Want Me To Tell You Why I Was Keeping My Hands Tucked Away Until Now? I Thought That If I Ever Felt Like

How funny that she never considered that.

I've been thinking about the moment where Douma suddenly confesses an attraction to Shinobu while the two were in limbo. It's short, and semi-serious, but I think it's a genuine - and tragic - feeling on Douma's part, and it hits him right at this moment.

From his earliest memories, Douma has been surrounded by suffering people, people who latched onto him for peace. He was raised to believe that he lived alone in a world of suffering people, and that his purpose was nothing but to ease their pain. There was no room for himself as a person. He had to be a saviour. People needed him. They latched onto a child and drained him dry emotionally so they could feel better, because they were dependant.

But Shinobu doesn't need him, not even for revenge, not anymore. Shinobu is content.

Douma is entranced. He took to Kotoha, Inosuke's mother, and liked her well enough to want her around, but she was still a dependant, like the rest of his followers. She was still a suffering person who relied upon him like everyone else. She fit neatly into his warped view of the world and its people, and could be discarded when necessary.

Shinobu is unlike anything Douma has ever seen before. He has never known contentment, not for anyone around him and especially not himself. He has lived more than a century believing that just pretending to be that purposeful, happy person was enough. But as Kanao rightly said, he is empty, and he knows it, and it haunts him.

Douma spent his entire life forcing himself to like and enjoy a role he was forced into in spite of his own feelings, and at the end he realised that it amounted to absolutely nothing. He was still empty, unfulfilled and miserable.

So the sight of a person, even the woman who killed him, showing the genuine joy of an ambition and life fulfilled, how could Douma not be smitten by it?

It's not true love, not based on Shinobu as an individual and certainly not healthy, but it's a sensation born from witnessing the purest iteration of the state of being that has so long eluded him. He now knows that such a thing is achievable, possible, and so should heaven and hell.

For more than a century, Douma knew that his life was a lie. He was not a seer, he could not hear the gods, but had to pretend otherwise because everyone believed - or said - otherwise. Living this lie developed a deep cynicism towards those things which people said were true, like salvation and peace.

Douma knew deep down that what he did was not salvation, and therefore believed that it was unachievable no matter how much he said otherwise.

But Shinobu proved him wrong. And no matter how Douma wants to hold onto the thing that proved him wrong, all that awaits him is hell. It was all too late.

THE "ZORO MIGHT BE SANJI'S MIRROR / RIVAL / SHADOW, BUT USOPP IS HIS FOIL" META.

THEY ARE BACK!! I can't believe my two fav characters of my two fav mangas are back on the same month!! And after so much time!

You know, Hajrudin kinda has a point

Dere-shi-shi-shi!

silly april fools birthday clown

Dropping this Higugin au before my next lesson 👁️👁️

Okay but, Atsushi leapt forward. He was sliced from behind.

He should have fell onto his front, he should have been faced down when he hit the ground.

And yet, as he falls he somehow manages to turn over.

To turn towards Akutagawa, to keep his eyes on him and not the thing that just killed him.

His eyes that plead with Akutagawa to be safe, the hand that pushed Akutagawa away from danger still stretching towards him, are the last things to go.

With the last of his strength in the physical world, Atsushi fought to know he'd saved Akutagawa, fought for him to be the last thing he saw.