Line-senpai, what did you think of the P5 trailer? It looks really promising on the theme of Phantom Thief! Looks like P5 Mc isn't as innocent as we thought he was!
Ok, so story time. I have never experienced a point in time where this was as powerful and as obvious as my freshman opening week back in college. They group everyone off and make you talk, people introduce themselves right and left, everyone talks about hobbies, and to me there was just this really cool vibe of, “Yeah, it’s easy to make friends, everyone is cool, yay!”
This quickly went away when I began to notice a disturbing pattern. I’d spend a while talking to someone only to mention something about my boyfriend (who by the way is now my husband) who also was starting at the same university with me. Usually along the lines of, “Yeah, me and my boyfriend both do this medieval fighting reenactment thing, it’s super fun. We’re hoping to start a club here,” because that’s pretty much all I could talk about at that point in my life. Almost immediately the face of the guy I was talking to would go from smiling and friendly to openly hostile, and he’d be like, “You have a boyfriend?” And after I gave any sort of affirmation, the person would instantly walk away and never speak to me again.
I was on a campus where the guy to girl ratio was 5 to 1, so as you might imagine, this happened to me way too fucking much in the span of a week. I was so fucking upset over it I remember sitting in my dorm alone in the evenings trying not to cry, feeling like an idiot and wondering why I wasn’t good enough for people to want to be friends with. A majority of my friends in high school had been guys, so the fact that these guys were solely interested in getting laid rather than making friendships really hurt (not to mention made me question a lot of the friendships with guys I already had). I had never made friends with girls easily (still don’t), and I was originally pretty pumped with the guy to girl ratio just because I much prefer to hang around men, so realizing that none of them would want anything to do with me unless it was for sexual reasons made me incredibly pessimistic about what my friendships would look like for the next four years.
However, there was ONE GUY the whole week who stuck around and stayed my friend. He ended up being good friends with both me and my boyfriend. We hung out all the time, joined the same clubs, went to parties together, etc. At the end of sophomore year, he actually came to visit our hometown (my boyfriend and I grew up in the same town but had attended different schools) and even stayed at my family’s house in the guest room. I was super pumped, because I saw him as a really good friend to both me AND my boyfriend. We were going to have like five whole days to hang out and show him the town, right? Come to find out, the only reason he’d been friends with me the entire time was because he was waiting for me to break up with my boyfriend so he could date me, and when that hadn’t happened after two years he actually gotmad at me while I was letting him stay in my fucking house. He spent the rest of his stay telling me what a horrible person I was, how terrible my boyfriend was for me, and making me feel physically uncomfortable in my own home— literally telling me I owed him something for the two years he “put up with me.” To make a long story short, we haven’t spoken now in five years, and I don’t regret that at all.
Like I get it, the friendzone sucks, no one likes rejection. But holy fuck, I would much rather be rejected sexually than be rejected as an entire human being.
The thing is: when someone calls you too skinny, that hurts. It’s inappropriate, hurtful, and makes you self conscious. But at the end of the day, you pick up a magazine, you turn on the TV, you go on the internet on a gossip site - what do you see? Women who look like you. Women who have a body that recalls yours, women who are considered the standards of beauty to which all must follow to be considered beautiful. You go to a store, and odds are you can find clothes that are in your size. Odds are you don’t have go to stores dedicated to people your size, clothes that might not be as cute and are definitively more expensive.
When you’re fat, not only does it hurt, but society just confirms it day after day. You flip on TV, you read a magazine, and there are no women in your size. Nobody with a body like yours, nobody modeling clothes or being called gorgeous. You go to a store, and you can’t find clothes that fit you - and even if you do find things in larger sizes, they still don’t LOOK right, don’t fit right, cause they were designed for thinner girls in mind, and making these clothes in larger sizes doesn’t mean it’s going to look good on your body. You’re told you’re ugly by a piece of shit and basically the world you live in says back, well, yeah, that’s true.
That’s the difference. No, people making comments about your body are ALWAYS unwelcome and gross, but a thin person and fat person still live in the same society that caters and upholds thinness as a standard of beauty. That doesn’t change, and that’s why it’s not the same.
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On why skinnyshaming isn’t the same as fatshaming, crystalzelda (via bookmad)
Let me repeat that, just so we all start on the same page: the ending of Free! isn’t a shipping competition.
It isn’t about Rin vs. Mako. It isn’t RinHaru vs. MakoHaru. It is Rin and Mako, and also Nagisa and Rei, trying their very best to help a friend — a friend who is hurting, a friend who they love.
I don’t think Rin is stealing away Haru to Australia without the others’ knowledge.
I don’t think that Mako has given up on Haru just because Haru ran away from him.
I think they are all carefully working together for the benefit of Haru. Each of them are trying different things until something clicks. Until something works.
It is like picking up pieces of a broken cup and trying to fix it. It isn’t a quick process. You have to try all the pieces until you find the first one that fits. And when you get one piece in place, then you have to start working on the next piece. You do this piece by piece until the cup is whole again.
I don’t think Haru will magically be fixed in episode 12. Hopefully, it will be a step in the right direction. Hopefully, he can see that Mako wasn’t trying to hurt him in episode 11 and said what he did because he genuinely cares. Hopefully, Rin will be able to share the light that Haru shared with him last season.
As with so much else in this series, fixing Haru is a team effort. It will require Mako, Rin, Nagisa, and Rei. All of them. Remember, Rei and Nagisa gave Haru some of the kindest words and encouragement in episode 11, Makoto let Haru know he was loved, and Rin told him they were going to Australia with a smile. Perhaps while reflecting on things in Australia, a place where Haru is displaced from the bulk of his pain, he can let all those words sink in. Perhaps Mako telling Haru that everyone is doing this because they love him will finally begin to make sense.
Because when you find where one piece of the broken cup fits, the others will fall into place too.
This is the story of a geeky anime/gaming gal by the name of Chibi. Please fasten your seat belts and prepare for... some sort of ride? Oh! I love to write, and I also love doing crafty things. I go to conventions with my partner and sell woodburned things, clocks, mirrors, and more! So expect to see those on here too :)
