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bpd-shuichi-togo · 2 years

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Ngl op I'm rlly interested in your ideas 👉👈 [if you'd like to share them ofc 😙] I also wish to go a bit #insane <3

tee hee tysm and i am SO #sorry this took so long i'm #unmedicated if you hadn't already gathered. anyways erm this is gonna be a bit of a mess

i INSTANTLY forgot every single brain disease i've ever contracted when i saw this, but a few in no particular order as concisely as i am physiologically capable of being

babs-shuichi besties:

(no romo. obv. as babalon is a Grown Adult Woman and shuichi is a High Schooler) this specifically is what i was thinking about when i made that post actually. for the sake of concision i will try to reel it WAY tf in here (i've been meaning to make A Whole Post or several about this for at least a year) but like just to touch on how this isn't actually canon divergent even though they've never interacted on-screen. do you ever think about how in chapter 5 shuichi declares to claude that he has critical info on babalon re: her True Identity, which he offers to trade? and how in chapter 7 babalon pulls up on claude with DEEPLY personal information re: her abusive mother and gender issues that she basically only could have gotten from shuichi, while claude (who we see in chapter 9 is not beyond getting mean about someone's Tragic Backstory, and def wouldn't have held back on babs here when she is making digs at her abusive childhood & repressed dysphoria-) has pretty much nothing to shoot back with? almost like (PRE-CHAPTER SEVEN) shuichi withheld crucial information about babalon's Whole Deal from an official ally to his guild, who was giving him something in exchange for that information-- with whom maintaining at least a functioning professional relationship is beneficial to duo, with whom forming an outright antagonistic relationship is detrimental not only to him but to DUO-- while giving babalon (WHO DISCLOSED TO HIM HER ~TRUE IDENTITY~ AND PRESUMABLY ALSO THE TRAGIC BACKSTORY THAT COMES WITH IT) considerable information on her, and possibly also her in-depth knowledge of the game come chapter 8. like what the fuck and like all that could be nothing, but considering they're both people who are comically doting and unshakably devoted to the children in their care and willing to let the world burn for their families, who are underhanded and manipulative and scheming and operate basically entirely detached from what is and isn't considered moral, who are DEEPLY jaded by all the shit they've been through, and moreover who were deeply, horrifically wronged by people in The East™ & who rightfully want retribution for what happened to them-- it's just. more likely and more meaningful to me if it's. Not Nothing. i'm becoming totally incoherent like i think about them for two seconds and it's like i'm going to scream and cry and throw up <3. all that without touching on their potential as foils to eachother, their potential dynamics or how fucking FUNNY they'd be. it used to drive me INSANE that they didn't have A SINGLE ON-SCREEN INTERACTION despite all that + the fact that it's clear they interacted off-screen, but at this point i don't trust housamo to not like fuck it up somehow, so unlike with some other stuff on here i'm perfectly fine with having been robbed lol

the nineveh thing:

you know how arc views themself partially as joan of arc due to the experimentation they underwent giving them memories of being her? i think something similar should be the case with the togos. admittedly the fujimi academy experiments were intended first and foremost to achieve the effect of warping people's identities like that as a means of ~achieving immortality~ (followed immediately by forcing the kids to fight to the death bc the researchers LEGITIMATELY were just fucking around -_-), but it's pretty well established that using an artifact enough is inherently going to cause that memory overlap, eventually to the point of some sort of identity disturbance. and the togos have been connected to their artifacts since before they were born, so imo it's hardly all that out there to think their identities are impacted by their connections to their artifacts to a similar degree to arc's with theirs. now i say The Nineveh Thing specifically bc like, where everyone else's Other Selves would be People, i think shuichi's Other Self should be. Ancient Nineveh, the biblical city, personified. think like a hivemind kinda thing, a ~library~, a distinctly non-singular being amassed from the recorded experiences and observations of/embodying the countless lives that existed within Nineveh (up to a certain point, specifically the desolation of nineveh by g*d :[). Nineveh. if that makes sense tee hee <3. this ties back into both the babs-shuichi bestie thing in various ways (compounding their shared Fuck The East thing into pariah to ed*n solidarity, it follows from this that shuichi is likely doomed in a similar way to babalon but that's its own brain disease tee hee hee, etc), as well as the arc-shuichi roomie thing below (also just tacking this onto the end here but i'm just really attached to the idea of the kids who were experimented on/connected to their artifacts like. being subject to experimentation fundamentally changing you to some degree or another, often to the point where even your humanity is called into question, is kinda a Thing in this game and it's a bit under-utilized with the artifact kids imo. if they're like, literally connected to sacred artifacts then the Rules of those artifacts should be core parts of them in one way or another, which should be more apparent & set them apart a bit from their peers in some more noticeable ways. also i think they should all have eyeshine bc that would be neat and Uncanny) [edit: i stand by this but CAN YOU TELL I WROTE THIS PART BEFORE THE PROLOGUES DROPPED]

arc-shuichi roomies:

okay so! i fucking HATE the way arc's character gets handled post-chapter 8. don't really like a lot of aspects of how the finishers as a whole were handled towards the end of chapter 8 but the way arc's mental health specifically was handled is just so 😐 like how their being selectively nonverbal gets phased out/basically dropped and how they're somehow more well-adjusted after literally being murdered. but more than anything i fucking hate how come chapter 9-- after having Literally Died? and worse yet, after watching their entire family sacrifice themselves for them, again? and then coming back to the temple they were traumatized in and could only call home because their family was there, alone, and trying to summon their family back to them, and failing?-- they are (deep breath) somehow just Normal, to the point of being basically Snarky Teen #27. like i can't even put it into words how 😐 it is. they started off as a portrayal of trauma i really appreciated and that intersected with the story in really interesting ways. and then they were straight up magically made Normal And Well-Adjusted by their own death and the deaths of their whole family (aside from the one guy who killed them and then left) bc lw wasn't prepared to have them be both nd and prominent in the story. 😐 baffling exhausting infuriating and so on and so forth. anyways i also don't really like how lw is handling the whole thing with shuichi dealing with the aftermath of chapter 7/8 re: duo SO instead of whatever the hell all that's supposed to be, OBVIOUSLY the sudden (and like. designed to be especially painful for them specifically) absence of their WHOLE ENTIRE FAMILIES would leave both arc and shuichi (euphemisms voice) A Bit Unbalanced. so, in the interim between chapters nine and ten, shuichi, while working on the Project his brother has left for him, has to be forcibly hauled out of the colosseum on more than one occasion so he doesn't work himself to death in an attempt to avoid feeling any emotion. arc has been having a time of it since chapter eight. they complement eachother in their losses: taking care of duo was, on a basic functional level as well as the emotional, pretty much the only thing keeping shuichi going, and i definitely got the impression arc was, on a basic functional level as well as the emotional, dependent on babs & surtr. through some catastrophic lapse in judgement, their friends make shuichi basically move into arc's fucked up temple house in hopes of keeping them both at least semi-functional (and. Alive. but let's not get into that rn). and it's (euphemisms voice) a bit awkward at first, OBV. but they bond over like their shared status as survivors of horrific human experimentation that connected them to a sacred artifact and how they both need to sort through the fact that they and their families have Done Harm to others, that their families have Done Harm to them and/or vice versa, the ways in which their relationships are/were flawed and how they're going to make things better when they reunite with their respective loved ones (i just want like a decent exploration of family and hurt and forgiveness or lack thereof PLEASE lifewonders' approach to forgiveness is so MINDNUMBING)... maybe even... their shared connection to babalon... and so on and so forth and they're roomies and also friends :)

long-hair shuichi:

shuichi but he has long hair. his hair is long by the time the loop starts? ✅ he starts growing his hair out at some point midway into the loop? ✅ just! shuichi growing out his hair in defiance of the notion that he's something to be experimented and operated on. and maybe in a Gender way 👀....?

shuichi/toji #divorcees (HEAR ME OUT):

i'd like to say smth like 'i'm glad i've already #posted about this a little bit bc otherwise i'd have no idea where to fucking start with The Two Of Them' but i STILL don't know where to start actually, bc they make me feel INSANE. i'm so fucking mad. this used to be a JOKE. and then within fifteen seconds i Realized they're practically fucking soulmates or something. like the contrasts there are so..... toji has internalized that he's an Other, an aberration who must justify his existence in tokyo as something other than a human, whereas shuichi resents the notion that he is any less human for the manner in which he was conceived & despises those who mistreated him and duo on that basis-- and yet despite defending his and his brother’s humanity, shuichi isn’t the one to tie humanity to personhood and insists (in a deeply jaded way, natch) that humans and transients are ultimately no different. shuichi exclusively trusts and is ride-or-die for those he feels are alike to him, most notable with the whole "blood ties" thing (i wont get into my thoughts on The Bloodties Thing rn but there would also be chapter 7 when he's so moved by the protag's refusal to give up on shiro despite how utterly hopeless the fight against yog sothoth is [paralleling his own devotion to duo + the hardships he'd endured to ensure his safety and happiness] that he tanks a hit from yog sothoth to turn the tides, and if you've contracted this brain disease from me, his selling out claude to babalon); the sakimori's whole thing is hunting their own kind: toji, like his ancestors before him, culls his fellow "aberrations" to avoid being exterminated himself. the sakimoris devoted themselves to justice and the public order; the togos played a part in introducing SUMMONS to tokyo, knowing better than most what that would entail. but even with all that, think about it for a sec and in a lot of ways they're so alike. they start from the same point: a bone-deep sense of alienation-- shuichi's humanity-and-by-extension-personhood being denied bc of The Circumstances Of His Birth and toji experiencing the discrimination his ancestors faced for being oni so vividly he may as well have lived through it himself, shuichi expecting betrayal from damn near everyone except duo and the sakimori's understanding that if they didn't exterminate other transients and kill shadows they would be on the chopping block, etc etc-- that can be traced back to their ostensible guardians disregarding their wellbeing in favor of their utility, causing them both to form harmful relationships to their sacred artifacts & SEVERELY stunting their ability to connect with others and warping how they view themselves. they're Like That for essentially the same reasons. for bonus points, you can trace it back to their respective neglectful/absent fathers specifically.

and back to their differences, how different are they, really? (for the love of god if you have it in your head that toji is inherently a better person than shuichi or was justified in his unconditional hostility towards him in the past, reevaluate i'm BEGGING. can't believe this even needs saying) how different is the togos screening the app-- which was going to get greenlit, one way or another-- from the sakimori's whole thing? in both cases it's perpetuating a system that is presented as benign/benevolent with it's harmful elements kept hidden to most (that is ambivalent at best towards them and their existence within it and will likely continue to exist even if they refuse to have a hand in it) and screwing over other vulnerable people-- in the sakimori's case, literally murdering them-- to secure themselves a more advantageous position because the deck is stacked against them. again, the both of them having complicated relationships to their artifacts that are both, again, harmful, but also deeply intimate-- and differ greatly from the vast majority of app users' with theirs? they're pretty much equally cynical and misanthropic, in one way or another reflecting the cruelty they had to endure until they're influenced by the protag's better nature. and as antagonistic as they start off chapter 7 towards eachother, by the end that's eased so much toji is willing to help shuichi search the dungeons for duo, and shuichi is willing to accept that help from him when earlier he refused even musashi's assistance. which makes me feel insane (the divorcees thing specifically comes from like. well first off the incredibly Antagonistic Exes energy of their interactions, but also i got the idea of the two of them at the towards the start of the #greenlight era being... not exactly on the worst possible terms, closer to their interactions later in chapter 7 than the earlier ones (and there was a weird mutual crush they were both too emotionally stunted to register it as such or act on Normally)-- before a very nasty falling out after shuichi (who wasn't yet quite as closed off) reveals that he's more aware than he'd been letting on about the true nature of SUMMONS and tries to warn toji against trusting h*gen and k*taro and he really doesn't appreciate him insinuating that people considered family would betray or abandon him (esp since he is on some level aware that's not untrue)-- let alone in concurrence with the whole SUMMONS thing-- and the rest is history)

this is one of those things where you need to be willing to disrespect lw's writing decisions to make it work w a few factors, first and foremost bc of how close they skirt to antisemitism with the whole togos greenlighting SUMMONS thing and how it gets framed like toji (who we know by now has an overly black/white sense of morality, is overly harsh in his judgements and excessively hostile towards those he deems deserving [AND LITERALLY IS/WAS NATIVIST/XENOPHOBIC OH MY GOD. LIKE ADMITTEDLY TOWARDS TRANSIENTS/NONHUMANS SPECIFICALLY BUT THE SUBTEXT ALONE SHOULD MAKE YOU AT LEAST QUESTION WHETHER HE WAS IN THE RIGHT]) was. 😐 entirely justified in both his past and present hostility towards shuichi because it turns out the brown people WERE subverting the government!! and then the parts that diminish the antisemetic undertones of the whole 'brown people bribing government officials' thing kept getting overshadowed by toji continuing to frame the togo's as untouchable masterminds and that just. 😐 barely being challenged or questioned like at all despite everything about toji's character and the fact that it's clear that everything involving the game is happening on a level above any of their the influence. like imo it's not unsalvageable if you do a bit of rewriting/reframing which only makes it worse tbh what the fuck was that in canon 😐. electric chair for that shit fr anyways i'm going to be honest i have no idea how coherent any of this post is. tldr as much as they contrast shuichi and toji are a lot alike and they have the potential for a really interesting relationship and i wanna see it develop in a less (genuinely) antagonistic direction.

SUPREME GUILDMASTER DUO TOGO, ULTIMATE GENIUS:

god. okay. (drags my hands down my face) okay. i'm going to try to contain myself here. this is one of if not the single most painful brain disease that afflicts me i already want to throw up. it presupposes that each new loop begins at the moment SUMMONS is released to tokyo which may or may not be actual canon i don't care, and also that duo's labcoat was originally from the facility he & shuichi escaped from. it also disregards the notion that the loops in tokyo were at any point "good" bc i spit upon lifewonder's writing decision, and presupposes that shuichi, inheriting the fate of one or more doomed entities, meets an unfortunate fate each loop, not unlike the finishers, but i won't be getting into that. what it boils down to is this: before the loops started, duo togo was a much livelier child and an absolute brat

when the two of them escaped, unlike shuichi, who brought nothing with him but his tablet and the clothes on his back, duo had the foresight to steal a labcoat from the facility-- if nothing else, it could be good to shield them from the rain. and when, finally, the two of them find their footing in tokyo and like Own Things, that reminder of their time in The East is- not thrown away but buried, tucked away in a closet or neatly folded in a box somewhere they don't have to think about it. and duo ditches the labcoat in favor of Literally Anything Else. for whatever reason, at some point shuichi develops some sort of infatuation with d-evils. as to be expected from one connected to the rule of Collection, he starts buying an ABSURD amount of d-evil merch, the vast majority of which- as is to be expected from his (Annoying) older brother- are gifted to duo. among the many such gifts his (Annoying!!) brother besets him with is a d-evil hooded blanket cloak, which he latches on to as his new Coat He Never Takes Off.

so, back to the Lively(er) Child & Brat thing. it might be a bit hard to imagine now, with the subdued, kind of burnt out air he has about him in the main timeline, but at the start of everything? having escaped the facility and with a home where he is safe and provided for, loved and constantly praised and encouraged and, as far as he knows, a step ahead of everyone on the way to winning the game? i can imagine him being a fair bit livelier. and my god, shuichi spoiled this little boy rotten. duo togo wasn't just a Genius, he was the Ultimate Genius-- and Ordinary People may have had his interest, but at the end of the day he was above them. he was the specialest little guy who made all the rules and gave the orders and was right about everything and got whatever he wanted because his big brother could and would do anything for him, and once they won The Game he would literally be on top of the world.

and then everything goes wrong. and then rights itself... and then goes wrong again, and again, and again. without a doubt duo's seen shuichi die, the fated desolation of nineveh or the smiting of menoetius, brought on by his own rage and hubris. or worse, a grave miscalculation, some stupid pointless sacrifice. how many times? how many times has he himself died, or worse? how many times has the world ended and dialed itself back, with him one of the only people to remember? what has he seen? eventually he decides he can no longer afford to be a frivolous child running around with a blanket over his head and he needs to start acting like a Genius, a real Genius. and he ditches his cloak and goes back to wearing the labcoat he carried with him from The East, tucked away somewhere in their house like a dirty secret, but so well maintained you'd never guess it had ever seen the rain or the filthy back alleys they'd ducked in and out of. and it doesn't fit him, but he just lets it hang off him however in a stubborn refusal to acknowledge that he's too small for it because he's a Genius he needs to be a Genius

GAH. section cancelled i think you get the point. my head is going to collapse like a soufflé if i keep thinking about this. SUPREME GUILD MASTER and current-loop duo by @vegetarian-macan

💞 WEREBABS 😳:

i've decided that when babalon decides to go apeshit, she and therion fuse and she becomes a BIG scary fucked up demon werewolf lady. with big scary teeth and claws and fur and everything. let her diverge a bit from what's considered conventionally attractive for women. give her body hair!! give her sideburns!! make her sturdy!! make her INTIMIDATING. we NEED femme werewolves. tbh i still kinda can't believe they didn't actually go with this considering the whole Pig thing like it so easily lends itself to big bad wolf babs. and legit i'm still so fucking mad about this still like if lw hadn't chosen to be WEIRD about babs in the specific way that they had (probably one of the most egregious examples of lw undercutting their own story by being weird and gross. Babalon Is An Adult Woman), instead of whatever tf was going on in her 5-star card we could have had a huge evil weremilf card. like there was NO love for the lesbians. or for ME. light still exists in this cruel world tho. tumbler user juno @summonerscenarios (who i have subjected to this and most if not all of these other rants already) did this werebabs a while back and i haven't once stopped thinking about Her

#error.ans #error.jpg #error.txt #shuichiposting #bapyposting #poor little meow meow (french)#babsposting #recovering piglet #the formatting of this post is so broken tumbler is so functional </3 #tried to omit details that were /too/ particular tee hee hee... which cuts down on a lot of it in some parts hee hee hee hee hee #kinda a LONG post tee hee hee hee hee #anyways anon ily tysm. im VERY unmedicated its torment but id move mountains for you #greenlight = stop #j'accuzzi gang #face me i face you #ninnyposting

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