For My Own Amusement

Anyway this is Guideau. Beautiful I know (you can also see Ashaf in that one pic)

AND THIS! THIS HONOURABLE SAILORS OF THE INTERNET! This is also Guideau... Also very beautiful I know

-> Phonics For Adults <-

Like, idk if it’s just me projecting, but honestly, the reason I do see myself in Zanka is that I read this in him from early on and I think it means interesting things for how his arc is going to go forwars from this point. Like right now Zanka hasn’t gotten to the point that I got to, where I realised that the thing I wanted to kill was essentially me — my disabled body is still my body damn. (Aka the realisation is wow I was suicidal all along). In that same vein, I see Zanka’s “averageness” as his own mental disability or well more off a mental block because he can’t see himself as anything else.

Zanka thinks, on a fundamental level, that people are born with talent or without, and that there can be talentless hacks who cheat the system and pretend to have talent, but that just straight up isn’t the case—hard work = talent. Someone might have a natural affinity for something, but if they don’t work on it, the person who is actually working will always surpass them. Zanka's problem is that he’s surrounded himself with people who are hard workers in the same field as him, so he’s decided they all must be prodigious, while he must be a talentless loser because that’s what everyone has told him his whole life. He still has his family's toxic mindset along with the complex he developed about Hyo, and it’s stunting him, but he can’t see that. So he’s going to push and push and push himself to be more talented but has lost all ability to see himself objectively, and so he can’t grow as a character until he confronts that HIS MINDSET is wrong, not him.

Like— you've got these two people who generally seem to want the best for the world, and both of them have put a lot of thought into the problems with the current system and how they could change it. They both seem to be relatively polite and respectful towards eachother? At the very least, they're not openly antagonistic. The problem is one of them believes she needs to become basically a god and reform the system from the inside, and the other stumbled ass backwards into actually being basically a god and he decided the system just needs to end in its entirety.

Conan: "you sure do like dressing as women"

The thing is, this is also why I think Zanka is now (or will be) stronger than his siblings. We haven't seen a lot of it, but we can assume that his siblings are focused on their skills developing because that's what's expected of them, that's their duty, it's not anything out of the ordinary. And crucially, we haven't seen what happens when they fail. We've seen what happens when Zanka fails. He gets back up. He gets back up stronger. He gets back up after nearly being disemboweled and attacks fucking god to prove it can still bleed.

Artemis really fucking likes heists.

Seriously tho, legit all the other Detective Conan characters will have fun matching themed outfits and KID is stuck in that same damn suit! They don't even change his colours or anything!

Stay with me.

We do not know how the hell the Gay Pirate Plate was first acquired. This being a point of contention is actually pretty plot-relevant; the saga of the Gay Pirate Plate began with my grandmother and her sister, who, for some ungodly reason, both BADLY wanted the Gay Pirate Plate and believed it to be rightfully theirs.

I should back up, firstly, to establish: The Gay Pirate Plate is the cheapest, tackiest, ugliest plate in existence.

It is in no way a collector’s item. It is physically impossible for it to complement anyone’s decor, because the colors in it are garish. It’s just a ceramic plate with a gay pirate painted on it, and the painting is, this cannot be emphasized enough, extremely bad.

(How do we know the pirate is gay if he’s just posing on a plate? Listen. Fully 100% to stereotype, but he is. He is gay. There’s an energy. That pirate is a flaming homosexual. That pirate has sex with men and does it frequently. That pirate is fucking gay, all right, he just is.)

Anyway. The point is that this is an extremely cheap and ugly plate with a poorly-executed painting of pirate on it who is like a nine on the Kinsey scale.

My grandmother and her sister fought a blood feud over this plate for their entire lives. It would be on the wall in my grandma’s house, and then her sister would visit, and then it would be gone. She’d visit her sister and the plate would be on the wall and her sister would pretend it had always been there. She would steal it back, hang it up, and, when her sister visited, pretend it had always been there. This continued for DECADES.

When the sister died, the Gay Pirate Plate lived triumphantly in my grandmother’s house. And then my grandmother died. And my aunt, who had lived with her and been her carer throughout her life, rightfully inherited their house.

We visit my aunt after the funeral and stay with her for a week or two.

Me, my sister, and our dad. Her brother.

The three of us look at each other. We don’t say anything. We studiously avoid making eye contact with the Gay Pirate Plate mounted proud and ugly on the wall. We notice one another studiously avoiding looking at it. We notice one another noticing. We say nothing. We come to a silent consensus. We pack up to leave. We get in the van. Our aunt comes out to say goodbye. I loudly announce I need to use the restroom before we leave. She obviously stays outside to continue talking to my dad.

I take down the Gay Pirate Plate, stuff it under my oversized sweatshirt, go outside, and get in the van. She happily waves goodbye as we drive off.

Two days later my dad gets a phone call that opens with hysterical laughter and “You FUCKING ASSHOLE did you seriously STEAL THE PLATE–”

Anyway. The gay pirate plate lives in my dad’s house currently.

The plate must be clearly and openly displayed in a place of great prominence whenever it is in your possession. When it is not in your possession, the display piece must remain in place. This is where you would put your gay pirate plate, IF YOU HAD ONE.

No active steps may be taken to prevent the theft of the Gay Pirate Plate. That goes against the spirit of the game, as does attempting to hide it.

The plate MUST be stolen and cannot be gifted or removed with permission. Should you witness attempted theft of the Gay Pirate Plate you are required to intervene and return it to its place.

More AU Hakuba becuase I've been thinking about how his 'powers' might work. And his relationship with it.