#Been trying to focus more on writing

[tohot4u]

Been experimenting with sum stuff-it’s mostly doodles at this point 💀

[eelclaw]

stupid fucking bastard. i am not coping with the leaks

[peachfruitcake]

well gosh

[madamdionysia]

Plasma (Law x GN!Reader)

Summary: Law never brings up his tattoos and their story. Then you ask him one day.

Word Count: 1,056

Read on Ao3

Dividers By: @cafekitsune (thank you for all of your work!)

Notes: My thoughts about Law's tattoos and how Corazon caught fire spiraled into this. I also don't go in depth with the Donquixote Family side of matters, including the exact details of Cora's spying and muteness. It's mostly just a conversation between Law and the reader about his tattoos that could be read platonically or romantically. My medical knowledge isn't up to par with Law's, but I did my best.

Takes place sometime post-Zou.

Unedited (mostly) but I'm still happy with how it turned out.

Fun facts:

Ancient tattoo pigments were made from soot, charcoal, and such.

Plasma is a component of blood, but it is also used to describe a state of matter. Whether or not fire is a plasma depends mostly on its temperature.

It feels like an eon has passed since the question left your lips, tumbling to the ground between the two of you like dried timber ready to catch flame. Law’s lips parted, his eyes widened almost imperceptibly, but he tugged his hat over his face and schooled his expression with such rapidity you would have thought you offended him. But you know him better. Offering him your silence while he gathered himself wasn’t uncommon in this relationship, and Law was grateful for it right now as his inked hands ran through his hair.

He sighed, a sound of his relentment, and let his power take you to his quarters. For his own privacy. He wasn’t one to show vulnerability. Between his duties as captain and doctor, as well as his troubled past, you knew he had to be quick to think and act. Emotions would only hinder that swiftness required for survival.

Law starts with his hands, the word DEATH across both knuckles. The irony of his profession is not lost on you until he detailed Doflamingo’s plot for Law to give his own life for the bastard’s eternal one. If Doflamingo wanted life, the healing touch of a doctor, Law would be certain that he would never get it. When you point out that most tattoos across the first phalanges face away from the owner of them, Law corrected you.

“Proximal phalanges.”

“Whatever.”

You punctuated your statement with an eye roll and continued listening to him. He obtained his Devil Fruit powers before his tattoos, this you knew, but since ascertaining much of his abilities he decided on the placement of the tattoos. Not only for that pink feathered demon, but also for his enemies in general. A warning for what was to become of them.

The back of his hand related to his medical knowledge, as did the central part of the forearm design. And the surrounding prongs of his Jolly Roger. All symbolizing the extruding envelope proteins of a virus. The remaining circular designs on his forearms were both reminiscent of another virus design but also incorporated the Room ability of his powers. The spiked spheres surrounding the viral symbols representing another aspect of his doctoral talents, much like the rest of his ink explained thus far.

“It’s also a lymphocyte eradicating a virus.”

“A what?”

“A white blood cell.”

“Oh. Well, at least your Jolly Roger tat is self-explanatory.”

“Yes and no, I’ll get to that.”

He took a deep breath, steading himself once more. Then he removes his shirt, folding it neatly beside him on the bed. He scratched at the back of his head, his ink stretching and flexing with the skin it's permanently embedded in. Law lets his arms fall back to his sides.

“I never tell those about the man that saved me…”

But here he was, detailing his early years to you regardless. You listen quietly, giving him the space to dredge the words up through memories long buried. The fire set to his hometown. The loss of his loved ones. The manipulation of Doflamingo and the subsequent escape with his brother.

“Corazon means heart. His brother awarded him the Heart Seat when he returned, feigning muteness…”

So this was how his upper arms earned their hearts, you thought, for the one who saved him.

“Muteness?”

“Part of his cover, let me get there.“

And apparently Corazon held a clumsy streak, nearly setting himself on fire multiple times. Law went off the subject for a moment to list the various pranks the other Donquixote family members would play on the poor guy. But as it turned out, Law found out that Doffy’s younger brother was a commander in the Marines. No one called him by his real name, except his eldest brother as Rosinante lay on his deathbed of snow.

“When I first joined the family, Corazon would try his hardest to get me to leave. He didn’t like seeing children under his brother’s influence.”

A pang echoed in your chest, like a can crumpling. No one should have been under that influence, but you kept this to yourself. You had decided you had interrupted Law enough during his explanation and that you didn’t want him to recede back internally with the memories. It was best that he lay them out, like his surgical tools cleansed and neatly arranged to be used for his benefit. Perhaps it was a good thing, you thought, for him to get all of this off of his chest. Though the ink would stay.

“The last time I saw him was with this huge grin…”

He gestured to the Jolly Roger embroidered on your clothes. A toothy, rebellious smile. Much like the tattoos on his hands, that defiant DEATH in the face of Doflamingo. You let out a low chuckle, letting your thoughts process it all.

“And this heart…”

He placed a hand over his chest now, palm covering that miniature grin as if to hold Corazon. Above his fingers spread the tendrils of flame, curved and clinging to his clavicles in such a way that they shifted and flickered like a real blaze.

“…Well, he was named for a heart and he caught on fire a lot…”

Law’s sweet, you realized, and had a wicked sense of humor. He elaborated that it initially symbolized that burning revenge he felt, a scorching desire to overcome the Heavenly Demon and take victory over him in memory of Corazon. Thoughts swirled in your head, ashes swept up by smoke. The conversation smoldered and glowed now like the remnants of the campfire on Zou, still warm and comforting against the chill of night.

“How come you never tell anyone else about your tattoos?”

“Too much explanation.”

“Then how come you told me?”

Law smirked and replied, “I don’t think I need to worry about you.”

Cryptic as always, you lamented, but he’s right. You weren’t one for divulging other’s secrets. Even as the conversation died out and Law shrugged his shirt back on, you couldn’t help but wonder if there’s anyone else that Law would let under his skin. If one day, the bridge between the two of you gave way to an inferno. That he would then collect the soot and charcoal left over, as deep as the pigment that’s marked on his body.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

I wouldn't really agree that boys are just arm candy in magical girl shows and only there to look cute. Yeah, sure the girls' friendships are the focus, but the boys are usually very much involved in the plot and most shows do explore their feelings about the odd things that happen due to magical shenanigans even if they aren't in the know (It's why ML baffles me even more with how they screwed up Adren's arc when he's the deuteragonist, when all these boys are supporting cast and get well rounded arcs)

I'm not much of a winx fan, but the specialists were very much not arm candy. Did the girls talk about them being cute? Yes, it's what teenage girls do. Did the narrative suggest they were good looking? Yes, but that's standard for most love interests in any genre. But we still got scenes with them talking amongst themselves about how they themselves feel and they got a fair share of badass fight scenes even if they wield no magic. A large amount of episodes actually included the boys and girls working as a team solving a mystery or fighting a villain. The girls might deal the finishing blow but the boys were still integral to the plot.

I hope this doesn't come across as hate, it definitely wasn't my intention. I'm just a bit too passionate about the magical girl genre.

I do think you have a good point with ML having a problem choosing a genre or blending two genres successfully.

For the CCS fans, I will add though that Cardcaptor Sakura had both Tomoyo and Syaoran serve as sources of motivation for Sakura. And both Sakura and Syaoran collecting cards even if Sakura is the only one who could seal them and yet never made you question whether Syaoran was even necessary for the job the way ml does with Chat.

I wasn't trying to say that boys have no part to play in magical girl team shows or that they're always treated as having no lives beyond the girls, that's why I mentioned that the Winx Club boys - aka, the Specialists - have their own (mostly off screen) lives and occasionally show up help the girls:

the boys are usually off doing their own thing and only occasionally show up for a date or to give the girls a ride on their cool bikes or magical spaceship

Even then, this is certainly a simplification of the roles that they play in the story, but I kind of had to simplify their roles down to their base components for the original post's discussion as I was talking in broad strokes of how these stories are written.

In terms of those broad strokes, the Specialists are absolutely only there for shipping fodder. That's why each one is assigned to a girl from the start and why their main role in the narrative is supporting their assigned love interest or causing relationship-based drama for their assigned love interest. If it weren't for shipping, then the Specialists would not exist.

While the Specialists do have fleshed out characters and may even effect the plot, the execution of those elements is designed around the girls. A really obvious example of this is the character Timmy, who has character development as the boy's tech guy. Why is he into technology? Because he's the designated love interest for the fairy of Technology and we have to show why they're a good match. Along similar lines, the boys don't really get plots that are removed from the girls because this is the girl's show. Every episode features one or more of the Winx, but the boys are optional and often don't appear.

This is because, narratively speaking, the boys are just love interests and that brings us back to Miraculous' big problem. You can't have a show where Adrien is written like a Specialist while also being part of the Winx Club and where Alya is written like she's part of the Winx Club while technically being more of a Specialist in terms of power set and actual narrative role.

I'm was thinking back to my memories of various Winx Club plots to find one that really highlighted what I mean here and I remembered that one of the big dramas in season one was the reveal that Bloom's love interest - Sky - was in an arranged marriage and had just never told her. As it turns out, that's a great example of what I'm talking about re Adrien!

Is that plot line technically based around Sky and letting his life effect the plot? Sure, but the fallout of that reveal revolves around Bloom, not Sky. The story doesn't really care how Sky's feeling as the conflict progresses. Instead, it focuses on how it affects Bloom and her friends because of course it does! She's the main character. It would be really weird if that plot suddenly focused on her side character love interest and his friends during one of her darkest hours/biggest moments.

Think of that and then consider how the ending of season five is written. Notice any similarities? Sure, this is Adrien's family drama, but because he's just a Specialist, the focus isn't on him. It's on Winx Club member Marinette and Adrien only shows up at the end for a kiss. That is the problem. That is what I'm talking about when I say that Miraculous will randomly write him as if we're watching a magical girl team show where Adrien is just the love interest.

In fact, let's really dig into this example because it's a good one.

You can have a look at the transcript for the finale episode of Miraculous season five here and see for yourself that Adrien doesn't even show up on screen until the final scenes when the big drama is over. The Winx Club wiki also has episode transcripts, so I took a look to see what happened in Winx land during the arranged marriage reveal plot (I love that this is a thing. It's so useful for fact checking myself!) This is the script for the episode after Bloom learns the truth. Sky does not appear even though his lies and family drama are the fuel for this episode's events, which are a major part of the season's arc. Note how perfectly that matches Adrien's writing?

Similarly, Sky's dialogue in the reveal episode is all about Bloom. He's worried about her learning the truth and thinking less of him. To match that, here's Adrien's only real dialogue in the penultimate episode of season five (full transcript):

Adrien:(Covers his ears.) I cannot transform... (Looks at his ring and tries taking it off.) Plagg: What are you doing?! Adrien: I'm not in my right mind. I'm too angry — at myself for falling short of Marinette's love, at my father for sending me here in London, at this stupid app and these rings that use my image... it makes me sick! This nightmare is giving me the horrible feeling that, if I transform, I'll get akumatized and destroy everything with my Cataclysm — Marinette, Ladybug... (Takes off the ring and hands it to Plagg.)

Switching back to Winx. After Bloom learns the truth about Sky, bad things happen because she's depressed. This results in her and the Winx going off on a journey to learn the truth of who Bloom is. After the girls share this big plot moment and Bloom gets her mojo back, the boys show up to be their ride home and to give Bloom her romance moment where Sky wins her back by declaring that he broke off the arranged married because he loves her.

Sky notably doesn't get an arc about choosing between his arranged marriage and his true love. We don't even know that the marriage is broken off until he tells Bloom because that was never really a conflict as far as the narrative was concerned. Of course he's going to pick Bloom! He's her designated side character love interest! He only exists to be with her. We don't need to treat this as a serious thing for him. The arranged marriage plot was never about him anyway. It was about giving Bloom a reason to have a darkest hour moment that moves the plot forward. Similarly, Sky calling off the marriage is nowhere near as important as him telling Bloom that he's called off the marriage to be with her in a grand romantic gesture.

This perfectly mirrors Miraculous' season five ending where Adrien doesn't appear until after Marinette is done fighting her big girl power fight against his father. As far as the writing is concerned, that fight isn't about him. His connection to the villain only really matters in terms of how it affects Marinette's actions during the final battle. Then, when the battle is over, Adrien shows up to give Marinette her big romance moment because, while the plot may be driven by Adrien's family, he is not a Winx club member. He's just a Specialist. Or, in the words of the head writer:

[image text: She's Barbie, he's Ken. You don't like it. I get it. It won't change. Anything else?] (The full, even more damning context of this tweet can be found here.)

What else can I say other than, "I rest my case."

Oh, and also that I didn't take this as an attack. I just thought it was a good opportunity to really dig into the nuances of this and what I was talking about in that original post as I never know how obvious this stuff is if you don't closely study story telling. As this case study hopefully shows, if a show is about a group of girl friends using the power of friendship, then their love interests may have important roles, but the boys are never going to be more important than the girls and most of the boy's screen time will be focused on romance and how their existence effects the girls because it's ultimately the girls' world. Without them, the show wouldn't exist. Without the boys? Well, then we just wouldn't have a romance plot.

[mr-payjay]

watching the nickel apology scene from the great bluish bakery over and over going completely insane. i could rewrite this to actually sound like nickel.

[oneluckydragon]

✨🌸 Sunshine on your skin, flowers in my soul 🌸✨

🌊🫧Summary → In the midst of his reconciliation with Team Wish, Dusknoir begins coughing up flowers. This unfortunate brand of bad luck should be a cosmic joke. A spiteful punishment that the world has brought down on him out of malice, out of vengeance for his past deeds. A cruel, agonizing curse manifested with the single unjustified purpose of preventing him from realizing happiness, ever seeking redemption, ever righting his multitudes of wrongs and moving on with his life. But that's not true, and he knows it deep down. Knows it in the very core of his soul like the flood of petals building in this throat.

This is his fault because he is a coward, and that's all he has ever been. A backstabbing, lonely coward.

And now he is going to die because of it.

[AO3]

[CH. I -- Word Count -- 13,290]

🌒💫 Return → the act of going back to a place, person, or memory

[CH. II -- TBA]

[lightningidle]

Fig's line "I don't think I'm an artist, I think I'm just a good friend" has not left my head at all. Just...

You're Fig Faeth and your horns came in over the summer and you pick up the bard class as a form of adolescent rock 'n' roll rebellion, and it works! It's exactly the outlet you need! You give a guy you just met drumsticks and you start a band and it's good enough that within a year and a half you're touring. You are, in every sense, good at being a bard.

And then, finally, your junior year, you start to take it seriously. Your art goes from an outlet and a form of rebellion to a practice. A discipline. (Can rebellion exist within a discipline?) Your classmates know what they want to do with their work. They all have a thesis statement. And yeah, there's cohesion in the music you make, but you've never had to think about why you make it. You've never sat down and dissected what it is about bass that speaks to you. You've never poured over your lyrics to pick at any deeper meaning. Why should you? You don't play music for a grand design, you do it to... huh, why do you do it?

(Your art is the one form of self-expression that feels as safe as Disguise Self does, because even if you're pouring your heart onto the page and then screaming it in front of thousands of people, it's not like you're really making yourself known. You can sing I'm lonely, I'm scared, I'm furious, and your fans will sing it right back, and there will still be the distance between performer and audience to keep your heart safe.)

Now you're being asked to look inward to explain the artistic choices you're making, and you can't help but recoil at that, because you'd rather do anything than look inward. Meanwhile, your classmates have no problem with it, so you start to wonder if you're a real artist at all. Can your art be authentic if it only exists to bolster a thesis statement? Has your art been unauthentic this whole time because you've never really thought about a thesis statement before? Is that what makes it art, and not just the next track on somebody's teen angst playlist?

You can't think about yourself— acknowledging your own existence makes you want to puke. So if your music is an extension of yourself, (and it is, even if it's just because the spotlight reveals only what you want it to,) you can't think about your music. You can't. You have to. Your grade depends on it.

You're Fig Faeth, and you keep multiclassing because you'd rather be a good friend than a great artist. If introspection is what great art demands, then fuck it. You must not be a bard at all.

[pyjamacryptid]

I'm currently rewatching the dark tower for reasons (fic reasons), and when Gwen said "Morgana's enchanted it to protect me," it rang an alarm bell, this time 'round.

"[...]to protect me."

hm. huh. you don't say. interesting. As in, the knights are the enemy not the rescuers? hm. curious.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it (i mean, hey, that's the fun of it), but that choice of language stood out to me.

[deoidesign]

Allowing myself to work on this comic. A LITTLE. Please....... I'm making comics all day every day please let me chase my bliss a little........... With a different comic...........

[birdsong-warriors]

Brick may seem to have a bit of a double standard here when it comes to labels, but they don't consider "halfhouser" (half housecat) to be a bad thing, much less an insult. But "half-cat" is too far into icky and demeaning and invalidating territory; they are very much not cool with that, and they're eager to call it out.

On another note: the escaped prisoner is Stonefur.

First | Previous | Next

Part 1: Friend and Family

See up to thirty pages ahead, with timelapses, on Patreon! Deputy and Leader tiers are temporarily 33 pages ahead due to a double update! :D

Backgrounds, brushes, and other assets for sale on my Ko-Fi!

[bookshelf-in-progress]

I had forgotten how much fun it is to have characters.

They can have personalities! That influence the way they react to certain plot points! And they can interact with each other! And have chemistry! And do silly things! It's wonderful.

[ch1zzie]

Forgot to post this here butttt

Working on a welcome home animation and mighttttt take me a while

[byanyan]

i've changed my mind again!! i am, in fact, going to delete a fuckload of my drafts bc i am!!! not vibing with having all this old stuff & having it stopping me from starting new stuff!!!! this is the year where i finally say fuck it!!! i'm gonna run this blog the way i wanna and i'm gonna do what's the most fun for me!!!! ...not that i didn't enjoy any of the threads i have in my drafts bc i did, i just. i have to do something to get myself energized again and clean slate (mostly) is all i got rn askjfhds

i'm not deleting everything — i've got some specific verse stuff, some plotted and/or specific character moment things, and some starters that i'm holding on to, but. yeah. everything else has to go, i'm so sorry

[twodiamondhoes]

SLAMS DOOR OPEN hello!!! I hear you're looking for lil ficlet ideas!!

I would love to see your take on jimmy and grians relationship 👀👀👀 I simply wish there was more content of them in the world (shippy or non-shippy!!)

If u would like any additional prompts maybe the aftermath of grian taking jimmy out in wildlife????

No pressure at all if the thought doesnt appeal to you, saluting you so much as a fellow traveller on the writing strugglebus right now. GOOD LUCK!!! <3

Hi Theo!! Welcome in, please have a seat! :D

as for Jimmy & (/) Grian I totally agree, I love their dynamic so much!! Time to be the change we want to see in the world XD

Take my hand, we will get through this rough patch together!! <3333

I haven't actually finished either of their WL POVs (Blasphemous as a self-proclaimed Jimmy Main, I know) so IDK how well I can touch on that one, but I did see that clip of Grian joining their phasmo thing late that's floating around and I lost my mind. Have this modern au?? Phasmo au??? IDK but here you go!

Grian sank deeper into the couch cushions, watching some rerun of an ancient Top Gear episode on the TV in front of him. The sound is so low it might as well be muted in favor of listening to Jimmy off in the kitchen, rummaging around in cupboards as they waited for Joel to arrive.

On the screen, Hammond spun out just in time for Jimmy's voice to peak, some offended crescendo about the story he was telling. Something about someone at work.

For the first time in days, Grian felt his lungs fill, untrapped by the vice of panic or stress. He made some sort of noise in response to Jimmy asking if he could believe all of that. He tried to focus on the words, knowing that Jimmy would be more offended at him not listening than he had been at the lady in his story, but relaxation was stealing over him in waves, pulling the steel and the energy from his limbs the longer he sat there.

Jimmy's voice was much closer when he snorted, placing down a mug on the table in front of Grian. He didn't remember telling him what he wanted in his tea, but the label that spun in front of them was his favorite brew. Warmth steeped through him.

"Budge up," Jimmy said, the words floating down through the syrup of Grian's mind instead of crashing through and jarring him back to consciousness. He shuffled back into a mostly upright position, "are you falling asleep on me?"

“No,”Grian scoffed, leaving Jimmy more than enough time to settle in before he slid sideways again so that he could lean heavily on Jimmy’s shoulder. He hooked a grin up at him. “Now I’m falling asleep on you.”

“You utter-I'm not that boring, am I?” Jimmy groused, reaching for the remote. Grian kicked at the coffee table with his foot, scooting it enough that the remote was out of reach.

“As boring as you always are,” Grian said, if only because he couldn’t seem to untangle the emotions caught in the warm mixture in his chest, at least not in a way where he could pull them apart and explain them to Jimmy. “Maybe I’m just tired,” he said, trying to call up a haughty tone, “maybe it’s got nothing to do with you.”

Jimmy grumbled something more under his breath, but shifted so that Grian was resting comfortably at his side, instead of just smushed against him.

"Go on, then,” Jimmy said, settling back against the armrest so they were both halfway to horizontal. “Joel can wake us up when he gets here.”

Grian hid a smile against Jimmy’s shoulder.

“Glad you see things my way.”

[stellewriites]

thanks for the tags @dwarvenagenda & @pricegouge !! 💓

it was fun to check my stats for this year :3

funny to compare how i started my year vs how its ending (fandoms im writing for, fic length range, themes and tropes i’m preferring, etc).

i’ve found that although ive maybe written less and had less interaction in general from readers this year i’ve truly found some amazing people that i consider good friends on here now :’) and i wouldn’t swap that for anything!!

blank copy below and npt: @pricetagged @ohlawdthebirds @sentientcave @syoddeye @gloard @wraithdance @buttdumplin @luvrodite @mikichko @lewistoferrari @disgustingtwitches