#I dunno if this post is coherent at all haha

[sunofaraven]

Love this post. And also want to mention how much the canary curse means to me. I didn't watch Jimmy before the life series, but I became so intrigued by this goofy guy everyone teased who kept dying first. And I'm so glad I decided to check out his content.

As a content creator, he is SO good at what he does. Truly boundless energy and silliness. You can tell how much he loves being the butt of a joke. And I've seen differing opinions on whether people enjoy how much this man gets mercilessly teased, but I love it. I love it because of how he reacts and what it means in context.

As someone who personally struggles with perceived failure, Jimmy's content taught me that not only is it fine to 'fail' repeatedly, but that it's funny. And a lot of content creators do this, it's true, but the overwhelming resilience and optimism Jimmy shows feels like a whole other level. And the fact that he has embraced the canary symbolism only adds to that imo.

He just is the canary: a golden bit of sun in the darkness singing his heart out no matter what. And now the canary has broken free from his cage, but he'll keep singing regardless.

The canary curse can't be passed on, and even if Jimmy dies first again in the future, it doesn't mean it's back. Because he demonstrated to all of us that even if you're doomed by the narrative enough to die first FOUR series in a row, you WILL break your own curse if you just keep laughing and trying again.

That's why he'll always be the canary to me.

Gang let's leave the Canary Curse behind. It broke in Secret Life. Vestigial traits can carry over, sure, but it's over. Mumbo has only died immediately after Jim twice, and now this one time hes died first- he's not the new canary, and neither is Lizzie, who just had really bad luck and is doing amazing this season. It sucks that has only been happening to them, while Grian died first in Real Life and, by that logic, would also be a canary.

That being said it would be so funny if Mumbo woke up back on Hermitcraft and had to comb some feathers out of his mustache. But let's leave it at that ey? Just a little refrence, a little "ough, you had it rough" symbolism when they wake up in another server- whisked away by the resuscitation device.

I have no idea how Jimmy feels about all the canary symbolism now, but as of Sos SMP he had basically accepted it (a quote where he named his elytra "Canary wings" and said "they're a part of me now, it's not lore", it's worth pointing out this is solidly after Secret Life). Hence I will keep using it as inspiration for his character and for some refrences. However we should take an actual look at canary symbolism.

Well, doesn't that seem like our vagyely unlucky guy. He's always hopeful, very optimistic, worried about his friends safety (even if he isn't allied with them), and can be relatively vulnerable. Most of all, after so many times of dying first (and being targeted in other series), he's kept his head up high, and kept his eyes on the prize, always swearing that this will be his season. He's the most resilient person I can think of. This is how we can still characterize him as a canary.

Remember, the Curse isn't just about laughs and poking fun at an unlucky player, the Curse has been broken, and you shouldn't force the Curse on other players. That's all thank uuuuu <3

[valfeathers]

OMG YOUR ART IS SO GOOD! Gonna go on a reblog spree tomorrow or something <3<3<3

Anywho, care to share some (more) of your opinions on Wammy's House? Saw a few text posts and they caught my interest 👀

Like, how do you think L feels about his successors or something. Or just rant about why you hate Watari and Roger (omg or more BB talk LOVE that). I dunno I can just ell your opinions/takes are *chef's kiss*

i'm so sorry this took so long but!! i had no idea where to start lmao

i spend so much time just thinking about L in any capacity,, i mean it, he occupies a scary amount of my waking thoughts (blame the autism)

so for starters, as much as i shit on wammy's and its terrible negligence, i find myself putting L & the successors into little found family scenarios & i often draw them all together

(eg. here's some older sketches of L & the kids)

now i know that canonically they probably (definitely) weren't like this but,, i want them all to be loved

i can understand why/how other people would have a different interpretation of their dynamic, but portraying L as a mentor/brother/father figure is very near & dear to my heart :'))

(this is also partly projection as i'm an eldest son who loves their sibling & wants the best for them, who also deeply relates to L so do with that what you will haha)

most of my wammy family art is for comfort! and maybe it can comfort other people too :')))

maybe one day i'll come back & explain the extent of my hcs about this dynamic but i'm not confident in my ability to like. word my thoughts coherently yet so !! for now u get art & some surface level stuff :)

but anyways, sometimes i question what being at the centre of a program like that must feel like. i try not to overanalyse L's backstory and dictate what he must have thought because i know that he's a complicated character and a lot of his morality/actions are up for debate but like,,,

having your guardians look for a replacement for you while you're still alive? that's like saying 'we're just waiting for you to die/mess up/become useless to us and then when that happens, we can instantly replace you with a new & improved version'

even if they were trying to do a classic 'heir' system where a person inherits L's position and this wasn't meant to send that kind of message,, the environment that was produced is still incredibly toxic. that still isn't good. they used children. malleable, vulnerable orphans. that's no coincidence.

and idk that's a little messed up to me.

i don't really know how else to word my thoughts on this situation rn? i just acknowledge that that's no way to treat a person and move on bc,, what else can i say? :'/ it's a terrible situation for everybody involved and watari (& roger) are fucked up for creating a cycle of abuse and putting L right in the centre of it.

and a prime example of how damaging this system was is B. he wasn't born hateful and vindictive and violent, something made him that way. we are all products of our environments, and his was inhumane by definition.

this post is getting long as fuck, jesus,,, okok i'll wrap this up by saying that i'll expand on B at a later date

and reminding u that this is my interpretation and you're free to disagree! we all read into characters & their relationships differently

but yeah a lot of my thoughts about them tend to be really sad so i pad it out with sweeter stuff like above!

[lordseventhby7]

I just came to know that there's a new Qi Ye translation on the block and it's Y'ALL to boot! I dunno what I'm more hyped about! I'm gonna start to reread it soon, so expect lot of crying screaming and meta posts when I do LOL (if I'm coherent enough). With how much I love y'alls take on QY-TYK universe and your fan creations on it, I know this is gonna be AMAZING!

Aww!!! Thank you so so much!!!

We're extremely excited for all this; especially the meta posts!!! (dare I say the crying? haha)

Thank you so much for your very kind message, and we hope that you'll have a blast re-reading Qi Ye!!

[evelili]

OKAY SO I JUST FINISHED ACT 3 AND HOLY SHIT I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS AND THOUGHTS AND WORDS FAIL ME BECAUSE HOT DAMN MY BRAIN THINKS FASTER THAN IT CAN COMPREHEND A LOT OF THE TIME SO I'LL TRY MY BEST TO GET ALL MY THOUGHTS OUT. Fair warning, this might be very, very long. So for starters, the way Chapter 11 Started with memories which, at first didn't make it obvious we were seeing Sunset's Memories was done absolutely fantastically. Like, it was a wonderful build up cause at first I didn't even question it, but then the moment she broke in I realized it couldn't have been Twilight's, and then as the chapter progressed it was more and more clear and it was so wonderfully executed and knowing my guess was right as I read got me so pumped up to see where everything went. AND THEN WITH THE REVEAL OF CELESTIA REMOVING TWILIGHT'S MEMORIES OF ████ WAS SO WELL HANDLED! Like, I thought it was ████ at first, but then my own paranoia had me second guessing but then I was right and it was incredible and I was so curious to see what happened to her. AND THEN CHAPTER 12 INSTANTLY EXPLAINING IT AND GOING INTO DETAIL OF WHAT HAPPENED TO HER BROKE MY HEART! And just knowing that ████ is still gone (I have yet to finish the Epilogue so I dunno if that changes) hurts still! BUT THE WHOLE BUILD UP TO EVERYONE BECOMING FRIENDS AND USING HARMONY TO SAVE SUNSET AND THE WHOLE THING AND SORRY THE EXCITEMENT IS STILL RUSHING THROUGH ME!! Honest to god this has been such a wonderful thing to read, and apologies I cannot comprehend coherent words at the moment. But all and all, The Twilight Effect has been one of my favourite reads ever, and I look forward to giving you my (hopefully coherent) full thoughts after the epilogue!

so i may or may not have gone overboard and drawn smth for this that deserves to get its own post, pls look forward to that lol

also i guess this is spoilers? idc at this point, ill spoil the whole fic if it gets ppl interested in reading it lollll i wish tumblr had a spoiler filter like twt or smth, oh well

but yeh!! c11 is i think my fav chapter in the whole fic, i loveeee playing with concepts u can only do w the written word (kinda like pinkies chapter in a way) and its so fun to “plot twist” in a way that readers slowly figure whats happening before the characters do, so it’s like holding your breath waiting for them to finally figure it out xd

and c12 was the “big reveal”, which im still super happy how it turned out! i got to play w diff mediums for storytelling a bit w “whitespace” (technically black lol) and using a comic instead of written word, which was a lot of fun :D figuring out exactly what happened in the past between celestia, twi, nd Someone was always going to b the “climax” of c12, and it was such a relief to finally get there in the end, as well as figure out a way to “show, not tell” the whole thing to still make it interesting

im so glad it was an impactful finale! and ofc, thank u so much for reading and all ur lovely comments, i still have ur epilogue comment in my box that ill save to answer this weekend haha dw, im saving it close to my heart for now!

[emanation-aura]

Weird questions for writers, 19 and 38!

This is a response to this post about questions for writers!

19. Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?

Wow, so uh. Maybe this is a common origin story for writers my age, but I started out on Wattpad? It must have been about 2014-15 or so when I began; I have vivid memories of hopping off a flight and impatiently waiting to be driven home after vacation so that I could use my iPad to type the next chapter to my fic there, haha.

I started writing Pokemon fic, specifically of the X&Y Pokemon anime. I dunno if people here know this, but there used to be a fic genre there called "Ash gets betrayed by his friends" that was super popular, and I wrote a version of that too— it was my first fic (I named it "Heartbroken") and I made so many poor and melodramatic choices with it, but also i look back on it fondly. Some of the stylistic choices there survive in my writing there. Apart from that fic, I also wrote stuff for Star Wars Rebels, Percy Jackson, and Ranger's Apprentice (so typical YA stuff).

Why I started... well that's kind of difficult to answer, because I honestly I don't know. But it may have to do with that spidey-writing sense I get sometimes when reading or engaging with fiction, the desire for a story out of what I know.

There were a couple of major "incidents" that spurred me on the path of the fic writer: one was reading this AoT fic (tw graphic self-harm) and this Maze Runner fic (tw grief, suicide, psychological torture). Ok maybe this sounds bad on the surface but I am legitimately convinced that reading these at a young age made my writing style what it is today: a bit purple-prose-ish, slow and contemplative, chock-full of emotion and introspection, always, somehow, sad or angsty. (and they end up touching on the topics mentioned above, although most of the ones that do I don't publish.)

As for closer to the present... well, I really hit the ground running when I started writing Genshin fic. It's pretty much the beginning of my "modern style" (or stuff that I can read back through without cringing), and I want to keep developing that: writing sadness and grief and pain is deeply cathartic to me, and outside of lore studies, those are what I will be focusing on in the future. (...currently staring at the inordinate number of angst WIPs I have.)

38. What is something about your writing process YOU think is Really Weird? If you are comfortable, please share. If you’re not comfortable, what do you think cats say about us?

In all honesty, most of my fic is kind-of vent fic, just more verbose and coherent that what the name 'vent-fic' tends to evoke. I need to be in a really specific kind of mood to write angst/hurt/comfort (my staple), and for a long period of time, I was perpetually in that state, which made creating... not easier, maybe, but something else that spurred it on. I'm not like that now, but the emotional intensity needed to create and convey hasn't left me, either.

Putting it this way: i need to find or set myself into a Mood(tm) to find my creative juices. It's weird because I can and do write when I'm mentally fine, but sometimes the low mood makes things sharper and easier to convey. These days, I usually put on music to do this: not just any generic songs I like but specifically stuff I've curated from listening non-stop 1000s of times before I keep it on the "dopamine injection" playlist. Stuff like that speaks to me in ways that makes me feel probably far too much, and it puts me in the right (or wrong, I guess?) state of mind to pour emotion onto the page. Cause thats what it is for me: if I don't feel emotionally destroyed by what I'm writing then what even is the point?

In lighter terms: anybody is free to ask stuff in general, not just from the question list, in my askbox whenever. Please. I love talking about writing (why write when I can talk about writing)

[xoxoemynn]

I know you're deep in OFMD mode, but I remember back in the day you got into Good Omens for a while! Have you checked out the second season/do you plan to? I had a great time with it, I thought it was a very fandom-tailored follow-up.

I have! Some spoilers under the cut.

So I'll start off with the caveat that I didn't watch it especially closely. I felt kind of pressured to binge it because there were untagged spoilers everywhere and Good Omens is a show I really wanted to experience vs. finding out everything that happens via gif sets/live reactions/spotify playlists. So I rushed through it even though I wasn't able to fully focus and appreciate it, which means I definitely missed some things. Which was kind of irritating, but I figured I'd do a rewatch soon enough to pick up on those things.

I thought it was enjoyable. It did feel like fan fic to me, which I think can be a plus or a minus depending on who you ask, haha, but I enjoyed seeing more of Crowley and Aziraphale's interactions over the years. There were some really delightful, wonderful moments. I love their characters and I loved seeing them on my screen again.

I am not a fan of Jon Hamm and was annoyed Gabriel was going to be such a focus this season because I already liked to forget he was a part of the show LOL but I had time to prepare myself for that. I did think that romance came out of nowhere but again thought maybe I just missed some clues since, like I said, I wasn't doing the closest watch, but from some posts I've seen I don't think that's the case.

I just... I know this is the 2nd act of a three act play. I know this is the dark before the storm. I know Crowley and Aziraphale need to grow and learn to truly talk to each other if they're going to be together. I fully get all that, and I'm sure if there's a third season like Gaiman wants then they'll figure out how to properly understand each other and get their happily ever after.

But the "I forgive you" felt like such a cruel twist of the knife that honestly it tainted a lot of my enjoyment of the season as a whole and I don't know when I'll be able to bring myself to rewatch it. And I've seen the oat milk theories, which... idk somehow almost feels worse in my mind? Like "oh he was drugged, he didn't mean it," but meanwhile my beloved best demon Crowley is just out here being devastated? And that's not even getting into the metaphorical layers there that I honestly just don't have the brain space right now to speak to coherently. I dunno, I know this season was supposed to be the bridge to the sequel to Good Omens Gaiman and Pratchett planned to write, so I'm assuming that needed to start from a place where Crowley and Aziraphale were on opposite sides and upset with each other. That's all well and good. I'm not even opposed to Aziraphale rejecting Crowley, because we all know he's constantly about a thousand steps behind him. For me, though, the execution felt more like pain for pain's sake and I wish there had been some more kindness, both for Crowley and for viewers.

[tularose]

hello, are you the person that wrote the baldurs gate 3 fic 'Blood of the Covenant'? if not, feel free to ignore this haha.

i just wanted to say - i revisit fics that i like often, and it seems that you've deleted it, which is fine, but i just wanted to express that i really loved it. i think about it often, and not just in the context of bg3. i think there's something really poignant there, in 'Righteous killing is killing all the same', and 'if that's all I was, all I could ever be, the gleam of a knife in the dark- I'd lose my mind no matter how good the cause was.' i loved the wizened old lady.

(i have a screenshot saved on my phone. i liked it ok.)

you've just captured something interesting about hero stories, i think. i dunno. feel free to tell me to fuck off, but i wanted to ask; why'd you delete it?

thanks either way, and i hope you have a nice day :)

I am very surprised to get something like this! I am very flattered to hear, and it does mean a lot to me to hear all of this. I'm really glad that you enjoyed reading it so much, really.

Mostly it comes down to feeling like it was all a bit under-baked, I suppose. A slurry of ideas that fit together in my mind very cleanly and concisely, but in writing, didn't necessarily cohere to one another as much as I'd have liked. The Dark Urge's relationship to all their current companions, their past with the Eilistraee worshippers, and the general queer undertones to their existence all would have ideally blended together into a singular theme, but instead it all feels like a lot of things being presented like a list. I was simply rather unsatisfied with it, and felt like it needed more than a few editing passes to get it in a shape I'd be completely happy with.

That isn't to say that I think it came out bad or anything, just... I felt like it needed more time in the oven. A bit more effort to let the ideas I wanted to explore mingle. I'm really glad that you found it as powerful as you did, and especially pleased that the old lady struck such a chord with you! I felt like I could have done a slightly better job explaining her history, but she was a lot of fun and ended up representing a lot of my feelings about looking back at a decades spanning series I played and modded obsessively when I was young. Hindsight, you know?

This was an incredibly nice ask to receive, so thank you. I will probably post it up again when I'm a bit more satisfied with the end result, but this was a very sweet and encouraging message.

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

Loved your Goro post and i was thinking, if the rumor of that Goro'spin off its real, what would you like to see?

I wolunt mind an supernatural/metaverse investigation story, because that boy does enjoy investigating. And maybe having to collaborate with someone? May that someone be, if atlus wants to give us a good chunk of fanservice, Naoto (because the kid deserves a caring adult) OR someone that reminds him of himself when he was young. Maybe this young edgy new character who is this close to snap and kill someone for revenge and Akechi is just like "umhhhh ok kid, what about we have a meal instead" while cringing

Basically both the idea of him having a caring mentor figure OR being the mentor and caring for someone its really appeling to me

Those are both really awesome ideas!

Personally, I kind of hesitate from future!Naoto content just because I don't like cis Naoto, but I know post-P4 Naoto content already exists so its not like we can prevent that from existing at this point. I would like Naoto and Goro friendship for absolute sure buuut I do think it is important to remember (as its easy to forget since Persona 5 feels so far in the future from Persona 4) that Naoto is only 3 years older than Goro, haha.

I would be more partial to a mentor figure for Goro than Goro being a mentor figure but I like both ideas a lot. Either way what I want is to see Goro grow as a person, maybe get to use his wild card abilities, and find a found family. I would love if that found family was the Phantom Thieves but I dunno how that would work exactly in a spin off.

I've heard some speculation that the Goro spin off would be a prequel of sorts, and I'm not opposed to that but I would honestly much rather see a future story with him since there's so much more story to tell with him. One idea I did have after hearing the rumors was that Goro, after the events of Royal, is stuck in the Metaverse and has to traverse his own mindscape (a sort of Palace but not really) to return to the real world, and that's where we learn about his past. So kind of a best of both worlds situation.

I think I would need to have finished Persona 3 to know for sure what I would like to see Goro do in a spin off game. From what I've seen a lot of people headcanon he joins that group after Persona 5 but I really don't know the context of that at all yet since I'm still at the beginning of FES.

Sorry I don't have any more coherent thoughts on this. The truth is, I would be happy with any new Goro content, especially anything that confirms he's alive after Royal.

[thewertsearch]

Asks compilation: 09/05

God ok that actually sounds like it would work really well. John would be a huge McElroy fan, wouldn’t he?

I just looked up the Washington accent to compare it to Griffin’s, and wow, my mental voice for John is completely different. I probably have all the wrong accents for these characters in my head, since I don’t have a clue which accent maps to which state. 

At least we’re all in the same boat about not knowing Jade’s accent - unless we learn where Grandpa grew up later on, since she’d probably have picked up his.

Brilliant! Yeah, no, I’ve been trying to nail down that font for ages.

Dammit, I just realized I could have inspected homestuck.com’s source >:(

It narrowly edges out Gen 4, for me. D/P/Pt were great, but Black and White were the games which really perfected the formula. I honestly don’t think they should have gone 3D, but whatcha gonna do?

Oh my god, of course there are. I’m going to rewatch that show some day and lose my mind, aren’t I?

Hey, thanks for the ask! 

I thought about this back when I was first starting the blog. I dunno, though. You’re really not missing much - my live reactions aren’t nearly as coherent as the writeups - mostly just a lot of ‘oh my god, what?’ moments. I write more articulately than I speak. Trust me on this. 

I’m honestly impressed you came up with something more headache inducing than the bogo algorithm, which for the uninitiated literally means ‘randomly shuffle a list until it’s sorted’. 

aw fuck we’re getting a bogo modus aren’t we

I like Bogleech’s writing, especially his creature design reviews, but I could never get more than a handful of pages into Awful Hospital. I respect his commitment to the stereotypically ‘gross’ organic aesthetic, but it kind of just squicks me out. Plus, I dunno. The premise is really dark, but the comic seems to be a full-on comedy. The dissonance just doesn’t really work for me. 

Still, though. Pokéween is some of my favorite writing on the web. Check out his stuff. 

I’ve never been super into horror. Mind you, I like having something to listen to when I’m out on a walk, and I’ve heard good things about the Magnus Archives, so maybe this is my opportunity to give it another chance?

No, yeah, we have a winner. Step aside, Broderick.

I have come to accept that Hussie is just really prone to making unintentional references. When Dave Strider is one of your primary characters, you probably can’t avoid constantly referencing pop culture - even, it seems, accidentality!

The Queen is dead! everything has gone to shit! Long live Jack the Ascended!  

Haha, I never considered that tumblr’s format does kind of resemble John and CG’s inverted conversations, in a way. When you reblog a connected pair of joke posts, you even have to make sure to reblog them backwards, or you’ll invert them! 

Ah, indie devs. Heads, they’re legends, tails, they’re assholes. 

I’ve never played it, but it’s been sitting in my steam library for months! If it’s anything like Celeste, I should have started playing it yesterday. Lore is pretty much the only thing Celeste is missing - not that it needs it. 

Those giant Underlings are nothing compared to what you see in Pipecorp. This is just another day in the office for Harold P. Egbert. 

Awesome! Yeah, I already see why the comic’s music is so popular. And considering we’ve got Toby ‘Leitmotifs’ Fox on the music team, these are all sure to return. 

So what, it’s like, Act 6: Act 1? We’re going to start recursing?

Don’t lie to me, guys. This comic is a fractal, isn’t it? It goes on forever, the sub-acts shrinking into the infinitesimal. 

I know not what awaits me. 

Six, right? Based on the above ask, there can’t be room for any more, unless they shrink dramatically after Act 6. 

I have no idea how many sub-acts there could be, though. Once you pop open that can of worms, you can’t easily close it. 

Done! From now on, all theoryposts will be tagged #theories!

Yeah, noted! I didn’t expect Homestuck to require the equivalent of waiting for the post-credits scene, but here we are?

In what sense? The Trollslum showed up pretty soon after Jade’s intro, and CG chimed in up not long after. The sense I always got was that Hussie improvised a lot of the comic, but maybe the trolls were a particularly spontaneous addition?

Liveblogging a liveblog! I can get behind that. Yeah, like I’ve alluded to before, I’d be having a very different experience with this comic if I wasn’t reading it in bite-sized chunks. 

Thank you!! I’m really trying to convey the same feelings that I’m getting while I’m reading this comic. I’m glad it’s working!

Honestly, my guessing technique is essentially just throwing theories at the wall to see what sticks. 

I usually have like, two or three explanations for a a given event in the comic, which means I can be eerily correct and ironically wrong about the same thing -  or ironically wrong twice over, as is probably more likely.

[autistic-dib]

I don't really plan out my stories, I just have thoughts sometimes. This will not be a very coherent post

THAT BEING SAID

So there's this part of The Expanse (in the novel Persepolis Rising) that (condensed) goes:

““Fair enough, Camina. Fair enough. Here then. See if you can follow me. Last long enough, and you’ll see that they’re all our people.” … ““I told you that you wouldn’t understand,” Avasarala said, her voice cold and cutting. “The fuckers on the Tempest? I’m telling you they’re us too.””

And that has always really struck me. it's one of my favorite parts of the whole series (which is really really good and everyone should read.) and so of course I've thought about that in regards to Invader Zim.

and just. ugh brain can't communicate. like Zim and Dib. like the Irken Armada and The Resisty. all of the characters of IZ down to those guards over the screwhead people. Even though they're not all humans they're people. THEY'RE PEOPLE arggghhh that's why I'm not down to like... obliterate the Irken Empire.

the Empire isn't a big bad in my verse, even though the characters may feel differently than I do about that. Do I want to change them based on my own morals? like. yeah a little bit haha.

but I can't want to completely destroy the Irken Empire because that means destroying Irkens, and not just the "evil" ones. I just want to cause a little chaos there and upend their society into functioning without so much oppression and fascism IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK

what will this look like when I get to it? I dunno man I can't even write a multi-chapter fic without drowning in lack-of-follow-through

[franeridart]

Oh man, I'm just imagining that there's so many close brushes with kiribaku almost realizing or almost being in positions to find out that the other is a vigilante-- an injury and no way to get into contact with Jack or Mina-- a rainstorm washing Kiri's dye away on the job. I think it'd be especially funny if he thought for a minute that Kiri was bleeding but then Kiri is like "UH GOTTA GO ITS NOT BLOOD" and he realizes it's red hair dye

Oh Kirishima sort of already suspects it’s Bakugou - more or less? He’s in the process of starting to suspect it, at least lol for being someone who really doesn’t want to be found out Bakugou’s more carefree in his disguise than Kirishima is (his hair is a pretty obvious giveaway, for example, thought Bakugou relies a lot on the ‘attacking and running’ strategy, so in his mind all he gotta do is just not be seen by anyone at all lol) compared to Kiri he gets bruised and beaten up way more too (Kiri’s hardening makes it easy for him to avoid that in general) - Kiri’s noticing Bakugou’s bruises and his vigilante friend’s bruises match up a whole damn lot, so he’s starting to figure that one out

Bakugou’s a dumbass tho (read: he doesn’t really look at people he isn’t particularly interested in) so for him it’s gonna take a while haha

Anon said: If in vigilantes au Bakugou and jirou are just friends why do they live together and hug like a couple?

They’re best friends, and sometimes when your best friend is going through a real rough heartbreak and he’s in literal tears over it, you might be nice enough to offer your back for him to hide his face in and let him pretend he isn’t currently breaking down on you. Sometimes, you like a person in a platonic way enough to emotionally support them as best as you can when they’re at their lowest. It. Sort of happens between best friends, now and again. You don’t really need to want in someone’s pants to care about them.

They live together cause they started working together as vigilantes when they were in high school, and once they moved up to college they found it a good idea to have someone back home who knew about what they were doing to treat eventual wounds, since they can’t go to the hospital! Also the rent is cheaper this way

Anon said:Can you draw more comics of childhood kiribaku? You’re art is sooo cute 💓

It’s something I’ve regularly kept on going back on for years by now, so sure, it’ll probably happen! And thank you!

Anon said:OH MY GOD. Please tell me you will make an official webcomic of your Vigilante AU. It’s so beautiful, cute and I definitely need more of this. It’s like a drug that I did not know I needed until I read your concept(????). BTW, your art is soooo pretty. Thank you so much for drawing KiriBaku ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

Ahhh I’m really happy to hear you like it! For personal reasons I’ve decided that making a cohesive, coherent succession of comics isn’t something I want to do, but I think I’ll draw more of that AU soon enough, snapshots and things like that! I hope that’s good enogh for you~

Anon said:May I request a pissed kiri??

Didn’t I draw that less than 10 posts ago

Anon said:Hey, I rlly admire you! I wish we were friends, you seem rlly nice!!

Thank you!!! The few close friends I have might tell you I’m actually not that great at the whole friends thing, but I appreciate the feeling a lot! :D

Anon said:Were Kirishima’s eyes red in the last panel of the last comic??

Yep :( he really does like Bakugou, after all

Anon said:I saw you answering the other anon and if I may ask, why posting the gem au was a big mistake? Were pol rude with you? If it’s so, I’m sorry abt it

Anon said:You said that posting your SU AU stuff was the biggest mistake you ever made… is it because of something that we, as viewers and worshippers of your KiriBaku (damn, I’ll never stop telling you it’s cute and adorable and it hurts but it’s also sweet), can help NOT doing? Or is there anything we can do?

It’s okay, it just got in the hands of people who don’t particularly like Bakugou, and these people started talking about the AU in less than nice terms, which was honestly pretty ridiculous and made me wonder how people can survive being alive on this earth when they consider Steven Universe sensitive material but either way it brought around in my activities a bunch of people I would have preferred not to interact with ever, and that sort of took the fun out of the AU? Now every time I think about drawing for it those people come back up in my head and I get annoyed all over again, it’s no fun

Anon said:are you still doing the fusion au? id love to see kaminari and shinsou

I’m not, sorry! Though someone did ask about baku and mineta and I’ve been thinking about drawing that horrible monster since then, and I’ve also been wanting to redesign the krbk fusion, so maybe I might get back to it ??? I’ll add shin*kami to the list haha

Anon said:I really like the relationship Jack and Bakugou have, and the angst is nice too! I really like the vigilatne AU! I hope we can see more of it, only if you feel like it of course!

Thank you so much ;;;

Anon said:Silly question. If Kirishima activated his quirk being in water. Would he float like wood, or he’d drown like a rock? >//w//

Oh, I’m pretty sure he’d go down since his quirk makes him into a rock haha

Anon said:I think this is around the eighth anonymous ask I send you, but being a porn-making Tumblr user, it’s better if I don’t go public. I just wanted to say, once again, that I love your KiriBaku, it makes me both ache and feel so warm and fuzzy inside; but right now, the focus is that Bakugou’s crying face against Jack’s back is just so good, expressive and painful. I often hate his guts, but yours I can never hate. And the sheer intensity of that expression, and the environment too… so many feels

Aw, thank you!!! I’m glad I can make you enjoy my fav character, anon :D !!

Anon said:I have a question about the vigilante AU. What’s the relationship between jirou and bakugou? Because they don’t look like just friends

Why don’t they look like just friends tho

Anon said:Hypothetically. How would Bakugou react (or what would he do) if Kirishima stopped showing interest in him?

Are we talking about a specific AU or is this meant for the canon universe? Well, either way I’d say he’d be pretty hurt, but it’s not like he can force Kirishima to like him can he. Ah, in the vigilantes AU he’d probably think it’s for the best even if he’d hurt a lot over it, but in canon and most other AUs I like to think he’d try to fix it somehow? Unless he has other reasons to not act on his feelings for Kirishima… gosh this is a vague question, there are so many possibilities really!

Anon said:🧡Hi Fran! I’m pretty sure you’re the one who introduced this concept to me so I wanted to say thanks! Touch starved Bakugou and super cuddly Bakugou are totally my fave, especially when you have him all curled up with Jirou! Having them be Mina and Kiri level besties makes so much sense and I love you for introducing that thought to me!!!🧡

I’m!!!!!!!!!!! so happy to hear that!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;O;

Anon said:in your vigilante au, Kiri has a scar, does Bakugo ever notice the scar?(curious if it reminds him of Red or nah, love yur art btw~~

When he’s not doing vigilantes work it’s actually hidden by the hair, so Bakugou never noticed! But if he were to notice he’d probably mark it down as a Kiri thing and leave it at that, as I said he’s not the most observant when he’s not particularly interested in someone so he hasn’t really registered it on Red’s face anyway haha

Anon said:I RLLY LOVE YOUR AU!! I haven’t found an AU in this fandom I’m rlly into but THIS IS SOCUTE??? will there be more?

Heck I sure hope so!! Thank you for liking it!!!

Anon said:hey for the anon you were looking for an outrageous ship to draw to test out their theory, try Tokoyami and Link (legend of Zelda link) cuz I just saw cosplayers of them hardcore dancing at dragoncon and I die every time I think about it. You can find a video of it on quirk-registration-office​  

…………………..I’m probably never gonna draw that ngl LMAO BUT this ask made me wanna draw Tokoyami as a Rito so I guess that’s ???? something that might happen instead heck that’s a good concept I should have thought about earlier

Anon said:I absolutely love your art its soon amazing and I really like the vigilantly au but take care of yourself okay

I dunno what I did to make you worry about me but thank you so much for it? I’ll try my best !!!! And thank you for liking my doodles too!!! ;^;

Anon said:Do you know about any fanfics based in your art?? (Idk if that’s grammatically correct sorry 😅)

Hmmmmmmmmmm there are a few but the only one that comes to mind right now is such a funny pair !!! boy ellen’s fics are always so damn amazing, I still can’t believe she wrote for me ;^;

[semirahrose]

I have seen Civil War only once because I hated it so much, haha. So I can't hang with your take, I honestly don't have the memory for it. But I'm interested in what you think as an unbiased party seeing the fued between Cap and Tony, what are your thoughts on the accords and the fallout from Civil War?

I’m sorry it’s taken a while to reply to this! My inbox is a disaster. 

[ Re: this response I wrote to a piece of MCU meta that crossed my dash ]

Makes sense! I saw it twice, I think, because I ended up watching it again with my dad, but I wasn’t too broken up about having to see it again. My favorite character is Bucky, and since he is—at best—a ghost of a shadow of an implication in most other Marvel movies, it was a treat for him to share some major screentime in that one. I can understand why you wouldn’t want to go back and rewatch it, though! It’s been years for me, so my memory is not the freshest, either! I owe any freshness of memory to my discussions with @monkeysatemylastrolo, who loves Tony and is super amazing, and deserves the credit for any coherence in this trash-fire of a response. 

(As for the start of your ask… To me, it’s pretty clear to me that Tony, in his grief, did a few things that were unquestionably lethal. A repulsor beam to the skull seems kinda like a no-brainer re: lethality. However, it was also clear he calmed down as the fight went on. But that’s not what this post is about, so…)

In short: I am the farthest thing from knowledgeable about the franchise or its characters. I have never read the comics. I will try my best to answer, but please bear with me.

Okay, so.

What do I think about the feud between Captain America and Iron Man?

Honestly? I think it was inevitable. For both of them. And I don’t really think it was as much about the politics as it was about their own personalities and experiences. I’m not trying to excuse anyone, but I also can’t really criticize either of them, because it’s hard for me to imagine them making any other choices. Of course the politics played a role, but if that alone were the case, I think they had enough of a friendship under their belts to reconcile their differences without violence. So, deep-seated fears and insecurities it is.

Cut for length. Some of this I’m making sense of as I type it. Sorry in advance.

To me, it seemed like at least part of the reason that Tony felt so strongly about the Accords was his past experiences. He had been made to doubt himself and his own decisions. He has been betrayed. His good intentions have—through no fault of his own—turned against him. It makes sense that he’d agree with the Accords, because there is security in having many voices. Guilt and shame and trauma led him to associate his (and the team’s) individual choices with death and destruction. 

To Steve, I think his history pushed him inexorably in the opposite direction. Way back when he was actually young, before he went in the ice, he was already a contrary fellow, but the war only pushed home his mistrust in government authority and oversight. I mean, Hitler. I don’t really think I need to say much more about how living in that time could instill a mistrust of authority in people. But that’s not nearly enough, of course, to justify his position. Enough to explain…. maybe. But then he comes out of the ice and helps to hold off a massive alien invasion as part of a government sanctioned group of enhanced individuals. Then the next Cap movie was all about how the organization he trusted and allied himself with was pretty much 90% Hydra, an organization that was still very much alive and well and which had kidnapped his closest friend, brainwashed him, repeatedly destroyed his memory, and forced him to kill. And ooohhhhhhh boy, the individualist streak is back. Anyone could be Hydra, and probably everyone is working for their own gain, anyway, with secret agendas from here to Mars. He withdraws. He only trusts himself. And you know, maybe that’s still not enough to justify his resistance, because the Accords were signed by so many countries and were supposed to really help things (though… I’ll get to that). Honestly, I can’t say that I see Steve as a terribly chilly, rational person. He’s hot-headed, and he does what he believes to be right, damn the consequences. 

But honestly, forget everything I said above, because while those probably had something to do with it in the beginning (and reasonably so, since I think our experiences do shape our perceptions and are difficult to change or unlearn). It probably wasn’t about any of that, and I doubt he could have expressed it if someone had asked. I think it was largely about Bucky. As soon as Bucky became a target, Steve was out. The Greater Good or whatever the flip might have been a footnote at the back of his mind, but

a) his only link to his past and his closest friend was being falsely accused and targeted

b) he didn’t know that it was unrelated to all the other stuff going down

c) since when has he been a cool-headed decision-maker?

So, honestly? Both of their positions make sense, just based on their personalities and experiences. Based on the fallout from some of their very major battles (though with battles of that magnitude, the damage doesn’t necessarily fall on them, because it’s most often driven by malicious forces), Tony’s position makes sense. They need permission. They need oversight. They do not have the right to just invade and destroy. It’s disgusting and disrespectful, and Tony has enough to have nightmares about.

But for Steve, the Accords likely seem like red tape. Bureaucracy and hemming and hawing about things have, in his experience, not often led to good things. It’s what meant the division his friend worked with—captured, tortured, and imprisoned—didn’t mean enough to save. To the absolute detriment of the big picture, he focuses on people. (See: Infinity War. Killing one man could have stopped or delayed everything, but he couldn’t justify it to himself. To him, the people he cares for are the universe. It warps his sense of scale.) So, as he is wont to do, he said, screw all of you, and he went off to free Bucky’s unit. Once again, in Civil War, the “greater good” came (quite indirectly) at the cost of Bucky. …I can’t say his actions surprised me, considering his history with the perversion of authority and government.

What did I think about the Accords?

Honestly? They sounded like they could have been very good. I really can’t speak to them, though. I genuinely can’t, because the movie told us nothing of their particulars. Their detractors are citing weaknesses that are not explicitly there, and the supporters of the accords are touting benefits that are also not explicitly present. We know many countries signed them. We know they’re pretty hefty. We know Wakanda signed them, which is a big point in their favor, though—crap. Actually… pre-Black Panther, Wakanda was a very insular country, denying outside influence. That could have affected their position. Anyway! The sheer amount of support they got means that the Accords likely seemed pretty solid to the majority of countries (if not necessarily the majority of the world, because there are a couple countries that hold a bit more sway, population-wise. I dunno if there’s a list out there of countries that signed, so let’s just assume the majority of the world).

Honestly? It sounds like, as long as there were provisions in place for emergency action (like in the case of another alien invasion) and some Mutant voices on whatever committee made decisions (crap, enhanced human? Are mutants a thing in Marvel? I know some characters weren’t allowed to be Mutant because of some weird dispute with Fox or something, so they just ended up enhanced in Marvel movie canon, but I don’t know if Mutants are a thing in this universe)—anyway. It sounds like they could have been good.

But honestly, I don’t know. And since that one really moustachey guy—was his name Ross??—was a) a jerk and b) the unofficial chain-yanker in the movie and the emblem of the limitations that would be placed on the Avengers, the accords didn’t get as good representation to viewers as they should have, and it became clear that, regardless of how amazing they were, there were already people set to take advantage of them. (Inevitable and irrelevant, I know. Just because there are people who will take advantage of a good thing doesn’t make it bad, but it wasn’t a beacon of reason to change Cap’s mind, either. It only drove home his presuppositions about authority.) 

The actual content of the Accords didn’t get much representation at all. So honestly? I can’t say anything about them. They could have been awesome. They could have sucked. They could have streamlined the process wonderfully and made taking action easier and safer for everyone… or tied the Avengers up in red tape and prevented them from apprehending Really Bad Dudes.

I don’t know, and I don’t think I can confidently say one way or another.

Also, it has become apparent to me that I really need to watch all of the Avengers movies, but I just don’t have the motivation.

[thesecondmost]

I read over my rules every now and again and it keeps bothering me how harsh I sound on my stance on morm*r so I’m just gonna...ramble a little to make me sound a little less dickish. This isn’t very coherent and I’m just kinda word vomiting on the topic

Q: Why don’t I ship morm*or right off the bat?

A: 1.) For one, I like slow build. I don’t like established romantic relationships in general because I feel like the work and time and development put into relationships are like...most of the fun.

2.) Every Mor*arty is different and the chemistry is going to be different. It’s all about chemistry, especially with my Moran and Jim is too complex of a character to be the same all the way across the board between all the people who write him.

3.) My Moran is a difficult character. He’s got similarities to the commonly accepted fandom interpretation but he’s....super different. His views on Jim are complex. He’s starry eyed but he also would like to see the man butchered ykno?? Jim treats him like garbo but also like his best and favorite garbo. it’s not the sort of relationship that has Moran right off the bat going like haha wow i love this dude like nah. 

they’re both toxic individuals. to others, to each other, to themselves. it’s a great ship because of this and the complexity, but the fandom has sort of diminished this and simplified them into “cute murder bfs teehee” and it does put a certain pressure on ppl who rp the characters and don’t really align with this interpretation. 

Plus, my Moran has a whole plethora of fucking detachment and emotional issues on TOP of being on the grey spectrum. Even if I wanted to, he’s just not the kind of character that I’d be capable of dumping right into a relationship.

Q: So I do ship it though???

A: Hell yeah I do. But, like I said above. It’s got so many variables depending on my partner, so much work that needs to go in it. Some Jims Moran might have the ability to fall for pretty fast, some not at all, some Jims Seb would legitimately betray. some jims he’s super fucking torn up about when they die. some he’s like lol bYE bitch. Like.....this ship can be suuuuch a wildcard and that’s why I love and hate it at the same time.

misc thoughts;;

early relationship;;

Early Jim and Seb is sooooo rocky. It’s such a struggle for power and I imagine Jim nearly kills Sebastian a few fucking times or seb nearly kills jim. 

The business relationship I do usually play established is the eventual outcome of that early stage, not really Seb backing down but it’s just more of like. earned respect I guess. it’s two near equals kind of balancing out. 

It’s Seb settling and falling into place as the loyal guard dog because Jim can do things for him no one else can and that he values, because he knows Jim deserves it, because he wants to understand this man better and fuck like??? seb prob legit wants to impress the dude because like as much as he hates him jim can also just be like this incomprehensible, fascinating fucker that is so above everyone and everything else and who doesnt want that sort of person’s approval???

and i imagine jim let’s him closer than anyone else because he knows moran better than anyone and knows that this dude aint gonna do shit to him and if he does like so what?? if its gonna be anyone ykno it might as well be his chief of staff [granted this mindset prob changes once sherl comes into play but thats another post for another day]

romantic relationship;;

Do I think it’s capable of being a loving relationship? Dunno, really. I think it can have ‘normal’ and ‘domestic’ moments, but I also think for every fucking idk night up layin in some bed together being “cute” there are like 3 nights of them nearly killing each other or putting each other through these mental gymnastics to see who breaks first. 

I do think it can be loyal, on Seb’s side at least. (i mean i have thoughts on Jim’s side, but I don’t rp him lol) He’s a very opportunistic and selfish man as I play him. I even have a headcanon post floating around that states by default he’s not even truly loyal to Jim, just the IDEA of Jim and what he represents.

 I think, depending on the Jim, this can change. I can see my Moran legitimately caring about Jim’s well being and caring about him as a person and being loyal to him as a person rather than just treating him as an asset that makes his life better and more appealing.

My Moran had a fucked up childhood (surprise, surprise) so emotional bonding is just not....easy for him. But I do imagine once that raaaaaare someone manages to get through to him, they get his all. Like, 110% loyal, would burn the world to a crisp to protect them type.

the process;;

Honestly r i p to Moran. Whether it’s the process to becoming legit loyal or thinking of Jim as a friend or someone he cares about to legit fallin in love with him I imagine it’s just this whole process of Sebastian being fucking confused and angry and scared. like that sort of attachment is weakness and Moran refuses to be weak even if the attachment would be to someone as ykno powerful as Jim. 

If his parents taught him anything it’s that no amount of blood relation or love will make ppl stay. ppl are selfish and the only one who gives a fuck about you is yourself and the only person you should care about is yourself. 

and if being a fucking top class sniper has taught him anything its that life is so fucking fragile. just in general, Moran is fucked in this situation because like this poor fucker not only has detachment issues but once he manages to get attached, he’s got fucking abandonment issues and fear of loss. like. oooooooooooooof. 

he’s so unused to having things he cares about that he’s also wholly unprepared to handled losing those things.

[driftingglass]

Weird 92 Question Thing. Not Important. Just Random.

Been tagged by a lot of random people and I’m taking a brief break from writing and totally being smart about not going to sleep yet with my 5:00 AM schedule starting tomorrow...

Anyway.

THE LAST:

1. Drink: Green tea.

2. Phone call: My therapist.

3. Text: A person who honestly shouldn’t be texting me.

4. Song you listened to: Too many songs to list here. I’ve created a playlist for NaNoWriMo that’s almost one hundred songs in length, so... that monster track. Instrumental, EDM, J-pop (usually theme songs from anime shows), classical, random remixes, film/game/television show tracks...

5. Time you cried: Today. Whoops.

HAVE YOU:

6. Dated someone twice: Yes.

7. Kissed someone and regretted it: Um. Somewhat.

8. Been cheated on: Yep.

9. Lost someone special: Everyone has.

10. Been depressed: Hasn’t everyone at some point...? Some worse than others, of course, but this is a pretty standard question.

11. Gotten drunk and thrown up: Never.

LIST 3 FAVORITE COLORS:

12-14: Navy blue, indigo, teal, burgundy, silver, coral. (Changes frequently).

IN THE LAST YEAR HAVE YOU:

15. Made new friends: I’ve made friendships this past year that have changed my life. Very humbled and kind of flabbergasted about it. Blows my mind.

16. Fallen out of love: Yes. 

17. Laughed until you cried: Not that I can remember, no.

18. Found out someone was talking about you: Sure.

19. Met somebody who changed you: Yes.

20. Found out who your friends are: Um?

21. Kissed someone on your Facebook list: Haha, well, they’re not that list anymore, exactly.

GENERAL:

22. How many of your Facebook friends do you know in real life: I dunno, some of them?

23. Do you have any pets: My siblings have a dog and two cats. I have none. But I like those pets when I see them, most of the time.

24. Do you want to change your name: Nah.

25: What did you do for your last birthday: Maybe something mildly interesting? Can’t remember.

26. What time did you wake up: 5:00 AM.

27. What were you doing at midnight last night: Talking to a friend on the phone, polishing up writing, then trying to sleep unsuccessfully.

28. Name something you cant wait for: I’m going to my first concert ever on the 25th and I could not be more excited and amazed. I honestly can’t even wrap my head around it still...

29. When was the last time you saw your mom: Huh...

30. What is one thing you wish you could change in your life: Not sure if I’m in the mood to answer this rather loaded question. You take what you have, you learn from what happens, and you progress further into life with a mindset that’s open to changing, growing and developing from these occurrences. That’s how I’ll answer this, I guess.

31: What are you listening to right now: My NaNoWriMo playlist. But this song, specifically.

32. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: Nah.

33. Some thing that is getting on your nerves: Selfish assholes hurting the few people who I hold close and dear. Fuck ‘em.

34: Most visited website: YouTube, HubSpot, Tumblr, AO3...

35. mole/s: *Blinks*

36: mark/s: I have a small birthmark on the bridge of my nose, scars and callouses, bare/raw spots of skin on my knuckles and thumbs, and freckles.

37: Childhood dream: Novelist, movie critic, traveling journalist, paleontologist, marine biologist, architect, graphic designer, painter, artist, screenwriter, editor, film director, cinematographer...

38: Hair color: Auburn. Reddish-brown. Whatever.

39: long or short hair: Long.

40: Do u have a crush on anyone: Nope. It happens once in a blue moon. Like, the bluest fucking moon.

41: What do you like about yourself?: Hahahaha--

42. Piercings: Nope. Not even ear piercings.

43. Blood type: I don’t remember, but this is probably something I should know...

44. Nickname: Squeakums, Dani, Buttons, Tay, Scottish Goblin (by me, :P) and Freckles.

45. Relationship status: Single! 

46. Zodiac: Uh... Gemini Sun, Leo Moon?

47. Pronouns: She | Her.

48: Favorite tv shows: Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Hunter x Hunter, Westworld, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood...

50. Right or left hand: I have both, thanks.

51. Surgery: Hm. Ask me another time.

52. Hair dyed in a different color: Nah. You went from asking about surgery to hair color? 

53: Sport: Tennis, crossfit, distance running, and yoga.

55. Vacation: Last amazing “vacation” was when I left the country to go to Europe. Was a worthwhile experience I’ll never forget. I want to go back.

56: Pair of trainers: Nike, yo. Wear them pretty much every day.

MORE GENERAL:

57. Eating: Nothing. Sometimes I forget. Ugh.

58. Drinking: Water.

59. I’m about to: Finish editing and hopefully sleep.

61: Waiting for: ...

62: Want: So. Many. Things. Wish I could actually summarize everything coherently onto one post, but... that would take way too long. 

63. Get married: Nah. I’m content.

64. Career: Too many dream careers to count, but I’m very lucky at the moment. Copywriting and content writing is the main thing at the moment.

WHICH IS BETTER:

65. Hugs or kisses: Neither? If you hug me, man, we must be inseparable friends who’ve known each other for at least two years. And if you’re kissing me, I would hope that we’re dating. If not, get the hell away, ya weirdo. I have no preference for either. I tolerate hugs from my best friends only, pretty much.

66. Lips or eyes: Eyes. Definitely. Probably the most intimate and naturally beautiful aspect of any human, in my opinion. 

67. Shorter or taller: Taller. 

68. Older or younger: Same age or a couple years older.

70. nice arms or nice stomach: I’m shallow, I guess, and too picky for my own good... athleticism is nice. But, no one should care unless it’s a health hazard. 

71: sensitive or loud: Both and neither?

72. Hook up or relationship: Relationship or nothing at all. Honestly doesn’t cross my mind unless I form some kind of attachment and general platonic understanding/relationship with the person first. Hookups have never been of interest, and never will be.

73. troublemaker or hesitant: Oh I’m such a rebel. *Turns up the volume on TV to just over twelve notches.* See? I’m being a rowdy neighbor. (... I’m turbulent as fuck, okay?)

HAVE YOU EVER:

74: Kissed a stranger: Nope. Strangers have tried to kiss me, though. Was not pleasant.

75. Lost glasses / contact lens: Nope.

76. Turned someone down: Not that I know of.

78. Sex on the first date: No.

79. Had your heart broken: Absolutely.

80. Broken someone’s heart: Yes.

81. Been arrested: Nope.

82. Cried when someone died: One time.

83. fallen for a friend: I’ve only fallen for my friends. Both relationships I’ve had started as friendships. This makes it better and so much worse at the same time.

DO YOU BELIEVE IN:

84. yourself: If I said yes, I’d be lying. It’s a process.

85. Miracles: No.

86. Love at first sight: Nope. 

87. Santa Claus: No.

OTHER:

90. current best friend name: Not gonna disclose that here.

91. Eye color: Brown.

92. favorite movie: My current favorite movies (off the top of my head) are Your Name, Whiplash and Baby Driver. This is always an almost-impossible question.

[therewillalwaysbeapril]

Chapter 4: Sixteen Hours

6:30 AM The alarm rang abruptly in the stillness of the morning, a rude shrill noise, splintering our warm, nocturnal embrace and throwing us both into the coldness of the day. 

“April, we gotta get up”, I said, mumbling as I shook off the last remnants of sleep. She groaned softly, rolling over and pulling the covers away. “Hey, get up. Geee-tta UGH-PUUUU! Get TU DA CHOPPAH!” I did my terrible Arnold Schwarzenegger impression loudly and poorly, adding in a loud grunt for full effect. 

“Argh, I need muh clothes, my boots, my motorcykalll”, she said, in the same bad Austrian accent without opening her eyes. “Come ONN, do it. Do it Nah-OW!”

Stumbling out of bed, vision still blurry, and nearly tripping over the corner of the blanket now fallen to the floor, I reached over and grabbed from the basket the first item of clothing on the pile of clean laundry that we neglected to fold from the previous night. I pulled open the top drawer of her dresser and felt around for a bra. I threw both toward the bed as I made my way to the bathroom. April put on her top as she stood up. Hair a mess and eyes barely open, April exuded a dreamy, other-worldly quality as she floated from the bed to the sink wearing the dark red floral patterned shirt dress I had bought for her the weekend before. I blow dried my hair into a more presentable state and shaved as she washed her face and finished combing her hair. 

I packed April’s belongings into her backpack for her, the both of us hurrying downstairs to my car. After stopping by a McDonald’s drive-thru on the way, we ate Egg McMuffins sitting in the early traffic heading toward Downtown LA. I looked at her as she opened a ketchup packet.

 “Don’t worry, I’ll be careful!” she said, laughing as she carefully squirted the ketchup onto her hashbrown.

 Briskly walking up the parking lot escalators and half-skipping across Pershing Square, April got to the bus stop just in time as the vehicle screeched to a halt. “WESTWOOD/SANTA MONICA” said the display. A quick kiss goodbye and she was off to class.

8:00 AM The office was dark as I stepped out of the elevator. Walking toward my desk, I was greeted by lights flickering on as motion sensors began to stir. Fresh cup of coffee in hand, I left the kitchen for the far side of the floor toward my favorite viewing spot. 

The Los Angeles morning was peaceful when viewed from high above. Cars moved slowly down Broadway; I could hear their distant honking noises in the early rush hour. Construction workers below near Third Street walked carrying their equipment, passing by the shops just beginning to open in Grand Central Market. From my hawk’s nest I saw a cyclist zipping down Grand Avenue past the Museum of Contemporary Art, in front of which a food truck was beginning to set up shop. My breath and the steam from my coffee fogged the glass as I stepped closer to look at the crowd of people gathering by the Broad. The early light bathed my city in a warm amber glow, thawing its sleepy commuters as a new workday began. Flecks of gold and saffron twinkled as the dawn bounced from the stirring skyscrapers and automobiles, blinding me. I, too, was beginning to wake as I finished my coffee. 

With my headphones on, back at my desk, I continued sketching out the wireframe concepts from the day before. Wireframes are the foundation of plotting out designs for interactive products such as apps and websites. They are a high level way of designing ways in which someone can use a product and the organization for which types of information and interaction appears on which screen, before a designer has to focus on the finer details such as animations, visual appearances, and the style of smaller items such as buttons. Even though the other designers created wireframes in programs I was also familiar with such as Adobe XD or Sketch, I always took great care in sketching out early ideas neatly on paper. I felt there was a purity in shaping ideas away from a computer, a kind of humility in making things with my hands.

8:30 AM The office is still dim as I make myself a second cup of coffee. This was one of those sluggish days; I felt slow to start, and was glad to still be the only person in the office. There was less pressure this way. I returned to my desk and cleaned up my lines with an eraser, reinforcing others with a Sharpie. Boxes with crisscrosses represented images, various other shapes representing icons and call-to-actions. Simple line patterns signified text, clearly showing the underlying grid to the layout. Adding final touches, I drew an outline of an iPhone over all of the screens before using a green colored pen to create the markings that showed how a user interacted and navigated from screen to screen. I felt pride for the cleanliness of my draft, as I never knew whether the second draft in the computer would be made by myself or a different designer. Finished, and satisfied with my work, I walked over to the simple Kanban board on the far wall and moved the task’s corresponding post-it note from the column labeled “in work” to the column labeled “done”.

Aside from a few coworkers from accounting, the floor was still mostly deserted. Sitting back and listening to the rest of Bach’s Goldberg Variations on my headphones, I fidgeted at my desk for a while. Impatient, I walked back over to the job board and grabbed one of the tasks from the column labeled “backlog” and moved it to “in work”. This should keep me occupied, I thought.

10:00 AM Standup was always kind of fun. Normally I have always preferred to work alone, with headphones on, lost in thought as I built designs and mockups, in an almost-meditative state of flow. However, I liked my coworkers very much, and it was also nice to see everyone at the beginning of the day and update one another on our work progress in the morning as we created the pieces of our product together. I enjoyed this kind of organized interaction that afforded me boundaries and space to create.

 <Walalala..>, texted April. It was her way of greeting. Warm and cheerful, albeit at times a little silly, it was a greeting that I had come to love. It would also be a salutation I would receive less and less over time until I would not see it at all. <What you doing?>, she added.

<Designing more apps. What about you?>

<Nothing bored in class>

<Lol. You should pay attention! I’m pretty tired too. I don’t think I woke up yet>

<I miss you.>

<Haha, I miss you a little too.>

<Only a little bit? Fine! Text me when u miss me a lot!>

<Ok I miss you alot>

<Pfft, you still need me to remind you?>

<Ha, you should pay attention in class. Your mom will kill me if you fail because of me>

<Well you can always quit and go to engineering or med school!>

<YOU can go to med school. I’ll make more apps!>

<Too hard~ And I’m so tired today I don’t want to do anything. Head hurt.>

11:00 AM Sketches spread out on the table before me, I began to create the second round of digital wireframes. As much as I enjoyed sketching, this step was also one of my favorite things to do. The useful aspect having hand sketches was their looseness — from a high level perspective, during this stage there were still so many possibilities. Creating the first digital wireframe versions, despite their inherent roughness, narrowed down those possibilities. To do so felt like taking a camera lens and turning it slowly into focus. At this stage, it was not a crisp focus, but much more recognizable as a coherent direction. The process was therapeutic as it was methodical; moving through it step by step, there was room to make improvements on the fly, perfecting each idea. However, today, my process of refinement would be interrupted by a different task.

There needed to be a version of our project for a new client, said marketing. A simple mockup of our app must be made in the style of our new client, a baseball team. The refinement of the new screen designs would have to wait. Grumbling to myself a little, I closed the program and neatly piled the sketches into my drawer.

<Heyyy, why u ignoring me?>

<Sorry, some other stuff came up at work>

<So sad but it’s okay. I feel so sleepy and tired>

<Maybe have some coffee? I’m on my second cup already>

<I dunno. Stomach hurt a bit too>

<I’m sorry. Would you feel better if you ate something? What are you gonna get for lunch?>

<Expensive grass, haha>. “Expensive grass” was April’s name for salad. They always cost more than they should, she would remark.

<btw…>

<what’s wrong?> Nothing good ever happened when April said “by the way”.

<If I go back to Taiwan after graduation, can we still be friends?>

<We’re not breaking up. We can make this work>

<I mean, if. Can we please stay friends? I can’t imagine a day without you, even if we’re only friends>

<I want you to stay though. We can figure this out>

<I don’t know…>

12:00 PM It is lunchtime. Mood now sour, I didn’t feel like leaving the building. After informing my deskmates that I was taking my lunch break, I grabbed a stale bagel from the kitchen and microwaved it with a slice of cheese. Taking that and a diet soda from the fridge, I returned to my viewing corner.

We had only recently moved into the forty fourth floor of the building from six floors above. The company had now grown bigger and the fiftieth floor was not enough space. However, it was only the design, marketing, and accounting teams on this floor, leaving most of it empty. In fact, we only occupied one corner, leaving the other three quiet and deserted. I enjoyed taking walks around the empty areas, sometimes even bringing my cello to work and practicing in one of the empty rooms during breaks. Today though, I only wanted to look outside and think.

Now midday there was visible smog in the Los Angeles air.  Protestors were forming on Grand Avenue. I looked closer, curious as to the reason for this group. I could not make out the writing on their signs. A car accident was visible further down on the 2nd Street intersection, blocking it off. The authorities closed off one of the lanes, backing up traffic. A bus awkwardly took up both lanes as it attempted to merge into the available space. An adjacent driver made a rude hand gesture out of his window. I sighed, feeling exhausted as I learned against the wall near the window. I sat on the floor as I drank my soda and looked out of the floor to ceiling window, thinking. The conversation I thought of was not with April, but one with someone else, from a different day, in a different language.

•••

<Your girlfriend is really pretty! I saw the pictures you posted to WeChat yesterday>

<Yeah, I took her to the airplane museum the other day.>

<Do you spend everyday with her?>

<Well, she kept asking me to stay over, and then I had to stay with her after she crashed her car. Lately though, she tells me she just doesn’t like it when I’m away. It feels weird, but I’m really happy with her and I love her, so I guess I’m not complaining. She’s been coming to work with me and taking the bus to school too>

<Hey, you should pace yourself. All couples need their space from time to time.>

<Maybe? Sometimes I go to work and five minutes after I leave she texts me that she misses me. I think she’s very sweet.>

<Okay, I’m just looking out for you. What if she turns out to be one of those possessive types?>

<She told me she gets jealous easily. A lot of my female friends came to my birthday party and she told me she felt weird about it. ‘I’m very jealous’, she said.>

<Hey! I knew it!! Is that why you didn’t answer any of my calls or texts last winter in China?>

<Sorry. I guess it’s just weird, what happened between us.>

<Why would you tell her that…>

<She had someone else she was trying to get over and I was trying to comfort her.>

<Well, nothing happened between us!>

<I know! Well, I don’t know. You are one of my best friends, and what happened affected me very deeply. It may have been nothing to you, but it was definitely something to me.

<I’m sorry about that. I really am. I was as confused as you too. I never meant to be cruel. I hurt you, and I ended up hurting myself too.>

<I’m glad we’ve moved past it and we’re still friends>

<How long have we been friends? I was still ten or eleven years old I think? We’ve been best friends for so long even though we are in two different countries. Don’t you think this is a friendship worth keeping?>

<I know! I’m trying to figure this out>

<You promised not to throw this friendship away after you meet some girl remember? You made me a promise.>

<Yes, I remember. And I will keep my word. I just need to figure this out. She’ll come around eventually. I really think the two of you would become great friends.>

<Well, you gotta figure it out eventually, because this is just awkward what you’re doing>

<I just need time…>

••• 

1:00 PM I snapped back to reality as my phone alarm went off. It was time to go back to work.

The caffeine was beginning to wear off. Still debating whether or not I should have a third cup of coffee, I flipped through the Android Material Design Guidelines online, pondering what visual branding treatments were acceptable within Google’s design parameters. Writing down the correct color hex values on a notepad, I began to change colors on app elements in Photoshop, reskinning the interface. The phone beeped again, as another text message arrived from April.

 <I’m sorry. I want to stay with you too. But I’m so worried>

<About what?>, I answered.

 <What if it doesn’t work out between us? In a year? In five?>

<Why are you worried about this now? April, I love you and I’m perfectly happy with you>

<Yeah, but what if we DO break up eventually? You’re not a doctor and I’m supposed to marry a doctor.>

<Come on, I can’t change that>

I stopped working. Taking off my glasses, I sat back in my chair, rubbing my forehead. I was getting very tired.

<I just wish you could accept me for who I am>, I texted back.

<I do! I really want you to make it. I love who you are I just don’t love what you do>

<There’s nothing wrong with what I do. I am a designer and I’m good at it. I make a decent salary and I like my life>

<It’s different>

<Well that’s just your viewpoint. We’re just different, I guess>. I saved my work and walked to an empty conference room.

 <Why do you even love me?>, I texted. My thumbs began to sweat. Typing was becoming difficult.

<I love you because you are kind. I love you because you value family, like me. My friends ask me why I love someone who is not what I want and why I want to change him knowing how much effort I have to put in>

<The only complaints MY friends have about you is these things you say from time to time! It’s so messed up. Maybe your friends are full of shit. At least I love you for YOU>

<I do too! Doctors are all over the place, especially with my family background it’s easy for me to just marry one, but I can’t find a doctor who is YOU>

<I’m getting back to work>

I stomped back to my desk, angrily chucking my empty soda can into a nearby wastepaper basket. A couple of coworkers stared.

3:00 PM For the next two hours, I tried my best to focus on creating more animations. More interactions. I compared the mockups I made against the Android and Apple guidelines. So far, so good. Sending the finished mockups back to marketing, I went back to the kitchen and made myself the third cup of coffee. 

I chugged the hot beverage, nearly searing my throat. I went back to designing the wireframes. There were only three hours left in the workday, and I originally wanted to have had this perfected at the end of the day. 

<Are you done with class yet?>. There was no answer from April.

Frustrated, I placed my phone face down on the table and returned to the designs. These have to get done, I thought. So little time. Fuming, I angrily threw the boxes together on the computer screen, connecting the button hotspots together as violently as someone could inside a digital space. 

 “Hey are you ok?”. It was Julie, who sat across from me behind my monitor. “I can hear you breathing from here”

“I’m fine”, I said. I sat back in my chair and looked at what I’ve made. It was sloppy and nowhere near the level of detail that I have been known for around the office. 

 “Take a break man. I just got an email that we have until the end of the week for these screens now”

“Oh…”

“Yeah. You can just chill”

“I think I’m gonna take a walk then.”

4:00 PM I looked at my watch as I waited in the elevator. Who does she think she is, I thought. So what if I’m not a doctor? Life can’t only be about status. I was so mad. That is such a shallow way of thinking! And it wasn’t me who started all this. I was just minding my own business working. She was the one who had to bring up Taiwan, and her parents’ crazy expectations for who she should be dating. 

 I walked outside briskly in the shade of the tall buildings. It was much louder now that I left the lobby. A street performer was beating a drum across the intersection. A crazy person was yelling about the end of times on the other corner. Good. Noisy enough that no one could see how angry I was.

And I hated the way she texted. How am I supposed to always be at her beck and call? I have a job to do; I can’t be there to simply answer every time she worries about crazy hypotheticals. I was doing fine today, I should’ve simply not answered. And now that she’s finished ruining my day, she’s stopped texting and has gone back to whatever she’s doing leaving me to pick up the pieces. Every single month, we have to have some fight about something completely stupid like this. Every single month — 

Oh. 

April had complained about being tired. April had experienced stomach pains during class. I counted the days since the last time I remembered similar complaints. There were many things I remembered for her. April could be so forgetful.

“Twenty-seven, twenty-eight….”, I counted in my head. I knew what she was going to need.

I stopped at the Rite Aid on 5th and Broadway. Quickly making my way through the aisles, I picked up a pack of Ibuprofen, a box of what appeared to be feminine pads, and a bottle of water. The cashier handed me the items in a paper bag after I made my purchase. Strolling further south, I began to think about what transpired.

Did she really mean all that she said? Perhaps a deeper question was, WHICH of what she said did she actually mean? You can’t tell someone you love them for who they are but also want to change them, I thought. Girls just say crazy things during their time of month right? I checked my phone.

 Still no answer.

 This is bad, I thought. Perhaps I was too harsh. Her car is in working condition. She chose to take the bus because she genuinely wanted to spend time with me. And now she’s probably on the bus home, in pain. All for me. I’m such a jerk, I thought.

Ducking into Bottega Louie on 7th, I bought a box of half dozen French macarons. They were rather pricey, but came in a beautiful box and were, I had heard, delicious. The small rigid box was not unlike jewelry packaging, with beautiful calligraphy and gold speckles dotted throughout its powder purple surface. It was a small gift that was sure to brighten up anyone who was having a less than perfect day.

6:30 PM The workday was now over as I closed my work laptop and packed away my things. The bus from UCLA arrived as I waited on a bench in Pershing Square.

“Hey what took you so long?”, I asked as I took April’s bag from her. 

“I had the most horrible day!” she said.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize I sounded so mean—

“No, not you! My period started and I forgot to bring pads so I had to use tissues. And my phone died, and then the bus had to take a detour. So I needed to get off and wait for another bus, but I couldn’t use Google Maps and I’m so tired and I just want something to eat”

“Well, first things first I guess”

I handed her the box of macarons and discreetly showed her what was in the paper bag. “Let’s find a bathroom,” I said.

She looked into the paper bag. She looked at me. She started giggling, the happiest I’ve seen her all week.

“What? What is it?”

“Have you never bought pads before?”

“Well, no, but I figured you needed them. Was I right?”

“Those are panty liners, not pads!”

“Oh.”

“It’s okay, I’ll be alright. Cmon, let’s eat”

•••

8:30 PM After April had a chance to change, I took her to a nearby Hong Kong styled cafe. It would be nice to have some porridge, she said. 

As we sat down and waited for our food, by reflex I folded April’s chopstick wrapper into an origami chopstick stand, as I have always done since our first date. I looked out the window into the dark. 

The San Gabriel traffic outside was a lot calmer compared to the city. It was quiet and I could just make out the sounds of crickets. A high school couple walked out of the boba shop across the street, laughing to themselves, carefree. An elderly man picked out a newspaper from a box near the entrance. I felt a soft caress on my forearm.

April handed me a crudely folded flower made from a chopstick holder. 

 “I’m sorry about today. I keep forgetting how to fold that fancy origami, but I want to thank you for taking care of me.”

She smiled the familiar funny smile.

•••

9:30 PM As we walked in the darkness at a nearby park, digesting our meal, I stayed quiet. How can I make all nights like tonight?, I thought.  Is there really an expiration date to our happiness? 

Perhaps reading my mind, April said, “I don’t know what we’ll do if I really have to leave…”

I looked at her and kissed her forehead.

“Whatever”, she added. “If I have to go back to Taiwan, I guess I’ll just get another boyfriend, and it’ll be a doctor this time! HA HA!”

I did not laugh.

I let go of her hand and walked a few paces ahead, sullen.

 “I’m kidding!” April grabbed my arm. “I really do love you, alright?”

[pa-cha-ran]

I agree with your analysis on the new chapter (364), but I still have one question. Why, if Killua is one of the main "heroes", is he still allowed to kill? In general he seems to be pretty casual about murder and the like. I'm just wondering what your opinions on this are as you seem very knowledgeable. Thanks!

thanks for calling me very knowledgeable and that what i slapped together from 4k of rambling paragraphs was actually anything as coherent as a true analysis (sounds so formal and legitimate put like that haha, it’s too much lol).

as for this question: i actually went into this in [the 4k version of] my long post, but i cut it out for length, relevance, and also because i didn’t feel like stepping away from the hxh explanation to also explain all my dragon ball references. i’ll let you see what i wrote, but i’m so so sorry if you don’t know dragon ball. dragon ball was all i could think of off the top of my head as a very obvious comparison, since i saw somewhere that yoshiro togashi apparently think’s akira toriyama (dragon ball creator, super famous, a god amongst men they tell me?) is pretty great.

so here’s the part i cut, but edited to take out most of my dragon ball comparisons, and also to make it more cohesive.

QUESTION: Why, if Killua is one of the main “heroes”, is he still allowed to kill?

i dunno if you’ve ever watched dragon ball, but the convention followed there is that the main hero, goku, rarely manages to directly kill anyone, like, even if the earth is in danger of being destroyed, even if his best friend was just blown up to a million tiny pieces, even if the person he’s punching really goddamn deserves a hole in the ground…he just rarely gets to kill his opponents. the result is that it’s stupidly hilarious how many hoops the storyline has to jump through to prevent goku from landing the killing blow. the series goes hard as hell on the “good/pure/righteous heroes don’t kill” trope (link to tv tropes description of same trope), and once you watch it, you start seeing that trope everywhere.

aaand maybe it’s because i was forced to watch all of dragon ball in four months before starting hxh, but i ended up watching hxh very aware of the limits of who was allowed to kill another person and why. from the trick tower portion of the hunter exam, it was evident that everyone else besides killua, even kurapika, would need a really strong reason to kill. that’s because, like nen, everything in a story has more power if you put a lot of limitations on it, and in this situation the power you’re augmenting is “the impact of seeing this character kill”. with killua, the limitations are much lower, so when killua kills someone, it’s like lol yeah, okay, he tends to get like that sometimes, what a cranky baby. meanwhile, gon kills someone and just…time freezes, something in you dies, the world has changed, the spring of our youth has ended, darkness has fallen, and every voice inside you screams out at once “NO GON NO”.

aaaaand because for most of the series they’ve been a complementary set, i will have to explain killua by first explaining this thing with gon.

the exaggerate horror of watching gon kill (as opposed to killua who just cuts people up like nothing) is derived from how gon was initially set up as the “good/pure hero” of the series, who doesn’t get to kill anyone, kinda like goku. gon would constantly get put into situations where the death of one of the combatants wasn’t the greatest potential outcome, and that helped maintain his innocent air throughout. later, when death was a highly expected outcome, he didn’t kill someone like the very deserving of death bomber in greed island. all this not killing anyone made it much much more awful when he killed pitou later (though on the other hand, pitou wasn’t exactly human…which is kind of a gray area on how much her death “counts” against gon—and also before killing pitou he killed (well i assume he killed it) that armadillo ant and stuff, but again, the ant wasn’t human, we knew that ant’s crimes, and the scene was mostly there to emphasize again to us how uncompromising and dangerous gon is when he thinks his enemy deserves no mercy).

when gon killed pitou, a non-human but still prominent character, it was kind of a subversion of this “good guys don’t kill” trope. but after, we all saw what happened to gon as a result of his choice. his previously almost absolute “goodness” and “pureness/innocence” came into question, he lost his nen, and at that stage he finally got to meet his father. ouch. for gon, killing someone came with a high cost to punish him for crossing that line, despite the fact that the character he killed had already committed enough atrocities to “deserve” death anyway, and on top of the fact that the character, as a royal guard, couldn’t have exited without meruem, so they also “needed” to die for the storyline, too. gon still got punished for it to balance it out for him, since besides netero, he’s the only one who directly killed a character as pivotal to the antagonistic side of the arc as meruem or a royal guard.

killua, however, was not set up as “good/pure hero” material. bringing this back to dragon ball, in dragon ball z, the antagonist-turned-hero vegeta actually can use lethal force against opponents without a huge extenuating circumstance making it “okay”, unlike goku. it’s because he used to be evil and murdering the inhabitants of entire planets was his actual job. likewise, in hxh, killua can use lethal force because he used to be in training to be an assassin. this makes killua exceptional compared to the other heroes, though it also taints him with his oft-mentioned “darkness”, since he’s allowed to kill quickly and at relatively low cost compared to our other heroes. at the same time, though, he isn’t hisoka, so he doesn’t actually get to kill anyone super sympathetic or super pivotal to the story. every time killua kills or threatens to kill, its just a facet of him being trained to be an assassin, and not him being inherently “bad” or “evil”. 

so yeah, killua’s mostly a contrast to gon, who isn’t “allowed” to kill anyone, especially not other human beings. that’s what makes it so dramatic when gon (who even defended the right to live of that bear-cat thing on whale island even after he was flatly told it would be fairer to the cub to kill it) actually turns out the be somewhat more monstrous than killua could be, because when gon kills someone, it is a deliberate choice he’s made to end a life while at the same knowing how valuable and worthy of defending life is. gon has to really not see you as worth living to want to take your life from you, and just…that makes gon fucking terrifying. once gon sees you as irredeemable, you’re already dead to him.

so yeah, basically, killua kills people and is a hero, but you have to look a who he kills and why to understand how that works. also, as the series progresses, he kind of lets up on the whole indiscriminate killing of background people, which i guess reflects gon’s humanizing influence on him as killua slowly realizes he isn’t a monster. killing by now is mostly just a skill killua can employ, and that’s actually something very necessary, because when you build up a story with a lot of “good/pure/righteous heroes”, it’s kinda hard to raise the stakes to life and death if the audience is subconsciously aware that certain heroes aren’t really “allowed” to kill other people (emphasis on the people here). you absolutely need to insert characters who are in more of a gray area and can employ lethal force if necessary, because if you don’t, the stakes, no matter how high you try to raise them, never seem real.