Shestolemycigarette - Karmas Cache - Tumblr Blog

people watching banana fish and not liking Yut Lung is something I will never recover from

OKAY SO i remember seeing this scene in the manga (volume 17 i think?) where yut lung is talking to blanca and tells him something like he wants to see ash turn into a monster and fight that ash but i was thinking and yut lung has like. no chance against him??? yut lung is smart, yeah, but he's at a clear physical disadvantage against ash and i'm not sure how skilled he is with guns and all that? a fight between the two would only mean that a shattered ash (all his loved ones dead, again alone with golzine) would kill yut lung.

and that makes... sense. we know that yut lung doesn't want to live (prompting both eiji and sing to shoot him, making small comments like when sing told him that one day he would end up poisoned for being a tyrant and yut lung said “sadly, i would notice”, etc). but what if yut lung's goal is for ash to kill him because he doesn't want to be killed by the same people who abused him and made him go through hell? what if yut lung wants to die at the hands of someone he considers worthy, someone who's an equal in the sense that they share a history of abuse and their beauty has condemned them? i find that pretty interesting... wanting to die at the hands of someone who resembles you in some way, kinda like a suicide

"i just need to get through this week" but you keep repeating it for at least 10 years, every single week.

you cannot love ash while hating yut lung i’m sorry but using the point that he tried to hurt ash and eiji will never get me……. this is a 16 year old boy who watched his brothers rape and kill his mother at 6 years old while he was being held in place to watch and was then trained for special assassination and used for his entire life with no free will by said brothers until he killed his brothers freeing himself and others from their control because he despised the lee bloodline and with the new freedom that came with the lack of control and the aspect of no guidance in life from any respectable adult he grew a deep hatred for ash and eiji because he sees ash as a reflection of himself so they should be the exact same except why does ash get to have someone that loves him and guides him out of the darkness of hatred and self loathing that comes with the life they were dealt when they are the same person and yut lung does not have anyone to love him. so as any teenager would do he has a breakdown about it and then uses control (the only thing he’s been taught) to try to take that away from ash because they’re supposed to be the same but when it’s addressed to him that what he’s doing is wrong and that taking eiji away from ash would just create another yut lung, an unlovable and unloving person (as told from the perspective of yut lung), he stops what he’s doing despite his own sorrow and breaks his contract with blanca so that blanca can go try to save them…………….. he was a 16 year old boy with absolutely no guidance in life and when hit with the voice of an adult who does not hate him nor hurt him he listened and stopped…………………..

Unpopular Opinion #1 Banana Fish edition

Blanca need to get his lashings:

1. What do you mean you ,a grown ass man, abandon a traumarised child at least 2 times and let him stay with someone like Dino because you are sad your wife died?

2. Then you go and abandon a second severly traumatised teenager with the excuse that you care about the first one.

No but seriosly, Blanca is a villian in my eyes. He is no John Wick, he is a clown and a deadbeat.

Something that I love and appreciate about Ash Lynx that I don't see many people talking about is his lack of desire for personal revenge. It's such a small and obvious detail, that I don't think we stop to think about it enough, but Ash is not consumed by revenge. Even after everything that happened to him, we never see him express a desire to kill or torture Dino, or anyone else who hurt him, we just wants to be free. Even with researching banana fish he's just trying to figure out what's wrong with his brother so that he can cure him, his motive is never revenge. Wanting to destroy and make Dino suffer would be a completely understandable reaction, yet all he wants to do is prevent other children from experiencing the same things he did.

The only times we see Ash express a desire for revenge, is when people he loves are hurt. This is seen several times with Eiji, such as when he's shot and he chases the men and shoots them with rage in his eyes, or when Shorter dies and he kills Dawson as he begs for mercy. This is why at the start I emphasised *personal revenge*. But I just think that his overall lack of thirst for revenge and just deep desire to be free is an extremely important facet of his character, that really just highlights who he is on the inside beyond all the violence and suffering, and is also very telling of his strength.

This is also one of the reasons why I dislike the "yut lung is just ash without eiji" rhetoric, because I feel like it does such a disservice to both their characters. Yes, they've lived through similar trauma and are in several ways parallels to each other, but they're different people with or without someone to support them. First of all, before Eiji, Ash did have someone, Shorter, and he had other people he cared about such as Skipper and his gang. Obviously none where as influencial or life changing as Eiji was, but painting him as being completely alone before meeting Eiji simply isn't true. Secondly, Ash and Yut lung are very separate people with separate personalities and with indivual nuances to their stories despite their similarites. One of these is the desire for revenge. As I established Ash isn't consumed by personal revenge, but Yut Lung very much is, his entire first arc is his search for revenge agaisnt his own brothers, whom he wants to kill.

Yut Lung isn't Ash without Eiji, he's just Yut Lung. He's a different person with different responses and reactions to the world around him, and of course, having someone to love and care for him would be monumental, but he'd still be a completely different character to Ash, and in my personal opinion, would have a harder time accepting that love than him (as we see briefly with his connection with Sing).

Of course there's also differences in their stories that I think are worth noting. I won't do it on this post because frankly I've been procrastinating making lunch and I need to do that rn. But reducing Yut Lungs's character to an "ash without eiji" is truly tragic in my opinion, and not only a disservice to him as a character but also to his story. Yut lung isn't just there to be a parallel to Ash, and I feel like we sometimes forget that. Anyway I'll get more into the nuances of Yut lung's character, and the nuances of his and Ash's stories and they way they both parallel and differ from each other if y'all want. If not I'll probably forget, and it'll just live in my mind, keeping me awake at 4 am.

ash, arthur, and yut lung, or “I hate you because you’re just like me but someone loves you”

cw: canon-typical sexual abuse (including CSA) and violence

I feel like a lot of Arthur’s hatred of ash stems from jealousy over Ash’s relationship with papa dino, and given he has every reason to know the nature of that relationship that makes it so much more fucked up than just being jealous that he can’t be the king of new york

Arthur knows exactly what golzine did to ash. when he captures Eiji to hand him over to golzine, he tells Eiji he’s going to be used in the same way ash was. and yet he’s jealous of ash. he’s jealous because ash was groomed and he wasn’t. he’s jealous because ash is being given the whole world at the cost of his dignity, of his autonomy. and he knows that. he tells ash “I know you never wanted it that way.” but he still wishes he could trade places with ash.

it’s never specified whether Arthur was one of golzine’s boys but I honestly believe he was. partly because the blond hair and blue eyes mean he fits golzine’s profile of a “valuable product” and partly because I honestly think it makes him more sympathetic and more of an interesting character. yes ash was victimized like him but ash was such a beloved victim. ash got tailored clothes and steak dinners. he was an object, but he was a *special* object, and to a boy who’s been broken down until he can only see himself as an object that seems leagues better.

Arthur and ash both got pulled off the streets and given power. they were both nothing before papa dino. arthur hated ash because he was the favorite, and because he was given so much more despite resenting that gift.

yut lung, I think, is already much more sympathetic than Arthur, in large part because he’s jealous of the love from someone who treats ash well and not the love from his abuser. he’s also just… very clearly a severely abused child lashing out and I think that makes him sympathetic, even to people like Blanca and Sing who know he’s up to no good and are actively trying to stop him by the end.

yut lung’s brothers not only killed his mother, but made him watch as they brutalized her when he was only six. his brothers continue to abuse him physically and emotionally, and may have even been molesting him based on hua lung's comments towards him and his reaction to being given to golzine as a “gift”. and obviously that in and of itself is disgusting and dehumanizing and abusive, that his own family would sell him like that… almost like how ash’s father encouraged ash to continue allowing his coach to abuse him in exchange for payment.

i almost want to say yut lung is ash if ash let his anger consume him, but that would imply ash DOESN’T let his anger consume him? like it seems different to watch yut lung murder his entire family as opposed to ash murdering the people involved in the banana fish conspiracy, but they’re both killing corrupt businessmen and politicians. they’re both killing the people who made their childhoods a living hell.

except ash is LOVED. no matter how many people ash kills, no matter how much blood is on his hands, no matter how disgusting his past is, eiji loves him. and yut lung hates them both for it because no one loves him. because he, and people like him, are supposed to be unlovable. if no one loves him, no one should love ash either, because he and ash are the same.

I think Arthur hates ash because he thinks he deserves the love ash gets. I think yut lung hates ash because he thinks he and ash don’t deserve love, and it’s not fair that ash can be loved if he can’t.

rewatching banana fish and realising that when Ash goes back to Cape Cod he has to deal with the memories of his dead older brother, who essentially raised him, on top of everything else. I wonder if he went into griff’s room when everyone else was gone or if he couldn’t bring himself to do it and stood at the threshold before turning and shutting the door. I wonder if he looked at the empty house and saw griff’s silhouette in the kitchen, heard his steps on the stairs. It’s not talked about enough, but Ash was grieving. He probably couldn’t sleep under the same roof he used to share with his brother, he was probably laying awake wishing he’d gotten to say goodbye properly. Of course he wouldn’t show how badly the grief was getting to him, instead he wakes up at the crack of dawn and finds a distraction in the sound of ringing gunshots and breaking glass bottles, and he misses and he misses and he shouldn’t be because he doesn’t have that luxury. He doesn’t have the luxury of grief.

I’m fine

i really have to do acid before i die but will i ever be mentally healthy enough to do it responsibly and have a positive experience ? honestly no

Camus was right; ‘Je ne sais pas’ y’all

after a fight

May we all witness a liberated Palestine in this lifetime and the next

No longer human by Osamu Dazai

*me, literally sick with want* whatever

Looking through my Pinterest boards like Narcissus looking at his reflection

“you’re so sensitive” i was born with a poet’s soul. bitch

i love u characters who are victims who don't show things in a way that's appealing i love u characters whos trauma leaves them with anger issues, with violence issues, with issues with connection and trust and being truthful i love you characters who don't get "better" in a way that's palatable, who don't find growth and meaning in their trauma

i feel disconnected from literally everyone and everything.

I actually can’t be normal about anything ever I’m so sorry.

I just eat it up when characters are written with symbolism like they’re a horrible self-destructive mess and yes, it’s like their hands leave scorch marks on everything they touch and oh they can only be admired from afar where it’s safe at a distance but you will be dragged into their self destruction and burn along with them if you let them too close.

Love it when writers do that.

“Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.”

-Fyodor Dostoyevsky

soulmates but not in a soft romantic way soulmates in a destined to change each other for better or for worse, cannot be who they are without each other, unstoppable together but they’re also the only ones who can defeat each other, equals, existences undeniably tied to each other way