kit 🧸

thinking about touya dog motif again

the thing about dogs is that domesticating them always boils down to creating a 'good dog'. it's a known response for a command that has been listened to. so we have these good, domesticated dogs but ultimately they are still animals. they still have primal instincts in them. they still have teeth and claws and prey drives and jaws that lock on a kill. they are still, by domesticity's standard, 'bad'. so if they inherently, biologically have these bad characteristics, it means they literally can never be 'good'. yet if you cast a domesticated dog out into the wild where those instincts would be embraced, it wouldn't survive because it doesn't have enough of them. they exist perpetually on this middle platform of always being too animal to be good and too good to be animal. and then of course there's touya todoroki, who could never quite be a hero and ultimately found himself in the world of villains instead. a domesticated dog thrown to the wolves. unwanted by both parties. what happened in those years between sekoto peak and canon? when he was an injured teenage boy having to literally staple his pieces back together? how scared must he have felt? how alone has he always been?

my favorite genre of fictional character is like "i am terrifying to almost everyone, i'm very good at killing, i can endure anything, i've become exceptionally good at playing into my reputation, and if you try to give me positive social interaction i will react with confusion and cower in a corner like an abused animal. and i may try to shoot you. but there is also a chance i may imprint on you like a feral dog receiving its first loving touch! good luck."

God damn this is so funny

@rockingpeeble

IDGAF if the women in my fiction are empowering or aspirational, I'm an adult, I don't need role models, I want the women in my fiction to be interesting, and if that involves being pathetic, hypocritical, amoral, or trapped in a delightfully dysfunctional relationship so be it

#'this is so illegal/toxic/unhealthy'#yeah bestie thats why im reading about it instead of doing it

Mules are like horses with the self destruct button removed

...do you mean the 'self preservation instinct' removed????

No, absolutely not. It’s the opposite. Mules will straight up refuse to do things if they don’t have the confidence that they can complete it. This is where the term “stubborn as a mule” comes from. A horse would attempt these feats and break its weak little ankles and roll over and kill its rider. Mules do this because they know they can. That’s also why mules and donkeys are used as mounts around the Grand Canyon, they’re both sure-footed and stubborn and will refuse to do things that put them and the rider in danger when a horse would listen to the call of the void and just do it. Donkeys are less domesticated than mules, less dependent on humans and more self-assured, this is why they can be harder to train but also why they have such great self-preservation skills. A mule inherits those traits from its father.