#because nothing works out anyway | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

57sfinest · 1 year

Text

calling harry a “can opener” was SUCH a good play for so many reasons i think about it every day.

in the context of his work, it makes him a tool. as many people have pointed out, including martin luiga, part of the hdb tragedy is that he simply cannot leave the force, and his superiors know that and are using it to their advantage. no matter what happens, even if harry hated every nanosecond of every bit of the work and wanted to leave, he can’t and won’t leave. they can leverage anything they want against him and then reel him back in with a facade of kindness when they “allow” him to keep his job, as long as he does what they want him to. the 41st knows he has this inexplicable talent with people and they use him for it. he’s a cop: that talent can be used in so many awful ways, to push so many different agendas. and they won’t even be his own. a can opener has no particular desire to open a can, aside from maybe the satisfaction of fulfilling a purpose. a can opener has no agency, it’s just a tool for someone else to use to get what they want. and he’s learned to be okay with being used as long as it means he gets to stay. his complacency with this system makes him guilty even if he’s also being harmed by it.

but in the context of his personal life you kind of... flip it. the people around him are going to be opened up whether they want to be or not, and it’s terrible for his relationships. it’s shown that the questions, the prying- the can-opening- it’s become inextricable from who he is as a person. it’s like he doesn’t know how else to communicate, except it’s hardly communication when you’re just ripping people open. he’s invasive as all hell, although whether he means to be is debatable. he’s the kind of person that wants to take things apart to see what makes them tick. he dissects people, but really that’s too delicate of a word for what he does; if he doesn’t get what he wants right up front, he’ll abandon all subtlety and go for brute force. if he can’t get your screws loose he’ll just smash you on the ground and pick through your pieces until he’s satisfied, and if what he did to you isn’t fixable? oh well, there are other cans to open.

and he’ll use it for personal gain: we already know he is (was?) manipulative. once he knows how you operate, he knows how to make you keep him. he can yell or he can cry; he can threaten you or he can threaten himself; he can be completely suffocating or he can withdraw completely; he can be an incorrigible liar or brutally honest; he can present himself as a threat or a joke or a talent. he’s a chimera- that’s why he’s got this inexplicable magnetism, even when people know they shouldn’t like or trust him. fidelity of character means nothing to him. he’ll be whatever he needs to be as long as it gets him what he wants. the can-opening is just his way in.

#disco elysium #harry du bois #and it works on us the audience as well!#look at how many different versions of harry there are out there. each tailored to our individual preferences #we exaggerate and minimize his traits according to what we want to see. he's can-opening us too!#it's just like. of course his job will frame the can opening as a positive thing #but it's honestly one of his worst traits. or at least it is when he doesn't keep it in check #there's nothing wrong with wanting to understand people but the way he goes about it is harmful to everyone including himself #he's doing it because he has ulterior motives like 99.999998% of the time #this is mostly about pre-martinaise harry but i have no doubts that post-martinaise harry can go right back to this btw #a lot of us prefer to think of harry as drastically improving after martinaise which is great and i'd like to hope he does but.#it's also good to consider the overwhelming possibility that he will go right back to being a total shithead #and that may be completely unintentionally! which almost makes it worse!#ALSO. this is part of why kim makes a very good foil #for the most part kim will stonewall anything he doesn't feel like sharing #harry needs to respect boundaries and by god does kim have a lot of those (affectionate)#HOWEVER kim is definitely susceptible to the can opening as well #wait okay i have another post idea.#anyway thanks for reading. as always feel free to add and share thoughts!#kiwipost #hdb meta

879 notes · View notes

clowndensation · 11 months

Text

there’s a question to be asked i think about to what extent “getting out” can be conflated with “being saved” in this show, and what freedom actually means to any of these characters.

like you can argue that shiv saved ken by voting against him on gojo, but what if your intent behind saving someone is to inflict a worse punishment than if you’d just left them trapped? can a child weaned on poison survive on milk, or are you just sentencing them to a death by inches, starved of the only thing they know? and if you save someone specifically because you know that being saved is the worst thing that can happen to them, is that kindness or cruelty? at what point does a good thing become a malicious act?

and you can say that roman is finally free, but what exactly is he free from? the company? his father? does unlocking a cage mean saving a dog, or are you allowing him out on the street knowing there’s a kill shelter nearby? if the driving anxiety behind roman is that he’s an idiot and a failure—that he’ll never amount to anything, and trying will only lead to pain—and he’s finally cut loose once all of those anxieties have crystallized into cold hard fact in his mind, what has he actually escaped from? if the cage is in your mind, is it even possible for somebody else to unlock it?

the fundamental truth of a tragedy is that even being saved can be a death sentence, if the characters are incapable of escaping the thing doing them the most harm (themselves and their childhoods)

#'what about shiv' if i think about shiv i'm going to kill myself. she needs her own post. there's too much there to get into.#anyways seeing a tremendous amount of At Least Roman Is Free <3 tags that have me going. right. for sure. free from what?#because it's certainly not the intense amount of self disgust that has driven him in circles this entire time.#i fear he may feel the weight of alienation on his soul for the rest of his life. and he won't even try to alleviate it anymore.#and ALSO the idea that shiv went out of her way to save kendall as an act of like. altruism. like it was a sacrifice on her part #which i feel is a very toothless perspective on shiv and the psychological torment that's been weighing on her essentially since birth #like her choice in regards to gojo is one of the meatiest most harrowing bits of character work i've ever seen #and while of course there was love inside that action (because nothing these characters do is entirely divorced from love)#i don't think it was necessarily a kind or forgiving or sacrificial love #like this was an intense vitriolic snapping from a dog that has been kicked by her dad all her life.#and who absolutely refuses to accept that from her brother (because that would mean acknowledging that kendall takes the mantle of Dad-#and that she's subservient to him. which is the one thing she absolutely will never do #because it's a level of degradation that's finally a step too far)#anyways. um. insane season that i still can't look at directly or i'll perish on the spot.#succession

239 notes · View notes

givemewallywestorgivemedeath · 1 year

Text

There are only so many fanfics that use the entirety of DC as cardboard cutouts to prop up bat family characters that I can read before I go berserk.

I swear to god. Every character that has ever been shipped with a bat or coexists on the same team as a bat is owed an apology.

How many Young Justice fanfics that solely revolve around Tim must exist? How many Titans fanfics centered only on Dick? Why is it a herculean task to find a Justice League fanfic without Bruce as the main character?

And then even when you do find a fic that seems like it's balanced, everything still revolves around the bat. Like Kon, Cassie and Bart have nothing else going on in their lives except Tim and Tim's issues or thinking about Tim. Like Donna and Wally and Roy just cannot function if they aren't spending every waking moment thinking about Dick.

I'm... Guys. I'm at my limit. I swear to god. We need to make a Batman tag and surgically remove all these fics and quarantine them there. We'll keep the actual DC fics and they can do whatever the fuck they want in their own tag. It's getting ridiculous how hard it is to find fanfic that's actually DC related and isn't just 'The BatFam Show'.

#im going INSANE #i literally just have to filter out the batfam characters at this point #and even that doesn't help sometimes #holy shit guys what is GOING ON #seriously if i see one more fic thats all 'haha the justice league meets the batfam and they're so shocked! 😯 because they're crazy 🤣'#i don't know how to explain to you people that THEY HAVE SEEN WEIRDER #a bunch of ninja kids aren't even making the top ten weirdest moments my dude. like. at all.#not even remotely #i can't stress ENOUGH how normal that would be to them #anyway im going fucking bonkers over here #dc #dc comics #or god fucking damnit the YJ fics that literally just have Kon's life revolving around Tim #and Cassie and Bart are just background scenary. and only exist to push Kon and Tim together. I'm going to go fucking nuts #ship whoever you want but at least have the character have an actual character beyond 'love interest'#also jfc. every. single. birdflash fic. that has Wally just be a love interest with literally nothing fucking else going on #except his relationship with Dick. work? family? life? villains?? nope! no he's just madly in love with Dick and cute and thats it!#im GOING INSANE

401 notes · View notes

scintillyyy · 5 months

Text

and the thing is that dick *did* need tim's emotional support and help during the beginning of the batman reborn era because dick's life was also falling apart and they did need to help each other badly and tim leaving him to fix everything and handle the city and damian by himself *was* mean and a bit selfish, but also if tim had stayed to do this, there would have been no real chance for good independent growth for himself (in-universe and narratively speaking) and staying to help dick manage the city would have also meant deprioritizing his own wants and continuing to push down his own grief to do what's best for the greater good and ignoring both his suspicions and what he felt he needed to do at the time (search for bruce, prove himself right, have a breakdown around the world as he figured out his place in it) to focus instead on prioritizing what was currently best for current batman/dick's sake. which is just. kind of a continuation of what he's done/tried to do since he showed up in alpod. (would therapy probably have been a healthier option to move past this? well, yes, but unhealthy coping mechanisms or gtfo frankly) (anyways despite the fact he left to ostensibly find bruce, which is still batman related, leaving is still what allowed tim to get into situations that made him solidify himself as the person he wanted to be moving forth into adulthood + get to the point where he is still helping batman but also is starting to prioritize himself over prioritizing batman's needs so leaving was the objectively correct decision for himself)

anyways, they were both doing the equivalent of putting on their own oxygen masks first here instead of prioritizing what the other felt they needed at the time. and that's okay. they're both allowed to be a bit selfish at this point.

#tangentially related this is also a bit why i can't necessarily vibe #with bruce is dead and tim is okay with being wrong and just comes back to help dick with gotham and everyone is better for it #where is the drama and conflict #why would tim's pride allow for this #tim was never mad at dick and will always love and support him #but that scenario doesn't really do anything of note for tim's character tbh it's uninteresting #really if he does survive brucequest but bruce is dead he should really go on his nightwing arc.#not become nightwing ofc but do what dick did and gtfo of gotham and come back to help only if batman/dick needs him for something #really try to carve his own place in the world separate from batman-dick to grow and come into his own #anyways thinking of potentially lingering tension in this arc (not ridiculous fanon tension)#where dick is a little annoyed that tim left him when he needed tim to go on a quest that led to nothing (also feels bad it didn't work out #and tim is too prideful and upset that he was wrong (and a bit ashamed for leaving when he was needed to go chase ultimately nothing)#and they're brothers they love each other so much but they can't talk about this because that would mean emotional conversations #and there's just a slight schism there. tim will always come for dick when dick calls.#but tim is also content to manage his bonds away from gotham - a place where he's just reminded of his failures #anyways there's a nice little alpod arc there with dick's potential second robin #bringing tim fully back into the fold #something something something

72 notes · View notes

dr3amofagame · 6 months

Text

honestly, there's probably a lot you can say abt c!dream in terms of losing even when he wins. because, tbh, this is...consistent.

c!dream is very intelligent and very good at PVP and these are well-established traits from the beginning of the server. he is skilled at thinking strategically and therefore is often able to navigate unfavorable situations to him in order to successfully achieve some goal of his. in terms of achieving goals, c!Dream isn't half bad in the slightest! but how do these goals actually work out for him?

in the revolution, c!dream successfully leads his side to victory while minimizing damage to his own people (and, sometimes, minimizing damage across the board: see him telling his men to hold fire to allow lmanburgians to retrieve their items.) the most amount of risk to anyone on his side is during the duel, where he ended up on half a heart to determine the end result of the war. and it's quite undeniable that c!dream wins the war--he gets to set the terms of the peace, gives them "technical" independence as he planned to from the start but says that he and the rest of the Dream SMP will view them as constituents of the greater server and gets both discs after c!tommy offers them willingly. by all means, on paper, a glowing success.

only time passes and as others treat l'manburg as independent, he is forced to do the same. "suck it green boy" becomes one of the most common catchphrases of the server when the independence that was granted them in the book that this statement was written was. literally given to them out of c!dream's mercy? and not out of their victory? he loses both discs AND significant leverage against himself due to various conflicts that involved people stealing from him and/or blackmailing him when he literally wasn't doing anything. l'manburg's ranks have swelled and the story established by it and its independence has long since drowned out any other perspective on the war.

then, in manberg/pogtopia, c!dream enters into the conflict from the perspective of wanting c!schlatt out of power. later on, remaining loyal to c!wilbur, he helps him to successfully pull off the plot to blow up L'manburg and also manages to obtain the revive book through a brief alliance with c!Schlatt. once again, his goals were successfully pulled off in no small part due to his strategizing.

and yet, in the long run, what does c!dream really gain? the revive book is something he evidently didn't know about until the trade with c!Schlatt, and the knowledge of it fucking destroys him. with both c!Schlatt and c!Wilbur dead, he immediately ends up as enemy number one, something c!Wilbur himself states later on. c!Dream, who had never really had any particularly stable alliances pre-manberg anyway, comes out the other side of November 16th even more alone than he had been before, publicly distrusted (not that he was ever really trusted, even by Pogtopia before he officially starts working against them because of the revive book, something that the content creator himself has stated was created purely to explain why c!Dream would switch sides.) the destruction of L'manburg is merely temporary. the plan to blow up L'manburg was c!wilbur's in creation, and considering how open c!Dream is about disliking c!Schlatt, I really hesitate to think that he was going out of his way to ally with guy unless he himself intentionally revealed the revive book to this end (like. c!schlatt is a smart guy, bro.)

c!dream is "secretive" about just about nothing at this time, besides I guess his actually helping Pogtopia (if you can call this guy telling the fucking Manberg cabinet that it's L'manburg, not Manberg, being secretive el em ay oh)--he's open about helping c!Wilbur with the TNT (and c!Wilbur you know, makes a point of doing it in front of an audience both times he asks c!Dream for TNT as well) in Vassal and then on November 6th, and that exact stream is also where he literally walks in the middle of Pogtopia to say hey guys. I'm Betraying You Now. like ???

everything he gains at this time culminates to 1) he helps c!Wilbur successfully pull off a plan that c!Wilbur himself came up with and wanted to pull off and does, to some degree, pressure c!Dream into agreeing with him about--even if c!Dream was going to give him the TNT no matter what, he does display a measure of resistance during Vassal Speech (whether or not you believe this resistance was genuine) and c!Wilbur responds to that by kinda threatening him. So. and 2) he gets the revive book by acting in service to a guy that was clearly established as someone he disliked and feared, and that book is also something that we KNOW scared the shit out of him and like ended up prompting a paranoid spiral that ends with him creating a whole goddamn prison to put himself inside. soooooooo. you know. and all of this is happening at the same time that his losses end up turning into "by the time november 16th rolls around and is over and done with most people either want him dead or are very very close to wanting him dead, cheers!"

then obviously, there's everything from november 16th to the staged disc finale. again, we see c!Dream pulling strategic plays left and right and achieving the goals he has--at this point, often through, uh, less than savory means. through political bullshit with NLM and well, exile, he manages to get the disc during green festival; through helping c!Techno against the butcher army, he manages to obtain a favor; through stuff involving the enderwalk and some kinda deal that im p sure has remained unspecified, he manages to get Cat from c!Skeppy; through experiments with c!Punz, he gets information on the revive book; through green festival, obtaining both discs (and therefore no longer needing to act in terms of political interests with NLM), and establishing common ground with c!Techno, he's able to destroy L'manburg through Doomsday; through having the discs + everyone hating his guts because of Green Festival, Doomsday, and to be fair everyone literally just hating his guts from the outset, he is able to ensure the security of c!Punz, the revive book, and himself by locking himself in prison. A lot of different moving parts, a lot of different goals, a lot of running around the server to get what he needs to get done done at the right times in the right ways, and he manages to con the server and put himself exactly where he wanted to be.

and yet?? and yet??? sure, he pulls off what he wants to pull off, sure he achieves his goals, but in terms of actually winning? he's paranoid and the paranoia just keeps getting worse. the threats to his life and the amount of enemies that want him dead just keep growing in numbers. he finally gets lmanburg blown up for good but you know there's going to be like 4 more factions on this server by the time he gets imprisoned. his friends ditch him and then try to kill him when he clumsily tries to communicate that he's trying to protect them because of the paranoia he has about everyone hating his guts, he explicitly identifies the reasons for people's hatred as having a lot to do with manberg/pogtopia arc where he ends up helping two dead men that aren't around for people to hate anymore, he pulls off staged finale and puts himself in a prison that ends up shattering himself.

like he achieves his goals--even if we're talking about the prison, even if we're talking about the time where things most thoroughly go awry for him because of c!sam's betrayal, you can't say that he didn't achieve what he intended. c!sam kept him alive, and would do anything to keep him alive--he might've been wrong about a lot, but he wasn't wrong about that. and yet. AND YET.

c!dream achieves his goals but where does he end up? miserable and afraid of literally damn near everything and losing his whole mind in the exact prison that he constructed to keep himself safe when in a paranoid spiral about a hostile world that suddenly made so much less sense than he was used to--alone.

like. wdym doesn't lose all he does is lose literally everything he ever had like 😭😭😭😭😭

#c!dreamisms #it's alllll fear all the way down #i have Strong Feelings about manberg/pogtopia too #but that'll have to go into a different post #i feel like. regardless of what you feel like c!dream's /goals/ were in manberg/pogtopia tho #it's kinda undeniable that he loses more than he gains?#i mean unless you're going from the perspective of 'well he kinda lost all of that anyway from the beginning by just being dream'#because to be fair how much of the hatred is even in direct consequence of what he does #even with the inclusion of the revive book it's like. all that did was make him more paranoid #when the ENTIRETY of manberg/pogtopia and how it ended up working out #really did nothing but make him . more of The Enemy and give him more reason to fear for his life #and meanwhile like what did he even gain from blowing up lmanburg fr it remained blown up for like a week #not even #but yeah like. even when he does what he wants. even when he wins? he's not really winning is he

116 notes · View notes

thevioletcaptain · 8 months

Text

if you as a fic reader ever become possessed by the urge to do a popularity bracket with the fics other people wrote and shared for fun and for free, consider:

don't ❤️

#just!!!! make a rec list!!!!!!!!!#popularity contests do nothing but drive writers out of fandoms by pitting people against their friends #and invariably result in people being assholes in the comments as if the people who wrote the fic can't see it #like ''oh clearly fic x is better than fic y''#or ''why is fic c even in this poll?''#nobody gains anything by you doing a bracket to see which fic is the ''most popular''#a stat which could be found more easily & less cruelly by simply hitting the sort by bookmarks/kudos button on ao3 #anyway ugh. i saw that one of my fics was being pitted against one of my friend's fics in this bracket that's going around #and i have no idea who is ''winning'' because i refuse to look. but either way it's gonna feel bad!!!#because i want my friend to get his flowers so i want him to win!!! but i also would like to know that people like my fic!!!!#so it's just a lose/lose situation even though i generally don't give a shit about numbers #but this turns it into a schoolyard popularity thing #and the emotional response to having people *vote* on if your work is *better or worse* than other fic is hard to ignore #cannot reiterate enough JUST MAKE A REC LIST #or if you absolutely must do a bracket like this do it in a private chat server or something #don't create a public forum for people to pass value judgements where the authors can see it #and feel bad if they get told their fic is ''worse'' than someone elses #but also feel bad if they get told theirs is ''better'' because it came at the cost of telling another author they weren't good enough #ANYWAY i still feel sick with a super sore throat and a headache & am probably extra cranky because of it #(still testing negative thankfully so it's probably just weather/allergen related)#gonna go make some tea and prep the fic updates i want to post today #cass says things #fandom problems #wank adjacent

91 notes · View notes

softesttangerines · 6 months

Text

Obsessed with the thought that tho mihawk is comfortable in his lone wolf life style, he does find it a bit too lonesome sometimes when the mood is somber, the silence is too much and he just remembers shanks' laugh and maybe no matter how much shanks' crew are too loud (understatement) he does find them entertaining, and maybe he enjoys ben's company in a comfortable silence, he may even consider him something close to a friend.

It just gets too much sometimes and he loathes the loneliness. When he's in one of those moods, he's mostly drinking and picking petty guaranteed wins. Going around like "you disturbed my nap" to whomever he's slicing into two and it got quite worst after he got used to zoro and perona and now they're no longer there and he was never much for kids but those are HIS kids and he misses kicking zoro's ass and baking with perona and them helping him in the garden as an unspoken, forced bonding family time.

He may like being alone but he hates being lonely, especially after he met people he actually enjoyed sacrificing his alone time for (not that he'll ever admit it)

Now he's hanging out with cross guild (while waiting for zoro to get stronger and come after him so he either take his retirement or just dies in peace, both are good, really) and no day passes without at least one murder attempt from his side, but really, try to take the clown away from him and it would be you he stabs.

#mishanks #in this headcanon it's mostly longing for past mishanks with zero hope of them ever getting together because shanks has big plans #mysterious plans that dont involve mihawk in his future and mihawk not necessarily being interested in the one piece or anything #he really just wants to have a great fight with zoro and that's his only life goal to die by the sword #but he does long for a time where he could have had something more that just a life where he lives by the sword and dies by it #and at one point life he just starts doing random shit cz he's bored and zoro's taking too long so he just joins cross guild #crocodile is very antagonising on a good day and buggy is just straight out annoying because no matter how much the clown shittalks shanks #he's more like him than he thinks after all they grew up together #and mihawk really doesn't need anyone to remind him of the redhead but buggy is still entertaining and he kinda grew soft for his antics #and if the clown is a yonko now and wants the one piece mihawk might as well follow him since he has nothing to do at the moment #and buggy's like “take that shanks!” and shanks' genuinely miffed that Mihawk joined buggy and not him and he's kinda annoyed cz wtf man???#anyways this is me rambling too much because i don't wanna do my work :)#alsooooo i really like to think that mihaek and ben are on good terms? like they are silence no shit typa buddies #one piece #opla #mihawk #shanks #buggy the clown

124 notes · View notes