If You See This You’re Legally Obligated To Reblog And Tag With The Book You’re Currently Reading

STOP this is too cute 😭😭😭

Image they were dancing at Barcelona before Yuuri take Victor to pick rings

Actually so accurate, Yuri P. giving Yuuri pirozhki is always so wholesome

#6 Friendship

True friendship makes sure you don't share your food.

Happy 7th anni to Yuri On Ice!

This is beautiful, the light, the flowers, AH amazing

Art by スカ

Posted with Permission (reprint/edit and/or commercial use prohibited)

Thank you, I wholeheartedly agree with this. Like you’ve said, Ash’s death to me speaks more to the tragedy of the abuse he suffered so young. It’s not about whether he deserved to die, it’s about whether he was able to live under the circumstances. And it’s unfair and horrible, but when you become as entwined in that kind of life as Ash was, there sometimes isn’t a way out.

Does that mean Ash deserved to die? Of course not. He deserved to heal, he deserved to be happy, he deserved the world after what he went through, especially when his heart remained pure in spite of everything. But as the OP put it, the abuse he suffered forced him into a life of crime, and that life of crime was not so easy to escape.

I still wish it would have ended differently, because I love Ash. The amount of pain he suffered in his short eighteen years of life is unfathomably horrific, and more than anything I wanted to see him happy. But I will not say that Yoshida’s decision to end the story that way was bad, or that it means she believes Ash deserved death. Ash’s death is not narratively insignificant in any way. Do I hate that it ends that way? Yes, with every fiber of my being, but the fact that I hate it so much, the fact that I shed so many tears over this fictional character, exposes the tragedy inherent in Ash’s story. The prolonged abuse that forced him towards gangs and the mafia is also what prevented him from leaving it behind. In that I find a powerful message about the resounding echoes of this kind of repeated, sickening violence.

When Ash dies, we are forced to confront the horrors of his life. Sure, it can be argued that all of Banana Fish forces us to do that, but when we receive the shock of his death, we immediately start creating a chain of events in our head to figure out how he ended up at that point. And through that process, we internalize the ways in which the violence done to him stretched beyond any single moment to touch every aspect of his life. That creates an endless, soul-rending stream of grief because we are left with a deep sense of injustice—he only ended up dying because his life was so irreversibly shaped by his trauma, and no one deserves that. No one deserves to have the ability to choose the course of their own life taken away, but that is the tragedy of Banana Fish. Ash lost that ability so young, and that is a very painful reality to face.

If anything, I would say the only one believing Ash deserved to die for the blood on his hands was Ash himself. I won’t go into detail about this because honestly, I’m not sure whether that was truly what was going through Ash’s head when he made the decision to go to the library. What we do know is that he did struggle with a lot of self-loathing. He often saw himself as a monster because of the people he had killed, the things he had done to survive, and so he could never see himself as Eiji did, or as we did through Yoshida’s story. The people who hurt Ash did so to the point that he believed he wasn’t worthy of healing, that he believed he was only hurting others by being around them, and that is once again an effect of that consistent abuse.

That is what saddens me the most about Ash’s death, that he might have believed he didn’t deserve better, when he did. But we all saw it—we all knew, from the very beginning, that Ash was a kind soul whose life was cruelly domineered by his abusers, and he did deserve to live and heal.

What people seem to constantly misunderstand about what Akimi Yoshida said regarding how Ash couldn't have just gotten away scot-free from his life of crime is that it ISN'T Yoshida saying Ash "deserved" to die. Yoshida frames Ash as a hero from beginning to end. He's shown to be a genuinely good and kind person, that goodness remarked upon again and again by multiple characters, and his death is seen as a tragedy. That should be enough to convince people that Yoshida didn't hate Ash or think he deserved to die. The fact she frames him in such a positive light shows she understands that Ash is a good person that was forced into doing terrible things for his own survival and the survival of others. So this insistence that she thought he deserved to die because she said in some fan-translated interview that he couldn't just walk away from his life of crime, or that there's a price to be paid for murder, is ridiculous. It relies on nothing but assumption about the character of the author.

It's also a problem in fandom, in general, where interviews with authors, in which they're often giving on the spot and half-baked answers to random questions without any prepreation, are given greater credence in interpreting the author's intent than the actual, published work itself. How about letting the work stand on its own and interpret it as is? I've seen so much hate lobbed at Yoshida for supposedly hating Ash or thinking he deserved to die, when the actual story itself does nothing but portray Ash as deeply sympathetic and tragic. Again, no one could read "Banana Fish" with any level of reading comprehension and come away with anything but the impression that Ash is the hero and a good person who's life and death was deeply unfair and unjust. That fact alone should override any answer Yoshida gave in any interview, especially when it's obvious how much Yoshida hates giving interviews and very obviously, intentionally gives half-assed answers that she doesn't put much thought into. It's clear from the work itself that Yoshida has a great love for Ash as a person and as a character. She based his design off of River Phoenix, her favorite actor, she shares her birthday with him, and again, the way she frames Ash and his actions is as that of a hero, from beginning to end. I don't know, maybe it's because she sees Ash as a hero herself?

Ash dying only demonstrates the point further about how child abuse ruined Ash's life. He was led into a life of crime because of the abuse he suffered, and the fact it was that life of crime that led to his eventual death, with it basically being a gang dispute that got him in the end, only further drives home the point of how devastating and ruinous child abuse is. Ash wasn't a criminal because he was a bad person, he was a criminal because the abuse he suffered drove him to become one, and then, eventually, that life of crime he'd been forced to lead came back on him in the form of Lao stabbing him, which is what I think Yoshida actually means when she says Ash couldn't just walk away from the life of crime he'd lived. That inability to walk away further demonstrates the tragedy of the abuse Ash suffered, because it shows how it forced him into doing things which eventually came back to haunt him, things which he couldn't "escape". Lao stabbing Ash was in consequence to his being a gang leader, and his being a gang leader was a result of the abuse he suffered. The two things are interconnected with one another. It's not about Ash deserving to die because of the lives he'd taken, it's about how the life Ash was forced to live as a result of his abuse eventually led to his death. That's where the whole notion of "you live by the sword, you die by the sword" comes from. It's not necessarily a moral condemnation of the person committing acts of violence, but an acknowledgement that violence begets violence. That violence is cyclical. But the fact of Ash's death as a result of his life of crime only further demonstrates the true devastation wrought by the abuse of children, and that's the ultimate point of "Banana Fish's" ending. It's meant to force us to face, through the tragedy of Ash's death, the tragedy of his life in turn.

Snowy and Gingersnap ❄️🍪

reblog with your starter chicks’ names mine are lucky and clover and i adore them 🐣☘️

If this isn’t exactly what happened I don’t wanna hear about it 🤣

HE BLUSHED WHEN UPON SEEING YUURI

“He’s here!!! He’s here. So cute and handsome, Yuuri. I’ve waited so long…and he looks so soft, even cuter. OMG OMG what do I do now. ?!?! Wait, don’t panic…we’re Russian, we don’t panic.”

VIKTOR NIKIFOROV WAS A MAN ON A MISSION.

“Calm down, Vitya. This is your moment, remember Sochi.”

“That’s right, I've been waiting for this since then, to see again the boy who made me feel passion for the first time in a long time…Imma seduce Katsuki Yuuri.”

*Stops blushing, now focused. Oozing every ounce of confidence and attractiveness practiced for 20 years, he thinks of this as a choreography but this time to win Yuuri. And he ALWAYS delivers*

“OH IT WORKED, HES LOOKING AT ME. YES, VIKTOR FUCKING NIKIFOROV, HES YOURS NOW. SO CUTE WHEN BLUSHING. MINE MINE MINE”

*Blushing again, owning the most extra and flirty move he's pulled in his life*

Analysis of the important little detail of this scene: Viktor Nikiforov blushing as Yuuri Katsuki got in the hot springs.

The tgcf reading experience (spoilers):

Book 1: omg it’s so romantic 🥺

Book 2: omg it’s so romantic, also wind master best character

Book 3: my poor baby *gives Xie Lian head pats* —ooh hualian content

Book 4: PAIN AND SUFFERING—oh cool more hualian content

Book 5: *mxtx dumps lore, refuses to elaborate*

Book 6: NO NO YOU DONT UNDERSTAND—YES YES HUALIAN—WTF WTF WTF

Book 7: Wtf is going on

Book 8: my heart has been shattered and stitched back together at least 10 times, but it was worth it

So anyway that’s what I did this summer

This is so cute to imagine, Xie Lian is definitely a Stardewer. He convinces Hua Cheng to play with him and Hua Cheng is chopping down trees and making upgrades and taking care of the crops, meanwhile Xie Lian is wandering around collecting random shit and giving out the weirdest gifts to the villagers.

Every time Xie Lian is short on something he needs, Hua Cheng just magically pulls out a secret stash of that material, and Xie Lian happily goes on with his day of mining or fishing or foraging or more likely all of the above

stardewlian

It's been more than a week and I can't this image out of my head.

I'm 100% sure Xie Lian would love to play Stardew Valley. It would be his favorite game. It has so many things he would love, specially the combat in the mines. But he would have so much fun fishing, and farming, and collecting things that he finds around, and raising animals. He would yap nonstop to Hua Cheng about every little thing he'd do too. I can see him spending hours lost in the game.

I absolutely love this art style, and these silly little guys (ok but why is Khun slaying so hard like 💅🏻✨)

Had to doodle the trio. They should get a vacation sometime

Some wholesome lesbian beefleaf for the soul because my babies deserve to be happy <3