Me Talking About My Favorite Character

absolutely obsessed with the fact that tsukki works in a museum + is still in university post timeskip because it highly indicates that he absolutely will end up living a double life. personally I am of the persuasian that tsukki goes on to get a masters / eventual doctorate in history (and/or an adjacent field, like archeology, paleontology, anthropology, you get the vibes)

but like I imagine the fucking Sendai Frogs (or any of his volleyball friends) dont exactly enjoy chatting about 9th century kings or 12th century architecture so it just never comes up. except for when tsukki tells them he's going to be missing practice because he's flying to China to a few small villages with local churches and temples to study old medical records and put together a timeline of the opiod wars in less documented places and the rest of the Frogs are just like !!!!!!!!!!! you're doing what now????? and he's just like yeah its a government grant :/ but it'll be nice to get published in this journal and then all of his teammates go home and google him and find the half dozen articles he's published that high school students are citing in their research papers

but then when he's working in the archives and reading through old newspapers a coworker of his comes down and is like "hey kei would you be able to fill in for a docent that called in sick tomorrow? we just need someone to lead a few tours" and tsukki is like "sorry, I booked that time off. the d2 volleyball league starts tomorrow." and the coworker is just like. what?

Thoughts on the new chapter?

so many!!!! we got so much thematic/character stuff and a lot of lore implications as well!! I’ll try my best to cover all my thoughts!!

mitsuba SHINED this chapter he was GLOWING he was so brave and clumsy and troubled, he absolutely NAILED the final girl role and I love that so much for him!!

he also had some of my favorite thematic moments. I especially loved the yorishiro destruction panel:

LOVE love love love that he TEARS IT APART WITH HIS TEETH !!!! when we’ve learned this mitsuba has supernatural mitsuba’s memories!! the HAT oh my god the symbol of the hat flying off in the moment when he goes full feral to save this girl and himself… when that’s a part of himself supernatural mitsuba tries so hard to hide and suppress… this mitsuba dives into it for the sake of his own life and the life of his underclassman. mitsuba tears something apart with his teeth, leaning into his more monstrous instincts, to be a hero!! the hat is so silly but also I’m choosing to read it as a symbol of hiding the parts of himself he’s scared of, and in this moment we see the beauty and strength in that part of him!! (go, queer monster boy, go!! I love you!!!!)

I also find this mitsuba fascinating for how he flips the script on picture perfect mitsuba

picture perfect mitsuba wants to pretend he’s human mitsuba… he wants his memories, even if it’s fake. 116 mitsuba… wants to remember!! he wants to understand!! he wants the truth!!

it’s hard to really know what to make of this though, because it’s hard to know who this mitsuba is. according to the supposed altered timeline, this should be alive mitsuba. but he has supernatural mitsubas memories… it raises questions mitsuba and tsukasa always have: what is a person? a soul? memories? both? to what extent?

to bring it back to him destroying the paper with his teeth: I would love… if original/human mitsuba had some of the same aggressive/feral tendencies supernatural mitsuba is so ashamed of, that make him feel so nonhuman, so monstrous. he doesn’t have human mitsubas memories; there could be so many similarities between them he can’t see!!

one last mitsuba observation:

his injured hand in 116 is the one always in his sleeve as a ghost and then as a supernatural. probably just a thematic thing rather than a lore one, but a really interesting detail!! are we barreling inevitably back to our original timeline?

kou is also really interesting this chapter, and in this arc in general, for his unwillingness to remember… he’s had multiple opportunities and ignored them all. very baffling, considering picture perfect kou’s and red house kou’s dedication to reality and all the pain that comes with it. not sure what to make of this just yet, but it’s something I’m keeping an eye on!! would love to hear other people’s thoughts on this!!

my favorite kou panel this chapter:

I am FASCINATED by the bandages slipping off his hand… they look!! incredibly familiar!!

I wonder what the parallel is here? could this be a lore hint, implying amane’s wounds were caused by whatever gave kou his injuries? or maybe just a thematic parallel of a boy in too deep trying to protect someone? someone putting himself in harms way willingly… much to think about!!

now some nitty gritty lore thoughts:

happy to report I am still steadfastly team “tsukasa is tsukasa”—I think original supernatural tsukasa definitely is tsukasa, and the white bubble of him calling out to amane suggests to me he’s still in there in this timeline too, just less in control. maybe that’s as good as neutralized to the clock keepers though? or maybe the yorishiro destruction was more tsukasa’s idea than the god’s, and the god is appeased by this ritual enough to not need to destroy any yorishiros?

do mysteries and their yorishiros even exist in this timeline?

on the topic of yorishiros, it’s interesting that the girl from the photography club was saved when the paper was destroyed but kou still got possessed… is it just one spirit traveling between targets, and it left the girls body to possess kou? but the girl and tsukasa seemed to be possessed simultaneously… so maybe destroying the paper did do something to help the girl? if the yorishiro allows connection between the supernatural and human realms, why the flowers? are they a sacrifice? the existence of the ritual itself is also confusing, because the god didn’t need any ritual to contact tsukasa in the red house… does this have something to do with the power of rumors? or is the red house maybe just a more powerful location than the school? why was amane hyping up the ritual? is tsukasa calling for him because he’s used to teacher amane being there and now he’s not?

as usual I find myself with a million questions lol, I absolutely loved this chapter!! would love to hear other thoughts about it!!

and as a closing note: I would die so fast in this timeline there’s no way I’m not playing with him he’s so cute even when supremely possessed

if he’s so evil why does he have a halo??

little angel confirmed <3

your boyfriend understands you 🌺❄️

something something "every so often I fall down a Chronicles of Narnia rabbithole for a week or two, specifically the Pevensie era, and I can feel it creeping up on me again" and also something something "I was in Oxford last year I just got my masters from the same place Narnia was written" and also something something "Edmund being my favorite since I was a kid, Edmund being the one I related to, Edmund being the one who fell out of favor and was simultaneously handed forgiveness without needing to work for it but also continuously given the opportunity to earn it and feeling like he could recover because he did so but yet also still being the outlier, the one it's easiest to project queerness onto, and also the one who doubted the most and still wound up among the strongest in faith because of it and also not having to defer to blind faith trusting in it when it was necessary but also always finding evidence and thinking and being the logical sibling, the clever one, the negotiator, the politician" and something something "i went to christian schools since I was born until college and my relationship with the church is kinda antagonistic because I disagree with a lot of the social decisions of the church as a body but my relationship with faith itself being very academic and as i'm slowly trying to figure out my personal beliefs and spiritualism I'm finding my way back to it but it involves a lot of religious trauma unpacking around being queer and disabled and neurodivergent and having interests that weren't 'acceptable' like loving the symbolism of tarot cards and studying folklore and enjoying ghost hunting and cryptids and faeries and me just plain being weird" and something something "when I think of Narnia I think of Aslan and Lucy sure but I hear Edmund Pevensie"

does that make any sense

Thanks for the advice, Mr FB of I! That's the same thing my very good friend the Nigerian prince told me, too, so our MUST be true!

fair trade

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more windbreaker comics

TEARS IN MY EYES GANG WTF😭

wdym they were already doomed the moment they entered the house

Edit: THEY WERE GONNA RUN AWAY WITH EACHOTHER WHAT HAPPENED

@7-sided-dice spoke about haiden playing pool and now it’s running around my head that they have never won a game fairly despite harvard’s best efforts

The subtle cosmic horror underlying the entirety of Sweeth Tooth is. So so so good.

Sungchul Park is so pretty hshsjdhsjd

Here are some portraits of the fencing boys from Johanna the Mad's public patreon!