The Hidden Inventory

Grover being all sweet innocent cinnamon roll reasurring Percy and Annabeth that he'll be okay staying behind with Ares like he isn't planning 5D chess psychological warfare on the god of war be like

"It's a story about devouring and love just happens to look similar"

now I just rolled into this establishment but it seems to me that jujutsu kaisen is in fact entirely about cannibalism. eating fingers, eating curses, eating your twin inside of the womb, eating your twin outside of the womb. archaic power structures that needlessly burn out their own young. ancient spirits assimilating little girls. prison realms full of bones that slorp you up. the envelopment of a domain, like being in something’s stomach sloshing around inside it. this is not a story about love! it’s a story about devouring and love just happens to look similar.

what is adolescence if not leaving and being left?

1. iain s. thomas | 2. alison zai @alisonzai | 3. @chloeinletters | 4. mikko harvey | 5. fleetwood mac | 6. the breakfast club (1985), john hughes | 7. lorde | 8. miranda july | 9. richard siken | 10. @mavra-matia | 11. homer | 12. amy hempel | 13. mitski | 14. katrin koenning | 15. freya ridings |

I think @runabout-river makes some really excellent fucking points and I wholeheartedly agree. Particularly,It is 100% accurate that JJK is more plot driven than character driven. I want to talk about the characterization a little bit though.

Now I'd like to preface this by saying, I'm actually new to anime and manga on the whole. This is the first time I've gotten into either (I am enjoying myself thoroughly). So maybe this approach to characterization is fairly typical in the genre. Or maybe its a Shonen thing, idk.

From what I've seen, characterization is a really really interesting thing in this series and it's Fandom. If I were to go on canon material alone, I would say there's not much actually characterization so much as an employment of tropes. Characterization often involves creating complex layers for your characters that aren't just generic nobility/villainy or expected set of traits for a certain archetype. I would like to clarify here that archetypes are not a bad thing. Used right, they're awesome. But creating tropes is different from creating characters. Characterization needs to go beyond the trope.

Some might confuse giving a character a backstory with characterization. And that's not necessarily the case. You could give the longest backstory but still have your character be rather predictable and typical for their trope, often the backstory is in order to play right into a certain trope. Now, this isn't an absolute throughout the series, it is relative. Some characters definitely have slightly better characterization than others.

I am NOT saying that the series has bad characterization. Because firstly, it's largely plot driven. And secondly, bad characterization is a whole different ball game. Bad characterization is if you could make a certain character do pretty much anything and it works because there isn't an established sense of "that person would never do that" (example- Black widow from Marvel). Good characterization would be where when you see a characters course of action and in hindsight you have no doubt in your mind that that is exactly what that character would do, no other way of acting would have seemed as right. Exercising tropes instead of in-depth characterization falls somewhere in the middle of the two.

Now here's where things get interesting. There is actually really cool characterization for jjk, but it's not what happens in the series, it's what happens in the fandom. The fandom consumes this content and then read and interpret these characters and often create content and/or discussions surrounding these representations. I think the best example of this is often when people in the fandom read into and create content about Gojo and his grief and trauma and how he chooses to process by suppression. The series does not do this at all because they need to keep Gojo within his trope- the cool, suave, overpowered mentor/man-child. And so we in the fandom often rely on these characterization and think of the series as one that has really good characterization when in reality, it's we the fandom who brought out that aspect.

One thing that bothers me about jujutsu is that the author doesn't know how to develop some characters. 1 Shoko Ieri is an interesting character but I find her apathetic without a cold and superficial personality. 2 itadori yuji doesn't seem to be a protagonist he seems more like a tool than the protagonist of the work. 3 nobara had no development dry and emotionless death. and many other characters. There were only 2 characters that really had development, which was gojo and geto, for me, they were the only ones that had it. Why do you think the author did this, is it because he didn't want to develop the characters that's why he killed many important characters? I would appreciate it if you respond.

This is a lot to answer so sorry if it gets confusing a little.

1.) and you really have to keep this in mind, is that the manga isn't finished yet. It's also not about to finish. We have just reached the beginning of the end and we have at least another 6 months to go if not more. Without the last panel drawn, we can't really talk about the stuff Gege hasn't put into the story yet.

Still, many of your points can be addressed.

Shoko: In both the present and the past storylines, she is a side character without her side of the story being shown too much. Her being cold and apathetic can be a fitting description of her in the present but in the past she was more open and easy-going.

When you say she has a superficial personality that's where your interpretation is a little off. For one, her personality changes and for two, her current personality reflects the cost that living as a sorcerer has on people. We are also shown her inner thoughts on occasion but interestingly, one of those thoughts kind of comments her role in the story.

(This thought also establishes that she has trouble understanding Gojo's point of view on his godlike status)

The thing with Shoko is that we're never shown what she does: heal and save people. That's an aspect of her character that has been completely, and deliberately I say, missing until this point. But she has saved the lives of: Geto, Ino and Angel (plus some others) and she has therefore shaped the entire plot of the manga extremely.

But this I think will change in the most impactful way possible: with her saving Gojo's life by showing us for the first time what her CT is and how she heals people.

On Nobara, you're right. She had little character development and no reflection on her thoughts and beliefs. To this I say, read my post about her coming back because I believe that she will get that character develepoment and reflection when she re-enters the manga.

The same thing goes for Tsumiki. I was really disappointed when Yorozu died and Tsumiki basically disappeared from the story with her role never being more than that of a prop. But it was pointed out to me, that Tsumiki actually had been shown in an active role in the manga 70 chapters ago and that role will definitely be revisited when Megumi gets the spotlight again.

Now to Yuji. Did you realize that you contradicted yourself? You said that Yuji doesn't feel like a protagonist but you also said that Geto and Gojo had the best character developement. You're definitely talking about Hidden Inventory here but HI is and arc where Yuji is removed as the protagonist.

So the main protagonist being removed from the story temporarily has a purpose. You could say that that was a flashback and doesn't really count and that you mostly mean the 4 mini-arcs in Culling Games where Yuji wasn't present + the Sukuna/Yorozu fight + the Gojo/Sukuna fight.

Gojo/Suku we don't even count in this, that's a given, Sukuna/Yorozu is character showing plus setup for the future and Yuki/Choso/Tengen vs Kenjaku we don't count either, because that's a plot progression plus villain fight.

In my experience when people talk about Yuji not being a good protagonist because he isn't present often enough, they mean the arcs where Yuta, Maki and Hakari take centre stage. (The three other mini-arcs add to this)

Why would a mangaka do their story like this?

For world building. To be more precise: for plot building. Yuta, Maki and Hakari have important roles for the endfights and for that they needed character development (Maki), a show of their powers (all) and setups for the future (eg alliances with Kashimo and Uro).

Right from the beginning, JJK always moved the plot forward first. That's why the pace is so fast. The story is plot driven and not character driven, but that doesn't mean that the characters aren't given their time, just that that time isn't an entire chapter.

You can critizese this of course, I too would've liked small character scenes to have been expended on. That Yuji is taken off the picture for world building isn't sth I would critizise though. That's what happened in parts of Attack on Titan, and it also happens constantly in One Piece with Luffy albeit in Flashbacks.

It simply adds to the story when we can see other characters act on their own and while Yuji is back in the centre now, he will most likely take small steps back again to let other characters shine like Megumi eg. It also adds to his personality, but for the end of the manga he will be the centre of attention.

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Hunger Games fanfic blurb:

I sipped the last of my water, slow as I could, hoping it would tide me awhile through the heat of the Hobb. Business was slow today. Not that we make much on other days, selling trinkets and scraps of metal and cloth in a district where most people could barely buy bread. But we scrape by.

But today, I hadn't a single body come by to look at the wares. Although, I s'pose, when you've got a Reaping tomorrow, you're probably not in a buying sorta mood. Even Greasy Sae is selling her stew for half price today for the youngins that usually come around to her corner.

Speaking of the youngins, one of them walks my way. The one with stern eyes who brings fresh game from the woods. The butcher's wife says she hunts 'em with a bow and her arrows never miss the mark. Must be nice to have a useful trade like that. Sometimes, she trades me berries for balls of yarn. That's probably what she's making her way over for.

Never got her name. I call her "Stern Eyes" and word around the Seam is she sings like a songbird. My Gammy Maude would've liked that. She gives me berries wrapped in cloth, and I give her the yarn. But she doesn't walk away.

She reaches her hand into one of the boxes, the one with old pins for hair and clothes that might've been pretty once but had gotten rusty and dusty since. Then she pulls out that pin. Gammy Maude's pin that used to belong to her friend. The friend with bad luck in love and even worse in life. Some say she ran away, and some say got shot in the woods by her lover. Gammy said her friend used to sing too. Like a songbird.

Gammy never liked that pin much. Said it never brought nothing but bad luck. I think it just reminded her too much of her friend and the lover who might've shot her. But she still kept the pin till she died. Guess reminders are still reminders.

It's a mockingjay pin. Might be gold, but it's too old and grimy to tell. Could've sold it for scrap metal, but after hearing Gammy's stories, I could never bring myself to melt the damn thing down. And it's not like I could just walk up to the fancy parts of town with a mockingjay pin to sell. The peacekeepers would have cuffed me before I could quote a price. Probably really is bad luck anyway.

Stern Eyes is holding the pin and askin how much. I think of asking for a couple of coins, and then I remember the Reaping. She's probably young enough to have her name in the bowl. More than a couple of times, like every Seam kid. I wonder if it'd bring bad luck to her too. Or maybe it'd bring her good luck. If I'm being honest, I just want the pin gone. Can't keep holding on to a thing like that.

I tell her she can take it. No charge. Can't ask people to pay you for what could be bad luck. Don't know why she picked that one, but I wonder if she knows anything about the last songbird who had it.

I really hope it brings her better luck than Gammy's friend.

Writer's note: I know this isn't accurate to the books where Katniss gets the pin from Madge and the pin isn't really mentioned in TBOSAS. But I remember she gets it in the Hobb in the movie and it does make an appearance in the prequel movie as well. Soooo, that's where this idea came from!

people often use snow’s experiences with lucy gray as an explanation for how he engages with katniss, but i think that the true story of his downfall lies not in how lucy gray and katniss are similar, but rather in how they are different.

snow knew that it was never him that made the games what they are. it was lucy gray, with her scrappy, passionate artistry, that put on the show that kept people watching. more importantly, it was lucy gray that put on the show that kept HIM watching. all he ever did was give her the stage.

ergo, snow recognizes that the person with the power to usurp him is his natural counterpart, someone like lucy gray, who possessed both the charisma and humanity that he sorely lacks. however, in his mind, those traits are not real; they’re performed in order to obtain power. how could he know better, when he’s never experienced them himself, and the only person he ever truly believed possessed them betrayed him?

so snow keeps his eye out for performers, people with gravitas who could capture the heart of the nation, and squashes their spark as soon as he can. people like haymitch. people like finnick.

and that’s where snow goes wrong. he doesn’t see katniss’ similarities to lucy gray from the start, because while they both demonstrate astonishing, intriguing bravery at their reapings, their actions and motivations are completely different. lucy gray is motivated to perform by anger for herself, and katniss is motivated to sacrifice herself by fear for her sister.

but then katniss starts to put on a show for the audience, kissing peeta and being willing to die with the berries at the end of the 74th games. snow starts to see an entirely different side of katniss that resembles lucy gray to a concerning degree. he sees how, with peeta at her side, she could beguile the nation the same way lucy gray had. and, even worse, she was using the poor, helpless boy who had the misfortune of falling in love with her to survive. the moment katniss started performing, he finally sees lucy gray within her. but it’s already too late.

by catching fire, katniss is the spark fanning the flames of the resistance, but snow fails to understand why. as far as he’s concerned, katniss’ star power comes from her connection to peeta. he tries to weaponize their “love” for his own gain, but it doesn’t work, not because people don’t believe that she loves peeta, but because, for the first time, a victor offers her winnings to the family of a fallen tribute.

snow is caught in a catch 22 of seneca crane’s making—if he kills katniss, she becomes a martyr. but if he lets her live, she’ll be a revolutionary icon. either way, she’s the spark. so he has no choice but to allow the spark to flicker, just for a little while. enter the 75th games. snow knows he needs katniss to die a tragic death in the games. more specifically, he needs it to be a brutal death at the hands of a tribute, not the gamemakers, because he understands that as long as the districts see the capital as the one who ended the life of katniss everdeen, she’ll still be a martyr.

but snow still doesn’t get it. in the quarter quell, the prey does not become predator. katniss’ allies protect her, ensuring she survives until district 13 rescues her. why would they protect this girl, assuming such a steep personal risk? why would they put everything on the line for a revolution they personally stand to benefit little from? he doesn’t know. but he does know that lucy gray katniss is at the center of it all, so he tries to eliminate what makes her look best: peeta.

and that is snow’s fatal mistake. what he, coin, and everyone but haymitch fail to understand is that it was never peeta that made katniss look good—it was katniss, who befriended and put faith in rue. katniss, who recruited mags, wiress, and beetee as allies. she is the source of revolutionary inspiration. it isn’t her charisma or even her compassion, and it certainly isn’t how well she performed those virtues.

katniss becomes the mockingjay because of her solidarity.

lucy gray was charismatic, like peeta, and compassionate, like both peeta and katniss, but she did not demonstrate solidarity. she was never truly “district” in the way katniss is. she showed kindness to jessup, not because he was from 12, but because he showed kindness to her. lucy gray left behind everything and everyone she loved when she left coriolanus, because she was first and foremost a survivor.

katniss was a survivor her whole life, but she survives exclusively to ensure the people she loves are protected. she always does what she can for people more vulnerable than herself. lucy gray couldn’t have sparked a revolution on her own because she lacked the solidarity that makes a hope for a better future authentic to others. katniss is the human manifestation of solidarity, and to a people divided by a common enemy, that’s the most inspiring thing a person can be.

only in the end, when katniss shoots coin, does snow realize none of it was a performance. choking on the blood of his countless adversaries, snow’s final moments are consumed by what he got wrong. what made lucy gray and katniss different ends his reign, but ironically, the final nail in his coffin is an act that both lucy gray and katniss share in their last moments with snow. they both prove, unequivocally, that he is not the center of their worlds like they are his. lucy gray put her own survival before her love for him, and katniss puts the future of her nation before her hate for him. in the end, he simply doesn’t matter. and that’s greater justice than could have ever been achieved if katniss had fired her arrow into his heart.

the greatest enemy to coriolanus snow could only be the person who reignited the embers of a dying revolutionary fire, who demonstrated to a broken people that while one spark alone might not be enough, thousands of sparks uniting in solidarity is an unbeatable force.

and really, he should have known better. after all, fire melts snow.