#-due to certain circumstances in the writing/media

[astro-b-o-y-d]

I think transmascs will truly have rights the day this website stops hailing Ozma as a trans woman icon and recognizes him for what he really was; a boy forced into detransitioning back into a girl because ‘it wasn’t honest for him to take the throne as a boy’ or whatever that bullshit was in the writing.

[birdofmay]

And again, as always: It would be nice if you guys could stop making this about yourselves. Whenever we post about our particular experience, people who normally can speak, but used to struggle with it, or struggle under certain circumstances, add on something to talk about themselves. This eventually leads to people talking about something completely different, and ignoring what the post was about at first. Make your own post. We are constantly spoken over even in online spaces, and that's especially unfair because we struggle to communicate even more than other autistics. Don't derail posts about people who never learned to speak from the very beginning and won't learn it ever. That's unfair.

Sometimes I see people on here who want to be good allies to nonverbal autistics, but at the same time don't understand nonverbal autism at its core.

Most of us, who are nonverbal "from birth", struggle with language, to communicate, and to understand complex concepts. That's why we never learned to speak at all, ever.

But their strategy is to "hand us the mic" and ask "What are some misconceptions about nonverbal autism you'd like to discuss?" and expect us to respond.

"Misconceptions" is an abstract concept. Most of us can't just come up with an answer; my mind, for example, goes completely blank when I read this.

I wanted to talk about allies assuming that our brain works similar for at least 2 weeks, but it's only now that I am able to write something. 2 weeks!

Sure, there are autistics who can't speak due to apraxia, and who don't struggle with language otherwise, apart from the "not being able to speak with their mouth" part. But that's rare.

Even my ability to express myself well is rare. I am not your average nonverbal autistic. I am very skilled compared to the rest of us.

One thing about "never learning to speak" is that most of us really really struggle with language, and with understanding big words and topics. Not everyone, but many of us. That's why most of us aren't on social media.

Whenever I write "educational" posts, my inbox is flooded with follow up questions I just can't answer without help. Because most of the time I don't understand the text. I regularly have to close my inbox because people assume that I can process the text and respond like everyone else can. But having these abilities is an exception within autistics who never learned to speak from the very beginning. It seems normal, but those people just are the loudest. Because they're on social media and love to participate in discussions.

Most of us can't do that.

I'm glad that I made some speaking friends here who made an effort to understand us thoroughly, and they now often repeat what we think and want "but louder". Listen to them, most of us can't advocate for ourselves. They're not speaking over us, they're helping us to communicate without draining our energy.

And for everything else I have some posts linked in my pinned post because I can't just participate in discussions.

[pinkkittysaw]

BUT I CAN’T STOP STARING IN THOSE EVIL EYES

title is based off a lyric in lady gaga’s MONSTER

my halloween night of horrors masterlist can be found here!

pairing: plaga leon s. kennedy x plaga f!reader

summary: while wandering through an ill kept factory, you and leon grow closer in unimaginable ways due to unforeseen circumstances

word count: 5,648

content: NSFW (minors + ageless blogs DNI you will be blocked!) minor dub-con (in the beginning), slightly rough leon, mind control, notes of voyuerism, fingering, male masturbation, boot humping, minor breast/nipple play, unprotected p in v, creampie, breeding, degradation, praise, petnames (baby, princess, sweetie) leon steps on you, reader is wearing a skirt

*some things to note: though saddler is willing leon and reader into having sex, they both want to sleep with each other of their own volition regardless of the plaga’s influence, it’s the circumstances surrounding it that makes them apprehensive

there are lines of dialogue from RE4R used in paragraphs 12, 14-15, 18, 23 & 39. i do not claim to own these lines or any media from Capcom

a/n: first time writing for leon so please be kind!!! i am just a simple mouse girl :( i thought it’d be interesting to write the plaga “overtaking” him and reader in a sense, watching his mood change drastically much like how it does in the OG RE 4 in this scene with ada (choking cw)

divider by @/benkeibear

You stare at the huge chunk of amber in front of you; it's pretty. The reflecting light gives it a soft orange hue, brightening the dull room it inhabits. After closer inspection, you notice what appears to be hundreds, if not thousands, of Las Plagas encased in the resin. You were almost too scared to be looking at them for so long, fearful that the parasites would jump out at you from their confinement once you crossed a certain threshold.

Cocking your head to the side, you think aloud, "I wonder if this is where they extract the plaga."

Leon, who's rummaging around the room looking for any spare supplies, pipes up, "Who knows? I certainly don't feel like waiting around to find out. Come on." He waves you over, walking toward the exit after determining that none of the scrap in the room was worth taking.

"Alright," you agree, beginning to move towards him.

Then, all of a sudden, your movements are halted, unable to continue forward. "Fuck, no no no,” you think to yourself. Leon looks behind his shoulder, noticing that you haven't moved from your position.

"What are you doing? Let's go." You can barely speak, clenching your teeth together as you force the words out.

"I can't fucking move." You demonstrate your lack of mobility as you attempt to force your body forward, but the most that happens is the slight twitching of your arm and legs.

"What?" Leon's about to stride over to you when the door opens behind him. He's quick on his feet, his gun in the air, aiming his pistol at the tall figure and a group of robed cultists that soon follow him into the room.

"Welcome, my children," he states as the two followers remove the hood of his purple robe, the rest filing around the two of you.

"I am Osmund Saddler. The speaker for our Lord."

Leon, obviously fed up with all the loony bullshit, shoots Saddler straight in the eye. "Tell someone who gives a shit."

Saddler reels back from the shot but doesn't die, staying hunched over due to the impact. "Foolish lambs," he scoffs. "Why do you deny grace?" The volume of his voice rises, and all at once, Leon keels over, taking a knee as he almost completely falls to the floor in front of you, now frozen in place while his gun falls from his hands.

You try to reach out to him, but your movements are stunted.

"Now, abandon your body." Your body is not your own.

"Obey, obey the voice of our lord," Saddler commands as your forced motions bring you closer to Leon. There's a ringing in your ears as he gives you orders; the noise is so piercing that you're ready to stuff your ears full of cotton just to make it stop.

Leon's now back on his feet, his veins turning black against his skin as his arm reaches out to you. His body trembles as he extends forward. You're compelled to move onward slowly, reaching down for Leon's pistol.

"Stop, please," you plead, your wrist swaying back and forth as the gun locks onto Leon. "No," you grit, resisting with everything you have while your arm continues to wobble. Tears stream down your face as you're forced to pull the trigger, shooting one of the cultists to Leon's side, watching them drop dead to the floor.

"Sweet child, do not resist." His commands turn into scolding. The ringing in your ears gets louder as your arm moves again. "Please," you wail into the open air, willing to give anything as long as it meant that he stayed alive. The trigger is pulled again, and the other masked figure drops to the ground.

Leon's face coils up, and his body jerks, trying to reach you, but to no avail.

"I'm sorry," you whisper as you pull the trigger for the final time, scrunching up your eyes, not wanting to witness his lifeless body drop to the floor. The gun clicks and falls in front of you while you collapse onto your knees, sobbing onto the floor beneath, your tears staining the dark concrete floors.

Leon is released from his own entrapment and rushes over to comfort you, placing both his hands on your shoulders. "Are you okay?"

It's funny, you think, in a twisted sort of way. You almost killed him, and here he was, asking if you were alright.

"Pray forgive these wicked sinners," Saddler exhales while shaking his head. Leon's about to lunge for his gun when you're both halted once more.

"Injecting one's blood with the plaga isn't the only way to diffuse it among the populous."

Both you and Leon are manipulated until you're standing in front of each other, his hand reaching out to grab at your hip.

"What are you doing?"

"It's not me, I-"

He gets cut off by Saddler. "The plaga can reproduce sexually as well as through implantation." And it's all of a sudden that you feel a certain heat growing inside you—desire, a sort of carnality—and if the crimson on Leon's cheeks is anything to go by, he's feeling it too. There's a certain glint in his eyes now, a hunger that wasn't there before. Both his and your irises turn a bright vermillion as the plaga fully takes control. It's overwhelming. All of your senses are heightened, now very much cognizant of Leon's hand on your hip, the warmth of his skin permeating through your skirt. All you want now is for him to bend you over and take you.

You shake your head in the hopes of clearing your mind. God, when did you start harboring such intense feelings for him like this? This can't be okay, can it? He saved your life. He's a government agent simply doing his job to rescue you from this hell hole. That's what these feelings are—just misplaced appreciation. You try to reason with yourself as the growing need between your legs calls more and more for your attention.

"What the hell's going on?" Your voice is harsh as it cuts through the air. Leon's grip tightens on your hip, almost as if he's holding himself back.

"Is it not obvious, sweet child? You two have perfect compatibility as sexual mates, and since you're both able to resist killing each other, I'll just have to change my line of thinking and make things easier for you."

"Don't be ridiculous," Leon grunts.

"Why deny it? It's quite clear that you're attracted to each other."

"I barely even needed to coax the plaga into doing anything."

As fucked up as this entire situation was, Saddler wasn't wrong, at least in regard to your side of things. You were intrigued by Leon from the moment he found you, rescuing you after being hog-tied and thrown into one of the wardrobes of an abandoned cabin. He was still incredibly handsome, even if you didn't trust him at first. From the subtle bounce of his soft ashen hair when he jogged to the bulge of his biceps whenever he slicked his fingers through the silky strands and how he was so protective over you, so kind. You could go on and on listing the things you found attractive about him. How he looked suplexing zealots, the slope of his nose bridge, his little smirk after roundhousing ganados, the thickness of his thighs, the swell of his **very** defined chest, and god, his ass. His cute, full-pert ass that you could just-

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

This isn't right. You shouldn't be thinking of him this way, but no matter how much you try to resist, you're always coaxed back into these feelings of sensuality. You'd be lying if you said you didn't think of him fucking you against one of the crumbling walls in the village, holding you so tightly against him while he tugs on your tits. Arousal pools in your panties as heat rushes to your face at the thought.

"Fuck," you murmur, and Leon looks over at you, his breath more labored than before. 

"Submit your bodies and release yourself from fear!" Saddler booms, waving his staff around in the air. It's then that you feel Leon's hand underneath your skirt, cupping your mound through your tights, his other hand still gripping at your waist. 

"Leon-" you say exasperatedly.

"I'm sorry, I just..." he leans into you, inhaling your scent. "I'm sorry." His lips press into the side of your neck, slowly moving against the sensitive skin. It's so gentle and kind, and if you close your eyes, you can almost pretend that you're somewhere else, not in a dusty room of an old factory, being coerced to have sex through the means of a parasite.

"You're so soft...smell so good," he mumbles into your ear. Even if you're forced to fuck in front of Saddler and his devotees, Leon at least wants his words of care and fondness to be private—to be yours.

You can't help but moan out loud at his ministrations on your neck, feeling your skin crawl with a newfound heat. Your nipples pebble in your bra, and how desperately you want his hands to be on your breasts, kneading them. You wrap your arms around his neck, curling your fingers into the smooth, pale tresses at his nape.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he confesses over and over. He knows this is wrong. He should have a stronger will than this. He shouldn't be sleeping with the hostage he was tasked with saving. This wasn't how it was supposed to go, if at all. He probably wouldn't have confronted his feelings in any other circumstances, seeing how wildly inappropriate they were. He would've rather taken you somewhere nice—maybe a fancy hotel—and do all the sappy, romantic shit you deserve—the candles, the music, the mood lighting. It'd be sweet and kind, but no. Instead, you get this, being made to breed like cattle. The only comfort he can offer is through his words, his mind trying to fight against the plaga, but you smell too good, your skin so supple and warm against his mouth; it's almost as if he can feel the blood pulsing through your jugular vein. He gently grazes his teeth over the area, biting and pulling the skin taught.

"Don't apologize. You feel good too," you exhale, pushing your chest against his.

"I shouldn't let this sick bastard have so much control over me, but god, you feel so good against me," he groans, worming his hand under the band of your tights and underwear. You loll your head back as his assault on your neck continues. He sucks the skin gently as the worn leather of his gloves makes its presence known against your mound. His finger swipes between your slit, gathering the wetness leaking from your entrance to rub soft circles on your clit.

"Christ, you're already so wet for me, baby," he groans against your neck, your breath hitching at his words.

"Oh, you like that, huh?" An amused tilt now present in his voice, the soft circles on your clit continuing as he speaks against your throat. "You like me calling you baby?"

"Yeah," you mewl, your hand reaching down to grip his forearm.

"That's it. Just focus on me making you feel good." Your cute noises cause blood to rush to his cock, making it stiffen in his pants. Your head rests against his chest as he continues to play with you.

"You want my fingers, baby?"

"Yes," you pant, pressing your face into the middle of his chest. He lets out a lighthearted chuckle, his digit circling your entrance before sinking into your warm cunt. "Oooh, you're so tight, sweetie. Squeezing my finger real nice."

"I can't wait til you're on my cock." he mumbles against your throat once again, smirking. His finger curls deep into your soaked pussy, thrusting in and out as you grind against his palm.

"Yes, yes, yes," you gasp, his lips resuming the suckling of your skin as he adds another finger, stuffing your cunt with their thickness, the leather of his gloves wet with your slick as it glides against your clit. You look down from his chest to see his hardened cock starting to poke through his utility pants. Your hand wriggling down to slowly palm him through the fabric, a soft moan rearing from his throat at your touch.

Through feeling him against your palm, he seems to be an impressive size, definitely girthy from what you can make out.

You slide your hand back and forth against the crotch of his pants, his hips lightly bucking into you as a grumbled "fuck" falls from his lips. He sounds so hot when he moans, and you want to hear more.

"I need you to come for me, sweetheart. I need your pussy on my cock so bad." He curls his fingers some more, hitting that soft, spongey spot that makes you see stars. A few more thrusts from his digits and nudges from his palm have you arching into him, his mouth swooping down to swallow your moans through a kiss. He's the only one that gets to hear you cum, despite the audience you both have.

He keeps his fingers stuffed in your cunt as you ride out your orgasm, the sensation of your pussy squeezing down on him making his head whirl in anticipation.

"That's it. That's a good girl," he murmurs, guiding you through the waves.

Despite having just came, you're still just as eager, if not more so, to palm him through his black cargos. 

"Easy, easy. You'll have me soon enough," he coos in an attempt to pacify you, removing your hand from his erection while you whine and grumble in response to the loss of touch, wanting him to mount you already.

He guides you onto the floor, laying you flat on the chilled concrete. The cold seeps into your clothes and skin, causing you to shiver almost uncomfortably so as you arch your back, spreading your legs as far as they'll go in your tight skirt. You take to palming your tits through your top, desperate for any kind of prolonged pleasure. 

"Someone's needy," he chuckles to himself while he looms over you, his broad shoulders casting a large shadow over your form.

"Come on, you'll be a good girl for me, won't you?" He moves to remove both of his belts, unbuckling them and letting them drop to the floor. Perhaps it wasn't the smartest decision to leave himself so exposed, but neither of you could be bothered enough to care.

The next thing to come off was his shoulder holster, the leather straps meeting the other discarded materials on the floor. It's only after his confines are removed that he begins pleasuring himself, reveling in your position on the floor, legs spread deliciously while the rest of you becomes utterly debauched, your expression filled with nothing other than need and want.

You whine out a little, desperate for his touch even after the fact. He smirks while walking toward you, his heavy boots echoing throughout the room with loud thuds til he stops just short of your cunt and sneers. Something about him is different. 

He plants his foot atop your mound, grinding the sole into your folds. There's no real force behind it, but it's oppressive and demeaning. He's not the same Leon. The Leon who told dumb jokes at every opportune moment, who ate multicolored herbs, both raw eggs and fish WHOLE, yet looked at you as if you were the crazy one for refusing, choosing not to believe him when he said they'd "mend your wounds." This was not the same Leon who pulled you aside after you ran off scared, giving you words of reassurance and encouragement just as he had throughout this whole endeavor. No, this Leon was more sinister.

Your whines and mewls get a little more pathetic, rolling your hips and grinding yourself on his boot in a desperate attempt for any friction that he'd give you—which wasn't much, but still, anything was better than nothing!

In the midst of your pouting, you catch Saddler's eye. His expression is blank, almost as if he were watching paint dry. His attendants were dismissed by this point, as they had no need to witness the impregnation take place. You can't help but stare at him, his eyes oddly captivating, unable to help but wonder what he thinks of this. Surely he’s the one controlling you both, but is this a last effort of sorts? Making two "subjects" fuck like rabbits just for the sake of spreading his message, his word, and his so-called "vision" Was sex something that he looked down on? Something shameful?

You're pulled out of your thoughts when Leon whistles at you. "Would you rather fuck him instead, princess?" He jeers in a mocking tone. You frown and furrow your brows, glaring at him as you deliver a bratty "no" in response.

"Then keep your eyes on me, yeah?" He sneers as he grinds his heel into you some more, swiping his foot from side to side, knocking the grooves into your clit. He laughs as you continuously mewl into the air, squeezing your tits through your clothes, begging for more attention. Instead of aiding you in your frustrated disposition, he decides to be a little crueler, reaching down to palm his cock through his pants. His head lolls back as he lets out a soft groan, the sound causing more arousal to flood in between your legs.

You moan, your eyes scanning his features—the bob of his Adam's apple, the softness of his jaw, the way his teeth dig into the plush of his bottom lip.

Deciding to prod further, he pulls out his leaking cock from his pants, and you can't help the gasp that escapes you at the sight. He has an adorable ash-blonde happy trail running down his navel that fans into darker, coarse curls at the base of his cock. It has a slight left curve to it and a pretty pink tip. The look of it is tantalizing and mouth-watering. Your mind is flooded with every memory you’ve had of wanting Leon to fuck you silly during this godforsaken nightmare. Now you have a visual to go along with your many fantasies—a pretty cock for an equally pretty man.

You expected him to be in a hurry to fuck you, but he does something unexpected. He keeps his foot on your cunt. You attempt to sit up, your abdomen contracting as you begin to move upward, when he plants his boot on your chest instead, right on your sternum, effectively pushing you flat on your back again.

"Did I give you permission to move?" He stares, cocking his head and quirking a brow, looking down at you as if he were scolding a misbehaving puppy. His carmine irises meet yours as you attempt to shove off his foot by his ankle, though soon finding it pointless as the boot remains firm and steady against you.

You shake your head with a petulant "no," grumbling as his foot takes hold of your chest, pressing lightly on your rib cage, making it somewhat difficult to breathe.

"Then don't get greedy," he chastises, moving his boot back to its previous position on your cunt, leaving a muddy footprint in its wake. Instead of providing you with the friction you wanted, his limb now lays idle against you.

You frown at the brown stain left on your top, glaring at him once more. "You ruined my shirt!"

"I'll tell you what: when this is all said and done, I'll get you a new top. How bout that princess?"

You roll your eyes, grumbling as his hand moves toward his mouth, yanking off his fingerless gloves with his teeth and tossing them among the pile of his other forgotten items.

Warm palms slither down his torso, making their way to his cock, where he squeezes the base, shaking it in the air a tad, teasing you with it.

It's well-known at this point how much you desire him. The plaga floods both of you with nothing but thoughts of you two fucking each other. He watches you eye his cock thoroughly, gnawing at your bottom lip with how badly you wanted him to fill you up.

He languidly begins to pump his hand up and down, precum leaking from his pretty tip all the way down his shaft, creating all the slip he needs. You start to buck your hips against his boot, desperate for your own pleasure, which he still refuses to give you. His hand continues to move along his cock; the rough callouses on his palm are a stark contrast to the glisten of his slick-covered dick.

You huff and puff as he continues to jerk off, growing tired of being teased and tormented. His thumb glides along the slit of his cock head, causing his hips to buck and shudder. You were like a rabbit on a treadmill, his cock being the carrot on the string you were being teased with, so close yet so far...

"Leon, you're being mean," you scowl, feeling grumpy and grouchy, tired of his damn games, your panties soaked through with your arousal, craving any sort of attention.

"Mean?" he asks, pressing his foot further into you, pumping himself a smidgen faster while his pectoral muscle begins to bounce with his quickened pace.

"If I were mean, I'd make you cum just like this while you watch me jack off."

"And since you want to act like such a little brat, maybe that's exactly what I'll do." He speeds up again, twirling his wrist as he fucks his fist, his grunts and groans filling the air among your whines.

"No, no, no, no," you cry, watching him buck into his hand as the slick makes his cock even more slippery.

A pink hue floods his cheeks as heat builds in his body, sweat gathering on the threads of his clothes.

"No?" he mocks with a feigned pout. "You want my cock that badly, huh? Want it to fill you up? Stuff you full?"

"Mhm," you nod incessantly, heat flooding your own face as well, the arousal so overwhelming that you feel as if you’ll burst.

"Why don't you beg for it? Beg for my cock."

You look at him apprehensively. Was he really gonna make you beg for him like a cock-hungry fool?

"I'm not joking about finishing you off with my boot. You'll get no dick and no cum." His efforts hastened, his hips twitching every so often. He’s serious, and so are you, so despite your "strong-willed bratty nature," you beg and you plead for his cock like a good girl.

"Please gimme your cock, Leon. Need it so bad. Need you to fuck me dumb; turn my brain into mush."

"I think you can do better than that princess," he smirks down at you, huffing slightly from the continued pleasure.

Your words turn into a slew of pleas and jumbled moans varying from saying you'll "die without his dick," "how badly you need it," and "how desperate you are for it," all of which boil down to you whining please over and over and over. When he's finally decided that you've made your case, he staves off his release, gripping the base of his cock so as not to finish right in his hand.

He drops to his knees, grabbing and pulling you towards him by your hips, your thighs settling on either side of his while he hovers over you. All his movements are quick and hasty in nature as he hikes up the bottom of your skirt over your pelvis, allowing you to spread your legs further and welcome him into the warmth between your thighs.

He stares down at your black tights below him, now transparent enough to see through to your pale-colored underwear from the fabric being stretched so far. He wastes no time in grabbing the crotch of your tights at the seam and effectively tearing a huge hole in them, his biceps bulging as he rips the fabric from your body. He stares down at the cute design of your panties as your tights lay in shreds against your leg, his eyes settling on the front of the fabric, the wet splotch soaking through from your previous orgasm.

He moves his hand over to your cunt, running his middle and ring fingers through your slit. He settles on your clit, rubbing the sticky fabric against you as he swirls the bundle of nerves in slow circles.

"I've wanted you since the moment I laid eyes on you. I'm surprised that I held out as long as I did without fucking you."

"Leon," you groan. "No more… I wanna feel you, please," you mumble, reaching out to him as a final stand to get what you desperately crave.

He finally gives in, tugging down the waistband of his pants, landing on the swell of his thighs and below the curve of his ass, exposing the stretch marks that litter his hips and upper thighs.

"See something you like, princess?" he teases, pumping his cock a few times in preparation.

"Mhm, mhm," you nod eagerly as he begins to move toward you. Luckily, your panties are spared from his strength as he chooses to simply pull them aside instead of tearing them apart. He mumbles a grumbly "fuck" as he gets a look at your sweet cunt for the first time. The hair covering your mound shines as your arousal spreads throughout your folds. He doesn’t stop himself from running a finger in between the seam of your pussy, gathering the slick on the pad of his digit and sticking it in his mouth, groaning at the taste of your sweetness.

"Delicious," he mutters as he lays his cock against the warm heat of your sex, giving you a closer look at just how big he is.

He lines himself up at your entrance, and without so much as a warning, he thrusts into you down to the base. You arch into him, your breasts pressing into his chest as your back curves in his direction, a hearty moan coming from both of you. He stretches you out better than in your fantasies, your warm, wet walls clenching down on him as he twitches inside.

"Let's take care of this, yeah?" He asks, lifting your upper half into the air and placing you on your elbows. He lifts your top over the peak of your breasts, ogling the sight of your tits filling out your bra, trapped within their confinement, before he's reaching behind you to fumble with the clasp of the garment. A part of you is amused while watching him struggle, but it's not long after that the cups are falling from your body, your breasts free to Leon’s eyes and the open air as he pulls the straps down your shoulders, flinging the undergarment toward the pile of other forgotten items. He decides to keep your shirt on, enjoying the disheveled, fucked-out look you have with your clothes half on and half off, letting the top stay wrinkled above your tits.

"Perfect," he mumbles, moving his head toward your chest to mouth at it, planting open-mouth kisses along the swell of your breast as his hips begin to roll languidly. He gives you a few slow strokes, just to get acquainted with each other's bodies, before it quickly turns into a hurried fucking.

His hips knock into yours in quick succession, his girth smoothing over every ridge and groove in your tight cunt, leaving you panting into the air as he grunts and groans against your breast. His body pressed so tightly against yours.

His lips find your nipple, his tongue swirling around the areola before pulling the nub into his mouth. The roll of his hips and the suckling of your nipple add to your growing pleasure. You buck your hips in tandem with his, desperate to feel every bit of pleasure you can.

"So greedy, huh, princess? Just need your cute cunt, fucked huh? Anything goes as long as you feel good, right?"

You whine, clenching down on him, squeezing his cock tight as he fucks you thoroughly. He pulls away from your chest, grabbing your hips tight in his grasp, his fingers digging deep into your skin.

"God, you’re perfect for me," he mumbles, leaning back so he's standing straight on his knees, his hands pulling you down on his cock as he brutally thrusts back into you. "So perfect for me to breed." You swear you can see a glint in his eyes as he says that, and your pussy pulsates around him even more.

"You like that, huh?" he teases, punctuating every word in the sentence with a brutal thrust. "You like the thought of being all mine? being claimed by me? Me fucking my kids into you? Knocking you up?"

You mewl and wail, nodding and gasping and heaving; the only thing you care about at this moment is him fucking you full of his seed.

The snap of his hips continues to get quicker, your soft breasts bouncing so pretty as you lay beneath him, your worn and fucked-out expression giving him nothing but joy. His rhythm gets so quick that he manages to slip out of your vice-like grip, causing a low and extended whine to draw out from your lips. He chuckles, enjoying how desperate you are for his body, and leans himself into you once more while he guides his cock back into you, his thrusts regaining their previous speed.

His hand pushes one of your thighs toward your chest, rolling his hips deeper so he can more easily hit the spot that makes your eyes cross, the coil in your belly winding tighter and tighter as he fucks into you with more vigor. You can’t stop your hands from wandering as you grab the plush of his ass, squeezing the fat while you writhe underneath him. You pant into his mouth, trying to signal him for a kiss, to which he happily obliges, meeting your lips with his as he continues to drive you further and further to the edge.

"Gonna cum for me, princess?"

"Gonna cum on my cock like a good girl?"

"Want it so bad, please?" You moan, sneaking your hand down to the front of your body and rubbing quick circles to your clit.

"Go ahead, princess, cum for me," he mumbles, nestling his head in the crux of your neck, sucking on your pulse point. As his hips continue to thrust into you, you arch intensely into him, moaning loudly as you reach your climax, your eyes rolling into the recesses of your mind as your nails claw into the meat of his ass, leaving pretty, red crescent-shaped divots in his porcelain skin.

You run your hand through his silky blonde strands as you position yourself next to his ear. "Cum with me, Leon," you mutter, still reeling from the aftereffects of your high, the additional thrusting adding to the lingering pleasure still felt. "Cum in me, please. Wanna be stuffed full of you." You lick a stripe up his neck, the salt from his sweat lingering on your tastebuds.

It's a few short and sloppy thrusts later that he's grunting loudly into your skin while he cums, ropes of his seed traveling to your womb.

The door can be heard shutting behind you as Saddler makes his exit, Leon's hips slowing to a full stop once he’s left. With the impregnation going through, he no longer needs to bother himself with whatever the two of you do from here on out.

It’s a few minutes later that the both of you begin to feel normal again, or as normal as you can be given the dire situation. It doesn’t take long for Leon to recover, his baby blues greeting you once more as he snaps to attention, getting himself situated as he puts on his gear and adjusts his clothes, keeping a watchful eye on you as you start to do the same, picking up your bra from his things on the floor.

After getting dressed, he’s immediately at your side. "I'm so sorry. I-"

You cut him off with a finger placed on his lips and a shake of your head. Your face is tired and weary, and your voice a little strained as you tell him, "It's alright."

He’s not willing to argue with you on the ethics of what went down, at least not here, so he decides to put off the conversation til you’re both safe back home, hopefully having figured out some sort of plan by then.

"Are you good enough to move? We shouldn't linger around."

You nod, moving to fully take off your tights before making your departure, seeing as you have no more use for the tattered fabric. The torn material catches his eye, causing embarrassment to rise throughout his face, his cheeks taking on the same rosy hue as before.

"I'll make good on my word, I promise. I’ll get you a new shirt and some tights when we get back. For now…"  He walks towards the exit. "We need to get rid of these damn things," he says, pointing to his chest. He checks his jammed gun, ejecting the magazine and resetting the casing before gesturing you over toward him, readying the weapon in front of him before the two of you begin to make your way out of the factory.

Needless to say, this would NOT be going in his incident report.

[de-fanzine-cpr-pale]

SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW OPEN!

For ART go >HERE<.

For WRITING go >HERE<.

SUBMISSIONS ARE DUE SATURDAY OCTOBER 19, 2024 at 3:59 AM UTC (Coordinated Universal Time).

LINK: DUE DATE TIME AND DATE IN YOUR TIME ZONE

If you need more time, direct message (DM) me on Discord at dr.tycho or on Tumblr @de-fanzine-cpr-pale as soon as possible.

Please do not post your submission publicly online anywhere until the zine is released! Thank you!

~~~

If you are doing mixed media (both art and writing), please fill out both forms!

If you are doing a collaboration (collab), fill out the part of the collaboration you are doing (art if you are the artist, writing if you are the writer).

If you have any questions about submissions or this form, DM me on Discord at dr.tycho or on Tumblr @de-fanzine-cpr-pale as soon as possible.

If you submit something, and you did NOT fill out the sign-up form (I will be cross-checking), I will not accept your submission! Please direct message (DM) at @de-fanzine-cpr-pale or @p0rchc0ll4ps3, and we can figure something out! Sign-ups may be closed, but I will accept anyone who still wants to join who is willing to work on a tighter schedule (I will not be giving you an extension unless certain circumstances come up and are discussed with me).

~~~

General Guidelines

If you do not provide either name or username (neither are required), you will be listed as "Anonymous."

As per the theme of the zine, lyrics should be included in your piece or in the title!

Optional but highly encouraged! Include the theme of past, present, or future in your work. More information below the cut.

Writing must be submitted as a PDF only. The PDF must include only prose. The file name should be USERNAME_NAME_OF_PIECE. Italics must be denoted in game style (*word*).

Art must be submitted as a LINK to your submission from IMGUR or Google Drive. Make sure downloads are allowed. Art must be 300 DPI resolution. Art must be 5400 ⨯ 3633 pixels (A3, landscape) for full spread, 2500 ⨯ 3713 pixels (A4, portrait) for single page, or 2621 ⨯ 3847 pixels (A4, portrait) per page (up to five (5) pages) for comics. File name should be USERNAME_NAME_OF_PIECE.

REMINDER! Sexual NSFW, 18+ and fetish content, and suggestive themes are NOT ALLOWED. We have minors participating in this zine. Submissions found with any of this content will result in a ban from the zine and potential future zines organized by me (k1ll3r-k4rg0 / p0rchc0ll4ps3).

Depictions of heavy topics ARE allowed within reason, but just remember to list them in the provided space on the forms! We are not trying to make an X rated / whump zine, but the game does deal with darker themes. Thank you for your understanding!

Twitter Version HERE

More In-Depth Guidelines and Format Examples Under the Cut

This information is the same as the information found on each form.

THEME OPTION

Does your piece describe past memories, present events, or future hopes and fears? You do not need to strictly adhere to this. These themes are a way to thematically tie everyone's pieces together as well as provide an organization scheme to the zine. This zine is intended to be a scrapbook of memories, after all.

Past relates to things that have happened before the events of the game, memories you or the characters want to preserve or forget. Present relates to events of the game as well as things that happen around those events, the new life that the characters are going into, unexplored territories, and bonds forming and breaking. This is the here and now. Future relates to events that happen way ahead from now. Revolution, for example, or the failure to achieve it. Whatever you may think the characters will be going through in the months and years to come after the main events of the game. Whatever hopes or dreams or fears they may have.

ZINE FORMATTING

The format on the zine will appear as follows:

ARTISTS

SUBMISSION TITLE [submission image] YOUR NAME (your username)

OR

SUBMISSION TITLE YOUR NAME (your username) [submission image]

Content warnings for art will appear at the beginning of the zine (subject to change).

WRITERS

Your Name (your username) Submission Title Word Count Submission Characters + Relationships (if any) Tags (if any) Content Warnings (if any) Submission Summary [submission]

GUIDELINES

>Artists<

You must submit a LINK to your submission from IMGUR or Google Drive. Make sure downloads are allowed.

As per the theme of the zine, lyrics should be included in your piece or in the title!

Art must be 300 DPI resolution. The size on your canvas should be set to PIXELS (px) or POINTS (pt).

File name should be USERNAME_NAME_OF_PIECE. If you do not have a username, use your name, and if you have neither just title it ANONYMOUS_NAME_OF_PIECE.  Example Given: k1ll3r-k4rg0_endlessly.png

Submit ONE of these: Page Artists: Double Page A3 Landscape or Single Page A4 Portrait Comic Artists: Comic Pages Sized A4 (Up to Five (5) Pages)

If you do not follow sizing guidelines, I may have to crop your image.

Page Artists:

Please submit 1 piece of art that features a clean sketch, clean line art, or no line art that is fully colored or toned (includes grayscale / monotone).

Double-Page Spread Art (A3, Landscape Horizontal, Wide [     ]) ——5400 ⨯ 3633 pixels (px) (4050 ⨯ 2725 points (pt)) landscape

LAYOUT EXAMPLE:

Single-Page Spread Art (A4, Portrait Vertical, Tall [ ] ) ——2500 ⨯ 3713 pixels (px) (1875 ⨯ 2785 points (pt)) portrait

LAYOUT EXAMPLE:

Comic Artists:

Please submit five (5) maximum pages of art that feature a clean sketch, clean line art, or no line art that are fully colored or toned (includes grayscale / monotone).

Comic (A4, Portrait Vertical, Tall [ ] ) ——2621 ⨯ 3847 pixels (px) (1966 ⨯ 2885 points (pt)) portrait

LAYOUT EXAMPLE:

If you do not follow sizing guidelines, I may have to crop your image.

>WRITERS<

Writers: Please submit one (1) piece of writing no longer than five thousand words (5k). The writing can be prose, a poem, a script, etc. It must be in English, as I have to make sure the content is not breaking any rules. Your piece should be polished! (basically: if you are not good at grammar, that is okay; I would simply suggest you look over the piece / edit it / polish it before submitting!).

Please submit a PDF only.

As per the theme of the zine, lyrics should be included in your piece or in the title!

Italics must be denoted in game style (*word*).

Submit the PDF with prose only.All the extra information such as title, word count, characters, tags, etc. should be filled out in this form.

File name should beUSERNAME_NAME_OF_PIECE. If you do not have a username, use your name, and if you have neither just title it ANONYMOUS_NAME_OF_PIECE.  Example Given: k1ll3r-k4rg0_endlessly.pdf

LAYOUT EXAMPLE:

[destinygoldenstar]

Hot Take: Plot Armor is not a criticism most of the time.

The definition of plot armor is: ‘A plot device wherein a fictional character is preserved from harm due to their necessity for the plot to proceed.’ -Wikipedia

If you have a plot that involves several characters getting hurt/eliminated/killed, then if you ask me, that automatically makes any character spared from these fates having plot armor.

Harry Potter survived the Deathly Hallows because he had the plot armor for that to happen.

Luke Skywalker wasn’t killed in Empire Strikes Back because he had the plot armor to be saved.

If you’re a protagonist, and you need to get from Point A to Point B, and the plot allows you to get to Point B, CONGRATULATIONS, YOU TECHNICALLY HAVE PLOT ARMOR

Insert action media here: Explain to me why the protagonist doesn’t die in a heartbeat.

The plot needs them to.

There may be a well written reason why they survive, like a certain skill, but at the end of the day, the plot had to write that skill in there for the protagonist to survive. So TECHNICALLY it’s Plot Armor.

But if it’s well written and you like it, then who cares if it’s plot armor or not?

Even some of your favorite characters have plot armor. If they get from Point A to Point B of the plot successfully, that’s technically plot armor.

So no, I don’t think Plot Armor is a correct criticism to use in certain circumstances.

If a character that you don’t like survives and makes it to Point B, the fault isn’t plot armor, the fault is for one reason or another, you don’t like the character.

If the story’s universe rules and logic are broken for the sake of a character making it to Point B, then yes it’s plot armor, but it would still be plot armor if it was ‘fixed’. The criticism isn’t ‘plot armor’ it’s ‘plot hole’.

PLEASE. Research your writing terms before you throw them around. Thank you.

[the-eeveekins]

While I'm on a roll, I'm going to go off on a little bit of a personal rant (continuing something I mentioned earlier), that's been on my mind due to some comments I've seen made about G-Witch and Sulemio in recent days. I normally try to avoid writing rants like this but this one has been grinding my gears a bit.

Yes, in the grand scheme of queer media, Sulemio's relationship can definitely come across as underwhelming. No one would deny that you can get more explicitly and textually queer stories out there, especially by queer creators. But that absolutely ignores some of the circumstances surrounding the show.

First, it's been made pretty obvious by now that the staff wasn't allowed to be very explicit in their depiction of Suletta & Miorine's relationship. The company that censored an interview and released a tone-deaf statement that their relationship should be "up to interpretation" because a VA said they were married obviously wasn't going to be cool with Suletta and Miorine kissing, saying I love you and getting married on screen. They would've put their foot down well before we got to the ending. And even then the staff did enough to make Suletta & Miorine explicitly married by the end of the show. They found ways around whatever limitations Bandai put into place to try and make Sulemio subtext, and made them a canon couple within the show itself. I get tired of people saying the show didn't explicitly and textually confirm their relationship and marriage because it does, just in a roundabout way via the "sister-in-law" line because they couldn't do it in a straightforward manner.

Seriously, by all accounts, it's not like the people making this show wanted to end Sulemio with "just handholding" and half-assed the relationship, they wanted to do more but couldn't. Just look at how some of the staff members depicted them in the artbook once they were off Bandai's leash: with multiple wedding pictures.

Second, it's actually a big deal that they ended the show married, even if they had to do it in a roundabout way. Yes, the yuri genre is generally going to have more explicit lesbian relationships than what we got with Sulemio, but the yuri genre isn't exactly mainstream. Dedicated yuri anime isn't airing in primetime and ending with the main couple married, it's usually late-night, niche and usually only gets one season that introduces the couple, maybe gives you a kiss, but forces you to finish the story through the LN/Manga. Mobile Suit Gundam is a popular, mainstream multi-media franchise that has been running for 44 years, and G-Witch was airing on prime time. The fact that a mainstream franchise like Gundam aired an anime series that was centered around a queer woman and a sapphic relationship that ended with the couple married is huge, especially considering the legal status of same-sex marriage in Japan. Niche yuri anime airing in the middle of the night can probably get away with a lot more gay content than a mainstream franchise airing in primetime can, especially when the franchise is owned by a bunch of old, conservative dudes.

As an anime fan, it's amazing to see a mainstream animated series like The Witch From Mercury focused around a queer woman and a sapphic relationship (and make it TEXTUAL, not relying on subtext to carry it), especially a series not specifically adapted from a yuri LN/Manga. And as a lesbian and a long time Gundam fan, seeing a major franchise I love like Gundam, that has always been dominated by male characters, air a series focused around a queer female MC and her relationship with another woman is a much bigger deal to me than a lot of random yuri series would ever be.

Reducing Sulemio to comparisons between other queer media or yuri series and how it's "inferior" to those because it lacked certain elements ignores and disregards the unique challenges and situation of The Witch From Mercury, and the way the staff fought to overcome those issues to deliver an explicit sapphic story ending in a married couple.

[my-favourite-zhent]

Writer Interview

Tagged by the lovelies @commander-krios here and @coreene here

Tagging: @dustdeepsea @thisaccountisagainstmywill @fistfuloftarenths

@littleplasticrat @captainsigge @grossestjay

Questions under the cut!

When did you start writing?

I suppose depends what counts? Where I went to school we did creative writing as early as six. The first stories I remember were Halloween stories I wrote with very unhappy endings.

Writing purely for myself maybe not till high school? I dabbled in a little fanfiction and then didn't touch it again for years and years and then suddenly BG3 and Rugan happened, smdh.

Are there different themes or genres you enjoy reading than what you write?

Is there a writer you want to emulate or get compared to often?

Just like Krios I enjoy horror novels, although I actually prefer horror as short stories/novellas. If you look at my spotify history you will see a lot of NoSleep podcast and Knifepoint Horror so its definitely a running theme. I could never write horror though, would spook myself too much. I did rather like the tiny horror story in one of the books in Baldurs Gate.

I also enjoy reading low fantasy (low magic, more grit, considerably plucky, ensemble casts) which I think comes across in New Tricks, but in contrast the stories I read have very minimal if any romance.

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space?

Nope, as much as there are many writers I enjoy and at times think "I wish I were that talented" I also don't wish to be a perfect copy of anyone's style because what's the point of that?

I suppose if it was something more like "as funny as so and so" or "world-building on level of such and such" then probably Pratchett, Rothfuss, Sapowski or Glen Cook?

I will literally write anywhere, a lot of my ideas pop-up while daydreaming and I have to get them down when they happen or I won't remember clearly later. So at my desk, in bed, on the couch, on the train, standing in the shoppe, literally anywhere.

What's your most effective way to muster up a muse?

Consuming other media. Books, TV, movies, podcasts, etc. Seeing a scene or circumstance and imagining how the characters I write would react under similar circumstances.

Are there any recurring themes in your writing? Do they surprise you?

Hmm hadn't considered it before but I guess so far: grey morality, class differences (this likely due to my muse being Rugan) and overcoming betrayal? I suppose the last one surprises me a little, I think I might just like the angst of it.

What is your reason for writing?

Is there any specific comment or type of comment you find particularly motivating?

I mentioned earlier I haven't touched personal creative writing since high school, although I did consume fanfiction on occasion. I originally returned due to a frustration at the lack of Rugan content. I wanted to consume, but at the time there wasn't much, compounded by the fact that I did not have an AO3 account at the time so of the few that existed I could only see half. So I started by writing how I thought getting that drink at the Elf Song might go.

After that I got a bit attached to the OC and was inspired by the works of @dustdeepsea to write something with a little more emotional depth. I was prone to daydreaming these sorts of things before but I never put pen to paper till now.

I'm happy any time someone enjoys my work, but I suppose the best comments are when the reader notices the characterization I've been trying to get across. It makes me feel validated that I'm able to write certain qualities without (hopefully) being too on the nose with it.

How do you want to be thought about by your readers?

Me or my writing? Myself, hopefully reasonable and open-minded. My writing, I hope they find it funny and exciting in turns, I hope it makes people feel some sort of emotion even if negative rather than being boring. I hope the world I've tried to piece together from bits of Forgotten Realms lore feels consistent and cohesive, that the rules and stakes make sense.

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

Similar to Krios I think my dialogue comes across the best of all my writing, and it certainly feels the easiest to get down.

How do you feel about your own writing?

It seems to change by day and chapter. There are some things that when I write I'm quite pleased, and then come back a month later and am quite embarrassed by. Other things I didn't like originally but actually enjoy quite a bit on reread. I find myself having to just post things I'm unhappy with at times otherwise I won't get on with the story. I jokingly tell myself "we'll fix it in post!" and I have slowly begun some edits of early chapters so it's not a complete lie.

When you write, are you influenced by what others might enjoy reading, or do you write purely for yourself, or a mix of both?

It's mostly what I think the story needs at the time. There are times where I feel "augh we've been on this mood/theme for too long, the reader will get bored" but I try to reframe it to myself as "is the pacing good? is this scene necessary right now?" and that helps me make a decision that is hopefully a bit more objective. Sometimes we need that information for later, sometimes we don't. I have been known to go back and adjust a thing here or there if the current chapter is missing a bit of set-up and will continue to do so until the story is over. I'm treating it all as a work in progress.

Thanks for reading this far!

[stillness-in-green]

What do you think about Horikoshi ending the manga without a canon couple? Do you ship or used to ship MHA characters? Did you see romantic potential? Do you think Horikoshi might confirm a couple later?

No canon couple?  Au contraire, my dear anon!  The manga ended with the most important canonization of all!

(Everybody give a huge hand to The Only Hets Who Matter, Gentle and La Brava; they deserve it.)

As to the ships people actually care about or were expecting some word on (e.g. the stuff with the students), my reaction there is overwhelmingly “lol gj hori”.  I’m glad he ended it with no canon student couple to speak of!  While I do sympathize with the position of certain people on Twitter who contend that Ochaco’s arc about repression really needed her to actually confess to Deku, I hated what her crush on Deku did to her arc anyway, so I don’t have it in me to be too annoyed.  Anyway, I don’t think it’s possible to do the Iron Might 2.0 part of the epilogue if Deku and Ochaco[1] have been dating the entire time, so I’m perfectly happy to run with the headcanon that she did confess at one point and it didn’t work out for whatever reason, so by the time the last chapter rolls around, they’ve just been friends for years.

1: Or Bakugou, for that matter, but with all due respect to the BakuDekus who haven’t been seeing Shonen Jump battle manga come and go for twenty years with nary a confirmed gay MC amongst them, that was never in the cards.

I remember posting once ages ago about a Japanese fan’s hope that Horikoshi, who the fan perceived as being at least somewhat progressive about women, could manage to end the series without a bunch of timeskip romances showing up at the last minute.  While I have some deep reservations about Hori’s progressive cred at this point in time, and am not tremendously impressed with his writing of women, either, credit where credit is due: he did end the series without any timeskip romances.

As to there being any confirmation of couples in the material we have remaining, I imagine the last train station[2] for that is going to be the final volume release in December, as, on top of the usual volume extras, Horikoshi should be considerably more free to include expansions that his schedule and exhaustion kept him from in the weekly publication.  I could even see a bonus chapter of some sort, maybe something post-epilogue so we can see the power suit in action or something silly and fourth wall-breaking to celebrate the series conclusion.  There’s also going to be one last fanbook released in January, which I have been assuming will be a data book like Ultra Archive.

2: Or harbor, I suppose, since we’re talking about ships.

Now, do I think any of that stuff will confirm ships?  Eh, that’s not really in my analytical wheelhouse.  The farthest I’d venture to guess is that I would a) not be surprised to get some clarification on Deku and Ochaco, and b) definitely peg the volume release to have material like that over squirreling it away in the fanbook.

For myself, my shipping habits are somewhat erratic—it’s not really where my primary engagement in media lies, and certainly not for this series!  But that’s not to say I don’t have ships, or that I’m not happy to talk about them, so if you’re curious about that, do feel free to hit the jump.  I’ll order them by general sphere first, then by how passionate I am about them compared to ones I just think are kinda cute or funny for whatever reason.

DISCLAIMER: While I have not explicitly stated as much here before, I am a 40-year-old asexual proshipper, proshipper here meaning I'm in favor of curating your own fandom space and not harassing people about their fictional ships under any circumstances.  When I say I ship something, that does not mean I’m idealizing the relationship, want it to be canon, think it would be cool in real life, or am mentally putting myself in the place of one the characters.  It’s solely because there’s something in the dynamic I think is fun or interesting, and “interesting” can very much include the same kind of interest one might have in watching a building get demolished. 

That is to say, there are a handful of Too Problematic For Tumblr ships in here—one age gap but otherwise wholesome, one age gap and tacitly abusive, and one that really hits the Tumblr Trifecta by being age gap, abusive and incestuous. I've put all three at the very bottom in their own section in descending order of Most BadWrong, but if you’re one of those people deep into The Discourse about how ships need to be Morally Correct otherwise the shippers are terrible people who should kys, this is not the post for you.  The block button’s there if you need it—and be advised that it’s there if I need it, too, and I’m not afraid to use it. (I grew up in dark fantasy shoujo fandoms; I am not litigating my ships with anybody.)

~~~Stillness’s Dubious and Delightful BNHA Ship Opinions~~~

Villain-o-rama-rama:

Spinarakiya, ShigaRD, Spinaraki: Alas for my short-lived OT3!  I was really, really pumped for this in the stretch between MVA and the early stages of the first war, what with there being such interesting possible angles between all three parties, only for Re-Destro to get arrested and never seen in person again, Spinner to get snatched up by Gigantomachia and never look back, and Shigaraki to get lost to the possession plot for, at least as far as scenes with his allies were concerned, basically the rest of the series.

Not exactly great material for my shipping heart, though I’ll refrain from the rant comparing how long the PLF members were living in close contact with each other compared to the League of Villains and why that should have meant they developed stronger relationships than what we got.

But canon being what it is, I do still ship the hell out of these three in a canon divergence situation, or any number of potential AUs.  I love the connective tissue there, with Re-Destro + Shigaraki having some startlingly strong background parallels and lasting injuries courtesy of each other, Shigaraki + Spinner having the gaming and the emptiness themes, and Spinner + Re-Destro having their Big Gay Feelings About Shigaraki as well as an appreciation for patterned fabrics some shared early frustrations about Shigaraki’s seeming lack of plans or direction.

It's a good dynamic, and I think they could all do a lot for each other, though certainly not in ways that are good for the continued survival of Hero Society.  But fuck Hero Society anyway.

As to the component parts, I don’t ship Re-Destro and Spinner without Shigaraki being at least an invisible part of the dynamic (though I would read the fic where he wasn’t with considerable interest!), but I��m also very much on board with ShigRD and Spinaraki individually.  My constant refrain about Shigaraki and RD is that they have a lot of common ground but very little common language, and I’m fascinated by how much of that they could recognize in each other and how much of it they could then recognize back in themselves, versus how much you’d get one of those cases of, “This guy is a freak and I’m so normal.”

It's so, so, so important to me that Re-Destro is the first ally Shigaraki won entirely on his own merits.  He's got no borrowed reputation from Stain, no monsters on loan from Sensei, and no help from people on Sensei’s payroll, yet still, as a result of his efforts (both in his own fights and in making the League his own, even if it didn’t start that way) he wins himself an army and a follower who never saw a light that wasn’t his.

I weep for the Shigaraki/Re-Destro relationship we could have had if Horikoshi didn’t decide that Shigaraki in the endgame was to be nothing but a pawn, and therefore couldn’t be allowed to keep any of his markers of independence and growth.

As to Spinaraki, man, what is there even to say?  The relationship so clear and obvious that it had even the mhatwt bros out there saying, “Spinaraki but at what cost?” in the last chapter!  I will admit that I liked them better when their romance had that apocalyptic tinge than when it suddenly started getting painted as primarily about them being Gamer Bros, but at least that melancholic “beauty at the end of the world” shading came back when Shigaraki talked about destroying Mount Fuji for Spinner (be still my heart!).    

They will meet and be close in every world and I will hear nothing else.

RiKoku: I don’t think I truly understood the appeal of ex-lover ships until these two.  They snuck up on me in a big way, pretty much entirely a result of my realization when I was halfway through the (first and only, sadly) MLA Week event that Trumpet was pretty free-roaming and independent from Re-Destro all the way through Deika only to be glued to his side from there on out.  Together with the Spinner parallels (the subordinates who fought each other and then came together to the crater to see their worlds remade) and my jokes about wanting to see the MLA heads during their stressed-out, over-achiever college years, all the pieces fell into place for a Rikiya and Koku who had dated for a few years and then broken up when Rikiya realized that his authority as Re-Destro—and Koku’s strong subordination to that authority—meant that he could not responsibly stay in the relationship.  (This also presents several good explanations for why a man in Rikiya’s situation isn’t married with at least one child already.)

Anyway, to me, they never really fell out of love with each other; Re-Destro just couldn’t justify overlooking the power dynamic problems once he realized how extreme they were.  (This does make for a fun alternate angle on RD’s personal life post-Deika, wherein Trumpet watches RD pass the mantle of leadership to Shigaraki Tomura and then more or less immediately pounces on him because now he doesn’t have the power dynamic excuse anymore.  Look up the great Whatever Is Spared by @leftofrevolution on AO3 for more on this.)

Overhonest: I just like Nemoto much more than I like Chrono, and thus my Overhaul ship of choice follows suit.  I like the idea that their feelings are wildly unbalanced but not totally one-sided—Overhaul has more baggage than a freshly loaded airport carousel, but he does like the Shie Hassaikai, as proven by them being mentioned in the Likes section of his character page. Nemoto in particular is someone whose presence we know Overhaul finds reassuring and we know it because he told Nemoto so directly when Nemoto asked, which means it can’t be anything other than the plain truth.  He relies on Nemoto enough to make demands of him, he expects (and gets!) effectiveness, and he even bothers to take the time to justify out loud why it would be okay for him to merge himself with Nemoto physically (because Nemoto would say yes if asked, right? of course he would) rather than just doing it with no thought to Nemoto’s feelings about it because why should he care about that.

And Nemoto, for his part, is of course an obsessive weirdo who’s totally smitten with the first person he’s ever found who legitimately wants him around, so smitten that he’ll happily overlook the fact that Overhaul primarily wants him around because he’s useful.

Moving away from what’s on-the-page canon, I enjoy (and write) the take that Overhaul is sex-repulsed, not because he’s fully asexual, but as an extension of his mysophobia.  This makes his sex life extremely fraught, but not non-existent.  When I dabble with writing them (and they’re by far the ship I’ve written the most explicit material for in this fandom), I write him as basically a sex-repulsed demi (not that he would know or use that terminology!) who is attracted to Nemoto but has been largely left aggravated and sexually frustrated by their periodic experiments in non-traditional ways of getting him off.  (Nemoto, for his part, is more than willing to keep trying!  No kink is too weird for this guy if it means finding something Overhaul would actually like.)

(To get real here for a second, if Spinarakiya is meaningful to me as a person who’s comfortably poly, Overhonest is meaningful to me as an asexual person who's only ever had allosexual partners.)

AFOUji: Truly the Evil Husbands of all time.  I wish the shift from Final Boss Shigaraki to Final Boss AFO hadn’t left Ujiko with a few truly inexplicable characterization beats,[3] because I truly do love these two as just the worst pair of mutually enabling monsters making the world worse and more dangerous for everyone while being 100% supportive of each other’s passions the entire time.  Here’s to 70 years of Dark Lord/Mad Scientist domestic bliss.

3: For the record, I consider these to be his, “I've only been living for the boy's sake,” line in Chapter 269 and his clear reticence and dissastisfaction with Shigaraki getting the surgery in Chapter 240.

DabiSkep: Skeptic is the only man Dabi has ever thanked for his contributions.  Dabi goes out of his way to kidnap him.  I’m 90% convinced that they’d been working on the video together prior to the Villa raid.  The combination of Skeptic’s deep and abiding neuroticism with Dabi’s swings between lazy malice and manic pushiness is extremely funny.  What can I say; it’s just about the only Dabi ship that really clicks for me.  I enjoy leftof’s take that Skeptic had a goth phase he never completely exited and so Dabi appeals to his inner Hot Topic teen, which he is 100% aware of and 150% embarrassed by.

   

School Environs:

Mirio/Tamaki: Tamaki literally regains consciousness at the exact moment Mirio loses his quirk.  Other than cases where there’s some actual explanation for that—a magical connection, psychic powers, etc.—I have never seen that kind of beat happen outside of a shoujo manga.  The bit where one romantic lead just mysteriously has a Bad Feeling in the same instant that something Bad happens to their love interest is so shoujo-coded.  Jesus Christ, Tamaki is so moe.  And Mirio so clearly thinks the world of him, too, as evinced by what an over-the-top sobriquet he dubbed Tamaki with.  They’re great, end of story.

Monoma/Shinsou: I’ll admit I liked this somewhat better when I thought there was any chance at all Shinsou might end up in Class B—I kind of loathe that he wound up in Class A for the self-evidently terrible reason that it’s The Main Character Class, when it seems so obviously a conflict of interest for Aizawa to be teaching him.  But eh, it’s okay; it just means Monoma will have to nobly learn to look past it after a lot of time spent being completely obnoxious about it.

My annoyance with Shinsou’s class placement aside, Monoma is one of my favorite students, and I like that he immediately latches onto Shinsou as a kindred spirit.  And, like, if that were 100% one-directional, I would probably shrug it off, but Shinsou, despite trying to play at being aloof, does actually get invested enough that he gets pretty bothered by the idea of Monoma needing help, even in something as inconsequential as a class exercise.  It’s just a much, much more interesting dynamic than Shinsou has with Deku or especially Kaminari.

Also, as someone with a bit of a Thing for mind fuckery, the way Copy and Brainwash can play off each other is Good.

MomoJirou: The fanart is cute and I like Momo better than Kaminari.  And the culture clash thing is fun.

Shouto/Inasa: The fanart is cute and I like Inasa better than Deku or Bakugou.

   

Professional Sphere:

Hawksdeavor:The age gap adds flavor.  The fact that Endeavor is still married but deeply unhappily so makes it even spicier.  The difference in what they represent (or could potentially represent) to each other is the best part, with Hawks, for Endeavor, being someone who represents a totally clean page, while Endeavor, for Hawks, represents a lifelong adoration.  Finding each other’s reality in all of that would be an interesting relationship arc and could be extremely fulfilling and strengthening for both of them.

The spoiler is (or at least should have been, if I’d been writing the series) their divided feelings on Dabi.  Honestly, I really wanted to see them clash over the matter of Touya and how to deal with him, with Endeavor wanting to save him but not knowing how and Hawks just wanting him gone but not knowing how to get away with it.  A certain pair of facts is glaring to me: first, that Hawks was a chief architect of the second war’s battle plans, whereas we never saw Endeavor involved with them at all, and second, that, when the big day came, Endeavor was slated to fight All For One with Hawks at his side despite at least some guilty protests from Enji that he really ought to be facing Dabi.

It smacks strongly of Hawks making some profoundly selfish decisions under the guise of clear-headed strategy and I really wanted it to blow up in his face when Dabi found his way to their battlefield anyway.  Pushing Endeavor into a place where he had to choose between them and ultimately chose his son (say, by protecting him from an attack coming from Hawks) would have been validating for Touya, done a lot to lever Endeavor’s arc out of the reactiveness and passivity that drag it down so badly in the canon, and also handed Hawks a real consequence for how dismissively he treats the lives of Villains and how much he’s tried to avoid reckoning with both Endeavor’s abuse and Enji’s own attempts to do said reckoning!

In summary, Hawks and Endeavor could be very good for each other, and the incredible amount of baggage they’d have work through first would be key to either making that good ending feel earned or lead to them dramatically and deliciously imploding.  Either one works for me, and either one, even without the romantic angle, would have been more interesting than the pablum we got.

NightMight: Speaking of could-have-been-good relationships that dramatically imploded!  I love Sir Nighteye as the most visible cost of All Might’s lifestyle, the one he lost because he couldn’t step away from the path his ideals had set out, and how that ideal inevitably took him full circle so that he found himself standing, for Deku, in the same place Nighteye once stood for him.  And of course by then it was too late and Deku wouldn’t listen to him anymore than he himself listened to Nighteye back then.

But Nighteye didn’t give up on caring about him, even if he had no avenue left to express it but throwing himself into finding a successor All Might would accept, which led to Nighteye's own (wonderful) relationship with Mirio.

Just great, difficult, adult stuff about irreconcilable differences that never stopped them from caring about each other even as those differences forced them to their parting of ways.

Mount Lady/Kamui Woods: They’re cute and I like the idea that they both have trouble, for opposite reasons, with cameramen.  I like that he calls her just Lady when he thinks she’s in trouble.  And not to put too fine a point on it, but I like that they’re kinda the most explicit Pro Hero couple and yet she’s the more prominent and important character with the more visible arc, which is a nice contrast to most of the other hetero relationships in this benighted manga.

   

Other/Cross-faction:

Togachaco: The yuri ship that could.  My god, the canon divergence I want to give these two.  You know why I want Deku and Ochaco to not be together in the end?  Because I want Ochaco to realize that she did everything in her power to save her Villain while Deku—after all that talk on the cliff!—just killed his, and triggered Toga just before he left to do it, meaning Ochaco had a harder time with Toga than she might have otherwise.

But, I’m not here to talk about No. 2 Green; let’s talk instead about the canon divergence where Toga survives (shove that absurd death-via-blood-transfusion right into the incinerator) and then Ochaco has to come face to face with a system that does not want to let her be anywhere near as kind as she wants to be.  The canon divergence where Ochaco realizes that her forgiveness is immaterial to justice, where she watches the system she fought to defend gear up to try Toga as an adult because Japan needs a scapegoat for the destruction of the war and all of the people who are actually most responsible are already dead or dying.  Where Ochaco realizes that she has to do something drastic if she doesn’t want to live the rest of her life haunted by the knowledge that her compassion got a 17-year-old victim of emotional and psychiatric abuse executed by the state.  The one where she decides to take a fucking stand, and it forces the rest of her class to confront that need as well.

“The cutest girl in the whole world,” my god.

Kotarou and Nao: I’m not as big on it by the time we’re seeing them in the Tenko flashback, though I certainly wasn’t pulling for some mean-spirited, allegedly feel-good “Nao slaps Kotarou and the whole family walks out of him” thing like you see in fanfic sometimes.  No, what I really like with Kotarou and Nao is thinking about them when they’re both still young, in the stretch of years where they really think they'll be happy together.  That her being with him can make all his problems go away, that him being able to bury his past and be better than all the people who hurt him (and there were so many people who hurt him) will be enough, that love is the answer to everything. Sure, the cracks are there, but they’re thin, and they can be hidden beneath all the days when things are good, when the two of them hold each other and feel safe and loved and sure.

The cracks are still there, and love isn’t enough when love becomes a band-aid and a blind eye.  But the love is still there too, and it’s so fierce and so desperate, and it still won’t save them.

Sorry, everyone; they make me emotional.  They are beautiful in the way of sparks dancing above flames, or early flowers blooming right before a vicious cold snap.  Ah, me.

StainMight: GOD, All Might really needed to grapple more with Stain’s side of his legacy.  Like, StainMight is really a victim of the way the story looked like it was setting up to criticize All Might’s methodology as well-intended but not sustainable long-term, but then, like every other aspect of the series that was about systemic critique, that criticism just evaporated and Stain became an All Might cheerleader with nothing to say about the system All Might supported for thirty years.  Maddening!  But for real, All Might should have been badly hurt in that car attack and then rescued by Stain, both to give Deku some stress about how All Might could be in danger after they parted on bad terms, and also to really make All Might have to sit with this opinionated zealot all-too-prepared to talk about how no one else is really living up to his example.

And there should be UST the whole time.

Yoichi and Kudou: I am almost entirely negative towards the OFA Collective these days, especially Kudou’s role in the endgame, but I still have some fondness for what he and Yoichi could have been.  My god, the first One For All transfer really should have been because they kissed.  More beautiful, more tragic, more profound, and preserves the Yoichi that had some actual fucking agency in the life he lived instead of just constantly being AFO’s or Kudou’s trophy princess there to talk about how respectively terrible and awesome they are.

TogaTsuyu: I just think it would be interesting if Tsuyu were actually allowed to be more present in the Toga plotline, rather than only arriving as a spoiler to avert major shifts every time.  Toga says she likes Tsuyu, too, after all, and Tsuyu is so different from both Ochaco and Deku, so much more thoughtful and considered.  I dunno, I just wonder how things might have gone if, for example, it had been Tsuyu that Toga managed to draw away in the Jakku fight.  Given that side story with her snakey friend Habuko, evidence suggests that Tsuyu is a good deal more observant and intuitive than Ochaco, and I wonder if she might have been able to suss out what Toga was actually asking there better than Ochaco did, and how that might have changed things.

   

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THE TUMBLR PROBLEMATIC ZONE:

Gentle Criminal and La Brava: I was willing to follow the canon’s initial vagary about these two, but I also like them quite a bit together, so if canon wants to put them in wedding rings at the end of the series, that’s fine by me!  Yes, I’m aware that there’s a pretty significant age gap there, which would have been at its most apparent when she first sought him out, but I don’t for one single instant believe that he’d be anything less than a total gentleman to her.  Indeed, it’d be entirely plausible to mount an argument based on his behavior that they were not at all romantically involved circa the Culture Festival arc,[4] and only become so after Gentle’s imprisonment and subsequent release.  But in general, what I’m more concerned with is the dynamic—I regard a power differential in a relationship as a reason for both parties to be cautious and mindful of that differential, but not as an immediate game-ender.

4: Most obvious is that when she says, “I love you,” he only says things like, “Thank you,” in return.

In that sense, Gentle and La Brava are great—they click together perfectly and obviously make each other tremendously happy after a lifetime of rejection.  La Brava, in Gentle’s theatrical attention-seeking, finds someone who accepts her overflowing way of showing love; Gentle, in living up to La Brava’s feelings, finds a reason for his skewed heroism beyond satisfying his pride.  To whatever extent their life together was heading anywhere bad (and there’s no evidence of this at all save that Heroes were always likely to catch up to them eventually, making La Brava’svery extreme response to Gentle’s defeat likewise inevitable), Deku’s intervention got them off of that path and back onto one that let them be accepted by the world, which they seem to have capitalized on marvelously.

They’re the only Villains I can think of whose turn to Team Hero in the endgame works for me without any significant quibbles.  Good for them!  I hope they are so, so happy together, because they deserve it.

AFO and Kotarou: MEANWHILE, IN MY OTHER KOTAROU SHIP.  I love AFO knowing Everything about what he’s doing here while Kotarou knows absolutely Nothing about what AFO is doing here.  I love an AFO who is self-amused in being friendly and reassuring and distractingly attractive to Kotarou, an AFO who knows that his toying with Kotarou would make Shimura Nana sick with terror and rage, and even if she isn’t alive to be so anymore, the fantasy of it is satisfying enough, especially since Kotarou is himself a very handsome young man, one whose hurt and resentment AFO finds beguiling to sometimes prod at, as if unable to leave a bruise alone except the bruise isn’t on his own skin.

I have an AU I’m never likely to write where Kotarou winds up successfully knocking out Tenko on the night of the accident before going on the run with him, only for them to get picked up by AFO a few weeks later, and let me tell you guys, that’s where all my guilty pleasure AFO/Kotarou really lives.

That said, I liked this one much better before we got the opening for it in canon, and not just because AFO’s disguise persona was doofy-looking instead of devastatingly handsome.  It was always one of those ships that tickled my inner hedonistic wickedness fancier but that I never wanted to be canon because my affection for the ship's vibe was not more important to me than the integrity of Shigaraki’s arc, and Shigaraki’s arc was far better served by his early childhood being as free from AFO as possible.  Alas, the reveal is very AFOtarou but at what cost.

Dabideavor: Sorry not sorry everyone, but all the people screaming about how this is SICK FILTH seem to have missed the point that it is indeed, absolutely and completely, sick filth and that’s part of the appeal.  Personally, I like it for two main reasons.

Firstly, I want Endeavor to have as hard a time as possible, and times don't get harder than this. I enjoy it when he's frozen and helpless in the face of the son whose life he destroyed because I have a long history of enjoying stoic male characters being made vulnerable through suffering.

Secondly, and more importantly, I like it because I like the version of Dabi you see in it, particularly compared to the Fanon Dabi who made so much League of Villains fan content un-fucking-readable for years.

I'm going to try to keep the hot fandom tea to a minimum here, limited to the upcoming footnote, but I hated Fanon Dabi.[5] He was an incoherent mash of a character designed to be a vehicle for the unabashed revenge fantasy of bloody murder against Bad Dads while also presenting no danger whatsoever of splash damage, a Woobie Big Brother who was completely harmless except to the father whose organs he was planning to paint the walls with. Every excuse that could be made, would be made, for Dabi's more questionable or even outright nasty moments, even if it meant minimizing or outright erasing the harm we saw Dabi do, right there on the page in literal manga monochrome.

5: There's a particular type of flanderization that goes into Fanon Dabi, the same kind of flanderization I saw attached to Steven Universe's Lapis Lazuli, and which informed the absolute umbrage certain people took with Rebecca Sugar for describing Spinel, the SU movie's villain, as toxic. There is a portion of fandom that loves abuse victims who get angry and lash out, but which will go absolutely ballistic at the slightest suggestion that abuse victims are themselves also capable of harm, that lashing out has the potential to hurt innocent people. In a perfectly executed DARVO, it becomes "victim blaming" to confront an abuse victim about the very real abuse they're inflicting on others. I only specified fictional characters here, but it's a dynamic you see in real life, too. Some people hunger for nothing so much as an acceptable target and abuse victims are not exempt from that statement.

The Dabi I thought was fun was the high-energy maniac who doesn't give a shit about anyone else getting caught in the crossfire of his revenge. Both that version of Dabi and the Endeavor who's paralyzed with guilt and despair are facilitated by Dabi’s father-obsession having a taboo sexual dimension to it that Dabi is all too ready to shove in the face of absolutely everyone who would think worse of Endeavor for it.  That means Endeavor himself, of course, but also all the good little civilians who Endeavor keeps telling to watch him.  Watch this, says Dabi, as he makes lewd hand gestures on force-streamed national television.

It's not about Dabi healing as an abuse victim, and it’s not about Dabi having a fulfilling arc—covering that stuff was canon's job!  It's about the fact that I, for reasons both personal and related to fandom spite, am personally entertained by Dabi being pedal-to-the-metal deranged about doing whatever it takes to seize Daddy’s attention and never let him look away again, which also means acting to ensure that no one is capable of or willing to save Endeavor from that fate. Like, if you want someone who would spend ten years plotting the most agonizing possible way to torment his abuser, then it’s sophistry to suddenly declare some agonizing torments off-limits.  Dabideavor is just committing to the bit.

[the-krakens-bitch]

One of the reasons why I could never read ‘real person’ fanfic is the inability to construct and adapt the appropriate characteristics to each being within the media.

With fictional characters, there's an established understanding of what the audience (dramatic irony) and each character know about each other whether this was compiled through what the character says, how the other characters explain them, interactions, characters' past (either shown in a flashback or told) and or parallels between them and other situations/characters within the media.

Personally, one of the elements of fanfiction that I enjoy is seeing how other people perceive and understand the characters, as well as the characters' relationships with other characters and how they react to certain circumstances; either given by the narrative itself (canon events) or the audience's decision (fanfic).

As the audience, it is a privilege to insepct and examine the small and unique aspects of the characters to analyse and connect elements within the narrative to develop a deep understanding of them. However, this can’t happen with real people.

In real life, there is no story arch, there is no specific camera angles, no specifc lighting, no intentionly writing choices, no additonal codes and conventions that explore a story deeper into the text of reality.

Especially famous people, more specially youtubers; within an increasingly parasocial world, where the audiences are becoming progressively closer towards the artist, it is harder to seperate the audience's belief that they know that particular person/group.

I think this is most obvious within the One direction/5 seconds of summer phase of the early 2010s, but it has yet to decrease due to the prevelent evolution of what is considered the norm of social media interaction with the artist and the fan.

Therefore artist will present in the 'so called' suitable character that they want to present at a given time. Implying that in particular circumstance, either promoting new music or movie, playing a game, peforming and so on, they will display the appropriate characteristics to go with that aim.

The audience cannot take this and deem it as their personality, or decode that they are 'faking' or pretending in front of the camera. I think there's a belief that famous people, more specifically Youtubers will either be their 100% authentic selves or become a completely different person in front of a camera, but that is not true. They are becoming an alternative version of themself for a performance.

In summary, I think the idea of reading fanfic about real people exacerbates the parasocial relationship that social media is now normalizing. Such as depersonalizing public figures into caricatures of themself and placing them into fabricated renditions of what that particular audience desires from them.

[bellaaldamas]

Hope you have a well deversed rest! Your edits are awesome as always! 💕💕💕

Also fun question: I remember reading one of your conversations with stupidrant that someone made a scenario where it's possible for Freya & Baldur to reconciled(?) Would like to know how this could work since he's one of the the few Aesir I sympathized the most. Baldur in Norse Mythology comes back from Hel after Ragnarök. Would be fun to see how he turns out since it possible for SMS to push this direction. :)

Thank you again for the kind words. And I'm grateful that you, through the playlist you had shared with me earlier, familiarized me with the song I used for the edit. It is not only remarkably fitting for Angrboda and Atreboda in terms of lyrics but is well constructed and competently performed in it's own right.

Regarding Baldur, it's fair to say that he is that exceptionally rare example in popular media of a tragic villain done right. Unlike certain whitewashed villains and antagonists apologized either by the narrative or by their respective fan-bases (or, typically, both; this usually applies to male villains but female ones and toxic female characters in general also tend to get away with their abusive and violent behaviors, especially when they come from privileged background) Baldur was treated exactly the way he deserved to. He was shown for someone who was, from beginning to end, a product of his upbringing, circumstances and personal choices influenced by said circumstances.

It would've been exceptionally easy to portray Baldur as a wayward and lost son of a virtuous woman - Freya - who chose the wrong path because due to Odin's genes he was "inherently evil" as well as "ungrateful" towards his mother for her misguided but genuine attempts to protect him.

That's not how Gow18 and GowR (where, notably, Baldur wasn't present at all in the current timeline) portrayed him. The narrative allowed him to vocalize and express every single valid concern he had with the way Freya went about keeping him safe. It was made clear that it were the ways in which he himself chose to express it that were wrong rather than his feelings or experiences.

What stands out the most is that Gow18 events are set in motion precisely because Baldur tracks down Kratos and confronts him on Odin's orders (even that small bit of information already reveals Baldur's characterization as that of a broken individual desperate for parental approval). As the gamer starts learning new fighting mechanics through their battle - the second boss fight in the game and the first one between Kratos and a fellow god - the audience is introduced to Baldur's emotional turmoil, albeit without context. Not through third parties or through Freya (whom Kratos, Atreus and the gamer meet and bond with later and become biased in her favor) but through Baldur's own heartfelt screams about how he doesn't feel a thing and Kratos struggling against him is "pointless" (as he baits Kratos/the gamer to give him their best punch).

That's how the narrative establishes that, on one hand, Baldur's aggressive behavior is inexcusable and unprovoked and, on the other hand, there are underlying psychological reasons for that which need to be examined. From the writing standpoint it's a perfect set up for providing an explanation rather than a justification for villain's actions.

Another noteworthy point is that we get more background on Baldur and learn of his being Freya's son after - as mentioned above - getting to know Freya personally. As Kratos, Atreus and the gamer come to sympathize with and respect her. Unlike Baldur, an obvious antagonist, Freya is, from the get go, introduced as an ally character and as a caring, kind and nurturing person (her determination to save Hildsvini, then in his boar form, after he's shot by Atreus, her love for animals and plants, her saving Atreus's life, her giving Kratos the comfort and support even after he lashed out at her for keeping the very same secret about her deity background that he did in regards to his own son). Which further ensures that Kratos and Atreus as well as the gamer end up taking Freya's side once the faithful information about Baldur being her son is revealed and he attempts to kill her to get even for taking away his feelings. Such framing could've been an opportunity for the writers to only show the situation through Freya's lens and completely rob Baldur of any agency or voice.

But that doesn't happen either. Instead, Baldur is framed as an antithesis for young Atreus. Both had parental issues and estrangement from said parents (despite the emotional closeness to Faye, Atreus eventually finds out she, much like Kratos, also lied to him about vital things and not just her own but Atreus's background as well, for the sake of protecting him - wrong thing done for the right reason, not unlike Freya regarding Baldur). Both Atreus and Baldur aspired to prove their worth to their respective, emotionally distant fathers (as we learn in GowR from Freya herself; who goes out of her way to compare Baldur and Atreus and offers Kratos to become a mentor and motherly figure for Atreus in order to make up for her failures with Baldur).

In Gow18 Atreus has his low point when he finds himself on the verge of losing his morals and compass upon finding out about Kratos's and his own deity heritage. But eventually comes back on track, both due to Kratos breaking the emotional distance between them in order to become the authority figure and positive influence in Atreus's life that he failed to be from the start; as well as due to Atreus's own realization being a ruthless killer is not who he is or wants to be. The latter is the most important part of that arc, showing that Atreus choosing to stay on the right path was, first and foremost, for his own sake. Rather than a part of him wanting to please Kratos and earn his approval, the way Baldur aspired to earn that of Odin. The theme of personal choice over imposed circumstances or mistakes of one's parents is, thus, further highlighted through parallels and contrasts between Atreus and Baldur.

Upon the "family reunion" in the end of Gow18, Baldur gets to spell out his frustrations with Freya and she fully accepts the blame and responsibility. Down to her willingness to allow Baldur to kill her as a penance for robbing him of his ability to feel. However, this is also when the narrative, through Kratos and Atreus, shows that while Freya undeniably is one of the fundamental reasons Baldur turned out the way he did and got consumed by aggression and anger (other reason being Odin and it is in GowR that the audience gets more in depth information about that - along with said audience being prompted to check themselves on placing the full responsibility for bad parenting and it's consequences on a woman), Baldur, ultimately, is his own person. And is just as responsible for his own choices as Kratos, Atreus and Freya are.

The above point continues to be emphasized more boldly in GowR and is the reason Freya escapes being reduced to a misogynistic stereotype of a broken woman consumed by bitterness. Said stereotype is often framed as "feminist" in mainstream media and juxtaposed against soft and vulnerable female character types who maintain their cheerfulness and inspiration in spite of the adversities, like Angrboda. GowR subverted that false juxtaposition as well when it paralleled not only Freya and Angrboda but their interactions with Kratos and Atreus respectively.

As I noted many times, the most subversive point of Freya's arc in GowR is that her vindictive quest against Kratos ends prematurely and permanently less than halfway into the story. Rather than perpetuating the cycle of toxic motherhood by making Baldur's tragic but logical demise (because of his own actions and the route he chose to pursue) about herself and her pain Freya chooses to redirect her anger onto the real aggressor which is Odin ("you're [Kratos] not the one who needs to die"). Essentially diverting said anger away from herself and Kratos; whom Freya initially aspired to kill even if it required irreversibly destroying herself in the process and giving up on everything and everyone she used to hold dear (another part of the toxic parenting cycle).

Her further bonding with Kratos is also remarkable: while Freya recognizes Baldur as "not perfect but hers" she, as noted above, delves more into his background, his dangerous determination to impress Odin at any cost and his similarities with Atreus; whom Freya aspires to shield from the same fate as Baldur's. Atreus, in the meantime, continues to prove himself a parallel/antithesis to the aforementioned by actively seeking interactions with Odin and trying to trick the latter by winning his trust - something Baldur failed to attain either in life or in death.

Through those conversations (particularly in Vanaheim and during Freya's Missing Peace quest) Freya and Kratos realize how numerous factors affected Baldur's worldview, ultimately resulting in the man he became and his eventual death at the hands of Kratos, in defense of Freya. In the scene with the Norns Freya actively jumps to Kratos's defense when they mention his love for god killing being the cause of Baldur's demise ("it was not out of hate!"). Even though she said nothing in defense of herself or Baldur when the Norns mentioned their own choices determining their fates.

As far as Baldur's potential return, I have conflicting feelings about that though consider the idea interesting as well as having potential for SMS to come up with new "mythology with a twist" plot points and give the characters more development. On one hand, Baldur's come back could provide Freya with a closure that, in GowR, she had not yet found with herself (even when Freya was no longer blaming Kratos for Baldur's death she continued beating herself over it, including in the optional scenes and side quests, causing Kratos to emphasize that she did what she though she must do to protect Baldur).

Additionally, regardless of whether the writers take a romantic route with Freya and Kratos' relationship (my preferred scenario) or a platonic one (your preferred scenario) getting to face Baldur again, for both of them, could strengthen their bond and result in them working through that issue completely. The narrative made it a point to never gloss over it and that's what made Kratos and Freya's partnership and alliance so productive, strong and positive.

An anti-parallel to that would be Thrud's unhealthy reaction to Atreus killing her brother, whose death she outright dismissed by saying they were "better off without him" (because at that stage Thrud was mindlessly parroting her father and grandfather's propaganda and didn't have a mind or analytical thinking of her own; her "treacherous ex wife" comment about Freya is a product of that same mindset). Followed by her inviting Atreus, said brother's killer, to enjoy his stay in Modi's room and explore Asgard with her. That is, in between showing distrust or even contempt towards Atreus not for legitimate reasons (as Freya did towards Kratos for killing Baldur and as Thrud should have done towards Atreus for killing Modi) but because of Atreus's independence and unwillingness to tow Odin's line. In Helheim Thrud either prides herself on being supposedly stronger than Atreus - though constantly needs his help and aid with "almost budging" doors - or outright tells him she should have never trusted him. And that her mother was right about him all along when Atreus makes an honest mistake out of good intentions.

There where Angrboda and Atreus's interactions serve as a parallel to that of Kratos and Freya (see above) Atreus and Thrud's dynamic is an anti-parallel to both. That said, as I mentioned before, the most fitting scenario for Thrud's development would be to have Freya as her mentor (something that was hinted at by Lunda) and, in the process of bonding with her, reconsider her misguided perceptions imposed by Odin.

Concerning favourite Aesir characters, in my case it would be Sif whose determination to better herself, overcome her addiction for the sake of her daughter and a brighter future for her family and her willingness to embark on diplomatic missions to restore peace deserves far more credit than she tends to get.

[zhabe]

Hi, I hope you're doing well. ❤️ I'm writing to you with full of hope to help me and my family. My family is in a very danger situation due to the ongoing war, and I've launched a GoFundMe campaign to save them. 😢 Could you please share my campaign post from my profile? Each share could be a lifeline for my family. 🙏 Feel free to share it in any other social media platform if you would like. Our campaign has been verified by operation olive branch, and is entry number 26 in their Master List on their spreadsheet. From the bottom of my heart I want to thank you in advance for all of your support and kindness.

Peace be upon you, I hope you and your family are doing okay today given the circumstances.

This person's family (7 people) are trying to escape Gaza. Two of the family members have allergies to certain medications, which is concerning if they become injured or ill. They are currently at €64,020/100,000 (slightly above 64%) of their goal. Their fundraiser has indeed been vetted by Operation Olive Branch, and this is a protected fundraiser by GoFundMe. Please consider sharing and matching my donation of €10.

[the-music-maniac]

I'm relatively new to ORV, I got into it a while back and then ran out of time to continue (the novel is long AF lol) but as I'm getting back into it, I've realized that ORV is one of the most main character centric fandoms I have ever encountered before.

And tbh I think that's why I've been having so many issues getting invested in ORV fanworks. Specifically shipping ones. It's super rare for me because usually I love reading fanfics.

Before I start talking about my thoughts I just wanna make a disclaimer that I'm not trying to attack anyone. You should interact with media and create stuff however you wish to! Lord knows that I'm not exactly unbiased about my blorbos (I would die for them and you can tell from my posts) but I just kinda wanna talk about this because it's such a unique experience. Never before have I encountered a fandom that is so centered on one character.

Like I hope y'all know what I'm talking about and that I'm not just talking out of my ass. Everything in the ORV fandom is super Kim Dokja centric. On one hand, I really do get it, he's a great character. He's not my favourite character but he's a lil rat bastard and I think he's so fucking neat. And how centred the storyline and moreover the people in the story are on Kim Dokja is to a certain extent, canon. He's their leader and also the person keeping them safe. He's the one who reached out in their darkest moments and pulled them to the light. And he's a traumatized little bitch. Oof. A certain amount of hero worship and protectiveness is valid.

What I can't really wrap my head around though, is the lack of development between other members of the group in a lot of fanworks. This is specifically fandom interpretations of the characters btw, I haven't finished the story fully, so I can't speak on how they are canonically but I have seen people's stories and thoughts. And this isn't always the case of course, I have read fics before where our protagonists all appear to have relations with each other outside of their care for Dokja but it... wasn't as much as I was expecting. Which is weird to me because ORV is super good at writing like. Well written and thought out characters that would be super fun to play with in writing. In developing connections and care for each other - creating a found family. At the beginning they're all tied in by the need for survival and circumstance, they don't even necessarily like each other, and so of course they all gravitate to Dokja, that's to be expected, that's who they're familiar with. But eventually I expect they would learn to care about each other too, y'know? It's difficult to not get to know each other when you're living together daily, fighting alongside each other to survive. I don't believe that they wouldn't develop care for the other members of the group, and people who care about each other don't tend to genuinely threaten each other anytime Dokja gets hurt, especially when it's not anyone's fault - like usually it's in response to one of them "not doing enough to protect him" which makes no sense to me. You don't guilt trip people you care about for things outside their control. Moreover, Dokja is his own person - he will do what he will do and you can try and prevent it because you care about him, sure, but it's also unreasonable for others to expect anyone to be his keeper enough that they get angry when Dokja gets hurt due to his own actions or to situations outside of their control. People in general also don't have their entire character and world centered on loving one person. There are fics I've read where all the characters don't even seem to have any hobbies outside of spending time with Dokja, and I say this because they all literally fight, tooth and nail, over Dokja's time. It feels out of character to me. And yet this characterization is also so common???

I don't usually mind fics that so clearly have a bias towards one character because it's valid to write what you wanna see, but I think it's how saturated the fandom is with those types of works that makes me feel weird. It makes me stop seeing all the characters as individuals in their own right. Having no wants or needs or hobbies outside of Dokja makes it seem like they're just accessories to the story of Dokja's life. The story itself becomes less compelling to me, because it becomes less of a narrative of how Dokja has helped these people and their responses, and more of a world that bends over backwards to worship this one character, using all the other characters as tools to do so. Because if this is meant to convey gratitude and love, its illogical to how it usually works. Specifically in that, you don't lose your own identity or your connections to other people because of it. And I find it hard to interact with this level of saturation of those tropes because at a certain point, I start losing sight of the canonical writing of these individual characters as their own people. I start losing the idea I have in my mind of their canonical personalities. And I don't like that feeling. And because Dokja also isn't my favourite character in this story - I still like him, don't get me wrong - I start feeling indignant on the behalf of all the other characters that are not getting development BC of the concentration on Dokja.

I also don't like it when the banter goes away. Like you can care about people and still enjoy messing with them, I'm not sure why caring about dokja translates to hero worship??? I annoy my friends all the time, and they do it back. It's fun. Like that thing the group does where they can't see Dokja's face and just unanimously decide to tell him he looks bad when he asks about it? That's peak friendship. Peak messing with your sibling energy. As far as I've seen Dokja isn't self conscious about that either (then again I haven't read the entire story yet), so like. What gives? It's canonical that they mess with Dokja - but a lot of fics just get rid of that element.

I also find it especially hard when it comes to shipping, specifically Joonghyuk and Dokja. The reason why I love Joonghyuk and Dokja's dynamic so much in the first place is because they view each other as equals. It would be very easy to place either Joonghyuk or Dokja onto a pedestal - but they don't do that to each other. They know each other pretty damn well and they care about each other even though they're so in denial about it. And you know that thing they do where they act like the other is the worst person in existence and then negates it all by repeatedly devoting themselves to saving them? That's my shit. That whole "you're so fucking annoying but if you died I would kill everything in this room and then myself." The whole "what was that?" "Affection." "Disgusting. Do it again." THAT SHIT. I love that about them. And like the platonic relationships, a lot of shipping works get rid of that type of banter when they shift to a romantic relationship. Like yeah, sweet talk and honesty is important. You should let your partner know you love them. But that's not gonna be all there is. I don't see a need to get rid of the banter because as the story goes on, it's clear that even in canon, eventually the harsh words they say to each other stop being genuine because their actions negate the words. They don't mean them in the first place, so why would that banter change once their care shifts from a platonic to a romantic one? And I could perhaps be okay with that shift from banter to sweet talk if it was MUTUAL, but too often I see a situation where Dokja continues to insult Joonghyuk but he doesn't return it in kind. Joonghyuk is very blunt about his love for Dokja - which is good - but Dokja doesn't do the same back, and for some reason that's fine, and then Joonghyuk also no longer has those very human moments of annoyance when Dokja does some stupid shit. Like I guess I could understand the characterization of Dokja being emotionally constipated cause he's kind of a traumatized control freak and I can see how getting him to talk about his feelings is like trying to get a cat into a bathtub, but it's not like Joonghyuk isn't also like that? It's not really as much of a compelling relationship if one person is telling the other everything, giving care in words of affection and the other person isn't returning it. And you could depict that returned care in other ways, absolutely, but again I don't see it in other ways either, because those stories are still so Dokja centric.

Another factor is that I find that I can't really like a ship in a work where one of the characters is elevated to a point where they can't do anything wrong. Where their own needs are always at the forefront and their partner is always catering to it. Like a relationship is a give and take. We focus a lot on Dokja's trauma - which I love, that man needs sO MUCH THERAPY and it's an interesting topic to explore - but we don't focus on the amount of shit Joonghyuk has had to go through. I very rarely see a shipping fic where Dokja tries to address Joonghyuk's trauma or his hurt. Physical hurt sure, maybe, but that other shit that Joonghyuk bottles up?? Never talked about. My man has had to keep living lives over and over again. Has had to see people he love die, make hard choices. There is no way he's not traumatized to shit, and I'd like that to be a focus some of the time, y'know? Moreover, of all people, Dokja would be the one to understand him the most? One, he's the only one who really knows the whole truth about Joonghyuk, or as much of it as you can, and two, they both have taken on very burdensome leadership roles in a situation where few would be able to understand their position - it makes sense for them to lean on each other mutually, and so far there's a very prominent skew, only an exploration on one side.

And I pretty much haven't seen a shipping fic with Dokja and Joonghyuk where Joonghyuk has recieved any form of platonic comfort from the other characters. I've seen plenty for Dokja. Where he gets comforted/helped by both Joonghyuk and all the other characters. But not for Joonghyuk. If y'all have any recs where Joonghyuk has that, PLEASE recommend it because I need. And sure, it can be argued that Joonghyuk is a hard man to know considering his prickliness but regardless, he DOES have canonical platonic relationships. People who care for him. Who would be protective over him if he were to get hurt. That is not something only Dokja has, and yet it's something I only ever see written for Dokja. Y'all need to remember that technically Dokja doesn't act like any less of an asshole sometimes than Joonghyuk. He's more outwardly approachable sure, but he's not necessarily sweet 100% of the time - he has grit and he's a rat bastard and that's my FAVOURITE FUCKING PART ABOUT HIM. The fact that he's a rat bastard and the fact that not everyone likes him. His interactions in a world where he does have to make hard choices or say things that put people at odds, or hurts others when he didn't mean to. I love that about Joonghyuk too. They suck and they both have so much capacity to be kind despite all the shit they've gone through, but they're not able to see that in themselves and they do bad things because they have to, and I think they're so fascinating.

Y'know out of all of this, I think what cracks me up is, knowing Dokja's character, he would be absolutely appalled at how centred all of it is on him only. Like. Like that's literally the opposite of what he wants 🤣🤣. Like I get that makes people want to do it more because he deserves it and whatnot which is valid but like. He would be quite disgruntled 🤣🤣🤣

[centrally-unplanned]

I feel like making a “Top 5 Media of the Year” post is like extremely redundant if you follow me, its going to be really obvious what is on there. Still, ranking things is fun and is good to reflect on them, in particular why they ‘stuck’ with me and what makes them last as opposed to fun-at-the-time so here goes:

Perfect Tides

Definitely the most well-crafted ‘narrative’ of the year for me. As a game its eh, but you essentially ignore that and its very easy to do so. I been ruminating a lot on temporality this year; the sort of stripping-away of the idea of one having a future that ones grows to as opposed to a sequential present. The idea of ‘growth’ being more of a story we write for ourselves. And additionally I have always had a passion for stories about contingency and specificity, the ways technology, locale and circumstances shape people in not-so-obvious ways. 

Perfect Tides is never settled on one thing but those two themes permeate every part of its narrative. Mara is obsessed with changing herself, getting out of the ‘rut’ of her life, but has almost no agency in that regard. She changes, massively so, but never due to her plans coming to fruition. There are these moments where she introspects, and she is smart so it seems right, but - while never confirmed to be so explicitly - are just wrong on reflection, in the battle between her identity & and her outside reality, reality proves stronger.

And the ways she tries to fight against her circumstances are so adorably 2000′s. Writing on fanfic webforums, ‘dating’ someone via IM (and it falling apart from it being transposed outside of that medium), living on an outskirt suburbia island to the metropole of the rest of your social circle, there is so much in there. In the end the bildungsroman story of a teen growing up is dime a dozen, these stories can’t survive on the universality. Perfect Tides marries the universality to a specificity that changes it enough to make it new.

Bocchi the Rock

I have said a lot about Bocchi and why it works so I won’t repeat myself on that front. Instead to situate its lasting impact on me I think I can instead focus on the kind of anime I have been watching. I have picked up a lot (by no means all) of the older ‘classics’ over the past 5 or so years, and I was absolutely soul-sniped by the 90′s ~mindfuck~ era of anime. I am always secretly hunting for more of that, but you really aren’t going to find any of that in modern shows; Sonny Boy is the closest I have seen and its a forced comparion for sure (still a great show, would recommend). The Evangelion era is so over not even an Evangelion remake could recapture it.

The modern era instead has other strengths that you need to see on its own terms - new themes, new styles, new approaches. Slice of life is one of them, K-On! was the first ‘great’ entry into the genre that utilizes the modern lexicon, and there have been more and more hits along that front over time. Anime - and the people who watch it - has a more comfortable relationship with its otaku identity, replacing existential dilemma with celebratory depiction. 90′s animation experimentalism was immense but also limited by the tools of the day; modern animation technology allows an easy integration of styles and techniques that was out or reach 20 years ago. 

Bocchi for me is the crest of a wave of modern trendlines in anime’s capabilities and thematics. It perfects so much of what slice of life does while shedding its tired tropes; ruthlessly depicts a real-if-exaggerated otaku struggle but through the modern comedic, happy lens; and puts animation-as-a-tool to work communicating those feelings in the most inventive ways posible. Hell, the design process itself is radically accessible! I follow the creative team on twitter who were live-posting production photos, scene reactions, everything you could imagine. The media mix was intense. It is, in a certain sense, the most modern anime I have seen. It crystalized its own ‘genre’ that I want to see more of.

Sing Yesterday For Me

This year was a big year for manga for me, a journey I am hoping to deepen going forward. Sing Yesterday For Me was on my list for a while due to the anime adaptation from 2020, which I...hated? But due to all the really polished balls it kept dropping, I could see the potential, moody characters struggling with love & life in period-piece 2000′s Tokyo, lots of my boxes checked there.

The manga drops many of these same balls (less for sure), this is not a ‘great’ work. Instead why it has stuck with me is that is a showcase in the strengths of aesthetics & realism. Kei Toume’s art is just so absolutely my jam; the way she draws eyes with enhanced roundness and detail; the way the hair is all messy textures and sharp lines; the fact that in the middle of this serious manga will be splash images of little fashion showcases or photobooth printouts or something. She does this in all of her works too, she has types - I have been reading two of her other manga, Rocky Princess and Karakida-ke no Koshogurashi, and her aesthetic archetypes absolutely show up again in both. 

I enjoyed Sing Yesterday for Me’s story but what I remember most are these individual panels that are just Art to me, and its something that manga does on its own terms that I have been growing to appreciate more and more as I read more and more (Chainsaw Man stands out in this regard as well). Its a reason to read manga specifically as its own genre. Maybe the story won’t be amazing, but it can be in service of those panels, a necessary component to making them shine, and its worth it for that.

Astrophyics - Hope Left Me+

Astroyphics is a synthwave/darkwave composer who got their start doing remixes, lots of anime & 80′s stuff, which all rocks and I highly recommend. This is the year they started branching out into their own original compositions in a way that I think succeeded - it was a rougher journey, some of their early works lack life, but the later stuff - Hope Left Me, Cute Tragedies - are some of my favourite of the genre in how they blend being ‘noisescape’ with having melodic elements or motiffs that still stand out.

And they are a media mix pioneer in how much work they put into video elements for the songs, album covers, and other things - Hope Left Me has a visual novel it is attached to! Which you can play as a standalone game (this worked ~fine) or partly experience as a visual album for listening to the music (which is amazing). I love that someone who started out making Serial Experiments Lain covers is working so well in the medium of “music as its permitted to be by the internet”. Its something I want more and more over time, music that exists beyond the notes and instead is in conversation with the rest of the media apparatus it is so inexorably embedded in, and Astrophysics owns that reality. They are 50% of the reason I am a Hatsune Miku stan nowadays (first t-shirt recently acquired!) - the other 50% of the reason being...

Hazel - Why Did We Like Elfen Lied? 

Hazel’s Why Did We Like Elfen Lied? lives rent-free in my mind. Its the perfect question for me, not about ‘anime as anime’ but ‘anime as societal product’, about how watchers viewed it, cared about it, repackaged it, communicated it, the works. “What does this piece of media being loved say about those who love it” is the root question over which every other media discussion I ever have rests, the Unified Field Theorem of media analysis. And Elfen Lied is the *perfect* target for this question - it fucking sucks! It is an awful show, and in Japan no one cared. But in 2004 everyone in the west loved it. It was a show begging for an explanation.

Hazel nails it, and she does so through her subjectivity. She was the patient zero for the Elfen Lied experience as an emo goth edgy teen girl for its release; the way she jumps back and forth between the anime’s actual content, the way what it offered was passed around anime & goth subcultures, and the wider concerns those communities had in 2000′s America, is completely realized due to its combination of analysis and autobiography. And Hazel excels as a filmmaker along this same lens - her editing style is a tower of niche references to iconography, media, and music from the era, she composes her own songs which she uses for key moments, its a “by kids for kids  by scene nerds for scene nerds” approach that epotimizes the strength of YouTube as a medium.

Hazel will not continue to be my favourite YouTuber - I will absolutely still be a fan, but she has her own questions she cares about that don’t align with mine, and the way she is evolving as a creator is not my own path. She has many other good videos and I highly recommend looking through all her works. But Why Did We Like Elfen Lied will last beyond that for me as an influence of the kind of thing I myself want to make (and probably never will, oh well!).

[atthebell]

This isn't really prompted by anything but this fandoms obsession with angst I think it's from how dsmp ccs made their characters suffer to get idk the best reaction from fans even tho it didn't really make sense narrative wise

What gets me with the qsmp tho is you would get your angst but also be rewarded for it. Like for example cellbit focusing on a puzzle which eventually tells us more about the federation or bagi using clues to solve a mystery, fit and foolish having their own roles to play within too. Felps being kidnapped but saving him lets in the audience on what the feds are like (and tbf it was the first kidnapping so it felt p new)

Egg disappearance arc tho is where I've had enough angst (I don't think there was really a plan like why did eggs leave on their own, who's this guy with the single eye etc etc)

finally at my computer so i can answer this okay i disagree somewhat with your first point and i'll explain why. also this might seem more aggro than i mean it to be i just like talking and swear a lot

first thing: i dont think dsmp ccs were making their characters suffer just to get a reaction out of fans. i think this is a deeply pessimistic and just obviously untrue take on the server and the ccs. it is VERY clear that several of them just deeply enjoy sad stories and that's where they wanted to go with things.

also think about this outside the context of minecraft roleplay for a moment. the dsmp narrative is a story that, from the outset of genuine quote unquote lore kicking up, involved a war; everything that followed, as lore became more and more serious, had to then take the implications of that seriously. war is a deeply awful and traumatizing thing. do you want them to have not taken that seriously? do you want people to never tell dark or tragic stories and talk about the real effects of certain events on people's psyches and relationships? because while i am not an angst enjoyer, as i've said many times, i do think people have the right to tell dark and sad and raw stories. my issue is more the fandom obsession with angst that goes beyond my tolerable level and becomes overwhelming, which i'll get into later in this post; not an issue with sadness and tragedy being portrayed in mcrp (or any story) at all. do i like constant tragedy in my media? no. but for the dsmp and qsmp both that isn't the case, so it's not relevant here really.

i in part understand where you're coming from here, in that fans were SO obnoxious and because interactivity was so much more present in this type of medium, fans had way more influence on the narrative than is typical of fiction. so there were definitely times where people had to change their plans due to how they thought fans would react, although i would argue this was more common with like. women on the server trying not to piss off inniters rather than tommy deciding that fans would kill him if he didn't have c!tommy try and drown himself. like sure i think there were plenty of times that ccs went "ooh, fans will eat this up," but they probably would've done it regardless. i think it's just really uncharitable to assume that it was more due to wanting a good reaction from fans than ccs' genuine desire to take their characters in that direction.

and i'm gonna be real i don't think the fandom obsession with angst actually does come from the canon itself. i think these canons are not overwhelmingly sad, even dsmp, and that the idea that they are is due more to the tragic circumstances surrounding their endings and their controversies than about the actual events of canon. qsmp is not actually a tragedy, in terms of narrative (i'm ignoring the stupid final ending shit i truly don't understand why anyone accepts that as canon; they needed to write a send-off that would wrap things up enough but wasn't overly complicated. it worked for what they needed, which was a goodbye, but otherwise it's narratively stupid and irrelevant). the tragedy is more in how it all fell apart in real life than the story of the whole things itself. and individual ccs deciding to make their character's stories into tragedies does not make the larger narrative (which does exist and matters) itself a tragedy. and the dsmp also isn't a tragedy or an angst fest; there are certainly deeply sad moments, but it's not all doom and gloom.

again my issue is fandom obsession with angst, not the content of the smps themselves. and the biggest reason beyond personal annoyance that i'm confounded about the obsession with angst is that it's completely disproportional to how it works in other fandoms. if you're a longtime fandom person you're probably aware of this, but the angstier a story is, the more likely that the fandom is obsessed with fluff and magical fix-its that solve everything and make sure everyone stays alive. this is the case almost universally, but mcyt, apparently, is a huge exception. people are OBSESSED with ruminating on the tragic parts of canon and then creating even sadder situations to put characters through. it's bizarre and weird and i do not understand it one iota. where are all the fluffy everyone lives and gets ice cream together fics????? why are inniters addicted to putting that child through even worse torment??? why is no one writing happy endings for their ships????? what is with like insane amounts of DD:DNE fic where it's just the most miserable non-ending lack of catharsis imaginable?? THAT is what's weird to me.

and on that last point i've talked about it a lot before but catharsis is really what's missing for me when it comes to angst in this fandom. i'm not a huge sad stories/tragedies fan personally, but i am willing to read them, and when i do, what makes a really good one is catharsis. there is something to a sad story that hits all its beats and makes you feel like you've just cried it out and can finally breath again that does, on occasion, hit for me. but that's something completely missing from the angst in this fandom. there is no catharsis. there is no breath of relief. it's just stress and stress and more stress, all leading up to nothing, leaving you unsatisfied and depressed.

listen, people can do whatever the hell they want forever. i'm not telling anyone they should personally stop writing angst. i'm just baffled as to why so many people are obsessed with it in this fandom in particular and as a fluff enjoyer i am in constant misery.

anyway, on your other points: i think you're right on the point about reward, although i would frame it more as the catharsis that i'm talking about as missing from fandom angst. qsmp had sad moments, and frustrating moments, narratively, but those moments (when the writing was actually good) often led to bouts of information, new relationships, a shift in the story that would take it to new places. it was devastating but it was exciting. and the ccs knew what to do with those moments, as talented rpers, and how to dig their character into a hole and then find a way to get them out again. like, if qcellbit's whole story as a character had just been him getting nonstop bodied by the federation, that would've sucked. that would not have been fun to watch! but that's not what it was. he had moments of victory, even with losses he found out information, like you said, and that was important! even with the stupid fucking reprehensible minimes event, which is the MOST negative i ever saw cellbit about the server (still not that negative, he never complained very much and was very polite despite being, like myself, a serial complainer), he still learned a bunch of information! they learned what the federation did and didn't know about the eggs disappearance, about forever's trip into the nether, about some of the inner workings of the federation. AND despite how stupid it was, cellbit, as a very talented rper and writer himself, managed to spin it into a great character moment.

the eggs disappearance was just fucking evil i will never forgive all of that. i remember on fucking SEPTEMBER 10TH (2 days in!!) i was like hey do they have like. a plan, or what.... and then we found out later no they did not. so. that's a great example of angst via negligence and stupidity. at a certain point it was more tiring than sad because it was just ridiculous how little information anyone had. i will curse that arc til the day i die seriously

[disorganizedkitten]

tell me about incubus or cling for your twins AUs owo

owo you picked two VERY good aus

Okay so first is Incubus; it's being written as a Very Long Oneshot, and it's exploring Horcrux implications; specifically, what if Human Horcruxes drained energy by touch and connection, like Object Horcruxes do. So Connor can't touch people because his touch is inherently harmful and drains their magic; but then remember, he's not the only one who's magical core was effed up

Harry's magical core is like a beetrap, he absorbs ambient magic, the more magical an area, the more powerful he is.

Now make them hug.

Connor can touch Harry without hurting him because Harry will accumulate more magic than he can use. It helps Harry for Connor to hold his hand and siphon off some of the extra, and it helps Connor to have access to basic human touch.

In the end they can't get rid of the horcrux and when Connor realizes that makes him immortal he tricks Harry into obtaining the Hallows so they can be immortal together. Very tragic, very open ended, they win a war and it's on the coattails that Connor betrays him.

(Because Harry, Just Harry, even a Harry who lives by ambition, doesn't want to be immortal, doesn't want to be other. he just wants to be loved, to be respected)

*

And then Cling.

It is. A very late fest fic, fulfilling the prompts (au where Theo and Harry are twins) and (due to unforeseen circumstances, Sirius' trial is postponed, so Harry spends the rest of the summer with the Notts. This Changes Things). Sarcasm & Slytherin 'verse, again.

Theo and Nott Sr. are sure that Theo's twin brother is dead, so they don't even look; and maybe, perhaps, sometimes, Theo gets an extra sadistic kick out of knowing that Perfect Potter's twin is closer to Theo than Jules.

When the trial goes to the dogs and Lord Nott takes Harry home, it's honestly a really great summer, Harry is having the time of his life, although there was that time Theo seemed oddly surprised to see him in a certain hallway and refuses to explain why.

(It was locked behind an actual blood ward. Hadrian Potter shouldn't have enough Nott Blood to get past the ward, and down that hallway. Theo is losing his everloving mind.)

Eventually Nott Sr. and Theo figure it out, then sit Harry down and explain, and they decide... to not do anything about it. Sirius is about to be cleared, Harry is welcome whenever, and as much as they'd love to rip James Potter down more, Harry has been very exposed to the media this year. He can go a bit without another scandal, and this way he can still live with Sirius like he kind of wants to. If, for any reason, Sirius also proves an incompetent Guardian... well, Harry's had the portkey ring for a year or two. Not like he's taking it off.

(They don't know yet that it's going to get worse)

It'll be mostly summer-focused, although I think I'll write to or just beyond the Graveyard scene, (Imagine it. But this time it's not just Theo's Dad, it's Harry-And-Theo's Dad telling Harry to stay down, please) where they collectively-separately decide Voldemort CANNOT know. either that or just after the Graveyard scene I'll write Nott Sr. looking Voldemort dead in the eye and telling him not to try to kill or kidnap his kid ever again, but I'm not sure that would be a go over well with S&S Voldemort.

We'll see how it ends.

[sorushing]

HII SORUSH!!!

what are your ideas about your boy band au??

if you want to share of course :]

○( ＾皿＾)っ Hehehe…

you see. it's not just a boyband au. its a very convoluted mess between boyband and another au - but more on that later.

Notes: the dragons are human in this au.

Berk and all the lower isles of the archipelago are all in uproar after a famous idol and rising star, LYGHT, or Hiksti, suddently disappeared at the peak of his career like smoke.

the only hint anyone was given was a cryptic twitter post claiming he "had to leave in a hurry due to personal reasons".

This AU would mainly be from Toothless' ("Tooth's") perspective as he tries to figure out what happened. Toothless, who debuted alongside Hiccup as "DARK", in their duo NIGHT||LIGHT.

Roughly a year ago, they were merged into SPY_KE (Storm's/Stormfly's group) by their agency, Grimborn Entertainment. They're essentially like a big kpop group. I know nothing about those

Hiccup was their mortar, glueing the quite headstrong members together, so his absence stings even more - especially since he didn't even say goodbye...or perhaps, he couldn't?

Now. there's 2 versions of this AU, and the main difference is how long he's gone.

version 1 is a shitpost-esque social media au I have some posts prepared for, where he's gone for 2-6 months.

version 2? He disappears for 6-8 years, acutally, due to certain...circumstances. this would be in fic form, but it's proven to be a struggle to write :/

ill let you pick one for the next post.