#bagyapping

[baguetteperson]

IMMORTAL VOLO TRUTHERS HOW ARE WE FEELING

[baguetteperson]

Want to talk to me about the appeal of mikage x touga, I've never seen that ship before and im curious

I thimk theyre conceptually sooo freaking interesting as a ship or at LEAST just a duo and it is kind of a shame we never see them interact in canon whatsoever (although it does make sense considering the circumstances at hand) but essentially

two dead boys w/ associations to butterflies (souji with emperor butterflies and touga with cabbage butterflies) both as victims and notable perpetrators in the cycle that is attending ohtori academy (being groomed by the adults in power and otherwise are manipulated into continuing the cycle of abuse, while not necessarily recognizing that they themselves are victims; because at the end of the day they are just teenagers who believe themselves to be adults) and being able to somewhat see themselves in the other and forming some sort of bond about it

but because souji is souji and touga is touga they cant be regular or well adjusted about it. rheyre both experiencing some form of comphet and deeply traumatized and would thus navigate this weird dynamic with one another. both of them inherently craving human connection but for a while they feel vaguely nauseous about the idea of something as simple as holding hands and at the same time they with to study one another under a microscope. this mutual sense of fascination with one another.... I particularly like to think that souji is more prone to letting himself be (metaphorically) vivisected in the dynamic on account of him constantly being positioned in a very vulnerable way in all of those (hime)mamikage official artworks. he allows himself to be examined and studied (because it makes him feel more like a human?) and touga would totally be willing to study him like that as a strange sense of feeling like hes in control(?) but its also lowk kind of mutual. Do you understand me

theyre also both kind of pretentious and weiiiirddd both of them justifying the relationship in their own heads in different ways. touga finding himself interacting so often because "mikage is a genius who lead the black rose circle so clearly he has a lot of information that I can use." souji who justifies it with touga also being a man of logic (man is being used very loosely here. those are still boys) that he can relate to in some ways and it could be helpful to be on good terms with the stuco president. I think when Feelings start getting involved there ends up being this sense of comphet-aligned justifications on souji's end that hes only attracted to touga brcause he looks vaguely like a girl (running his hands through touga's long hair trying to convince gimself its the hair of a girl's [he is failing]) At this point I'm straight rambling LMAO

They could be good for eacjother though Touga has probably handled both Saionji and Nanami straight tweaking enough times to be able to ground Souji whenever he's hallucinating and whatnot (that boy's got early onset schizophrenia!) while at the same time Souji is capable of like. Even just talking to touga. Theoretically. That guy is pretentious and annoying as hail but souji would be able to respect him as an intellectual and see him as an equal in my heart of hearts. this is a good thing

idk 🤔 the problem is definitely souji's whole arc. I think for him to ever end up in a romantic relationship with touga it would inherently have to be in a world where he realizes that mamiya is dead, has been dead for a long time, that his memories have been tampered with and the mamiya he thought he knew has been someone else masquerading as him for god knows how long (a revelation that resulted in souji graduating – aka, being able to finally rest in peace) BUT. Its really fun to think about. ❤️ there is tragic and interesting yaoi everywhere for those with eyes to see

[baguetteperson]

i like to imagine nemuro as a social smoker who picked up on smoking because everyone else was doing it (it was like the 70s or something they were giving that shit to dogs /j) so it was essentially a way of fitting in while simultaneously making him seem more like an adult (which he isnt. a lot of people think he is. i dont know why. thats a highschooler.) In a way it would kind of garner more respect if even the uptight stoic professor nemuro was smoking with the others. I dont think he'd ever smoke around mamiya though because mamiya was sickly enough as is and the smoke wouldnt be doing him any favours.... nemuro probably also wouldve tried to mask the smell as much as possible before visiting mamiya but I digress

after mamiya's death i imagine he would've started smoking a lot more often leading up to the fire... done out of a belief that it might help relieve him of the stress he feels (which is an oddity because hes supposed to be a machine who does not feel [and the smoking never helped anyways])

[baguetteperson]

thinking about Volo and their partnership with Giratina because to me those two have always been on equal standing (or as equal as a human and a god could be) because it really does show how every bit of their partnership goes both ways. how even with the inherent power imbalance of one being a human and one being a god there is no manipulation or corruption of one or the other. theres a mutual understanding that what each of them is doing is justified - Giratina believes Arceus should be taken down as a form of revenge and Volo believes they need to overthrow Arceus to remake the world. theyre both driven by this intense bitterness and hatred to the circumstances they were both placed in and they both inherently blame Arceus for it. and the craziest part about it is that its clear that sometime between PLA and DPPT, Giratina changed its mind. it decided that maybe the world was worth protecting, and overthrowing Arceus was nothing worth pursuing any longer. thus, it dragged Cyrus down into the Distortion World to stop him from trying the same shit that Volo did. which is So interesting because IT DOES NOT DO THE SAME TO VOLO! VOLO DOES NOT GET DRAGGED DOWN INTO THE DISTORTION WORLD! and i think thats very indicative of this feeling of. respect? that it holds towards them? even though Volo was deadass closer to success than Cyrus was. and i think that feeling of respect is only possible because of that partnership they once had. its some weird dynamic between human and god where (and this is not necessarily canon for Volo, so take it with a grain of salt) both were rejected by/isolated from their peers, and were able to relate to another being of such different power. and again, to reiterate: I really do think their partnership is as equal as it could be. I don't think Volo was corrupted, and I don't think Giratina is completely under Volo's command. It's not even a "trainer and their pokemon" dynamic, its a real genuine partnership where both are in control of their individual actions (which is also why Volo isn't outright commanding Giratina in the final battle against them - they're just observing). And I say this because a lot of people seem to think Volo was simply corrupted and manipulated by Giratina and I just ... really don't think so. I think it's a take that completely dismisses the complexity and motivations of Volo as a villain. I think they were always just this disillusioned with Arceus and the world around them, and the worst that Giratina did in this partnership was enable them - but it goes both ways, because I think Volo enabled it as well. hard not to when both of them had such similar goals, right?

[baguetteperson]

everyone talks about immortal volo but nobody considers adding time traveler adaman into the mix

[baguetteperson]

whatever thinks about the dichotomy between volo's team and the way they're described as a "pokemon wielder". The mere existence of their pokemon contradicting their own title and they way they hold themself. Also they straight up have an animation where theyre like covering their eyes whenever their pokemon get hurt haha you care so bad loser

But its just so interesting to me. Half their team evolves by friendship, half their team evolves with rare stones. And yeah, yadda yadda yadda "haha cynthia's ancestors here's her team OooOoooo" but Gamefreak has specifically made teams crafted to a character's writing PLENTY of times before. Its really good characterization that people forget.

Togetic is a friendship evolution and Togekiss is a stone evolution. Roselia is a friendship evolution and Roserade is a stone evolution. Lucario is a friendship evolution. Arcanine is a stone evolution. Then there's the outliers - Garchomp and Spiritomb, both of whom require a lot of time put into evolving & obtaining respectively. What's the point here? The effort! Volo HAS to give a shit about their team to go through the effort of training a Gible into a Garchomp and finding a ton of rare stones and collecting a hundred spirits for a rock of souls - and that's not even mentioning the whole concept of friendship evolution. Like come on.

They care about their team and refuse to admit it (hence, Pokemon Wielder). I personally think its because they may very well lose their team if they succeed in their plans, and its easier to prepare for that potential loss if they pretend like they only view their Pokémon as tools.

[baguetteperson]

i remember reading a fic a while ago that described cogita as "teaching" volo to wear their hair over their left eye which ive always found silly. i personally think its funnier yet somehow less ridiculous if it was genuinely just a coincidence for all these little freaks (cogita volo cynthia) to be covering their left eyes with their hair .... even bigger coincidence that they all happen to have a fucked up eye beneath it. because at the end of the day half my headcanons are in fact for the bit to be more specific though i think cogita has unilateral cateracts / had an eye stroke or SOMETHING that made her blind in her left eye. just some sort of medical condition that she didn't exactly have the resources to handle it properly because it's ancient hisui. man. then because I think of her as immortal her body has just stayed the same ever since. theres really no way for her to heal it / really have it get... worse? so. she covers her left eye because she wasn't exactly fond of how it looked and now she's used to it. volo i do with the classic eye gouging for the sake of giratina. which. <- something ill probably elaborate on anootherrr time... but because of it they took a page out of cogita's book and chose to hide it with their hair. I really don't think it would make sense if they had a functioning eye beneath their bangs honestly. For a travelling merchant in dangerous ass ancient Hisui it would be really strange to essentially ... remove? one half of a very important sense of theirs? just for aesthetic reasons? Because quite frankly it is NOT easy to see through a chunk of hair like that. Okay. I really just think they are covering up a missing eye. and for Cynthia I feel like it was just something as simple as a training accident when she was younger. Got too overzealous with her pokemon and got struck in the eye. Since she was only being raised by her grandmother there probably wasnt enough money for like, a glass eye or anything, so she made do by hiding the missing eye with her hair, and she got so used to it she never found any reason to change it ... and thus the tradition carries on. smile

[baguetteperson]

already really fond of urbain x naveen. what if they were called streetstyleshipping (urbain's name is literally just urban, and hes a city boy + naveen is a fashion designer = urban fashion aka "street style")