#( you choose the muse. )

[deoidesign]

Thinking about vampires, death, life, and the space they occupy in between

[druidposting]

“Phineas is in his usual position, passed out and drooling just a little bit on Jonas’ pecs. Jonas cards a hand through Phineas’ hair, his eyes trained on the opalescent scar the dim bioluminescent blue light doesn’t quite know what to do with.”

From Imperfectionism by @acaptainbyanyothername

[kotaromita]

Open Thread

Kotaro's thin eyebrows twitch nervously in the dressing room mirror, conflicted seeing himself in the outfit suggested to him. The way it fit his body, the skin it showed—was it too much?

He had only recently started to experiment a little more with how he dressed, given he was pretty picky with the genre of street fashion he wore. Having someone else choose for him was a surefire way to get him wearing something outside that comfort zone. But seeing his exposed forearms and collarbones made him wary.

Even so, he felt obligated to show them how he looked given they'd given him their assistance in the first place. So he steps out from behind the curtain. "So, does it suit me?"

[megamindsecretlair]

So 🥲 apparently there are....quite a lot of you following me even after banning the porn bots and folks without age or personality on their blogs. And yall 🥹🥹🥹

You're all sooo sweet 😍 thank you for all the kind words, comments, reblogs, and asks. I know I have a ton of requests to get through and series to update, but I wanted to celebrate yall. And put the decisions in your hands. I will be doing a series of polls over the weekend where YOU get to choose. YOU get to decide the follower celebration fic 🤸🏽‍♀️🙌🏽🙌🏽

First up! Who is it starring? 👀

[maximalcatpossible]

George had met her on a night when she came to the bar, his bar. It started with him pouring her some drinks, listening to her words, and offering his own wisdom. Maybe it was her younger age, or the alcohol, but somehow, someway, George took her home with him; And it was AMAZING.

George was older and more experienced than her, and he knew how to take care of her. It was supposed to be only one night, but they both kept coming back to each other. Sometimes she’d go to his place, sometimes he’d rent them a hotel room for the night. The nights together always felt so short, but they slowly began to change.

Sometimes George would take her to the movies, sometimes he’d take her shopping, and some nights there was no sex. There were some nights when George just wanted cuddles as they watched a movie until they fell asleep. While they shared a unique dynamic, George more than listened to her, and he was more than happy to give her whatever she wanted. However, there was no communication from his side.

He payed attention to everything she told him, and always asked about her week, but he never shared anything about himself. It came down to either he was hesitant to share anything, or he had poor communication skills. Regardless of this, George sent her a message asking if she’d like to spend the night at his place again. Deep down he hoped she’d say “Yes”, but only time would tell.

@ofinfinitedreams

[sunnysssol]

what is it called when you like depictions of fem!england as a quiet, bookish loner with a lot of complicated feelings so she just never opens up about them and stays lonely even though she desperately craves connection and depictions where she's a slightly snobby, snarky MILF with alcoholism and abandonment issues and why is it called "being right"

[insurged]

smack that ❤️, if you'd like something cute (soft things) 👉👈

[windsfavored]

i  know  i've  stated  it  a  few  times  on  the  old  blog  (  and  i'm  definitely  not  the  only  one  with  this  headcanon  )  but  i  generally  tend  to  play  ren  fairly  close  to  canon  with  A  SINGLE  very  big  divergence  —  the  traveler  was  NOT  the  one  who  named  him.  ren  named  himself.  to  be  honest,  i've  always  found  it  kind  of  strange  and  immersion  breaking  that  the  player  is  the  one  prompted  to  come  up  with  a  name  for  him.  his  entire  existence  has  been  characterized  by  other  people  making  choices  FOR  HIM.  you've  just  gone  through  this  entire  story  arc  culminating  in  him  finally  settling  on  a  purpose  and  direction  in  life  for  himself  —  and  then  directly  after  this,  someone  else  is  prompted  to  pick  out  a  name  for  him?  after  he's  already  been  established  to  struggle  severely  with  his  autonomy?  i  know  it's  definitely  meant  to  be  a  fanservice  type  of  deal,  but  in-universe  it's  always  felt  really  contrived  and  left  a  bad  taste  in  my  mouth.  i  do  not  like  it  and  i  think  that  it's  weird,  hoyo.

ren  talks  frequently  about  how  he  sees  names  as  a  wish  for  the  future.  for  example,  one  might  gift  their  child  a  name  that  means  prosperity  or  love  in  the  hopes  that  their  life  might  be  rife  with  those  things.  it's  for  a  similar  reason  that  he  chose  to  name  himself  after  the  LOTUS  FLOWER.  it's  most  definitely  inspired  by  the  aesthetic  similarities  to  the  clothes  irminsul  decided  to  adorn  him  in  when  it  spat  him  back  out  —  but  more  importantly,  a  lotus  flower  is  meant  to  symbolize  rebirth.  it  rises  from  muddy  waters  to  unfurl  petals  untainted  by  the  filth  it  was  planted  in.  it's  a  sentiment  ren  very  much  relates  to  —  he  also  wants  to  bloom  from  his  painful  past.

[note-boom]

Life and Death Parallels within the ADA

Someone in a tag said a while back to throw some of my tags of this post onto a post, and I meant to do it way back in February but kind of got lost to the timestream.

But I'm back and I really do have thoughts about the way the ADA is structured to really be, as Atsushi was told just before the Kamui revelation, a place where the members give the organisation unique strengths that cover each other's weaknesses. And I thought about how there's a sort of equal divide between the older generation (Ranpo, Yosano, Dazai, and Kunikida) and the younger generation (Kyouka, Kenji, Tanizaki, Atsushi) and how each of these characters have both a similar aged parallel to them in the agency as well as a minor-adult parallel.

I'll try to be as concise as possible (I failed), but hear me out...

We have Ranpo/Yosano, Dazai/Kunikida, Atsushi/Tanizaki, and Kyouka/Kenji as similar-aged parallel sets that pair a death-coded individual with a life-coded individual. On the the adult-minor side, you have Ranpo/Kenji, Yosano/Atsushi, Dazai/Kyouka, and Tanizaki/Kunikida as parallel sets in their story arcs rather than thematic ones.

So, to start with the first set.

Ranpo (life-coded) and Yosano (death-coded): I feel as if these two have sort of reached the most balanced level of thematic parallels than any of the other pairings. Ranpo's past was full of this enjoyment with life where his parents' occupations dealing with darker forces of the world were hidden from him. Meanwhile, Yosano's past was full of death and darkness that was not hidden from her. And in Yosano's backstory, she was called the angel of death; in Ranpo's Origins tale with Fukuzawa, he confronted an angel of death of a sort. Yosano was deteriorating into death while Ranpo was slowly thriving under Fukuzawa. And then they met...and Ranpo found someone to bring back to life, and a place in the ADA where he could use murders and death and the darkness of the world to spread light/life by literally shining light on the mysteries, while Yosano found a place where she could use death to bring life in the ADA.

Dazai (death-coded) and Kunikida (life-coded): I think this parallel of life/death manifests the most in their ideals...Dazai's ideal is sort of entrenched in death and trying to die a painless suicide while Kunikida is all about spreading life for himself and others no matter how much pain it brings him. What's so wrong with these two is that they also have inclinations towards their "opposite coding," so to speak. We constantly see people pointing out Kunikida's secret desire to die while we clearly see Dazai doing his uttermost to live a good life and carry on Oda's legacy. Life haunts Kunikida as much as death haunts Dazai, and yet death chases after Kunikida (all the people he's witnessed dying, RIP) as much as life comes after Dazai (all his failed suicide attempts, double RIP)

Atsushi (life-coded) and Tanizaki (death-coded): This is honestly pretty tricky because we barely know anything about Tanizaki. Even though Kunikida and Dazai's past-pasts are still pretty mysterious, we have a good grasp on their characters. But Tanizaki's personality dissonance and as-of-yet unknown past with his sister definitely contrasts with the way we're know Atsushi's past and values. Both, however, are incredibly protective, but the way Tanizaki and Atsushi approach it is pretty different; Tanizaki seems to have this mentality that he must kill the threat while Atsushi seems determined more to save the victim. (I also find that one throwaway about "wimp of the east (Tanizaki)/wimp of the west (Atsushi)" interesting because maybe it's just in western lit, but west denotes sunsets and death while east denotes sunrises and rising, except in Buddhism where the west is shown as a direction of enlightenment(info check?)...which provides another host of interesting parallels to Atsushi and his relation to the book but let's not go there). All in all, these two are a bit of a stretch, but it's interesting to see that Atsushi's mysteries lie more towards the future (usually associated with life) while Tanizaki's life more in the past.

Kenji (life-coded) and Kyouka (death-coded): This one's pretty straightforward, not just because they're the youngest members of the ADA. But you see their life philosophies and personalities lean towards what they're coded as, as well as their pasts (Kenji as a farmer, cultivating life, and Kyouka as an assassin, dealing death). And yet what drew each to the ADA....Kenji was drawn to the ADA after witnessing death after a lifetime of growing new life while Kyouka was drawn to the ADA after being given life after a long childhood of killing.

However, in the end, the Armed Detective Agency is a detective organisation devoted to saving people, and all of them end up choosing life for it. But the different ways they go about it just go to show that you can have any crazy skill and still spread some sort of life through it. All of them are haunted by death, anyway, and yet all of them choose to spread life regardless.

Now onto the second set, which I'll keep shorter by simply saying that the pairs - Ranpo/Kenji, Yosano/Atsushi, Dazai/Kyouka, and Tanizaki/Kunikida - just have similar story beats, in a sense.

Ranpo and Kenji raised fairly happy, rudely awakened by the world, and yet choosing to believe in continuing to keep up a positive attitude; I'd say, though, that Ranpo does it primarily through shutting his eyes to the world while unmasking it while Kenji does it through acknowledging its pain and refusing to let it bring him down.

Yosano and Atsushi both with honestly terrible childhoods spent witnessing some of the most cruel sides of human natures growing up to be champions of life, only Yosano has definitely developed more steel and walls while Atsushi's definitely softer and more open still (they're both crazy stubborn, though).

Then Dazai and Kyouka's past with the Port Mafia and a disillusionment in reality that was abruptly interrupted when they realised they had to do something about it as useless as it sounded; Dazai thanks to Oda dying and Kyouka thanks to Dazai telling her to save people anyway.

And again, Kunikida and Tanizaki's probably a stretch given we know nothing about their pasts, but I really really find it interesting that Kunikida was a former teacher and Atsushi first assumed Tanizaki and Naomi to be students; also, I've mentioned this in other posts but Kunikida and Tanizaki are paired together a lot and have...their moments. It's pretty interesting to perceive these two people with strong ideals that are almost the reversal of the other ("the world for one person" vs "myself (one person) for the world").

But yeah...that has been parallels within the ADA concerning themes of life and death and their character's narrative arcs.

Bonus? Fukuzawa and Naomi....a middle aged president and a teenaged clerk, both protective about the people they claim to be their own, smart in their own ways, with seemingly "support" roles.

[blitzbuckz]

℧ :: starter with / @yoroiis

【𐂃】 ❝ Christ on a stick WATCH YOUR AIM DIPSHIT !! ❞ It was unknown whether the "target" was the imp, or the creatures behind him, needless to say Blitz wasn't about to lay low and act as if nothing happened. The arrow nearly left a mark! and if there's one thing he didn't appreciate is another goddamn hole on his body!

[thehxrkness]

@thwipsthrown started following you

"Don't mind me, still getting used to this form."

[facesofjustice]

𝐒𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆  [  𝟎𝟎𝟐  ] || 𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐕𝐄𝐘  𝐃𝐄𝐍𝐓  &&  𝐓𝐖𝐎-𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐄  ─ 

𝐓𝐖𝐈𝐂𝐄 𝐈𝐍 𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐖𝐄𝐄𝐊 .

THEY WOULDN'T MAKE IT THREE NOW , WILL THEY ? 𝐓𝐖𝐎 IS KIND OF THEIR THING .

[usagimen]

the precursor to weeding out the weak in the rpc should be introducing them to your female oc and seeing the reaction

[normaltothemax]

this has never worked for me before, but this here is a super sneaky starter call nobody tell luke

[yingren]

happy halloween i'll be spending the night in a haunted house called my drafts and inbox

[memesomething]

one thing i DO think is pretty much everyone deserves a free pass when they are grieving. grief does weird things to the best of us. you are not weird or bad if you hurt in a way that people don't recognise. light a bonfire and throw all their property on it. destroy a kitchen. hurt the people you love so that they can't be someone you care about and you can't lose them. cry. shrug it off and keep going like nothing happened. clean a mansion (something to do). grief is grief is grief, there is not a wrong way to grieve