“unbinding” Spell Jar

when one character brokenly says “i have nothing to offer you” and the other character looks at them with fond exasperation, because there’s nothing else they could want except the gift of their love. that shit gets me.

nothing's better than private life

Something that bears mentioning: I get why we need to shame straight girls who fetishize mlm ships but. To any straight girls who consistently relate to or resonate with mlm dynamics on a deep level or see themselves in queer male characters. if by any chance this post from a tiny tiny blog crosses your dash. Please take this moment to very privately consider the possibility that you might not be straight. Or a girl.

please baby come back I promise I won't transmit horrific images into your mind via our psychic bond anymore

Fave new twitter thread

Y'ever think about what absolute mad decadence we live in that "vanilla" means "plain"

when alphonse elric turns into a metal blob with this face °﹏° like if u agree

In which I ramble about a movie

The reason "A Silent Voice" works so well is that at no point does the story try to justfiy the fact that Ishida Shouya bullied Nishimiya Shouko.

No excuse about him having a hard home life.

No trying to say that he bullied her as a child because he had a crush on her at the time.

When he himself is bullied later on, the story doesn't use this as a way to nullify the fact that he bullied his classmate in the past.

His remorse is realistic and he starts to feel regret soon after Nishimiya has to switch schools. He feels responsible even though he wasn't the only student who bullied her, even though the teacher was probably the most responsible of all, as he purposefully turned a blind eye to his students' behavior.

Ishida goes out of his way to learn sign language in order to make amends. The story doesn't tell us how long he had spent on learning the language before he found her again. It could have been months, maybe years.

He doesn't feel deserving of Nishimiya's friendship, but she's the one who decides to forgive him, no one pressures her into doing so. And you agree with her decision because of how well Ishida and his redemption is written.

He focuses on making her life better, probably out of a mixture of gratitude and a desire to assuage his guilt.

Nishimiya also feels guilty despite being innocent. She thinks Ishida would be better off without her friendship, believing he's being stigmatized because of her disability. All the while Ishida wants to spend more time with her to make up for his past, and to make her realize she's not at fault.

The story also treats the characters' depression with respect and doesn't really romanticize it. You want these characters to be at peace with themselves, with each other, and with the other people in their lives.

TL;DR

"A Silent Voice" works because it doesn't try to justify the former bully's actions, shows that he feels genuine remorse and is willing to change his behavior of his own accord in order to make ammends, thus making his redemption and his friendship with Nishimiya all the more believable.