#but I won't bet on that | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

carionto · 5 months

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The duality of Man, or triality? quadrality?

Alien to Human about New Human: Correct me if I'm wrong, but they appear abnormally large for your species?

H: Yea, he's a biggun alright, even without the EV suit I'd say... 7'3'', 310 pounds, bet he power lifts.

A: Umm... not to be rude, but, uhh... he seems, well... how should I put this...

H: Intimidating? Terrifying? Evil? Yea, if this station didn't have high screening standards I'd be totally pissing myself if he started walking towards me. The mohawk and eye tat totally make me believe he could snap me in two with a single glare.

A: I feel ashamed that my instincts are telling me to flee. I wish nature were easier to change.

H (shouting at NH): Hey buddy! Could you come over here for a minute please? You look awesome by the way!

A (whispering nervously): what are you doing?!?

H: Gotta overcome those fears somehow, I believe the best way is a direct confrontation.

NH approaches, somewhat slowly, looking around at all the other aliens in the station that are chatting, waiting around, or doing some work. He finally approaches A and H, and in a very deep and husky voice says: Um, hi, hello. T-thanks for the compliment, I, uh, was a little worried I would stand out too much here.

H: Oh you totally do, my friend over here is practically about to pass out from how much like a gothic viking of death metal you look.

NH: Oh no, I'm so sorry, I-I just grew up in Sweden-Delta and both my parents were huge into classic local music, so I just, uh... it's complicated. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare anyone.

H: Hey, relax pal, we're all good people here. Anyway, what you here to do? I'm planning on starting a bakery, still testing out what kind of flour most species here can actually stomach. My friend here is on the team working on Moon theft preventative measures.

NH: Oh, that's cool. I'm here as an exchange student with the department of applied astrophysics. If all goes well, I can finish my Bachelors degree remotely and stay here as an intern with the head researcher.

H: Oooh, that's cool. (so cool yea that you're apparently half my age but oh well guess I'm a big fat time waster like my father before me and oh god change the subject before I get depressed in front of strangers) That's a real big bag you got there, carrying some super secret science things, eh?

NH: Oh, that... uhh... guess it can't hurt to tell, security vetted it already anyway.

NH proceeds to unzip the bag and hold up a large white piece of clothing with light blue rings and accents, alongside a strange white cap with what looked like small fins, and a curious little backpack.

NH: It's uhh... um... my... Ika... musume... cosplay.... (oh gods I can't believe I said it out loud again)

After a moment of awkward silence, NH slowly puts on the backpack and presses a button on it's strap, and suddenly numerous light blue colored tentacle-like appendages sprout out from the backpack and move in line with NH's movements.

NH: I, uh..., got my engineering friend to make them articulate and interface with my contacts. I can make them do all sorts of things, like make various shapes and animals with them, though works best as a shadow theater.

H:...

NH:...

A now frozen out of confusion than fear:...

H: That's so

NH: (oh I know it's so lame, but I love that show)-

H: COOL! I don't know what a ika musume is, but those things look amazing. You said articulate? How precise can they be? I'd love to have something like that instead of my useless assistant. Poor lad can't make a piece of toast if his life depended on it...

NH: Y-you like it?

H: I LOVE those things. My daughter does cosplay too sometimes, but she makes her Dreadnought suits herself from scraps. One time the military came to our house and installed a limiter on the gauss cannon she found in a crash site, said it would otherwise start to generate small doses of radiation if used too frequently. But she replaced it with a handmade rail gun before the next convention. Do you go to those? Did you see a 7 meter tall hulking metal monstrosity with a bunch of candles all over? That was her.

NH: Oh, I think I've seen video of that, but no, not in person, I go to smaller events. I don't really like big crowds.

H: Oh yea, I get ya, you do seem a bit on the shy side now that we've been talking for a bit. Hey, no worries, like I said, we're all good people here.

NH: T-thanks, but I think I should be going now, the teacher is calling me over.

H: Oh yea, go ahead, didn't mean to take up so much of your time. Have a fun stay and I'm sure you'll ace that paper or theory? Or whatever astrophysicists do, you seem like a solid kid.

NH: Oh, uh, thanks. Good luck with your bakery. And you with stopping those weird people from stealing more moons. Bye.

H: Bye bye, come visit, don't be a stranger now, I'm set up just a short bit from the main lift on floor 14.

NH: R-right, I'll, uh, be sure to stop by soon.

A is finally able to process what they just heard and says: What was all that just now?

H: What? Just a friendly chat with what is apparently basically a kid. Man, this kid's got so much going on, while I'm almost 50 and I have an oven. Life, man, it can go in so many ways. Anyway, let's go grab a drink, I'm parched.

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shinidamachu · 1 year

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I think you or someone else discussed how Inuyasha is most likely demisexual because of his lack of interest in nudity until he formed an emotional bond. I was just thinking how the anti’s claimed Inuyasha settled for Kagome, but all evidence points to him loving her *despite* her resemblance to Kikyo. Not hating on Kikyo, just pointing out how Inuyasha kept saying it’s his fault she died because he didn’t trust her, even though trust has to go both ways but whatever, so if he was settling then Kagome would be a daily reminder that he failed Kikyo. Which would sound like hell considering his repeated claims of his fault.

But clearly in the past discussion of Inuyasha being demisexual, we all know he isn’t shallow or ”settling”.

I might have mentioned Inuyasha being demisexual once or twice, but I don't remember posting something that specific. Maybe someone else did and I reblogged it?

I'm glad you brought up the "Inuyasha settled for Kagome" terrible take, though, because you make great points and boy do I have something to say about it.

First, I love that you mentioned trust has to go both ways despite Inuyasha blaming Kikyo's death solely on his lack of trust on her. It always bothered me how quickily and sincerely he owned up to the role he played on her fate when there was zero reciprocity from Kikyo.

He went as far as taking responsability for things that have never really happened and that would be completely out of his control if they had, such as Kikyo "dying to follow after him" even though he didn't ask for it and never would.

The irony is that, between the two of them, Kikyo was actually the one more equipped to realize they were being played and yet, not only she falls for the same trap, but never really acknowledges that her lack of trust on Inuyasha was just as detrimental to their downfall.

Naraku's entire plan was based on both of them doubting each other. If either one had been more trusting, it'd have failed. Inuyasha recognizes this and regrets not trusting Kikyo, immediately treating her like the victim that she is and never once blaming her.

But he is a victim himself and she never extends the same courtesy to him, still thinking her actions were justified because he should have trusted her — not the other way around — and so she never bothers easing his guilt. On the contrary, she purposely adds to it.

The thing about the love triangle — for lack of a better term — is that Inuyasha and Kagome are constantly pushing their feelings aside to empathize with each other's and Kikyo's pain, while Kikyo acts like she's the only one who's hurting.

Which is to be expected at first because she is the one who died and was brought back against her will, but as the story progressed, I kept waiting for Kikyo to see a little bit of herself on the ordinary girl who was entrusted the weight of the world upon her shoulders, had her shoes to fill and the mess she left behind to clean up.

I kept waiting for her to show some sympathy for the boy who lost fifty years of his life because she misjudged him and was willing to die for a debt she manipulated and guilt-tripped him into thinking he had, a boy she supposedly loves.

None of it came, at least not in a way that felt organic or satisfying. That's my main issue with how Kikyo was written. You can't paint her as a complex character and then gloss over her flaws. You can't sell her as gray character and then pretend the bad things she did never happened.

Takahashi wanted her to reap all of the rewards that come with a redemption arc without really bothering to make her go through one, because that would mean having Kikyo face her mistakes for what they were — including her distrust on Inuyasha — and then apologizing or making up for it, a feat that rarely happened in canon, if at all.

Instead, she abruptly stops acting as vicious, so everything can be conveniently forgiven and forgotten because "she isn't like that anymore." The lack of explanation about what motivated this change makes harder for the audience to connect with her and results in many plot inconsistencies.

And the lack of accountability regarding Kikyo's actions keeps her from growing and reaching her full potential as a character, indirectly regressing or preventing the development of the characters around her as well, which I believe is a huge part of why the story feels repetitive and stagnant at times.

Now, you're definitely onto something when you argue that all evidence actually points to Inuyasha falling in love with Kagome despite her resemblance to Kikyo. I've actually talked about it here and here.

While it's true that Inuyasha mistook Kagome for Kikyo when they first met, it would've been unreasonable to expect anything different. Their looks and scents are similar, he had just woken up from a fifty years long spell and up until then he had no reason to believe otherwise, but Inuyasha actually caught up in a decent amount of time.

After that, as much as he still refused to call Kagome by name, he was also very aware she wasn't Kikyo, to the point that it took seeing her with complete priestess attire on for him to even make that correlation again.

And yet, Inuyasha still doesn't go back into thinking they're the same person, but rather that Kagome's a girl who resembles Kikyo. Only eventually, even this starts to change the more time they spend together and suddenly, when Inuyasha has a nightmare about Kikyo, is Kagome he sees first.

Mind you, he has only seen Kagome in priestess clothes once. Kikyo wore those her entire life. It'd be understandable for him to confuse Kagome for Kikyo and yet Kagome was his first thought here when, by logic, she shouldn't have been. From them on, he doesn't even see any resemblance between the two girls at all anymore.

Which makes sense, because even if Inuyasha had tried to use Kagome as a replacement — something he never did — he couldn't possibly have succeded, since both girls are polar opposites — a creative choice that was done completely on purpose — and Kagome wasn't slightly interested on being anyone but herself, making her into the worst Kikyo replacement ever.

That's why it got easier for Inuyasha to distinguish one girl from the other with time. Their distinct personalities make up for completely different dynamics and bring completely different feelings out of Inuyasha, because they represent completely different things to him and, again: this is done absolutely on purpose.

In the manga, this is better illustrated by two very specific panels. In the first one, Kikyo is smiling sadly but genuinely at Inuyasha — which we don't see her do often — and he admitted later on that the exchange made him feel guilty, like he had done something wrong, since he had just been rude to her.

In the second one, Kagome is smiling brightly at Inuyasha, which she does constantly, then we immediately see him blush and think to himself how relieved he is to see that smile

Of course those are very different contexts, but they pretty much set the tone for both relationships and if the arrangement of those panels wasn't a conscious choice — which I doubt — then Takahashi is insanely lucky. It's also worth noting that Inuyasha felt relieved to see Kagome smiling because it was further confirmation that even after Kikyo's resurrection, she was still Kagome.

So I think it's safe to say the physical resemblance actually slowed the romantic process down, considering that the staged betrayal made Inuyasha build his walls even taller than they were when he met Kikyo. This becomes even more clear when you compare their respective first "amicable" conversations.

With Kikyo, even though he was reluctant about her approach and suspicious of her intentions, there was still a part of him that obviously wanted it to be true, so he was at least open to what she had to say.

With Kagome, he was visibly more aggressive and closed off because he has been burned before and she was the reincarnation of the woman who did the burning, which makes her managing to get his trust so quickly that much more remarkable, since she apparently did in less time and in worse circumstances, what Kikyo couldn't.

And Kagome did it precisely because she never acted like Kikyo. She actually took the time to know Inuyasha, to give him her trust and to earn his, to build a solid relationship, based on honesty and real acceptance.

I like to think that, while Kikyo found a crack on Inuyasha's defense she could slip in, Kagome slowly smashed his walls to the ground, therefore leaving an ever lasting impact on him that she couldn't have made by being anyone but herself.

When Inuyasha starts to pursue Kagome romantically, he does so after concluding that there's absolutely no resemblance between the two girls at all and after going through an entire arc where Kagome cried for his sake and trusted him blindly, none of which has anything to do with Kikyo.

People argue that Inuyasha was actually trying to kiss Kikyo here, but why would he do that when he still thinks she betrayed him? And if this was really the case, then why has he never willingly kissed or tried to kiss Kikyo until their final goodbye, Sunrise additions excluded?

At this point, it makes more sense to me that he was avoiding to look at Kagome not because she looks like Kikyo — he has been looking at her just fine before —, but because he has started to catch feelings for her despite his efforts not to and doesn't know how to act. In fact, when he had the chance to kiss Kikyo soon after, this is what we got instead:

And then he hugs her — something the anime cut out — but the important thing is that Inuyasha had this and many other opportunities to rekindle his relationship with Kikyo and simply didn't.

In this particular occasion, he even go as far as to ask Kikyo to return the piece of soul that keeps her "alive" to Kagome knowing full well what the consequences were.

Why would Inuyasha settle for a "replacement" when he could have the real thing instead? Even if you believe resurrected Kikyo to be nothing more than a malicious replica of the original, she's still more Kikyo than Kagome could or would ever be.

I dislike this notion because if it's true and there's not an ounce of Kikyo there, why should the audience or the characters care if she "lives" or "dies"? If she gets a redemption arc or not? It feels like a cop out to only consider her the real Kikyo when she does good things.

That being said, save for maybe one scene at the beginning where Inuyasha shoved a bow and some arrows at Kagome because Kikyo was a master archer, he never expected her to behave like Kikyo, never tried to change her so she would and never acted frustrated or disappointed at the fact that she was her own person.

Inuyasha has his flaws — as any good main character should — but he always respected the inviduality of both girls, which is more than I can say about the people who insist on this baseless take.

To wrongly paint Inuyasha as someone who settled for Kagome because she looks like Kikyo gets especially icky when even Naraku, the villain who was obsessed with her, never redirected said obsession to Kagome.

It's such a common trope that I was actually expecting it, but I'm glad it didn't happen because it's a subtle and yet effective way of sedimenting both girls as separate individuals instead of going for the cheapest option.

And ironically, the only character who treated Kagome as if she was Kikyo was Kikyo herself, but even that was very early on and she only seemed to do it as a way of belittling Kagome, because while mentioning her to other people — or by the end of the story — Kikyo had no trouble referring to Kagome as a different being.

Sunrise's adaptation made very questionable choices but something they were pretty consistent on was making clear Kagome and Kikyo aren't the same.

Besides, something fundamentally wrong with this argument is that Inuyasha comes off as shallow and Kikyo as disposeable. Shallow because it suggests physical appearance is all that matters — which goes against everything his character stands for in canon — and the soul is just a seal of approval.

Disposeable because it hints Kikyo's personality is so forgettable and unimportant that it played absolutely no part on sparkling Inuyasha's interest. She's so easily replaceable that even someone who had opposite world views, thoughts, feelings, temperament and mannerisms could do the trick. The memories they made are so generic that it wouldn't have make a difference if any other character was in her place.

Why do people even like those characters, why do they even ship them together if they truly believe that? That's why I don't buy that they actually do.

You see, considering how huge Kagome's soul is, Kikyo technically has got to be someone else's reincarnation too, but I've never seen anyone making the case that she is anyone but herself or that her predecessor is also the love of Inuyasha's life.

The reason they try to do this with Kagome is so that they can pretend Inuyasha and Kikyo somehow ended up together to cope with the fact that they didn't. And that's the exact same reason they pretend he setled for Kagome as well.

Which is funny because what exactly was Inuyasha settling for? Like, in the great scheem of things, what was Kikyo able to give him that he couldn't get a thousand times better from Kagome with no strings attached and just had to make his peace with it?

It seems to me like it was the other way around: Kagome managed to accomplish everything Kikyo failed to do, so if anything Inuyasha was settling, it was for Kikyo, resigned to spend the rest of his life as human — something he hated to be — just to get "accepted" or to die for something he didn't do just to appease her.

Finally, to say inuyasha settled implies he had no other choice but to marry Kagome. He had: staying single, because now that he has friends and wasn't alone anymore, he doesn't need a lover to fill that empty space in his life if he doesn't want one.

Plus, Kagome wasn't entitled to his love. She jumped trought that well knowing that three years is a long time, that people and feelings change and that what waited for her on the other side was a mystery, but she did it anyway because all she ever wanted from him was to stay by his side and for him to be honest with her.

Kagome would've been fine with a platonic relationship because even though she obviously wanted more, she was ready to accept whatever Inuyasha was willing to give her, but he wanted her to return so he could give her everything, which he couldn't before because he felt in debt with Kikyo. That's the whole point.

Inuyasha was the one who iniciated every romantic moment they had early on: the first hug, both almost kisses, etc. And it was clear that the things Kagome made him feel, such as that sense of peace, of belonging, of unadultered happiness, were very new to him, so the idea that Inuyasha was settling for her is laughable when this is the character in question:

I know a lot of those scenes were deleted or changed by Sunrise but I watched the anime without reading the manga beforehand and reached the exact same conclusions, so I'm still of the opinion that the people who convinced themselves Kagome was a consolation prize either didn't pay attention or have an agenda of their own to push, that won't change by reading the original material.

TLDR; one does not simply "settle" for their soulmate. They come home to them.

#As you can see I have no self control when it comes to this topic #I bet you regret sending this ask now but this one is on you anon #I won't feel bad about it because I know nobody will read it anyway #And I'm glad I wrote this because if I ever get another ask on the subject I can just link this post and call it quits #So thank you for this opportunity #Sidmailing #Inuyasha #Kagome #Inukag

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