#<- Same talk tag as my DGM main!

[susatosanhelp]

@ryutarotakedown asked me for my Susato hcs for the ask game!

Realistic: She eats small bites out of politeness but has a taste for yoshoku food! She loves curry rice, croquettes, and all sorts of sweets! She also really likes the novella Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for more reasons than she can admit to herself!

Unrealistic, but funny: She is an Excellent gambler and has snuck into horse races and won. A lot. Unfortunately, 221B is a biiiit of a money sink so her winnings often go up in smoke.

Angsty: She alternately loves and despises her Ryuutarou identity, and he is basically the Edward Hyde to her Henry Jekyll. She has nightmares about him breaking her ribcage open and crawling out because she is so deeply repressed about many things, like her dissatisfaction with societal misogyny's impeding of her ambitions, her lesbianism, her gender, her grief...many problems she crushes inside of her and refuses to address. Whether she likes or not, they will come out eventually in some way.

Canon can eat my shit and hair: She is not fucking skinny wtf are you on Capcom put some meat on that poor girl's bones!!! She needs muscles to toss grown men!!! Also she will marry Haori as Ryuutarou Naruhodou and no one can change my mind on this.

[kitty-bandit]

Idk who I can say this to, I want to write a poker pair fic I’ve had in mind for so long but the constant hate discourages me to no ends

Hey, Anon (◕︿◕✿)

First off, I want to tell you that I know how you feel. I’ve been shit on for writing certain ships before, not just Poker Pair, and it really does make you feel awful. Like… just a deep down pain that aches. These days, shipping is a dangerous thing to do in certain circles, and you have to take precautions when delving into fandoms.

I’m so sorry that the recent hate has discouraged you. It’s easy to get down on yourself when things like this happen. I do have a few pieces of advice to help you feel better and hopefully let you work on your fic.

There will always be haters.

No way around it. No matter what ship or character you like. No matter what fandom. There’s always going to be someone who hates what you like–and more importantly, there will always be someone who’s loud about their hate. The best thing you can do for your own peace of mind is block/mute/unsubscribe to people who actively send out hate, either to you personally or posted in main fandom spaces specifically for everyone to see.

Do you know what I do when I see hate in the Poker Pair tag? Or the DGM tag? I block that person. I don’t care what their reasons are for posting hate. If they go out of their way to show hate to people, I don’t care what their intentions are. I don’t need them in my life. You can’t stop people from hating something, but you can cut it out of your life. Block people who spout hate, and you will feel 100% better.

There will always be supporters.

In the same vein, even though people might hate on something you like, there will ALWAYS be others who support you and actively like the same thing you do. I can tell you from experience that pretty much every Poker Pair shipper I’ve met are supportive and kind. They are the least judgemental people I’ve met and know the pain of being attacked over fiction.

If you’re looking for other poker pair shippers and want to interact with them in a safe, enclosed environment, please DM me. There is a poker pair discord server I’m a part of. I won’t share the link publicly, but it’s quite chill and everyone there is nice. You can share your thoughts with other like-minded people. You can also bitch in private when things frustrate you, which is something we all need from time to time.

Spite is the best motivator.

I’ve said this before, but I do my best writing out of spite. Most of the time, when someone tells me I can’t do something, I do it even harder–and while maintaining uncomfortable eye-contact. XD

Use the energy that you would’ve otherwise wasted being upset by being creative and putting your story out into the world. Shift your focus. Instead of worrying about what the haters will say, focus on the people who want to read what you have to write–the people who support your ship and what you have to offer to the fandom.

It’s not always easy, and I know that. But do your best. Your fic deserves to be written and your ideas should be shared. If you ever need someone to talk to when things get shitty, I’m always around. (｡･ω･｡)ﾉ♡

[sozotohakai]

15 QUESTIONS, 15 MUTUALS

Tagged by @moon--wake​ (thank you!)

⭑ are you named after anyone ?  

Technically yes, my mom was raised Christian though she grew apart from the religion itself (but not from her belief in God and angels), and when she learned she was getting a daughter (which she had desired but until me didn’t get), she named be Christelle, to be written like this (rather than Kristel for example), and it can be read as Christ+elle (elle being french she). This works perfectly for me too as it shortens to Chris, which is a more gender neutral name, which is rather fun considering mom wouldn’t have known back then I would realize I’m non binary.

Fun fact: my middle name is the same name from an aunt if I recall correctly, one of the few people from my father’s side of the family that mom did like.

⭑ when was the last time you cried ?  

This weekend, there was Doctor Who on TV and there was the episode with Doctor Donna so if you know it you know it’s the ending that made me cry. It didn’t help my mind start going “Yooo super angst Wangxian” and I yelled NOPE. Long story short: the episode deals with how the only way to save someone is to erase all memories of the time spend together (including meeting) and how they can’t come into contact with anything that could lowkey remind of said times. Now I’m not okay thinking of how the theme of having forgotten is heavy in DGM ouch.

⭑ do you have kids ?  

Nope, unless you count characters I created we always joke that with mom, they’re her grandchildren.

⭑ do you use sarcasm a lot ?  

Depends, it can come out of me at random times, its more likely to happen if I’m playing; or if I’m lacking sleep.

⭑ what’s the first thing you notice about people ?  

That is a good question...   It can vary? But mostly I feel like I take right away into the overall appearance, like... either to recognize them, or store them in my mind so I can hope to recognize them later. I don’t really (or not often) stop at a detail, it’s just, get a reading of the general appearance of someone. After that I pay attention to expressions and how they speak (which is funny to say since I have trouble with eye contact half the time).

⭑ what’s your eye color ?  

Brown

⭑ scary movie or happy ending ?

Happy ending, though tbh, I do kind of love scary movie, it’s just that I have troubles actually watching.

⭑ any special talents ?

Uuuuu, I guess, I’ve been told I’m good at emotional empathy? I’ve been able to know when someone felt low just by how they would write. That’s, I believe, the main reason I find my way with words (when I have time to think) because it’s heavily based on my empathy mixed with experience. Like, I feel so much what someone else is feeling, and that’s why I can come with up with words for them and their situation.

⭑ where were you born ?  

France

⭑ what are your hobbies ?  

Writing, reading, playing games, listening to music, watching videos (Markiplier, React, MMD&Vocaloid stuff, AMV&Anime mix videos, sometimes bloopers and funny stuff).

⭑ do you have any pets ?

I don’t, but my brother and his dad have a cat so he’s like my pet. His name is Grisou (gris = grey so it’s totally a cute naming of his fur colour), he’s playful and seems to view any approach as a signal to play (aka paw at you and try to nip), though he’ll get cuddly at times from what I heard. For my part, we’ve got this ritual that I’ll slowly approach my fingers so he sniffs them (unless I see him about to paw/bite so I dont even try), he lets me pet his head a tiny bit, and then I leave him alone. So he doesn’t try to paw or claw or nip at me because he knows I’ve learned to tell if he’s okay with an approach and when I should stop.

(Fun fact: one time he kind of accidentally hurt my leg, despite my pants he dug fangs and claws too deep and I ended up with a few cuts that bled, I was a bit scared that day and for the next few times I saw him, then I kind of hesitantly start to approach him again, and I think he picked up on it and that’s why he’s a bit more patient with me? I’m the only person he doesn’t straight up claw or paw or nip at, and the few times he does, it’s slow, and/or light).

⭑ what tattoos / piercings / body mods do you have ?  

None, sometimes I get the thought of having tattoos, but I’m not sure I’ll ever follow through. But probably if I did, I would got with a small tattoo first just to like, see? I once thought about wolf tattoo, but tbh if I get a tattoo one day, it’ll be a dragon. Oh gosh yeah, a small tattoo of an eastern dragon circling my wrist or maybe higher like close to elbow level, maybe on both side. And after that if I’d have the courage, a western dragon in the back (with feathers wing, I love my dragons with feather wings).

⭑ how tall are you ?  

5 ‘7~ I don’t think I’m that tall, but I’m amused because it seems like I’m taller than most of my friends. My brother is even taller than me, he’s 6′/6′1. Or because I’m squinting at the conversion, I’m ~172 cm (and he’s ~185 cm).

⭑ dream job ?

What I’m doing right now, which is work as an independant/freelance writer. Lemme be shameless for a tiny bit and link to my site too, since. Kind of fit with the question.

What’s funny is that, as a child, when it first start to float around, what will you be later, I loved dinosaurs so I thought, I’ll become a paleontologist. I stayed on this path until college, I could feel in me something off, there was nothing else that I could see myself do, so I stick to it, but in college I truly felt how much I just didn’t see myself become a scientist. And it’s totally all thanks to mom and my bro that I realized, hey, writer can be a job too. Then came the hilarious realization that I’ve always been writing or reading, mostly in/for school, but at the end of middle school I discovered fanfics and I never stopped writing&reading those since then (and later rping was added).

⭑ favorite subject at school?  

I’ve always enjoyed literature (no surprise here) though to be precise, here in France the subject is called “Français” and is a mix of learning grammar&spelling&punctuation, then all kind of things like analyzing books and poems. It was, in fact, a bit rarer to actually write a story ourself, as it was more about learning the french language and what is expressed in books. But in elementary school I did have a teacher that gave us a homework that was literally just “write a story” and I got an almost perfect mark (in my teacher word: the only reason you didnt was for the grammar&etc mistakes”). While in my mom words, years later, “that was the moment I knew you would become a writer”.

I also adored learning English, I think I do love learning languages in general, but the other languages I tried to learn (Latin for one year, Spanish), the teachers were... not helping. The Latin one was, bless her, good but boring (my mom literally almost fell asleep in a teacher-student meeting, face to face); and my first spanish one had no authority and we barely learned anything, so the next one had to try catching up, but it left me (and those who had come from the same class) with very shaky basics and next to no motivation except just have marks above or equal to average. Compared to those, English was made fun to learn, and then it also got associated with my mind with tons of things (fics, subbed animes, being able to talk with friends).

Tagging: @ask-cross-marian @avellaturortem @shensheng-aoman @xueyaang @crowleiii @illusiive @manadcampbellrpblog @crystallizecrimsonbutterfly if you want to!

[esquitor]

millennium twins + dgm meta, bc i can

mnNGHGH OKAY...... most of this is pared down from what i use (would use, will use at some point) for red carpet welcome neahfic, and is largely neah-focused. at some point this is also just au conjecture. i don’t make meta or hc, i create aus based on my theories and it becomes au canon.

here goes.

(i don’t venture into the dgm tag so if this has all been said before..... oops. i just wanna post it.)

i refer to the millennium twins and their noahs rather separately? ‘mana’, ‘neah’ are self explanatory. ‘adam’ is the noah memory, while ‘the earl’ is the combined mana+adam or neah+adam.

GENERAL

the earl's main ability (besides like giant magic blasts and smacking people with a sword) is manipulation of the soul, its energy, and the helix of life. the ark was first said to have been used to populate the world with new humans after the great flood.

creation of 'humans' likened to the creation of 'akuma'; both are simple a soul in a flesh body, and once the soul is destroyed, the body is also destroyed.

that the earl, whether of his own volition or bc of katerina, split himself consciously instead of just ‘dying’.

my pet theory is that wanted to stop doing whatever it is he was doing / wanted to try coexisting with humans. he looked very tired and sat next to that tree in that wheatfield okay?

attempted to split into two so that the burden of the memory of 'adam' would not be so bad. i think my notes said ‘share the madness’ but tbh it’s probably more along the lines of ‘have another quasi-earl to spend time with inbetween the other noahs reincarnating’.

split himself unevenly across mana and neah, resulting in a conflict between the two pieces of 'memories' that they each carry.

each of them is considered a ‘separate person’, but as parts of a whole. ‘a separate part of one person’

MANA

more kindhearted of the two of them. more human?

likely adopted more of the earl’s desire to coexist with humans, or whatever his intention was for the split.

unfortunately he also received more of the ‘memories of adam’ than neah did, and is more driven by the earlface ‘adam’ to recombine to carry out their task.

judging by the flashbacks, his feelings on this matter were regret and guilt for doing it.

NEAH

in neahfic at least, the pet theory is that he receives only the ‘hatred’ of noah, the feeling of disgust towards humanity, without much (if any) of the memories that make a noah... a noah.

meaning no intrinsic feeling of brotherhood or family, no cemented loyalty to the earl. he is the earl. or he is part of the earl. he is his own master.

there is no one he loves more than himself, and the other half of him

neah does not consider himself 'one of the noahs’ any more than the earl does. he is half of the one who should lead them, but he is not one of them. he is not ‘the 14th noah’, he is ‘their destruction’

c205 road says "don't stop, keep walking. those are the last words neah left mana. neah fought for mana. but it's a secret, okay?"

which is why he's surprised when 'the earl' says 'mana is gone' because that would essentially give neah no reason left to kill 'adam', to absorb the memory of ‘adam’ and become ‘the earl’

hc that neah intended to do the killing / devouring at first but was unable to for whatever reason

that by killing and and devouring 'mana', neah spares mana of having to do the same to him, hence the 'i'll kill you and become the earl’ -> ‘i’ll do it so that you don't have to do it'

possibly that scene with him standing over road and someone in the bed? it’s possibly mana. looks like it could be katerina but road has no reason to hold her like that?

WIBBLY WOBBLY

with 'the earl's ability to manipulate soul and helix of life, he creates?? another himself?? a split. into whom he puts 'mana' and lets loose on the world.

'the earl' has already been split once into mana and neah, nothing says he can't just do it again, he just has no reason to?

'mana's portion of soul becomes an akuma, while the rest of 'the earl' walks around in a fatsuit. 'the earl' right now is quite possibly just 'adam' and maybe remainders of mana's soulmemory? hence why he has no memory of being twins with neah.

ch225 spoilery bit way down below.

this is not really a headcanon but i’m viscerally relating the 225 line of neah’s ‘i could laugh and spit up the food i ate’ with the fact that he probably has the same abilities as the earl, soul/body devouring

but being that he isn’t ‘completely’ the earl, he doesn’t really destroy them completely when he killed/devoured their souls, only damaged them to the point that they couldn’t remember a thing about him

or they’ve willfully repressed it, since the idea that ‘the other half of the earl killed them dead’ would be a pretty bad memory?

what’s up with joyd and neah oohh.

just the amount of CASUAL DEFIANCE neah has whenever he talks to any of the noahs, even the earl, makes me think oodles of things that i can’t put into words properly. the level of casual, dismissive, blunt familiarity is like a punchline to a joke only he knows

it wouldn’t have been out of place for him to keep quiet the fact that he and mana are actually both the earl, just for the irony of the joke that is the earl (or half of the earl) killing his own apostles

does anyone else ever think about how, since they are the earl, if they ever awakened as noahs, there would’ve been no one to greet them? unless all noahs have intrinsic noah-awakening senses?

the earl is supposed to greet them, or at least he greeted skinn boric.

no one told these two children why they were bleeding from their foreheads or having 7000 years of memories downloaded into their heads (for mana at least? in this theory neah doesn’t get that).

please. i think about this a lot.

[liketolaugh-writes]

yes hi hello uhm i was just wondering if you have any tips on characterization when writing dgm? specifically, Kanda, Link, Cross, and Nea? they're very hard to write for me personally.

Sure! *smile* I’d like you to know that this ask spawned an entire conversation in the group chat, these are literally the most complicated characters you could possibly have chosen.

I’m tagging @lpwrites, @hurryupfic, @nea-writes, and @allxnwalkxr because they helped a lot with this.

Kanda has a bark a bit worse than his bite. He’s not fluff and sparkles, mind, but he doesn’t actually hate everyone. I draw to your attention:

- Alma and Kanda’s relationship highlights the complexity in both of them. For Kanda’s part, he talks rough, he’s irritable and abrasive and fairly introverted, and he’s hard to get through to. But when one of them snapped and killed everyone they knew, it wasn’t Kanda.

- He’s impulsive, but he has a strict sense of honor. He has acted in anger on several notable occasions - almost killing Allen, strangling a finder, lashing out verbally, and that time he stabbed Allen - but he pays his debts, and he doesn’t let people die.

- I like to play Kanda as autistic, but I know it ain’t for everybody.

Link can be neatly divided into two parts: his kindness and his loyalty. Consider:

- On the first half: Kindness is clearly discouraged in the CROW, because individual rights don’t seem to matter much. So towards the beginning of his character arc, that’s pretty repressed. However, he clearly does have kindness in him, best seen in his later interactions with Allen and in the allowances he gives him.

- He is incredibly loyal to Leverrier. Leverrier’s is Link’s Mana, aka his everything. However, where Mana taught Allen love, Leverrier taught Link dedication and purpose. Therefore, these are the most important things to Link, and how he seeks fulfillment as a person.

- He seems to do very badly with guilt, re: Allen and the Thirds. Related, he has his own moral compass, but consistently discards it in favor of orders.

   - (From the group chat, I add: stupid weenie, pastries, had a bad hair day once, is a hot dog)

Cross fights to save the world. He cares about people - more than he wants to, more than he should - but in the end, he fights to save the world. I’m going to point out a few main points to you:

- He was a scientist before he was an exorcist, and he wears a rosary around his neck. This is literally all we know about his background.

- He gathers intel like it’s gold and then never gives any to anyone.

- He schemed with Neah and Past!Allen to save the world, but both of his co-conspirators died more than twenty years before the plans started moving. Still, he kept at it. He drank to forget, he slept around for company, and both these things are Problematic™, but he didn’t give up.

- When he took Allen in, it wasn’t out of charity. It was because Allen was the host to the Fourteenth. All the same, he became attached. He taught Allen how to survive, and then he reminded him how to live. He could have left Allen a spiritless little puppet, it would have been easy- But he didn’t.

Neah is one of the most mysterious characters in DGM; we don’t know much about him. Really, you’d be safe with almost anything, but here’s a bit:

- Neah did murder essentially his entire family. This could mean various things, but my best guess is that either he believes that’s the only way to save the world, or he just really hates his family.

- He’s a good actor; if Link hadn’t been able to read his qi, he might’ve believed he was Allen. (Additional note: apparently his qi is murderous. I doubt qi lies.) He also, like Cross, believes in gathering intel - his first action on properly waking up was to view recent events via Timcanpy.

- He doesn’t appear to hate humans on principle, but he doesn’t care for them either; at one point, he nearly killed Johnny to get privacy, and at another, he tried to save a finder from the Earl. He also denies being friends with Cross, but does not deny association.

- If you want to ask about theory, you’re gonna have to do that separately, because whoo boy.