Ghost

To me she is so unbelievably thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, however old she is in the story now. Whatever it is, she's so obviously a child, even if she looks like a full blown adult which, while a little annoying, I completely understand (forcing a child actor to do all that would be an actual crime i think, plus with how long game of thrones ran she'd look this old anyways in like season three.)

She hates Joffery, she loves him, she hates the kingdom, she loves it, she hates the queen, she can't help but pity her.

She has such a good heart, and so little empathy. She thinks she has it worse than everyone else in the world, like every child who has ever and will ever live.

I can't imagine a grown ass man watching this show, looking at what happened to her, looking at how she has an obvious fawn response, and decide that she is the worst person in the story.

Does she make stupid decisions? Yeah obviously, all the characters do! Plus, need I remind you, she's THIRTEEN. Name me a single person who would act better in that situation as a thirteen year old.

(At thirteen I was a fake ass poser who naruto ran in gym class and stabbed people with pencils. By comparison, I think she's a hell of a lot less annoying.)

(.. And maybe it's that feeling I get when a female character is so often overlooked and hated by the primarily male audience, but man. I love her. I love her so much, I think besides Arya she may be one of my favorites right now.

I know that she eventually matures, as all people do when they grow up, and I know I will enjoy her being free from this stupid plot. I will defend this girl to my dying breath. )

(Gonna pretty explicitly reference suicide, both in game and irl)

When I first played stardew valley, it was just added to gamepass. I played video games all night, went to school all day, sleeping only whenever my body let me, and never really feeling like I contributed to society in any meaningful way.

It became my escape. More than any fallout game, skyrim, or any of the other open world thing I played where I could be something other than myself for a moment. It wasn't healthy in any way how much I relied on these games to wake up in the morning, but it kept me alive so I genuinely can't be mad now.

I liked how many monotonous and repetitive tasks there were. I liked how a single look at a guide could let me dig into every single character. I liked how easy it was to marry and discard those characters just to know what they would do in my home. I hated Shane.

Shane with his mean attitude and destructive coping mechanisms. Shane with his dirty ass room, and his unwillingness to accept help until he was literally on the edge. Shane who, when you helped him, didn't mysteriously get better but instead kept some of his rude attitude and kept going to the bar afterwards even when he knows it's not good for him to be in that space.

I spent so long trying to figure him out, picking him apart every single playthrough just because he didn't make sense, divorcing him just to see him sad again. He deserved to be sad. I wanted him to be sad. He was better sad.

I deserved to be sad.

Then I got better, had some friends help me out of a bad situation, moved away from a place that really couldn't handle my issues, and lived like an actual person for the first time. I played stardew for the first time in a while shortly after, and finally understood why I hated him. He reminded me so much of myself I felt genuinely repulsed by him.

Destructive habits, a mean personality to push people away, just wanting to be left alone to wallow in self pity. Liking repetitive schedules, doing the same thing every single day even if it really isn't good for you. Eating trash, living in trash, treating himself and others like trash.

(The first time I got to his 6 heart event, I thought the wrong choice would actually send him over the edge. I wanted him to die. I wanted to see how the townspeople would react, if they'd be sad or if they'd be happy he was finally gone.)

(I used to fantasize a lot about killing myself when I was younger. Doing some brutal thing to myself, splattering myself across the walls or maybe just jumping off the roof of the old giant parking garage across from where I had my prom. I wanted it to hurt, and I wanted everyone to feel so bad that, somehow, I'd know. Even in death, I wanted to know how the people I loved would react to me dying. To planning my funeral. To seeing my gravestone. I wanted to know what they'd write on it.)

(I wanted to see his gravestone in that small cemetery, and I wanted to have the option to place flowers there. To mourn a man I didn't even like, that I pushed to his death. I wanted the guilt to consume me.)

Obviously, I don't think much about that time of my life anymore, but I still look at shane and think what would have happened to me if I stayed where I was. If I continued living in trash. If I continued to treat everyone I loved like trash.

He's a funhouse mirror version of my younger self that I can actually fix. Even if he still has some bad habits, even if his room is a mess, even if his sweater still has a stain on it from being unwashed.

(Some days I am my old self again, and I wallow in self pity, in a dirty room, In my dirty clothes, desperately just wanting something I can control. Something that proves I am real, that I'm contributing something, anything, to society.)

It rains in game, and he says he doesn't feel like doing anything today. I kiss him, because I understand days like that. Days where I am not a person, where I can't do anything. Days where, if I had someone right beside me, someone who loved me and wanted me safe and drew me from the worst part of my life, I'd want them to hold me tight all day.

(Never romantically, because that's not my happy ending. But a friend? A partner? I'd adore that. )

She's my favorite character from Naruto, if only because of fandom interpretation, which brings me to the point of this post: she deserved so so much better than what she got throughout that fuckass series.

Sakura is a character I used to hate as a kid because she was pink and annoying, and she wasn't as cool as Sasuke or Naruto so why should I even care about her at all? It wasn't till like 2 or 3 years ago when I was rewatching the anime that I actually started liking her presence at all, and even then it was more pity than actual enjoyment.

Her team (mentor included) don't respect her, said mentor neglects her learning entirety, the only people who likes hanging out with her are Ino (who's her rival, so she won't activelyseak her out) and Naruto (who has a crush on her, and like,, befriending someone with a crush on you is the worst thing you can do when you're 12), her creators leave her on the back burner of every arc (only giving her miniscule frames here and there, less like a foil and more like a direct contrast to whatever homosexual fuckery is happening with Sasuke and Naruto for some reason)

and finally FINALLY when she starts getting stronger, starts being someone the fans can actually enjoy, they MAKE HER MARRY SASUKE.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME????

He doesn't like her, she probably should have gotten over that crush years ago, neither of them are good together, and they are only together for the 4 fans that wanted it + to stave off the narusasu shippers.

(WHICH DIDN'T WORK BTW?? SO MUCH FAN CONTENT HAS THEM CHEATING ON THEIR WIVES???)

Overall, she deserved so much better, and I'm glad most of the fandom interpretations of her character focus less on the Canon events and more on what she could've been if literally anyone cared about her arc. It's awesome reading sakura-centric fics where she gets over her crush and acts like an actual person with real thoughts and dreams instead of just saying 'i want to marry sasuke :]' the whole time.

Speaking of trans jax, that topic is much more debated than I thought it'd be! Most twitter threads I could find were actually pretty accepting of the idea, going out of their way to make sure people knew why it wasn't actually bad representation.

(Stuff like "Jax may be a bad person, but she's not a bad character. You all are just used to any Trans character, confirmed or implied, being babied and/or doing no wrong at all, when in reality Trans people are PEOPLE who mess up just like anyone else. This doesn't excuse what Jax did, but it doesn't mean you should just ignore subtext because you don't like the idea her being trans")

Actually, tumblr and tiktok (usually much more nice to queer characters in media) ended up dogging on the idea a lot more than twitter! Like I said earlier, someone called me a waste of space cause I said I liked the idea, and thought it was actually good representation (paraphrasing here, but I basically said "as someone who did some not great stuff when I was first trying to find out what I was, it was a real wake-up call seeing all my insecurities laid out for the world to see in a character I actually don't like that much. She's like a mirror of what I'll be if I don't get my act together, a warning to not ignore what I've been really trying to for years).

Anyways, I'm just not sure why but the roles for these social media sites are really flipped for jax?

Is it just because she's a Trans woman, who historically get more hate than Trans men? Is it because of the 'tumblr sexyman who's not quite a man' thing? Is it just because jax is an ass, and they don't want her as the poster child for Trans characters? Is it a secret fourth thing? All of the above? None of the above?

I don't know, it's really throwing me for a loop here. I feel like if I talk about how much her story actually means to me I'll just get made fun of again???

I've been thinking about it since I beat her, how easy it all was. The last sinner took me so long to finally win against, and I only just managed it after like 2 hours of shifting through tools and crests.

And don't even get me started on lace! Something about her fight, lost or otherwise, was just so hard for me and I don't know why. It's like her attack pattern is a direct antithesis to my own, which made her extremely difficult but still very fun in the end.

Grandmother silk? I beat her first try. It wasn't even a 'I had so much stuff the win was all but guaranteed' win. I was missing several mask shards, tools, spool fragments, pale oils, ect. Honestly, I probably fought her a lot sooner than I was supposed to, and I still won after only needing to heal like twice.

She wasn't fast, she didn't heal, she wasn't an interesting fight, it all felt very standard I guess? It's was disappointing. I know, theoretically, that she wasn't really meant to be a hard boss. She was meant to be more like the hollow knight than the radiance, a boss that you fight to win in a normal playthrough but isn't the main final boss in 100%, but still.

Finally completed 112% of hollow knight and made it to act 3 of silksong, so I decided to draw my headcanons of the characters :D

Show me the fics where the knight learns to accept emotions, especially because they forgot they weren't supposed to have them in the first place. Show me the fics where the hollow knight gets to move on and deal with their daddy issues after they get out of the black egg. Show me hornet learning to love her siblings after years of killing every vessel she found roaming hallownest.

Oh Ulysses, simple coyote whom watched your pack die, you knew you could not fight and win against me so you ran instead. Oh Ulysses, you don't fight until you're cornered. Oh Ulysses, why would you let this happen to yourself? To them?

Oh simple coyote, you just wanted to live. Oh courier, you just wanted to live. Oh Ulysses, you just wanted to live.

You could've stopped me, you watched me long before I got to them, you knew what i'd do, yet you just watched.

I may be a monster, but you? You're a coward.

A coward who hides behind justice, who's been hurt and hurts in turn, who wants to kill me for something I knew nothing about, because blaming me is easier then looking inward.

I will be your monster, coyote.

I will be your monster, Ulysses.

(I will be my own monster, I will hand you the gun and beg you to pull the trigger.

Will you be a monster, coyote? Will you kill the monster, Ulysses?

Or can this cycle end, finally?)

Violence begets violence always, but sometimes you need to let go. Sometimes you need to look the monster in the eye and realise you're the same creature. You need to look the coyote in the eye. You need to look me in the eye.

When will you let go, Ulysses?

When will you let go, Ulysses?

When will you finally let go, coyote?

(When will you let go, courier?)

I grew up a very picky eater, sticking by my favorite foods for years on end only really trying new things every now and then and hating them most of the time. College has allowed me to buy small portions of what i'd like to try without someone over my shoulder saying I won't like it, or with the expectation of finishing it if I actually don't end up liking it.

For example: spinach and artichoke dip. I hate artichoke so I thought I was gonna hate it but it ended up tasting really good actually. If I wanted to try it back home I'd 1) have to convince my family I would, in fact, like it 2) eat it in front of said family because they get weird about me trying new things (they like being right when I make a face at whatever I eat) and 3) finish it, even if it ended up tasting awful to me.