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sankatsuka · 3 months

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Gintoki Sakata Discussion: Takasugi's Influence on Gintoki - What it Means to Truly Protect Your Soul

This is DEFINITELY overthinking it and stretching it beyond canon, but nevertheless I wanted to share my recent thoughts... Spoilers for the entire story, of course. Also, warning for Takagin/Gintaka.

Edit 22/2/2024 (marked with *): Small section added for more evidence on how Gintoki was never a naturally straightforward person.

Maybe it was Takasugi who ironically inspired Gintoki to be who he is today: the man who never gives up, even if he's beaten down and everything seems hopeless - he will stand back up and protect everyone and everything around him. Just like how Takasugi senselessly was as a dojo challenger.

When Gintoki was younger, he was never like this. He was just fighting for his survival. When Gintoki first meets Shouyou, Shouyou points out how Gintoki was just wielding the sword to protect himself in a harsh, bloody environment.

This is why Gintoki doesn't give up when sparring Shouyou. He needs to be as strong as possible to keep protecting himself. Gintoki brings up how he has never lost to an adult - as if he wants to beat Shouyou simply so he can never lose ever again (so he wouldn't end up dying).

And then, Shouyou mentions how monsters are something born from a bloodstained karma. Gintoki is naturally drawn to bloodshed and death, because losing meant death in the environment he used to grow up in. So he needs to be strong and be capable of killing others so he can survive in such a place. You can just see it in the fear in Gintoki as a child standing on a pile of corpses.

(It's probably why Gintoki carries his sword around with him everywhere as a child, too. So he feels safe at all times.)

This all goes to show how Gintoki would have never had anything he would want to fight for as a child. He would just fight to be with Shouyou who was the only one he could trust or to protect himself. That's why this personality to want to protect everything within his sword's reach was definitely never innate.

Then comes Takasugi, whose Gintoki's first impression of is an irrational kid who would challenge a poor temple school with no actual reason other than wanting to win. You can see how Gintoki is clearly confused by him.

And even after losing many times, he just wouldn't give up on coming back. Gintoki even tells him to give up - he had no reason to keep getting hurt and beat up like that. It wasn't like he had to fight for his survival like Gintoki, he was clearly a privileged kid.

It is only when Takasugi wins and laughs that Gintoki no longer expresses this confusion and disagreement with Takasugi's actions. It's shown in how Gintoki suddenly tells Takasugi to come back, when Gintoki had initially told him to give up.

As if Takasugi's and everyone's smile and laughter after all that ridiculous irrationality made Gintoki realize something that made him change his mind.

Gintoki had a glimpse of Takasugi's way of living - to fight to the very end and keep getting back up for what you want, even if it was silly and stupid. In the end, you'll be rewarded with your own laughter and the people around you laughing along to your sincere, honest spirit.

It was a pointless, dumb way of living, but everyone was still laughing like that and happy. So maybe there was actually some worth in living dumbly and straightforwardly like that.

This may even be why Takasugi's laughter always stuck with Gintoki, even as he cut him down. Because it defined his life - that you should live by facing the present - just as much as Shouyou's words to use a sword to protect your soul stuck to him.

It was Shouyou who first taught Gintoki that what you truly want to do couldn't be the desperate instincts driving you, but rather something deeper down that should feel genuine - the soul. Then it was Takasugi who came along who seemed to demonstrate what living as your soul really was like - to do what you felt like doing in the moment, no matter what the people around you would say.

Even Shouyou encouraging Takasugi's pursuit suggests how this was Gintoki's lifelong answer. And only Takasugi could have demonstrated it best for Gintoki to imitate (instead of imitating Shouyou, as Shouyou had warned him against).

It truly feels like Takasugi is the humanity Shoka Sonjuku cultivated (Katsura did already know what he wanted, after all).

Takasugi's straightforwardness could have inspired Gintoki to tap into his own dull feelings deep down that he carries as he lives his everyday life. If those simple feelings for Takasugi were to grow stronger, then could there be such a thing for Gintoki too? Instead of being drawn to the joy of beating someone stronger than him, Gintoki could realize he seems more inclined to just living for some reason--

Even with no ambitions, he was still fine with just sitting around doing nothing. No matter how mundane, monotous and boring his everyday was without the excitement of a dream, Gintoki was still living for some reason. Maybe his joy in life was right there then--

--It was people. We see throughout the story that Gintoki is solely motivated to fight for the people around him.

Gintoki's actions have always, always been motivated by a desire to protect the people around him. He loves them: simply seeing them laugh when they want, cry when they want and fight to live as their truest selves. So isn't it fine for him to just want to fight for something as simple as that? Just like how Takasugi only fought for the petty reason of growing stronger.

This could be why Gintoki can now confidently say that he just loves the world as it is, even despite all the tragedies that's happened in it that made him suffer.

Not only did Takasugi potentially inspire Gintoki's present way of life, but Takasugi may even be the embodiment of what Gintoki found himself loving most about the world - that imperfect humanity of simply living, chasing what you want, getting lost, failing and suffering, but celebrating those small victories when you finally get there and laughing with everyone. This soul is what Gintoki always wants to protect within Edo, too.

After all, the mundane moments they shared in Shoka Sonjuku and Takasugi's laughter are the only things running in Gintoki's head as he resolves himself to cut Utsuro-Takasugi down. Gintoki truly loved them all.

If this wasn't the case, Gintoki would have never told Takasugi to come back. If Gintoki's motivations was never just the joy of seeing people be themselves, he would have set out and pursued whatever his soul wanted from being inspired by Takasugi's straightforwardness. He wanted to see Takasugi again, because he wanted to see that sincere, straightforward soul once again.

It could be why Gintoki is the one who disagrees with the way Takasugi does things in the present more than anyone.

If it was Takasugi who taught him that happiness of being sincere and straightforward with chasing what you wanted, and given that same spirit was exactly what Gintoki realized he loved most and wanted to protect - Gintoki would fight with all his heart for Takasugi to be that person Gintoki loved again.

It's also a nice touch that Gintoki says "I, the you who is me" when declaring he would never give up to Takasugi, as if implying how Gintoki took that lesson of straightforwardly never giving up from Takasugi himself.

Just as much as Gintoki's acceptance of Takasugi helped him, Takasugi's straightforward passion helped Gintoki just as equally.

*More evidence that Gintoki was never the person he is now is what he chooses to do after the war. Unlike Katsura and Takasugi who went off to pursue their goals, Gintoki's first instinct was to wander around and detach himself from people out of fear of losing people again. Gintoki seems to be more naturally a coward, and only when he lets people in does he find the courage to once again embrace the straightforwardness that Takasugi demonstrated.

After the events of the story that help Takasugi come to terms with himself, Takasugi's straightforwardness is later emphasized as his strong point that resonates with people. It wouldn't be a surprise then if he was the natural source of this straightforwardness in Gintoki, especially when the latter has always been defined as an empty person.

Takasugi and Gintoki are opposites who complete each other, to the point that even outsiders who only briefly meet them together no longer cared about how one of them was a terrorist. One way of seeing it is Takasugi represents the strong, unrelenting humanity that Gintoki realized he loved and wanted to live for, and Gintoki represents the impossibly white soul that the outcast Takasugi found as a place to belong to.

It was important for them to find each other: for Gintoki to realize he wasn't empty and was always capable of emotions, and for Takasugi to realize he wasn't wrong for who he was which the world made him feel.

It's why their life-defining events most often involve the other: Takasugi's laughter was a pivotal point in Gintoki's life where he finally grasped a real reason to fight in his empty everyday, while Gintoki's tears was a pivotal point in Takasugi's life which forced Takasugi to face his biggest enemy: himself.

Ironically enough, their ways of living now could even be said to be a a reflection of their love for each other: Gintoki facing the present because he loved that part of Takasugi and wants to be in the present with him, and Takasugi facing the past to feel closer to Gintoki who is obviously incomplete without the emotions of his past.

Naturally, there is no present without the past, and it feels like Takasugi decided to live in the past to represent it for Gintoki (but probably more because he's too scared to face the present because of his self-hatred and blame, but to be fair Gintoki is afraid of facing the past too even though he should). It's why I liked that the story ended strongly with Takasugi's death, because its impact really conveyed how there was someone who was always chasing Gintoki's entirety - he definitely had a place in someone's heart. He would still be loved no matter what, even if he always felt he was a monster different from others for how he grew up and thus would never properly have a place to belong.

You can see I really, really love Takasugi... From inference and parallels alone, Takasugi has always demonstrated so much importance to the narrative, but it's never laid out beyond how he's the one who lost himself and now has to redeem himself.

Gintama feels like a story about the two of them, not just Gintoki. Especially if Takasugi was the one who originated Gintoki's straightforward way of living, and given how Takasugi seems to literally be the human sword Shouyou prophecized to cut down Utsuro in the end.

It's really because Gintoki avoids thinking about the past and Takasugi hates himself for his emotions that we have to infer how much these two affected each other... But I do enjoy things not being shoved in my face, the avoidance really makes it a lot more emotional.

#gintama #gintoki sakata #sakata gintoki #shinsuke takasugi #takasugi shinsuke #takagin #gintaka #lmao the way writing this made me realize i completely misinterpreted a line and had a very very wrong idea of gintoki from there #i thought shouyou was the only one who made him the way he is today and that's why i misinterpreted gintoki's character #the scene of takasugi laughing feels so so important to understanding gintoki's character i swear #gintoki felt like a robot who was sticking to shouyou's teachings until he got somewhere before this #but now he feels like a loving person with a cruel isolating past who's just trying his best to be happy

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average-hua-cheng-fan · 6 months

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xie lian took 2 days to heal after his stab wound on beizi hill

he tooks several months to recover after the temple scene with white no-face

he took a year+ to heal after being trampled in banyue

the quick pace of healing after the temple scene makes me headcanon that he didn't give himself enough time to do it properly, meaning he was in a lot of physical as well as mental pain during the no-face arc.

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bruciemilf · 11 months

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I think an underappreciated motive for Bruce / Batman to not murder the Joker after he killed Jason is that it would, in a sense, mean Joker won. Like, yeah the Joker would be dead but he would also be laughing himself silly that he was the one who made the Bat break his code.

Bruce sparing the Joker was not because he didn't love Jason enough to kill him, but because he refused to let the Joker take anything else from him; he took his son, but he would not take his honor, his morality, his code. He would not give Joker the satisfaction.

Yeah! I think, ultimately, DC said it best, -- one death, two deaths, three deaths, -- whatever you pick, everybody loses. It was a no win situation from the start and specifically designed to have no satisfactory ending

#my thing is -- like. jason is such a self fledgelating character at heart (to me he does not have a victim complex like many ppl say #but i can completely get why that's a character trait ppl assign to him)#that even if bruce did kill joker (which he did in the comics multiple times. but everyone leaves that part out)#i think jason would ultimately feel horrible enough to isolate himself either way #and bruce already lost a son and there's truly nothing that can heal that. yes jason is here. but when bruce buried him #he wasn't.#but that's because of the same factors that affect canon too. it was never about the clown #it was about bruce and jason #bruce wayne #dc comics #meta

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scramblecat · 1 year

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okay scramble’s gonna get a lil unhinged with this one. But I already wrote it out for a server and all I gotta do is copy and paste SO:

About the Narrator and his Fears

[Putting it under a cut because it is. REALLY long as in like 700+ words long]

The Narrator is usually really good at keeping his composure when it comes to negative emotions, I feel like. He expresses happiness and excitement often enough, but the only times he cries (as in, voice audibly breaking) are the Zending and the Real Person ending.

So he’s shown to be distraught before. But panic? Full-on panic? There’s also only two instances where this happens, and that’s in the Skip Button Ending, and interestingly, the second time you go to the expo.

Now, the skip button ending is completely understandable. He’s being faced with the idea of being completely and utterly isolated for the foreseeable future, over and over and over again, getting longer and longer each time. Anyone would be afraid if they were in that position. At its surface, it’s a completely rational fear from the get-go.

But the expo? It’s… odd. He goes into the achievement room prepared to pop off with his whole ‘it doesn’t work YET’ thing, and then it does.

In the expo, it’s different. It’s not a high stakes situation, not by any means. But when the achievement machine works against all of the Narrator’s expectations, he panics. But not just in like an ‘ah uhm this is definitely what I meant to happen aha!’ way.

It takes him a moment to realize, but he verbalizes his train of thought, so we know exactly when he does.

The machine didn’t work before —> the Narrator didn’t do anything to it to fix it (implying that he didn’t have any sort of solution for it yet) —> it’s fixed anyways and he doesn’t know how —> someone else might have that knowledge —> there’s someone else here.

And that is the moment where he starts to panic. He sounds almost faint when he talks next, and he has to verbally tell himself to keep his composure— something we’ve never, ever heard him do before.

His breathing gets audibly strangled as he tries to finish his whole pitch, telling Stanley that everything is working as intended to cover up the anxiety he’s feeling. But he stumbles through it, and he finishes it with telling himself to breathe, to regulate the panic.

He straight up has like. A whole anxiety attack in front of us. It’s so UNLIKE him to be that afraid, and that REALLY makes it a moment that stands out.

There IS something that links the Skip Button and the Achievement Machine together— and that is CONTROL. Or, rather, lack thereof.

In the Skip Button Ending, yes, he’s scared of being alone. He makes many discoveries about his thought processes and how he works in that solitude, and realizes that talking isn’t his main purpose— it’s telling a story. Telling a story TO someone. He doesn’t feel like he has a purpose otherwise. And that’s the big root of the isolation part.

But otherwise? He spends the first few skips desperately looking for a way out. He panics when he can’t touch the room around him, when he realizes he’s trapped, and that he can’t do anything about it. He’s lost his control.

And it’s the same thing with the achievement machine. He THINKS he has complete control over the Parable and its contents. He really does. And then, something— or someone— fixes the machine for him. And all at once, his perception of what he can control comes absolutely crashing down on him. In that moment, he’s having a LOT of huge realizations:

He doesn’t have the control he thinks he does

He doesn’t know how much control he actually HAS, and it could be NONE

He and Stanley are not alone in the Parable, and are being watched

Whatever being is watching them has more power than he does, and could very well strip all of his control away from him

These realizations— that last one especially— are fucking terrifying to him!

The Narrator is obsessive about maintaining control over the events that transpire in HIS PARABLE, and the only times he shows negative emotions are when he cannot control a situation. It most often presents itself in annoyance at the very least, or a complete breakdown at its worst. And it’s all because he needs that control. He’s fearful of the idea that he can’t control a situation, because it makes him feel helpless and weak. He’s USED to having control, and when it’s taken away from him, he has no idea what to do.

He’s desperately trying to keep up this facade of ‘this is all fine and working as intended’ in front of Stanley after Stanley gets the achievement, even though it’s clear that he’s barely holding it together. His entire perception of his own control has collapsed in on itself, and has given in to one of his worst fears. And he’s really, really shaken up by it.

The Narrator’s greatest fear has been shown to be a lack of control. It’s quickly followed by the fear of isolation, obviously, but the fear of helplessness/weakness is present all through the games.

And THAT, folks, is why the Narrator freaks out in one (1) ending that nobody ever talks about!

#tsp #TSPUD #skip button #long post #scrambleposting #scramble’s rambles #shoutout to the folks who have already seen and reacted to this already!! you know who you are #thanks for indulging me >:]#I have COMPLETELY normal feelings about the Narrator I stg #he is FASCINATING as a character and I’ve said that over and over and over but it’s TRUE #also this is def not like. downplaying his fear of isolation I hope #because that is a VERY REAL fear he holds and he even expresses it verbally #but the possibility of not having control in a situation causes him blatant distress #and it’s one of those fears that he hasn’t exactly realized he has/one he doesn’t want to share

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aimlesswalker · 1 year

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I just want to be some guy

As a trans man, I don’t really feel like I belong anywhere in the lgbt+ community because I’ll never be attractive to anyone (which is why I ID as queer but even then I feel outcast) and it…. it really hurts sometimes. I’m simultaneously too masculine and not masculine enough.

in the men who are attracted to men spaces, most people when they see me think I’m a twink because of being short/small and/or for being trans/nonbinary. They think I’m hairless, feminine, boyish, submissive, etc. I’m…. at this point in my life I am really really not. Testosterone has made me male and everything that entails. I’ve gained (healthy! good for me!) weight and my stomach sticks out, I’m covered in body hair, I am partway to balding. All the things that are conventionally unattractive about men. All the things that are demonized in trans men. I’m too masculine to fit their idea of a nonbinary person. But masculine in “the wrong way”. I have to either be muscular/fit or small and hairless to be wanted here. I don’t even count as a bear, you’d probably just call my shape a “dad bod”. This isn’t just some vague feeling I get in these spaces- people have legit said to me “oh I love twinks” or “oh I love femboys” and I have to awkwardly explain that no I’m not one actually. I’m not what they want me to be. And I’m really tired of people placing that expectation on me- that I’m a slender hairless twink who is submissive and likes bottoming. Just because I’m small and/or trans. so gross.

and then in the women who are attracted to men spaces well… they’d never look twice at me. I’m short and not at all muscular/toned/fit. Again, I have gained weight, am hairy, and halfway to bald. Bedsides not being conventionally attractive- they usually want a man who can “provide”. I am disabled and can’t work. I can’t drive. I can’t give them flowers or pick them up for a date. I can’t be any of the things they’re looking for in a partner. Being disabled makes me seen as “less than”. Being dependent on other people is a trait that is endlessly mocked in men. I’m not masculine enough.

so where the fuck does that leave me? I’m not even going to talk about how being aromantic in queer spaces alienates me further. I love testosterone, I love what it’s done for me and how I feel healthier on it. But like. fuck. I don’t feel like I’m ever going to be attractive to anyone. I never get to feel pretty or handsome. I never get to feel happy about my appearance anymore and that makes me so sad. I used to derive so much joy from picking out outfits and accessorizing and applying glittery make up. I’m too sick to leave the house ever so I don’t do those things anymore, besides the fact that I *can’t* present feminine anymore without risking my safety. People would assume I’m a trans woman and act accordingly because they see a man attempting to be feminine. I am fully man and fully nonbinary, but I never get to exist as both at the same time. I can’t be feminine without people invalidating/forgetting my manhood. I can’t be masculine without people invalidating/forgetting my nonbinary-ness. I’m too masculine for nonbinary spaces and too nonbinary for masculine spaces. I just…….. I get incredibly sad about this.

And people generally don’t care??? the sentiment seems to be that trans men who are masculine, who pass, who are stealth, etc don’t belong in the lgbt+ community, shouldn’t be in lgbt+ or queer spaces. They’re not wanted there because of being masculine. These spaces are only for “non-men”. But the second you talk about your struggles as a trans man as a reason for why you should be included, you get pegged as an owo twink femboy to most people. It’s always one or the other (demonized or infantilized) and I’m really fucking sick of it. It hurts. I just want to be some guy.

#transmisandry #transandrophobia #trans masc #nonbinary #trans male #transgender #disability #fey talks #idk how to tag this at all #i hope this will resonate with some people #i've completely given up dating at this point although i dont want to #i just dont have the energy to sift through 99% of the people who want nothing to do with someone like me #I dont feel like I have any community at this point in time even in online spaces #i dont feel like I fit in anywhere and it is incredibly isolating #i wish i could see myself as handsome or attractive in any capacity #can we please stop shaming men for being bald and hairy #can we please stop infantilizing disabled men #can we please stop calling all trans men twinks or femboys solely bc they are trans #sometimes i want to stop T just to be accepted again #but i cant i need the T for my health issues #does being both man and nonbinary at the same time make me multigender?

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