when the heart is the witch's @ace-and-the-rpg-horrors - Tumblr Blog

intro post!!

hiya, my name is Ace!! this is my main blog and it's quite unorganised, i just put whatever i feel like here. my silly blog for my silly thoughts <3

info undercut!!

#intro post #ace's random thoughts :)#art by ace :)#asks answered by ace :)

colesyangs

Not my best but whatever I’m tired of this drawinf I’ve been working in it for too damn long

Reference:

that one scene

Guys I can’t believe Julian Loki and Vivian Hugo are playing in the 2026 World Cup!

#yayy

quehecke

im a bit late to drawing hugo i meant to do this ages ago

#ooooh lovely shading

littleannoyingbluebird

One of the reasons people headcanon Grace as aromantic is the unfortunately realistic scene where they go "you don't have a family or a loved one" as if that's enough of a justification to send him on a suicide mission. As if not having a family makes Grace inherently less valuable and means he should be more willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good.

Grace wasn't sad and lonely, he was happy, he had a good life, he very much did not want to die. They have to do a looney tunes chase sequence and drug him because Grace was *very* unwilling to be the sacrificial lamb. Humanity's savior was dragged kicking and screaming into the role and called selfish for daring to be a coward, as if most of us wouldn't be.

And then he befriends Rocky, who never demands a sacrifice from him, who willingly prolongs his journey home so Grace can go back to his. Rocky has a mate back home and his species depends on his return, and still risks his life to save his squishy human friend. And Grace returns the favor.

And thus the power of friendship saves two planets.

#aaughh

checkyourasianbias

#same energy as white teachers back in school struggling with my Arabic name that's a measly four fucking letters #at least one of them straight up ignored me when i corrected him

tiktoks-for-dead-pope

magic-and-moonlit-wings

Video caption: Good guy who talks like a bad guy

“Perhaps you’d like to see my pets. They were ALL … rescues.”

“And as always, gentlemen, our profits will be … donated.”

“Oh, I wish I could stay and chat, but I’m afraid I have to take my friend to the airport.”

yourheartinyourmouth

Redeemed villain who can’t let the speech pattern go

#Rui Kamishiro vibes #also Suirei Apothecary Diaries

earlgraytay

i don't know how you can "the curtains are just blue! ACAB lol" fucking Death Note of all pieces of media

this is a show for thirteen-year-old boys. the only writers I've seen who are less subtle about what they're going for were fucking Victorians.

earlgraytay

@rawr-monster and @eyestumblin asked me to elaborate so here goes:

Death Note is a show with a very clear central premise: no one should have the power to kill others without consequence. Not the cops, not corporations, not the Mob, not civilians, no one.

Even outside of the 2000s-era criticisms of the Japanese justice system, even if you're looking at it in a vacuum, Death Note makes it incredibly obvious what it's trying to say. It starts this off by making it very clear, right out of the gate, that the audience identification character really, really should not have this power.

For Death Note's original target audience, Light is everything you're supposed to be. He's smart, diligent, good-looking, athletic, popular but not too popular. He's The Perfect Middle-Class Japanese Teenage Boy. If you're the kind of edgy, smart Japanese teenage boy who would want to watch an anime supernatural crime drama in the mid-00s? Light is built for you to imprint on like a baby duckling.

...And then the show goes out of its way to point out, in the first proper story arc, that Light is the villain of this piece. From the introduction of L to the end of the Raye Penber/Naomi Misora arc, the show makes it very, very clear that Light is a hypocrite with a massive ego. Sure, he says that he's only killing criminals to make a better world. Sure, maybe he panicked and killed fake-L in self-defense. Sure, maybe the life of Reye Penber and any law enforcement chasing Kira were worth the clear drop in the crime rate. Maybe.

But then Light kills one of the very few unambiguously Good members of the Death Note cast, does so in a smug and cruel way, and the entire scene is framed as tragic in a way that none of the criminal deaths really were. The whole world goes quiet. And Naomi Misora stumbles off to commit suicide. By the end of that arc, even if you'd otherwise be sympathetic to Light- even if you're still rooting for him to get away with it- it's a lot harder to justify what he's doing. He's not just breaking a few eggs to make an omelet- at this point, he's actively happy to kill anyone who gets in his way.

So. Okay. The Perfect Japanese Teenage Boy (TM) can't be trusted with the power to kill indiscriminately. Maybe the problem is just that Light, as a person, is an asshole with impure motives, and if you gave the Death Note to someone who's a better person, you'd be better off. Maybe you could find someone who's motivated by love, and they'd do a better job with that power.

Everyone, say hello to Misa Amane, who is utterly driven by love and devotion, and probably one of the crazier/more evil characters on the show! She'd do anything, no matter how terrible, just because Light told her to do it. She is utterly without remorse, utterly without fear, and utterly driven by a darkly Romantic fanaticism.

Light gets to dodge what's coming to him twice because of Misa and love- once because Misa's love for Light lets him start the Yotsuba arc, and once because Rem's love for Misa becomes a diabola ex machina. In the world of Death Note, love is not a pure enough motive to let you kill indiscriminately - in fact, it makes you worse.

Okay, well, (our hypothetical edgy teenage viewer might say), cLEARLY the problem is that everyone here is too emotional, and you need to be able to detach from the situation to use the power of life and death. Of course you'd kill indiscriminately if you've got feeeeelings about it, but someone who is driven by Logic and Reason? Surely they'd never do anything wrong.

...And then L gets his hands on the Death Note, and immediately starts trying to figure out how to use it to prove that some of the rules in the Death Note are fake and Light is guilty. L's plan is to have a criminal on death row write in the Death Note and wait the 13 days to see if he dies. It's simple. Logical. Effective. It's also extremely reminiscent of the stuff Kira's been doing this entire time, and the implication is that, had L lived longer and used the Note more, he might become No Different.

(I think it's significant that in The Movie, L uses the Death Note exactly once, with himself as the victim, and he turns down the Death Note when it's offered to him. TheMovie!L is an unambiguously heroic character, and therefore, he will not kill without consequences.)

The power to kill without any consequence to yourself corrupts you. It makes you want to use it to solve more and more of your problems. It turns you into a fucking monster, one name at a time. And nothing can stop that process except refusing to use that power. Love cannot shield you. Rationality cannot shield you. Justice cannot shield you.

And every other character who gets the Death Note reinforces that theme. The Yotsuba Group? Big corporations should not get to kill without consequences. Mello? Criminals/genius detectives should not get to kill without consequence. Mikami? The Perfect Japanese Adult is outright sadistic about how he uses the Death Note. And on, and on, and on.

Near outright tells Light, in their final confrontation: "You are a murderer, and this notebook is the worst weapon of mass murder in the world." Using the Death Note is not justice; it's not going to bring about a perfect new world. It's murder, full stop. Light has become a mass murderer, a monster, by killing over and over again.

Death Note has a theme: no one should be allowed to kill without consequences, because it makes you a monster. It is not subtle about that theme. It is very, very blatant, and the only way it could be more blatant is if Near stopped to deliver an Atlas-Shrugged-style monologue about it.

and so seeing people reduce that to 'haha ACAB' gets my goat, because no. No, it's not just ACAB. anyone with the power to kill indiscriminately and without consequence- whether it's a cop, a megacorp, an autistic supergenius, a mob boss, or a perfect audience-insert- would become A Bastard.

this is a show that makes it abundantly clear that there is Symbolism and it has a Point, in the way that only stuff aimed at teenagers that's trying to be Deep can do. how you get through the entirety of Death Note and walk away with "there's no point! a cop's son decides to be the worst person ever! Light is Uniquely Terrible and that's all there is to it!" is fucking beyond me.

cookingwithroxy

I was just going to blithely reblog this, and then I thought of something.

There is a category unmentioned here in the 'people who use the death note' and that category is the Shinigami. Yes, Rem's mentioned in the 'things you do for love' situation, tho she's not the only one who uses the Death Note in a selfless way (even under manipulation).

Because Rem and Gelus both use the Death Note to save Misa, and they both DIE for doing so. And that's an important context here, the Shinigami, the people who are MEANT to use the Death Note, are near-immortal immoral monsters. And the one way for them to be killed? Is to use the Death Note to benefit someone else.

Not only is there no 'good' way to use a Death Note, it was never INTENDED to be used for 'good', just as a way to elongate the lifespans of actual literal monster people in another dimension.

derinthescarletpescatarian

Death Note goes out of it’s way to have characters just straight-up monologue several times about how it’s the power to kill that’s evil and that corrupts anyone who accepts it, that there’s no good way or good person to have power over life and death. They even put the Death Note in the hands of someone who refuses to use it either directly or by proxy (Light’s father) and he gets to die peacefully with the belief that his son was innocent and Ryuk straightup explains this to the audience just to make sure everyone gets it.