We don't talk about platonic marriages enough
I am bisexual. My partner is aroace. We are in a queerplatonic relationship. We have been together for around 4 years and got engaged a little over 2 years ago. We don't do romantic things (we do sometimes, but not usually.) and we don't do sexual things. There's no romance, but we love each other. It is 100% platonic.
But I ALWAYS feel the need to clarify this with people we meet that, it's not "oh haha we were best friends for so long we just decided to get married teehee"
NO
It's still love. We live for each other. We would die for each other. We are attached at the hip. We are each others most important thing in the entire world. Just because we don't kiss or have sex doesn't mean it's not love.
I LOVE my fiance in ways words can't explain. And they love me just the same.
Just because it's not romantic doesn't make it any less of a relationship.
Just because it's not sexual doesn't make us any less engaged.
I am going to marry my fiance, my best friend, the love of my life, and I need people to know that it's not because we couldn't find anyone else. It's not because we said we would if we were still single at X years old. It's not a trend or a phase or anything like that.
I'm going to marry them because I LOVE them.
@novelcain <3
(update since this is gaining traction again: we're married now!! :D)
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Very interesting to me that a certain subset of the BES fandom's favourite iterations of Mizu and Akemi are seemingly rooted in the facades they have projected towards the world, and are not accurate representations of their true selves.
And I see this is especially the case with Mizu, where fanon likes to paint her as this dominant, hyper-masculine, smirking Cool GuyTM who's going to give you her strap. And this idea of Mizu is often based on the image of her wearing her glasses, and optionally, with her cloak and big, wide-brimmed kasa.
And what's interesting about this, to me, is that fanon is seemingly falling for her deliberate disguise. Because the glasses (with the optional combination of cloak and hat) represent Mizu's suppression of her true self. She is playing a role.
Take this scene of Mizu in the brothel in Episode 4 for example. Here, not only is Mizu wearing her glasses to symbolise the mask she is wearing, but she is purposely acting like some suave and cocky gentleman, intimidating, calm, in control. Her voice is even deeper than usual, like what we hear in her first scene while facing off with Hachiman the Flesh-Trader in Episode 1.
This act that Mizu puts on is an embodiment of masculine showboating, which is highly effective against weak and insecure men like Hachi, but also against women like those who tried to seduce her at the Shindo House.
And that brings me to how Mizu's mask is actually a direct parallel to Akemi's mask in this very same scene.
Here, Akemi is also putting up an act, playing up her naivety and demure girlishness, using her high-pitched lilted voice, complimenting Mizu and trying to make small talk, all so she can seduce and lure Mizu in to drink the drugged cup of sake.
So what I find so interesting and funny about this scene, characters within it, and the subsequent fandom interpretations of both, is that everyone seems to literally be falling for the mask that Mizu and Akemi are putting up to conceal their identities, guard themselves from the world, and get what they want.
It's also a little frustrating because the fanon seems to twist what actually makes Mizu and Akemi's dynamic so interesting by flattening it completely. Because both here and throughout the story, Mizu and Akemi's entire relationship and treatment of each other is solely built off of masks, assumptions, and misconceptions.
Akemi believes Mizu is a selfish, cocky male samurai who destroyed her ex-fiance's career and life, and who abandoned her to let her get dragged away by her father's guards and forcibly married off to a man she didn't know. on the other hand, Mizu believes Akemi is bratty, naive princess who constantly needs saving and who can't make her own decisions.
These misconceptions are even evident in the framing of their first impressions of each other, both of which unfold in these slow-motion POV shots.
Mizu's first impression of Akemi is that of a beautiful, untouchable princess in a cage. Swirling string music in the background.
Akemi's first impression of Mizu is of a mysterious, stoic "demon" samurai who stole her fiance's scarf. Tense music and the sound of ocean waves in the background.
And then, going back to that scene of them together in Episode 4, both Mizu and Akemi continue to fool each other and hold these assumptions of each other, and they both feed into it, as both are purposely acting within the suppressive roles society binds them to in order to achieve their goals within the means they are allowed (Akemi playing the part of a subservient woman; Mizu playing the part of a dominant man).
But then, for once in both their lives, neither of their usual tactics work.
Akemi is trying to use flattery and seduction on Mizu, but Mizu sees right through it, knowing that Akemi is just trying to manipulate and harm her. Rather than give in to Akemi's tactics, Mizu plays with Akemi's emotions by alluding to Taigen's death, before pinning her down, and then when she starts crying, Mizu just rolls her eyes and tells her to shut up.
On the opposite end, when Mizu tries to use brute force and intimidation, Akemi also sees right through it, not falling for it, and instead says this:
"Under your mask, you're not the killer you pretend to be."
Nonetheless, despite the fact that they see a little bit through each other's masks, they both still hold their presumptions of each other until the very end of the season, with Akemi seeing Mizu as an obnoxious samurai swooping in to save the day, and Mizu seeing Akemi as a damsel in distress.
And what I find a bit irksome is that the fandom also resorts to flattening them to these tropes as well.
Because Mizu is not some cool, smooth-talking samurai with a big dick sword as Akemi (and the fandom) might believe. All of that is the facade she puts up and nothing more. In reality, Mizu is an angry, confused and lonely child, and a masterful artist, who is struggling against her own self-hatred. Master Eiji, her father figure who knows her best, knows this.
And Akemi, on the other hand, is not some girly, sweet, vain and spoiled princess as Mizu might believe. Instead she has never cared for frivolous things like fashion, love or looks, instead favouring poetry and strategy games instead, and has always only cared about her own independence. Seki, her father figure who knows her best, knows this.
But neither is she some authoritative dominatrix, though this is part of her new persona that she is trying to project to get what she wants. Because while Akemi is willful, outspoken, intelligent and authoritative, she can still be naive! She is still often unsure and needs to have her hand held through things, as she is still learning and growing into her full potential. Her new parental/guardian figure, Madame Kaji, knows this as well.
So with all that being said, now that we know that Mizu and Akemi are essentially wearing masks and putting up fronts throughout the show, what would a representation of Mizu's and Akemi's true selves actually look like? Easy. It's in their hair.
This shot on the left is the only time we see Mizu with her hair completely down. In this scene, she's being berated by Mama, and her guard is completely down, she has no weapon, and is no longer wearing any mask, as this is after she showed Mikio "all of herself" and tried to take off the mask of a subservient housewife. Thus, here, she is sad, vulnerable, and feeling small (emphasised further by the framing of the scene). This is a perfect encapsulation of what Mizu is on the inside, underneath all the layers of revenge-obsession and the walls she's put around herself.
In contrast, the only time we Akemi with her hair fully down, she is completely alone in the bath, and this scene takes place after being scorned by her father and left weeping at his feet. But despite all that, Akemi is headstrong, determined, taking the reigns of her life as she makes the choice to run away, but even that choice is reflective of her youthful naivety. She even gets scolded by Seki shortly after this in the next scene, because though she wants to be independent, she still hasn't completely learned to be. Not yet. Regardless, her decisiveness and moment of self-empowerment is emphasised by the framing of the scene, where her face takes up the majority of the shot, and she stares seriously into the middle distance.
To conclude, I wish popular fanon would stop mischaracterising these two, and flattening them into tropes and stereotypes (ie. masculine badass swordsman Mizu and feminine alluring queen but also girly swooning damsel Akemi), all of which just seems... reductive. It also irks me when Akemi is merely upheld as a love interest and romantic device for Mizu and nothing more, when she is literally Mizu's narrative foil (takes far more narrative precedence over romantic interest) and the deuteragonist of this show. She is her own person. That is literally the theme of her entire character and arc.
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im very normal about fuuta in general but i dont think im ever going to emotionally recover from his fire motif and what it represents for his character and how he reflects the greater theme of justice so that means i must rant about it
(more under the cut because this got longer than i expected whoopsies)
so anyway fire is pretty obviously supposed to be symbolic of his passion for justice right? that fire is all over the place in bring it on. he's wielding it to take down enemies, his signature weapon is a flaming sword. it's what he uses to lead the campaign against the people he's after, the people he's deemed in the wrong.
it's a fucking flaming sword, it's badass as hell!!!! it's what a hero of justice, a knight, would use!!!! it's cool as shit, it's his symbol of justice.
that's how he sees his justice in trial 1.
he's righteous, he wants so badly to believe he was a hero, he was doing it all for a good cause, for justice. his passion for justice was a tool he used to meet those ends, to be a hero, to wave it valiantly in the face of enemies.
the fire, however, is conspicuously absent once he's noticed the blood on his hands
interestingly, despite backdraft as a song title being much more related to his fire motif than bring it on, fire is actually surprisingly absent from the mv's visuals. fire, as in actual orange burning fire, doesn't show up much at all in backdraft except for when both fuuta and his victim begin turning to ashes, and a short bit near the end right after the last chorus when the spraycan explodes in fuuta's face. you know what the mv does show a lot of though?
smoke. and ash. the byproducts of a fire, the byproducts of fuuta's passion for justice.
bringing it back to firefighting for a moment: as many people have already pointed out, backdraft as a firefighting term refers to when a fire that has consumed all available oxygen suddenly explodes when more oxygen is made available, such as when a window or door breaks. the thing about fire hazards, though, is if the fire and the heat don't do someone in, usually it's the smoke. the smoke inhalation causes breathing difficulties and suffocation, making it even more difficult for a person to escape the fire.
in backdraft, instead of fire itself, what we're shown is these byproducts of a fire. the smoke is damaging to human health, and the ash shows that the fire has burned things up and caused destruction, in this case killing someone. all we're shown is the negative results of a fire, in sharp contrast to its badass, positive portrayal in bring it on.
hell, even fuuta himself starts turning to ashes and the spraycan explodes in his face, showing how even he is experiencing the negative results of a fire that has gotten out of his control, how even he has gotten burned by his passion for justice. or, is it es' desire for justice?
translation of fuuta's t2 vd by onigiriico
Me, too! I was like that, too! I also didn't think it'd turn out that way!
You and I are exactly the same breed! The only difference between us is the clothes we're wearing.
fuuta's justice and es' justice, it's all the same in his head now, he directly tells es that they're the same, that we're the same. it's all the same hunger for justice that ends up causing harm even if that wasn't the intention.
you know that saying that fire is a good servant but a bad master? i think that's pretty applicable to fuuta's situation. his passion for the pursuit of justice was great when it was still a tool, a sword he could wield, after all he did manage to shed light on some people's wrongs and bring them to justice. but once it exploded, when it became a backdraft that even he could no longer control, it did more damage than he intended.
it burned even him, it killed a middle schooler. and he recognizes that in backdraft. he only shows us the ways fire that becomes a hazard can go wrong.
translation of fuuta's t2 vd by onigiriico
What did I do? All I did was say that what's wrong is wrong! I was just going off at a bad person online!
I didn't think they would die! I just thought that wrong things are wrong, and that a crime is a crime! You get that, don't you? See? Aren't we the same?
it's just. fire is such a good metaphor for the message of fuuta's character and his arc. it's an amazing illustration of how dangerous it is when you feed a desire for justice too much, when you forget to put a boundary on how you handle that fire. eventually the fire spreads just like how passion for justice becomes zealotry, until more and more things fall under what you consider to be 'punishable' by your standards and goes out of control to hurt people that probably didn't deserve it. it's a warning to set proper boundaries on our own definition and desire for justice and what's 'right' so the good intentions doesn't spiral into harm. it's a reflection of our attitudes towards milgram as the audience responsible for their justice and forgiveness. it's amazing i love it i love fuuta's fire symbolism i love fuuta's character arc and i love milgram's writing so so so much
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playing chapter three right now and I’d beat the SHIT out of Azul (read more in place because this is a long ass rant) spoilers ahead btw
ITS NOT EVEN BCS OF THE STUDY GUIDES bcs that’s just smart business tbh I respect that
The MC was just out of nowhere teleported to this insane ass magic world with no money or magical ability, has 100% been struggling, dealt with 2 overblots already and has the useless headmage hanging their financial situation above them to get them to do shit for him,,, Azul probably knows all of this mind you,,, they come to him bcs out of the kindness of their own heart with all the shit on their plate already they want to save their friends (and like 223 other students) AND HE PRETTY MUCH DOES EVERYTHING IN HIS POWER TO MAKE THEM HOMELESS???
like yea MC could stay at Heartslaybul (in a room with 4 other guys) or maybe at Savanaclaw (while basically being Leona’s servant) or there could be other cannon possibilities (like Kalim is really kind so he might have let MC transfer there if they lost Ramshackle) but none of those options were ever a guarantee plus he would have taken all of MCs belongings they couldn’t carry with them out of Ramshackle
and Azul was making it actively more IMPOSSIBLE to fulfill the terms of the contract.
yea no sorry Jack Howl the Moral Compass Haver but both twins would have to pull me off of Azul I’d break his bones
EDIT BELOW: I finished chapter three
yea I still think Azul is a huge bitch and I realized I kin him
like I was bullied as a kid for being chubby too and I’ve never tried to make someone homeless to open a restaurant branch ffs
though I am proud of him for pulling a character development (however small and long overdue it was) I sure as hell would’ve asked for something in return
like oh u wanna erase your past so bad??? yea I’ll forget all about ur overblot for a free sushi buffet courtesy of Mostro Lounge
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Since you have a lot of opinions about Sunflower fics, do you have any recommendations :p? I do generally agree with you about the derth of good works on them - kind of hoping for something I've maybe slept on.
Okay, I'll try,
First of all — I want everyone, and I mean everyone to read Coda for a Crestfallen Caitiff by MercuriallyApathetic, who also wrote The Strange Summer of Sunny Whatshisface (still one of my favorite longfics to this day but a lot more lighthearted). Coda is a masterpiece, it makes me insane, it is criminally underrated, I want to inhale its essence, and when I first read it it gave me a panic attack and a mental breakdown that lasted three straight days (/pos). Definitely read the tags and prepare yourself mentally but JESUS CHRIST I need everyone to read it. Please. You will regret it for a few hours but it is... an experience. To me at least. And to the two people I recommended it to who gave me feedback.
Then there's sunflower seeds in the rearview mirror by @andrewwtca which remains probably my favorite multichapter OMORI fic of all time (you might spot my essay-comments in the later chapters, I love this fic so much. I didn't end up writing one for the last chapter but man did it hit me hard). Very intriguing with a captivating style and an unreliable narrator mechanic that I am absolutely in love with. Everything by that author is excellent.
We have, of course, literally everything by BetweenDisorders. Arsenic is partly inspired by one of their fics ! (you know the one.) Their characterization of both Sunny and Basil (but especially Basil, because I'm gay) makes me froth at the mouth. Their style is very recognizable and honestly one of the best I've ever seen. But more generally, they have really original and intriguing ideas (like communication, in which Basil and Sunny are two computers... Did I mention how I'm a sucker for original/unique plots and premises enough yet) and everything they do is something you've never seen before. It's amazing.
Note to Self: Don't Be Gay in Faraway Town by witheredahlia is also very, very good. It's a lot lighter, but it still made my gay little heart ache, because I'm a sucker for misunderstandings done correctly (fight me).
Detective Sunny by Det_Sun is genuinely one of the most creative, fascinating OMORI fics I've seen, and also way too underrated. It's an excellent read, and there's a bunch of ideas in it that you know go deeper than what is shown, and it makes my brain go at the speed of lights. Many many thoughts about this one. (Side note: I fucking love it when there's unexplored ideas in fics. Makes my brain go brrr. Not everything has to be shown and when I see hints of "behind the scene" thoughts and character background that isn't discussed much but still implied, my brain becomes a feral animal. I don't know if that makes sense...)
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