.

since humanity has already been eradicated (hey callback to kaworu's presence marking the ultimate end of humanity, he came back for more than just to comfort shinji & be a thematic parallel to denote his "true" choices), i think shinji is able to view this decision much more clearly and thus seems a lot more satisfied with his ultimate choice. there's a lot of nuances to this of course, as evidenced by the ending with asuka, but past that i think the fact that both the tv series & EoE end with shinji coming to some sort of satisfied (if mostly theoretical) conclusion that seems to leave him with a marginally happier emotional state is pretty meaningful, especially considering just how little emotional development these characters go through in general (see sections 3 & 4).

what's particularly satisfying about all this though is the fact that shinji seems to actually engage with this idea himself in one of previously mentioned conclusions. the ending of the tv show is essentially just shinji realizing that he does in fact have agency and has had it all along, even if not in the biggest/most overwhelming situations he was forced into. personally, i read this as shinji not only becoming consciously aware of his own learned helplessness, but also the fact that he has actually been making decisions for himself all along and is able to continue doing so, that he can take back his agency for himself through the conscious decision to keep making meaningful connections with others- a very beauvoirean conclusion, which is gonna become real significant real fast as we get into this next section. up next: sartre.

2. sartre (shinji/asuka/rei as no exit, ft. good place parallels)

no exit is a 1944 existentialist play written by the french philosopher jean-paul sartre. in it, three people (two women, & one man, by the names of estelle, inez, and garcin) are sent to hell and locked in a room together, destined to torture one another for the rest of eternity. the most well known line from it is likely "Hell is other people," a conclusion the character garcin comes to near the end of the play as the group realizes the truth of their circumstances.

there are some obvious connections here- the three main characters from no exit pretty easily map onto the three main pilots (estelle -> asuka, garcin -> shinji, and more lightly inez -> rei). the cycle of torture even follows as well, with a possible interpretation of the pilots' dynamic being that asuka tortures shinji (see section 5; tldr it's all the degradation), rei tortures asuka (her silence heightening asuka's insecurities), and shinji tortures rei (less obvious, but hinted at through things like rei's emotional attachment to shinji which seems to at least scare her for how strange it is).

past that though, the sartrean elements of this story become super fucking clear in the last few episodes, coming down to two big ideas that shinji frets over: freedom as a curse, and hell as other people.

the "condemnation of freedom," idea is kind of tied up with the whole shinji agency thing discussed in section 1, and since i don't think i can elaborate on it much more here without doing a whole deep dive on the philosophy, i'll just focus on the second idea, especially since it's one of the emotional cores that the story revolves around.

the idea that "hell is other people," as stated by garcin in the original play really comes down to one main factor and that is the dissonance between how we view ourselves & how other people view us. in the show, this is presented through the hedgehog allegory (also related to western philosophy but i know sartre better so i'm gonna keep talking about him here) and the idea that in the process of getting closer to one another we also hurt each other more, but i think the sartrean idea lends a bit more light onto the whole conflict of perspectives thing that the hedgehog idea along misses out on.

it's pretty clear imo that shinji has some kind of social anxiety, or at the very least is dealing with a lot of the normal anxiety that comes with growing up and beginning to desire validation (from your peers, from your guardians, etc.). the entire point of EoE as a film and seemingly the very basis for the concept of AT fields is the idea that humanity is separate, with individual humans never being able to truly connect with one another. ignoring the more esoteric & absurd ways this is portrayed in-movie, this idea is pretty easy to get on board with- relationships change over time, people fight and become close and fall apart, and that is largely just a natural fact of life. again, the inability to accept this fact is going to be examined more in section 4, but i think shinji is key in connecting the hedgehog thing to sartre.

near the end of EoE, when everyone is getting exploded into orange goop and melted into the human soup, it is notable that the way everyone gets incorporated is by a rei transforming into the person that they seem to have wanted to connect with the most (shinji's dad with his mom, but also maya w/ akagi and hyuga w/ misato), again tying back to that theme of desiring a more "true"/deeper connection between people. at the end of the tv series, however, this is slightly different due to the look we get into shinji's mind. specifically, shinji doesn't just desire a relationship (platonic, romantic, and/or sexual) or validation from other people, but is caught up in the way that he is perceived by others. the separation between people is thus torturous to him not in how it means he can't truly connect with other people, but in how he can't control the ways that other people view or understand or react to him.

i think this is a part of why shinji seems to have a much easier time with his end decision in EoE- despite all the underlying freudian psychosexual development shit that permeates through some of the weirder parts of NGE, shinji seems to me to care a lot more about how other people view him than the specific types of connections he is able to make, e.g. he still considers his relationship with asuka to be a key point of meaning in his life, despite how turbulent/messy it is. for a kid who struggled with social interactions a lot growing up, any deeper connection is pretty meaningful to him by this point, and it shows. this also could be attributed to being a part of the greater influence of kaworu, as the fact that he cared so deeply and so meaningfully about shinji (and the opposite as well) may have been proof to him that any "deeper" connections aren't really necessary or worthwhile, even before he got mixed up into the people soup.*

*ALSO: didn't think about this until later, but there's also the whole process of connecting with the evas that the pilots have to go through to think about here.

**ALSO 2: if you didn't already know, the good place is also very overtly based on no exit. this means there's actually a kinda random parallel between tgp & evangelion in that they both happen to add a fourth individual through the introduction of a fourth dude (jason & kaworu respectively) that mixes shit up even more. neat.

so, speaking of the various endings:

3. the ending does make some sense, actually (dropping shounen expectations)

one of the things that i was most impressed by while watching evangelion, especially around the mid-point of the tv series around the time that asuka is introduced, is the fact that they were able to make what would otherwise be pretty standard anime fan service a genuinely meaningful part of the story's underlying themes, in particular those related to the freud shit (getting there soon, i promise) but also just the general connections to biology and humanity and development.

i don't think evangelion should be watched or understood like a traditional shounen show, and in fact it kind of goes against the underlying emotional core of story to try and force that kind of reading onto it. like, okay, take shinji for example- like i said a couple sections back, one of shinji's key character traits is the fact that he doesn't want to be a fucking shounen protagonist and hates being forced into that position, but keeps getting dragged back to nerv and EVA 01 anyway.

i think it's notable that the few moments where shinji has what might be considered a "traditional" epic shounen hero moment could very easily be read as not even being shinji's own actions in the first place, but the eva itself due to them 1. not showing shinji's face during the moment, just his fear before and trauma after, and 2. being motivated by shinji's extreme fear, giving more of the vibe of a mother protecting her child than shinji making progress on his own.

none of the main cast really seem to go through any super significant character development throughout the entirety of both the show and movie, actually- the closest we get is whatever the hell rei was doing and the breakthroughs in thought that shinji has at the very very end of either production, but that's about it.

what i think makes this important is the fact that it points towards what the actual emotional core that the show centers around. what sets evangelion apart from other shounen shows, imo, is the fact that it takes a hard look at the apocalyptic world that it created and really takes the time to reflect on how that kind of trauma would actually influence its characters. i haven't seen a ton of in-depth negative reviews of the ending of NGE, but i'm guessing that a major factor in the potential frustration with the ending is the fact that it drops a lot of the overt plot elements in favor of more a more abstract look into shinji's mind. but i think that look is entirely the point of the ending- it was never really about the robots, or at least not by the end of the series, so the ending focuses on the emotional payoff of at least one character instead to find the barest glimmer of hope leftover.

this is part of why i find kaworu to be such a significant character- one of the key conclusions that shinji seems to come to at the end of the tv series is the idea that "you have to love yourself in order to love other people," but i actually don't know if that's entirely true or even demonstrated in the series. kaworu is the first person to really demonstrate to shinji that he is capable of loving and being loved, and despite the tragedy of that relationship, i think it was a core part of shinji's eventual first step towards self-acceptance.

4. freud & generational trauma (everyone is ultimately just an abused child)

ok fuck it, i've been talking about this for ages, let's just fucking get to it already.

i'm nowhere near an expert on freud, really i only have a pretty baseline understanding (thanks to a high school ap psych class) of the psychosexual stages of development thing that the show references a lot in the later parts (the oral fixation thing w/ misato, etc.), so rather than looking into the details of that, i think the big thing here for me is how the use of freud influences the ideas that the show focuses on. namely, as we see through the last few episodes of the tv series: everyone is just a sad, traumatized, abused kid.

i also think that what the inclusion of all the freud shit ultimately does for this series is give it a big emphasis on biological human development and family relations, which feels especially significant in how it can tie into a more subtle, but imo still very important idea: generational trauma, told through the story of the end of the world.

what i like about this idea is that it's really where the story begins, chronologically in the timeline and in episode 1 with shinji & gendo. the idea then evolves and expands the more parent/child relationships we learn about, from misato and her father to asuka, akagi, and, at least in part, rei.

similar to how the series utilizes its religious themes & imagery to get back to the origins/sources of humanity (namely adam & lilith), i like to think of the second impact as the source of this initial trauma. because of the second impact, we are basically guaranteed that every single adult present in the series has dealt with some degree of trauma, though in many cases this expands to other things as well (e.g. gendo struggling with social connections & misato's tricky relationship with her father, both of which are established pre-impact).

what's really big though is how this initial trauma influences the next generation of kids, especially the main trio of eva pilots (& their respective mother-related machinery) but really all of their classmates as well. toji, to some degree kensuke, really every kid born after or around the time of the second impact seems to similarly deal with the echoes of this initial trauma. if you want to, you could maybe even relate back to the very first impact of the lilith egg as a source as well, each new impact being an echo of the previous through the continuation of generational traumas.

TLDR: the freud shit doesn't have to just be freud shit, the fucked up family relations can be read through the lens of generational trauma as well.

5. queer shit (THE GAY ANGEL)

when i say queer shit here i'm really talking about gender roles, which is ESPECIALLY important when talking about shinji's two main crushes: kaworu and asuka (sticking with those two for now since they're the most overt, but they're not necessarily the only ones you can read into btw).

the big thing here is that imo the main factor that makes shinji's relationship with asuka (in particular, but really all of the women in the show) so difficult is the weight that heterosexual relationships have. again, much of evangelion's imagery is heavily focused on biology, specifically in terms of development both as a baby is developed & in puberty, and i think that weight is felt in the awkward relationships shinji has with all the girls he's suddenly been surrounded by.

this is in part why i think it was so much easier for shinji to get on board with kaworu, and why the relationship itself was so meaningful to him- because there's no threat of MARRY A WOMAN BONE HAVE A CHILD REPRODUCE CONTINUE THE HUMAN RACE (the last one in particular being especially relevant in the post-apocalyptic hellscape they're all trapped in), shinji is able to focus entirely on the personal emotional aspects of the relationship and the ability to find meaning through human connection, which again is a very beauvoirean idea.*

*i think i kinda skipped over this in the sartre section but beauvoir was a contemporary of sartre that influenced a lot of his philosophy especially later on so the fact that shinji's end conclusion seems so reminiscent of beauvoir is very satisfying.

this is not to say that shinji's relationship with asuka or any of the women around him wasn't meaningful or revolving around genuine feelings on his part, just that the weight of social expectations particularly in the context of male/female gender roles is a constant factor at the back of his mind when trying to navigate all these new social situations.

this is also not just an issue that shinji deals with- asuka herself is constantly the one to call shinji out for not being enough of a real man, which shinji actually rarely mentions all that directly, only caring when asuka herself mentions it, and i personally read her struggles with sexuality and desire to be seen as an adult as a part of her deeper issues with the woman gender role. misato kind of deals with the same thing actually, and even akagi in how they all have such tricky relationships with their own sexuality and the men around them. again, i think the whole dissonance between differing perceptions idea is relevant here, especially when considering the ways that women deal with objectification, both in terms of how others view them and how they're taught to present themselves.

6. no development but lasting hope? (making sense of EoE)

i kind of already talked about this, but expanding on the idea that everyone is ultimately still just an abused kid looking for solutions to the problems they were raised to have, i think it's significant within the imagery of the show that the world post-second impact is eternally spring/summer, meaning that even the environment the characters are trapped in itself is unable to develop or grow, stuck in the same cycle of infancy & puberty with no real adulthood. the constant threat of the angels and/or third impact also adds to this, with characters rushing to get married and form relationships (as misato & akagi talk about in one episode) but never getting the chance to properly grow old before they die.

this implies however that the existence of an autumn/winter is potentially in the future, that growth can come eventually and hope is still present. i'm not entirely sure yet what to make of the ending of EoE- i actually really like how the tone shifts so drastically immediately following such an emotionally heavy, complicated sequence, but i also don't think it's entirely without hope. it's the same old as before, maybe a relapse, maybe a reaction the traumas that initially happened, but. i mean she doesn't actually die??? my big conclusion is still a work in progress i suppose.

7. bonus: this isn't low budget it's goddamn beautiful, watch utena

i've been writing this "short reflection" for like two days straight already, this section is basically just the title. watch utena for more fucked up shit with an actually low budget. frankly this video explains the low budget thing better and has a better justification so i'll just direct you there. (yes this connection is about the therapy elevators.)

#astronaut rambles #nge #neon genesis evangelion #end of evangelion #evangelion meta #not my usual type of meta posting but i couldn't keep this shit in #sorry if the freud section is kind of incoherent i stopped & started writing halfway through it due to a need to Sleep #baz this one's for you