#i dunno if that made sense

[celluloidbroomcloset]

Y'know, I was rewatching pieces of both Season 1 and Season 2 for an analysis I was considering, and it struck me that there is indeed a tonal shift between seasons (without it violating the development of the characters or the overall ethos of the show) as love and desire stop being marked by fantasy and become...real.

So much of Stede and Ed's early romance is framed with romance and fairytale tropes - the meet-cute/deus ex machina, the Prince and Pauper switch, the full moon "fine things" conversation, the break-up/divorce speech Stede gives the crew when Ed leaves with Jack, the casting of Izzy as the villainous complication and the English as the encroaching threat.

Then something shifts with "Act of Grace" and the kiss on the beach - the physical and emotional declaration that "this is real" between them. It stops being fantasy - it stops being Stede's fantasy, which was romantic and clean and largely sexless, and it stops being Ed's fantasy, which was to get to be a part of a different world and change what he thought was his fate - and becomes true. It becomes untidy and complicated, but deepens with every moment. There are hints of it building throughout the first season, but with the end of "Act of Grace" and "Wherever You Go," the fantasy falls away and leaves desire and heartache and hope.

Season 2 makes them messy and hurt and angry and so deeply joyful with each other. There's no more wealth and no more toy boat and no more full moons, but there is a dream that saves Ed's life, a kiss under a gibbous moon, passion born from pain and such intense love, and a home where neither thought a home could be.

The fantasy breaks, but pieces of it remain, and what's underneath is so much better.

#ofmd meta #ofmd season 2 #our flag means death #ofmd season 1 #gif #stede bonnet #edward teach #ed teach #rhys darby #taika waititi #gentlebeard #i dunno if that made sense #but there's such a beautiful shift that in no way undercuts what came before #just deepens it in a natural way #it actually pulls off what a lot of romantic comedies don't

[ourhouseishaunted]

Vash and Chronica's terrible sibling game night

#trigun #trimax #trigun maximum #vash the stampede #chronica #i dunno what this is it just came to me today i think post canon these two hang out but it sucks and they have shitty 2 person game nights #chronica likes in depth strategy games and vash doesnt have the patience or the game sense for any of that #and they try card games but vash always cheats badly and theres only so much fun to be had with 2 card games anyway #so they end up each getting a 5000 peice puzzle and sitting in seperate corners of the room #and the winner is whoever puts their puzzle together first #dont judge its 2am and i made this in like an hoir #.txt #my art

[the-ace-with-spades]

(another unfinished post i found on the way to glasgow - that was the longest train ride in my life - I'm sorry in advance)

When Ice finally passes away, at the age of 73, in his sleep, Bradley moves Mav into their house the same day.

He gets the call in the morning, while trying to simultaneously cook Jake's breakfast and try to make their daughter put on a rain jacket. It's not Mav, but someone from the hospital. Jake doesn't know this — Bradley's face twitches only for a second and then he's back to the nagging, relaxing tone and telling their daughter it's raining and it won't stop. Jake only finds out when he comes back home from the school drop-off and Mav is already there on their couch. Jake doesn't even get the full explanation until that night, just a quick, "Ice passed away overnight."

There's only their three youngest living with them at the time — their 18-year-old daughter who attends UC San Diego, and their 15-year-old son who is still in high school, and their 7-year-old daughter — so Mav takes one of the vacant bedrooms.

The first few nights, Bradley sleeps in the same bed with him. Neither of them looks like they get much sleep. They don't really eat, either, just drink coffee and nibble on the crackers.

The kids start coming back home, and their oldest helps Jake arrange most of the things for the funeral, at least for the first few days. Mav is... numb, not really there, and Jake understands — he would, too, if he woke up one day and his husband died in his sleep next to him. Bradley is silent, mostly, the way he usually rambles to fill out the silence, the way he hums, the way he sings at any given time when there are no words spoken, it's all gone and Jake doesn't know how to fill out the silence either, how to ask, how to make it better without asking.

Bradley doesn't cry, or at least not the way he knows Mav does — he can see Mav's red eyes every morning — but there's something empty in his gaze, in the way his eyes follow Mav and in the way he melts whenever Mav is around, always close, always brushing against him. Mav spaces out a lot, doesn't talk much, doesn't—well, doesn't do much. Every time he tries to help with something, paperwork, the funeral arrangements, the hospital bills, even just sorting out the kids' school leave or Jake's own work leave, he fumbles a bit, not really able to focus on anything for long, and it's like his mind is completely scrambled. Jake doesn't know how to help him — doesn't know if they even can.

The kids, well, did not take it well, as expected. The oldest two try to be brave and help Jake with everything, keep the house going, but their youngest daughter doesn't really understand why her pops isn't back, the middle kids don't understand why now — Ice was in remission, in good health, would go hiking with them once a month, play with them in the backyard, talking about plans for the future with them, nothing that would tell them to expect their pops passing away. Mav and Ice had taken care of all of them for years, while Jake and Bradley were still deployable, and helping out as much as they could. Ice was a huge part of their lives, since the very beginning.

Bradley is certainly not doing any better but one couldn't be able to tell if they didn't know him well enough. He's always been more for packing his feelings into a tight neat box, compartmentalizing until there is too much and it all overflows in some explosive way. His focus is mostly on Mav and the kids, trusting Jake to take care of anything he can't.

Jake can't even ask him how he's doing until the night before the funeral.

Mav tells Bradley he wants to be alone that night and Bradley lands in their bedroom.

He acts normal — checks the kids are in bed, checks on Mav, prepares stuff for breakfast in the morning, has a shower. Only when he sits down in their bed, their dress blues, cleaned and pressed sitting on the hangers hooked up on their wardrobe, right in front of him—only then he freezes, a blank stare still on the uniforms.

Jake sits down next to him on the bed. "Talk to me, Bradley."

"I knew it was going to happen at some point, I just," "I just thought we would have a few more years."

Bradley sleeps curled up on his chest — he sleeps the whole night, soundlessly, and Jake is almost settled.

Almost. Mav is a couple doors down, alone.

Ice's been—had been retired many years now, but he had been high enough in the ranks that the Navy still insists on making a military funeral. Jake tried to take away as much of the flashy bullshit as possible, but there are still things leftover — the sailors with the flag, the flyover. But there's no one who wasn't close with the family at the ceremony, there's no speeches, and no one tries to hand either Mav or Bradley a flag.

The wake has an even smaller amount of people, all packed in their house — Mav hasn't been at his own house since — and thanks to Slider, mostly, and his 'the bastard wouldn't want us to mope around', it's less sad and quiet.

Mav eats two slices of cake, which is the most Jake's seen him eat since, and even laughs at some stories about Ice people are exchanging.

Ice had a good life. A big family. A big happy family that loved him.

But life goes on without him. Jake goes back to work first, then the kids have to go back to school, then Bradley has to back to work. After a couple of days alone at their house, Mav starts bringing up moving back to his own house.

He's not really doing great. He's still quiet, still spaces out more often than not, still forgets himself sometimes, still freezes whenever he tries to say something and the we he uses is one person short. He's—lifeless, for a lack of better word, and seems like he's noticing it now that Bradley isn't with him most of the waking hours.

"That is our home," Mav tells them. "I can't abandon it forever, I'd be abandoning him, too, if I—"

Jake—Jake gets it. He doesn't like it, but he gets it.

Bradley's been fielding off any suggestions of Mav moving out but he's pretty sure that soon Mav is going to pack his stuff and up and leave without asking for permission.

"If he wants to move back home, we can't exactly hold him here. against his will."

"Jake," Bradley says. "I feel like—if we let Mav go back there alone, he's going to die of a broken heart and I won't have either of them anymore."

"Sweetheart—"

"I know it's selfish," he interrupts, "but I can't lose him, too. Not now."

Jake can't make Mav stay with them — so he finds the best solution he can and instead, they all move in with Mav. Hell with it, he's going to try to get everyone to live their lives to the end. They'd done it before, Mav, Ice, Bradley, Jake and their two kids under one roof, when their oldest two were their only two kids.

The two of them and two of their youngest; two of their kids move into their house so they don't have to sell it.

Mav lives on. They try to occupy his mind by throwing their youngest at him — ask him to take her to school, pick her up from school, take her to her gymnastics class, do her homework with her, teach her how to play piano. The other kids pick up on it, too, and their high schoolers would wrap Mav into doing math workbooks with them, or ask him to drive them to their friends' house, and the kids that have moved out ask Mav to go to lunch together or call him to ask him things about car and house repairs that don't exist.

Mav gets brighter every day. Never as bright as before, but no longer so numb.

Their daughter ends up never moving out and so do they.

They all get older but Mav holds up pretty well. He does break his hip when trying to wash the windows, had a limp and terrible back ache ever since, had to stop driving because he can't see shit, had to stop piloting even sooner, and his memory is also shit, but Jake is pretty sure his cholesterol is lower than his own and he has better blood pressure than Bradley. Bradley and Mav are the ones cooking after all, Jake is the one eating all the tasty but not healthiest food, and Mav's life revolves around spoiling his cute great-grandkids and Bradley's is filled with the constant stress of managing Navy's top flying school.

For his ninetieth birthday, Mav flies a fighter jet as a passenger, the oldest person to ever do that — his youngest granddaughter is the one to take him up in the air, a junior grade lieutenant herself. They have a birthday party held at their house, Mav falls asleep in the armchair, Bradley makes fun of him and promptly falls asleep on the couch, too. Jake loves them both so much and still kind of can't believe he has this — house full of grown-up kids and grandkids of his own, his graying husband of over thirty years, his father-in-law coming to an age he wanted to see his mother at.

They're cleaning up, their two daughters who still don't have kids and didn't need to go home helping, and Mav tells them he's going to get some fresh air on their veranda. "I've got a terrible headache," is all he says.

Half an hour passes, they've packed all the clean and dirty dishes, and Bradley huffs to himself. "He fell asleep on the bench again, didn't he," and goes outside.

Bradley shouts for him in less than a minute. The ambulance is there in eight. Within the half-hour and a CT scan in the hospital, the neurologist tells them Mav is too far gone to survive the day. Within six hours, every single person from their family has come to say goodbye. When they pass the seven hours mark, Jake stands up from the plastic chair behind Bradley — he's not about to tell Bradley he should rest, but he's been holding Mav's hand since the minute they admitted Mav to the ward and hasn't eaten or drunk anything all day. He tells him he'll go grab them a coffee and bagels and gets a little nod and a smile.

Jake comes back twenty minutes later and Bradley doesn't even look up from where he's gripping Mav's hand.

"Can you get the nurse for me?"

#this isn't really about Ice's death or Mav's death #but more about getting old in a family #sorry in advance #dunno if this made sense #idk felt some way when i wrote it #my nan had a stroke around that time and as a person who works mainly with critical stroke patients it hit hard #i didn't get into detail here but stroke patient at the end of their lives are very emotional sight for relatives #icemav #hangster #angst #pete maverick mitchell #tom iceman kazansky #bradley rooster bradshaw #jake hangman seresin #tgm #charlie writes #op

[kittenmoth]

Continued re-watching made me wonder out loud to my Fiance; "Man, how come no one ever told me about the scene where Jet is just blatantly flirting with Zuko? How come I don't remember the scene where Jet is just blatantly flirting with Zuko?"

Bad break up, man.

#kittenmoth arts #atla #atla zuko #atla jet #avatar the last airbender #jetko #technically I guess #don't ask me about the anatomy of Jet in the second image I dunno what happened there it made sense in the sketch #but his Angry Fisher Cat Fluff made it look bad somewhere along the way #atla fanart #atla centaur au #atla au

[vanweezer]

that type of person who you think you'd be friends with in every universe - expressed through jim & corey - id/transcript in alt text

so this is a kind of not-so-surprise for my friend @sinclarsupremacy , bc they were the first person i showed this two and was on the phone with me the whole time while i made it. didn't give a single thing away until everything was scanned and done. five dead pens and one reliable sharpie later, i show him this. wanted to get used to drawing the slipsour guyz more but also wanted to articulate something i have troubles saying to important people. this is kind of an ode to all my close friends ive made who i definitely wouldve hung around some graveyards with, and an ode to some bands i didnt know id like as much as i do 🫶

#corey taylor #jim root #also based on that one jim page where they called him the 'group ghoul' and talked about how hed get nightmares #of a flaming head telling him he was gonna burn in hell #ill tell you one thing. having dorks like nate in my life wouldve saved ME some melodrama #however i am always melodramatic (eg: this very post) so maybe it just wouldve made things melodramatic-er #slipknot #stone sour #<- again purely organizational i dont wanna step on anyones toes #artings #nate tag #dunno if i should tag this as #rpf #but considering this is a story ive growth'd from my dome. fictional retellings of irl doofuses & whatnot. whateva #prolly gonna go on a sideblog soon. you know how it goes #also im sorry jimberly i made you have the silhouette of a yugioh character #if this is rpf in the traditional sense call it the au where jim and corey are able to shoot the breeze like this #in a way that isnt insanely passive aggressive or terribly jokey or downright explosive. yknow how they be #drinking game: take a shot each time jim says yknow or coreys fucking HAT deteriorates in quality #tell your friends that you would be friends in every universe

[fulcrum-art-fox]

Sabine carefully explaining everything about Shin in great detail to Ahsoka:

Ahsoka: and you got all that just from Shin staring at you?

Sabine: yes. it’s very eloquent staring

#ahsoka show #ahsoka series #I’m particularly thinking about everything that went between them on the shuttle #but also #you know #ahsoka tano #sabine wren #shin hati #wolfwren #I dunno maybe this made more sense in my head lol

[chidoroki]

August 22nd - Happy Birthday Emma - ft: her tvtropes

#the promised neverland #tpn manga #tpn emma #emma #my edits #i cant say a lot about our girl that i havent already said countless times before but i love her an endless amount & she still remains my #fav shonen protag to this day. she's just so perfect?? & im so insanely proud of everything she's accomplished aahh..but yeah i think i got #this idea back in march..or may? cant remember exactly but regardless i only managed to start it a couple days ago. thats how busy ive #been recently. so i wish i couldve made 'em not look so simple but whatever. obviously the photos are a reference to those that ray took. & #dunno if those cameras can capture stuff in a sepia tone but it works for her colors so here we are. all that might not make as much sense #when i do a set for anyone else or even for a different series but i dont care. this is the idea im rolling with for this birthday cycle.

[idontlikeem]

also like. losing is a part of being a sports fan. so as much as i've been like 'it doesn't really matter because of all that we've won in the past!' that doesn't actually mean anything. lots of teams lose all the time and you don't have to justify watching them or give a reason for why they're still worth your time and attention as a fan. this kind of feels like a very uniquely tumblr thing, and i think it's been shaped a little bit by a few people going around frantically asking others to like...fix how they feel about the team's performance for them, but like...

...you can just watch a team that isn't very good, because you like the players and that's your team. it's ok. you don't need to have a set of reasons to trot out to give to others who have decided to put their bad feelings around losing at your feet.

idk. i feel like pens fans are in a weird spot because we've had so much success for so long that maybe some of us are feeling like we either need to be blindly confident the success will return quickly, or we need to have a bunch of justifications for still watching?

it's enough to have just selected this team as your team and watch them. it doesn't need to be deeper than that. none of us are hockey execs or GMs or coaches, and it's ok to just watch a game and be like 'hell yeah' when they win or 'man' when they lose and that's it. we don't all need to be searching for answers in order to be here.

#i dunno this makes no sense #i'm exhausted and i've written far too many words today #but like...man #seeing what i suspect is the return of someone who made a lot of us feel really bad last season #(because they're in my inbox again today too i just am not answering) #is making it hard to want to come on tumblr and hang out with my friends during and after games #please stop putting that on other people #it's not fair and we've asked so many times for it to stop

[nopecho]

Thinking about a DoL x Heathers Musical crossover

Ughhhhh

#Unpopular and biased opinion: Kylar isn't going to be JD in this fucoing crossover #my bias being that I hate kylar and can't stand him to he a main character #i know it makes the most sense personality wise but #he's not the fucking type to beat up jocks with his bare hands #literally JD's introduction scene #Heathers #Heathers Musical #dol #degrees of lewdity #MY BIAS? I want Whit to be JD because he's my fav #listen AUs are made by people and people are inherently flawed #whitney the bully? more like whitney the bullied #Bailey is Heather Chandler #Eden? not sure- I was thinking Heather McNamara maybe?? i dunno #Harper is Heather Duke #Ram and Kurt are Wren and Landry #Robin is Martha- it fits well imi #imo #Leighton as Ms. Fleming would be so ironic and funny ngl #or do I put Harper as Ms. Fleming?? aaarghggggsgsvs i Don't KNOW #DoL x Heathers #degrees of lewdity crossover #heathers crossover #heathers musical crossover #I can't wait to post art and be ruthlessly critizied about the Kylar JD thing #it's my own fucking blog I make my own fucking rukes :)

[pines-eyes]

I like the idea of Jonah and Jon trying to feed off whatever fear Sam has, but 100% annoyed that he sees it all as a joke?

"Hey, this creepy piece of paper just appeared and wants me to answer questions of my trauma? Damn that's nuts. Anyways-"

#samama khalid #tmp sam #i dunno if this made sense #but it was funny to me #tmp #the magnus protocol spoilers

[weepingalaxy]

a moment of crisis.

#omari au #omori #omori au #mari omori #omori mari #and if i made my own version of an omari au? what then huh? whatll you do? #you know that thing where once you enter a stage of crisis you need to cut your hair for a sense of control #and perfectionism is basically just the desire for control to make everything exactly as you hope #um. um. yeah #i dunno listen i have a vision

[celluloidbroomcloset]

HI !

I think for stede you have pointed out something, some members of the fandom don't like stede.

In the fandom I have always felt a kind of imbalance when it comes to blackbonnet. An attempt to make their dynamic one-sided: ed is too good for him so stede will have to step up to the plate to be worthy (and this isn't just in blackbonnet but in fandom in general and I'm tired of that.)

For stede this manifests itself in bad behavior which does not seek to take his feelings into account because for them it is not worth it. Slanderous takes that make him look like a bad guy. I've reached a stage where I don't even know if people are sincere in their tags when it comes to stede. If they really love him or only in the pair he forms with ed, because otherwise for them he is worthless.

And recently in the tag of a post (not current) concerning ed and stede I read: "I like stede but you are allowed to hate him BUT ED??" (And I left before reading the rest...)

I too allow people to hate characters I love even if it hurts. But there is this difference in treatment in mode: stede has no value so do as you wish.

After a while, what did stede do in their eyes to be considered so detestable? At this point nothing will surprise me anymore.

Anyway, I'm here writing to you because it's not often (if ever) that we see a person who talks about stede so in a sense I'm confiding.

Still have a good week !

The times when I come across this (and it obviously pisses me off too), it seems to be centered on Stede being effeminate and perceived as weak. Which is hilarious, given that the whole point of Stede's character is that he upends views of traditional masculinity and that threatens the hell out of people who are invested in patriarchy. One of the things that's getting me right now is the combo of either "he's too foppish" or "he's trying too hard to be masc." Stede being in control of his own self (and that includes him fucking up in some things and learning as a result) seems to bother some folks.

I do think there's a general lack of consideration about some of his characterization, like the takes about when Jack bullies him, his reasons for running away from Ed at the end of Season 1, or the incidents in Man on Fire. It seems to assume that Stede is less perceptive about others and also less self-aware than he actually is (in part, I think, because his emotional arc is subtler and more internal than Ed's, which is part of his characterization) and vilifying or blaming him for things rather than any other character.

TBH, a lot reads to me like low-key contempt for him because he's more fluid, both in gender presentation and in his overall emotional makeup.

All of that being said, most people I follow and whose takes I see are 100% into Stede, just like Ed is, so it makes the more problematic takes stand out to me.

#ofmd #reply #stede bonnet #i dunno if that all made sense #i did get so tired of the “haha he'll be mediocre at sex!” takes #but that seems to have been killed off

[front-facing-pokemon]

#WOOOOAAHHH THEY'RE TRANSPARENT!! I THOUGHT REGIICE WAS BLUE BUT LIKE #i guess it makes sense that they're actually transparent! 'cuz! they're made of ice! i kinda wish they were blue here since that's like #more iconic and i feel like they'd be more recognizable if they were transparent but i guess this ALSO looks cool #and no‚ the stuff in there is not‚ like. its brain or whatever. it's just FULLY transparent and you can see through to my desktop wallpaper #and that's what's showing through its head. which is like cool but i'm worried makes this guy a little bit less visually distinct #actually yeah it kinda does LEMME redo this one but with a blank background and see if it looks any better #yyyeeeeaaahh okay this helps a bit. more visual clarity. i'll replace it with the one where you Can't see my desktop wallpaper #i might leave that version under the cut actually. but i'd have to add some text to the post which i generally don't like doing. just to #explain what it is. cuz not everyone is gonna read these tags #i'll just. leave it the way it is. in two weeks i'll just hope i remember what wallpaper i had applied when i took the original image #cuz i have it set to change every night through a set list of images that i update whenever i find a new image i like that's roughly #the resolution of my monitor. i dunno if anyone else does this #most irrelevant tags ever #regice #thanks for the catch on the spelling nidoskull

[littleeyesofpallas]

Bleach’s Issue with Queer characters (1/3)

So, someone recently(when i started this draft anyway) left a kind of incoherent rant on one of my posts.  It wasn’t actually related to anything I’d said in the post, and just came across as disjointed babble, so it didn’t warrant a direct reply at the time.  But it did bring up a subject I would actually like to talk about:

How Kubo handles gender queer characters.

I think it’s a little easy to look at the most glaring cases, come to the conclusion that he doesn’t handle representation well, and leave it at that.  That’s valid.  And he’s clearly not well versed or tactful in how he portrays these characters, and it’s really not that unreasonable to judge him for it.  But I also think there’s more going on with it than that really accounts for, so let’s pick at it a little...

By and large what Kubo does is some pretty by-the-books queer-coding villains, and what amounts to casting effeminate men in adversarial roles.  In the big picture, it’s not a good trope to be falling back on: it comes from a bad place historically, and even if Kubo doesn’t mean anything bad by it (and I’ll get into why I think he genuinely doesn’t) it contributes to the momentum already behind it that other, less well intentioned creators and readers inevitably stand to do more direct harm with.

The earliest case of this is actually from Zombie Powder.  Very early episodic villain, Ranewater Calder is a youthful and even girlish looking man who is actually an old man sustained by a youth restoring drug.  He’s a villain of the week type, so the fact that he’s pretty and evil is literally all there is to him.  Moreover, his fixation on youth, his vanity, and his deception (he pretends to be a frail, dainty victim at first) all link directly to his moral character.  Although Calder is himself never made out to be gay, the archetype he's clearly based on is a pretty classically homophobic characterization at face value

But even here it’s not totally black and white...  

There’s a snag in that Kubo’s not writing some 1950s American pulp novel where the perils of homosexuality spell self-destruction or divine/dramatic irony on the loathesome villain; he’s writing a shounen action manga, and it operates on the Rule-of-Cool first and foremost.  Calder isn’t a vehicle for moral preaching by religious conservatives, he’s a highlight character taking up valuable print space in a popular comic.  He’s attractive, he has a cool name, he has a cool weapon with a unique fighting style, and even his vanity and deception aren’t there to make him unappealing, they’re there to make him compelling.

And herein lies the root of Kubo’s problem.  He just likes having cool characters, and he crams them in where ever he can fit them, and that often means in villain roles.  Moreover, although some characters get more vilified than others, even within the scope of villain roles, not all of them get to stick around long enough to be developed as either something other than queer and villainous, or to get the full turn around.  After all...

Yumichika was a villain at first.

And you’ll noticed I hesitated just now at calling it a “turn around” and not a “redemption” or “turning over a new leaf” because frankly, the Shinigami never actually changed alignment.  They were circumstantially the villains of the Soul Society Arc until Aizen turned on them to be the bigger "real” villain.  Technically it was Ichigo & co. that changed alignments from fighting against the Gotei13 to fighting with them.  But relatively aside, Yumichika became a good guy and his favorable portrayal got to outweigh his villainous introduction.

Speaking of which, there’s not a whole lot to go over with it, but Yumichika’s original appearance pretty closely mirrored the profile of Ranewater Calder’s bit in Zombie Powder: a kind of “sissy” prettyboy is obsessed with his looks, and other than just being a guy with a sword pointed at the established heroes making him a villain, that vanity and narcissism make them mean, judgy and vindictive.

But Yumichika came back, and stuck around, and frankly became something of a fan favorite.  And I think this particular development says a lot about how Kubo looks at these situations.  You’ll notice, he didn’t actually have to change Yumichika’s character much to shift him from villain to hero.  Yumichika gets a little less prickly, but he’s still vain and it’s not even something that anyone ever frames as a problem he needs to work on.  In fact, the introduction of his shikai brought into play a new facet of his vanity: Deception.  So we’re back to that Ranewater Calder framework, where the prettyboy has something to hide with his looks, but in Yumichika’s case it’s shown as an almost endearing quality.  He hides his sword’s powers, a reflection of his true self, to fit in.  But this isn’t shown to be a thing to pity, his willingness to sacrifice a part of his own identity is portrayed as a kind of noble restraint.

Now, granted, I don’t think those elements all play nicely together. (In fact, the nobility of his self-restraint is a very dangerous thing to uphold as a virtue) But when it comes to trying to draw a line between message and intent, I think the most pertinent thing to consider as context isn’t actually the villain or hero dichotomy, or even your own personal feelings about the themes in play, it’s the attitude ("attitude" as different from “intent,” mind you) of the creator towards his creations: Kubo seemed to enjoy making Yumichika.

He had fun with his design (the feathers and the weird sweater collar thing) He had fun with the sword, with giving him a secret power.  He had fun writing his vanity rants.  He didn’t have to have Yumichika, he didn’t have to bring him back, and he didn’t have to add to his character, but he did.  He invested his own time and effort and space on the page to him and to making him interesting to have around.

But like I said, Yumichika’s the lucky one.  He came in early, got to have a comeback, and had time to stick around.  But consider that when Kubo was floundering around trying to figure out how to salvage the mess that was the late TYBW arc, he didn’t need to bring back Arrancar, and he didn’t need to bring back the ones he did. (in fact, only the Privaron even make sense in-world, Luppi and Charlotte weren’t convenient choices, they were just Kubo’s personal picks.)  And when he did finally get around to cleaning up the Sternritter?  Bazz-B was an obvious choice to keep, sure (following that Renji/Grimmjow mold of the hotblodded rival who bucks his own organizations rules) but Giselle and Lilttoto?  That was Kubo playing favorites.

Luppi was so short lived, it’s hard to really say anything about him.  He was basically just reusing notes from Yumichika’s first appearance, which again also refer back to Ranewater Calder in Zombie Powder for basic aesthetic and demeanor.  (It’s actually kind of weird that Yumichika never really had any kind of dynamic with Luppi when they fought.)

Side note here, but Kubo really loves to build some of his recurring character types around a certain kind of scene or dynamic.  Byakuya and Ulquiorra both do this thing where they’re supposed to be the stoic unflinching types, but they actually get shocked and surprised almost constantly.  Kubo seems to be going into it with the mentality that he thinks it’s cool when the character who predicts everything and always has everything under control, can’t predict something and doesn’t have it under control, and just reverse engineers a stoic person for the purpose of having them “break character” later.  In this vein Kubo seems to have a real love of very pretty characters shifting into a kind of sinister “ugly mode.”  It wouldn’t serve his purpose to just have them ugly or obviously meanspirited all the time, the ugliness has to be served up in its reveal as that “breaking character” moment, even though that “breaking” moment is itself the core of the character.

Not to get too heady about this little observation, but it honestly feels like something that applies even to Kubo’s broader writing habits; wanting the payoff of a twist, and planning said twist first but then reverse engineering the supporting ruse only as a matter of course.  Just a silly little thought...

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#bleach meta #bleach #kubo tite #zombie powder #ranewater calder #Yumichika Ayasegawa #luppi antenor #oh damn i drafted this forever ago #i kind of never really intended to post it #but i guess i didnt delete it either #i dunno that most of my feelings about not bothering with it have changed #but contextually i've also now made a number of posts about my headcanons with trans characters #as well as bleach's weird glancing relationship with questionable symbols and themes #so i guess while this still feels like an argument not worth making it feels somehow less not worth making??? #if that makes any sense #any way im clearing out drafts so here ya go

[mermaidstede]

I'm heartbroken over the exchange that Ed has with Pop-Pop. It's so clear that he's been in this situation before with his dad.

"What? What have I done to offend you? I just don't understand. I'll work harder. I'll work faster... Get off me, Pop-Pop. Pop-Pop. Calm down, Pop-Pop. I'm sorry if I offended you, Pop-Pop. I was trying to say a nice thing. Here. Here, just take your plate. Hold out your bowl. Okay, here we go. Here we go. Okay. Put some of that fish onto yours... Pop-Pop… I'm so-- It's just a fish. It's just a fish!"

I'm sorry I did something wrong. I'll be better. I was just trying to do something nice. Here, let me make it up to you. Let me prove myself to you. I'm sorry. Please don't hurt me. "You don't work! You don't do anything, you sit on your ass all day! You have no skills...! You ruined dinner!"

Slop! You wanna tell me why that's all you ever cook?

"You guys are dicks!"

The good news is, my dad was a dick.

#dunno if this makes much sense but i haven't seen anyone else talk about it #and it made me very sad :( #* #ofmd s2 spoilers

[uncanny-tranny]

A disability take I have been thinking about is that if companies refuse to provide accessibility options/adequate accessibility options (which is shitty, don't get me wrong), the very very least they can do is make it as easy as possible for people to make tools for accessibility possible. It's shitty enough when products are not accessible at its base (like a video game controller, for instance), but it's even worse when it's made as difficult as possible for people to do things to make accessibility an option.

#disability #does this make sense like i dunno #shoutout to every single programmer/developer/craftspeople/ect who dedicate themselves to making accessibility a reality though #like that one person who made closed ASL captions for movies (i forgot what the program was called but i remember seeing a clip of it) #or the people who 3D-print accessibility tools like signature guides and whatnot to help people #it's also shitty when the very few accessible options are wildly expensive too #to me it seems very weird when companies refuse to be accessible because it's like????? losing out on money??? much capitalism (sarcasm) #tfw you don't want a wider audience (which means more money) because... reasons (read: ableism)