#I lied. I looked for answers.

[moonlight-at-dawn]

A) ...why that picture???

B) uhhhhh they're in our blood and blood runs through the penis so...

C) i don't want to click and find answers i want to laugh and cringe at all the things this one little sentence makes me think and feel

[alien-bluez]

if you draw ships then how about swiftli?

he fell asleep watching the garfield movie of all things-

[everyryuujisuguro]

[originalaccountname]

happy new year!!!! when you answered my last ask, you said this:

“Asagiri is always going on about how ~mysterious~ Dazai is when he's not that complicated.”

i was wondering if you've made other posts about this, or if you'd be willing to expand on it… i love reading Dazai analyses & i’ve been doing a deep dive trying get to the core of dazai’s character motivation & inner conflicts/personal struggles, so i love hearing other people’s interpretations & ideas :)

break him down for me please!! (if you wouldn’t mind <3)

I had this plan of collecting all the interviews of Asagiri saying Dazai oh so complicated and talking about it but I ran out of steam and then.... well you saw how this ask started. The most recent Asagiri interview/talk delved into it again though!

What makes Dazai tick "hasn't been revealed" and Asagiri seems to be/think to be in the dark about it too. But to write a character with depth and consistency, you must know how they work! But not every micro detail has to be accounted for, and sometimes they might surprise you by revealing their true colours despite yourself. I get the impression that Asagiri hasn't worked out the fine details of why Dazai is the way he is, but rather how it shows and what can trigger it.

The character of Dazai was based on his namesake's struggles and his namesake's semi-autobiographical story of a character struggling with society, living and (probably) depression. I think on some level there might be a fear of intruding upon such a personal experience by giving our Dazai a definitive reason behind his own struggles, since he's so closely linked to his inspirations. However, I mostly think Asagiri's writing style makes it so leaving that part up to reader interpretation is purposeful and more fulfilling to both Asagiri and us.

Altogether, I think when Asagiri talks about Dazai being unknowable and mysterious, it's both about how he is written to keep an arm's length between himself and everyone else, and because Asagiri, as the one writing him, is keenly aware of how much of Dazai isn't shown. I believe it when they say Dazai is a tricky character to portray. Arguably, Dazai is, this way, the character that's most written like a real person, with a rich inner life that, as an outsider, you can't pretend to fully know, and that's the point.

There's a passage in 55 Minutes about how nobody has managed to understand Dazai's struggle with life. Atsushi outright asked him, and yet he couldn't remember what Dazai had told him. That was the author telling you "it's not that this issue is unaddressed, it's that you're supposed to fill in the blanks yourself".

The scariest monster is the one you can't see, and the most visceral struggle is the one you can project onto.

So Dazai is supposed to be up to reader interpretation, however he has to have some consistency and patterns and quirks to be recognizable as himself to the audience. We may never be able to say with certainty why Dazai is, but we can all come to a semblance of how Dazai is, because we're reading a story about a fictional guy written by a real person. Fan interpretations may vary, but the canon story is static. Dazai might be ~mysterious~ by design, but he's not that complicated.

[every-sanji]

[where-the-water-flows]

AND ANOTHER THING, I say, coming back into the tag with an unrelated question for the fine minds here in MLC fandom: how the fuck did baby li xiangyi afford to even found the sigu sect. He's like seventeen! max!! shan gudao presumably has built up a cushion of funds from fucking about on his lonesome in the jianghu for (mumble) years and probably doing some sketchy shit while unsupervised (and also fathering fang doubing, because the timeline of MLC is even more nonsense otherwise), and, I assume, the other people of sigu sect helped bankroll it, but still!

li xiangyi is seventeen? max?? somewhere between fifteen and seventeen?? and sigu sect is fucking big. that is a lot of very fancy land and buildings, and also a lot of very fancy stuff in general, where did this orphan street rat raised on the side of a mountain get the money for that? I assume he was sent out with like. some money to Not Starve, but I don't think he was sent out with 'found a rich ass sect' money.

like I guess bounties? rewards from grateful people he saved??? very explicitly not the imperial court, I think, given he's like 'we have nothing to do with them we cannot compromise our ethics' argument with shan gudao, so...???

I know it's Not That Deep, but also, blease, things cost money, how do you afford your fancy boy hair crown and robes.

[echosong971]

I really love how you draw P!! He's a feral little thing and honestly, after all the crap he had to go through, its so bloody understandable! We all need a little ferality in ouru lives sometimes

HAHA THANK YOU! I think he deserves to go a little brazy sometimes, as a treat

I mean, if I got woken up from a nice nap to an apocalyptic hellscape and told I had to start killing people, I'd be pretty cranky too

[moeblob]

Right and his work menaces (Brent and Karen).

I don't remember last I mentioned it but apart from crude nicknames to people (except Chris), he also just puts them in his phone really weird (except Chris, who is literally in his phone as Chris). And I bring this up because in Right's phone, Karen is saved as "Lawful Obligation".

[unriding]

hi evie !! how have you been ? :33 i hope you dont mind me borrowing you and moze for something ehehe <3

[da-birb-writes-sometimes]

CONGRATS ON HUNDRED DOVE!! you sent me a risqué ask for 100 so now i do it back to ye-

"caught in the rain" with leona :D or ruggie, if someone got to him first! ehehehehehehhehehehe you can see stuff 😳👀 for free ✨✨✨

btw your ask is sending me so hard but i'm already typing out so much for leona so your ask is gonna be the last one for the event lol

Caught in the Rain; Leona Kingscholar

Content; Fluff, gender-neutral reader, reader needs to get bonked with a stick (/j)

Content Warning; Swearing

Word Count; 700+

AN; Don't expose my ass on my own blog, Soru /j. (just trying to feed your own simping along with the simps) But I hope you enjoy what I wrote for Leona and this prompt! As a reminder, do not put my work — or others for that matter — into AI as it steals. Link to Masterlist

The sky lay heavy with dark clouds, the smell of rain thick in the air, yet not a single drop had yet to strike the ground. The air was dense with humidity, warm from the harsh sun’s rays from earlier in the day. But yet, you found yourself outside, trying to find Leona.

He had invited you to spend your summer break as his guest in the palace. Well, less so 'invited', more so demanded.

“Do you have anywhere else to be, herbivore? I thought as much. Come on, you’re staying with me.”

You still don’t really know why, but you weren’t going to throw away the chance of staying someplace beyond nice for the summer… plus Leona wasn’t so bad once you got to know him. Yes, he puts on an act of not caring, and being abrasive, but you knew that he cared, that he worried. Also, the two of you had been having this back-and-forth banter for months; blurring the lines of just friends bickering and something... more. But neither of you had made a move. It just hung in the air between you, nearly as suffocating as the humidity now; potent with the possibility of a massive storm.

Back to the present though. You were on the outskirts of the palace, looking for wherever Leona had decided to take a nap for this afternoon.

“Leona,” you called, but all you heard in return was the low rumble of thunder in the distance. Where is that overgrown house cat? I swear if I get caught in a downpour because of him… “LEONA!”

The first drops of rain began to fall, gentle and sparse. But you knew full well that in a few minutes' time they would be falling hard and fast.

“LEONA KINGSCHOLAR?!” You shouted at the top of your lungs.

You heard an annoyed huff of air off to your left, and looking up you saw none other than Leona lounging in the low-hanging branches of a tree.

“Ya don’t need to yell, ya know,” he sighed, landing softly on the ground. He looked up to the sky and frowned before setting a slow pace back to the palace. “Are you coming or what, herbivore?”

You followed after him, catching up so the both of you were going at a comfortable pace. Thunder was still rumbling, and the rain was slowly picking up, but there was no rush. Well, there wasn’t any rush until there was a flash of lightning and it seemed like the entire sky’s worth of water came down all at once on the both of you.

“Shit,” Leona hissed and guided the both of you to the relative cover of a tree to wait out the worst of the monsoon. “Just our luc-” He stopped talking when he looked at you though.

You were spitting out some stray rainwater that had managed to get into your mouth. But once the intruding water was gone you looked over to him but you felt your eyes lock on his torso; the white shirt that he was wearing was now completely see-through and you could see everything. Stop staring! Damn though- STOP STARING! But your eyes refused to move.

Leona noticed this, and he also took in your drenched appearance but was more subtle with it. “Tch,” he tapped you on the nose, breaking you of your staring stupor. “My eyes are up here,” his voice was teasing though, light.

You snapped out of it, catching his mirthful eyes. “You’re beautiful,” you whisper. You felt your face grow warm at the slip of your tongue, but it was true. Even before you openly ogled at him, you always thought that, but never said it to his face.

Leona chuffed, but he didn’t say anything; neither denying or accepting your statement. “You aren’t half bad yourself,” he said softly.

The two of you sat underneath the tree, still in your soaked clothes, watching the rain fall together in a comfortable quiet. And while the first golden rays of sunlight may have been stunning, the both of you thought it was nothing when compared to the captor of your hearts; each other.

After all, you still had the rest of the summer to build on this new development.

[itsalwaysforyou]

hold me together.

kenny ortega, descendants 2 / holly black, red glove / nicole homer, underbelly / ada limon, a new national anthem / k c cramm, christmas eve forever / kenny ortega, descendants 3 / the crane wives, curses / silas denver melvin, let dead dogs lie / natalie wee, least of all

[lovesickeros]

lord its so dark in here the sahara desert of tsaritsa content you are like a shining oasis. your characterisation of her compels me & mihoyo would be hard pressed to top it imo.!! caaaaan i humbly request yr thoughts on her first meeting w a reader of any kind, or maybe even multiple kinds (sagau, sagau god au, isekai, etc) if you so desire...

it really is like a desert here. being the fan of a character we aren't getting until the last damn nation is driving me up a wall but i will persevere bc if nothing else i support morally bankrupt women in media. we r in a severe drought over here but i do my best. unfortunately nothing i say is ever coherent so pull out your translation notes its abt 2 be messy

also this got out of hand but thats bc first meetings w the tsaritsa are tricky to write + a LOT of her characterization lies in deeper exploration then just surface level yknow...NOT A DIG AT YOU this is just my excuse for rambling. gently pats the tsaritsa she can hold so much complexity i do not have the word count to delve into it completely :]

gonna talk cult au for a bit here though because that's 99% of my content. and honestly? she thrives in sub au's of the cult au like villain au + imposter au. it's basically made for her. i mean, early days, the imposter au had been going around for a little while but one of the first few ideas was the Fatui taking reader in so like. it kinda technically actually was. pretty sure cult au Tsaritsa popped up because of the imposter au. a lot of it's writers kinda left though which. man am i getting old or.

anyway.

there isn't much of a chance her first impression is all that positive. at best it's usually neutral, imo, but rarely if ever positive. specifically because i view the Tsaritsa as someone who isn't as fanatical as most of the acolytes typically are towards the creator. she's not exactly going to worship the ground you walk on unlike a certain geo lizard. which is partially why i think she thrives in the sub au's i mentioned.

imposter au, for example. she meets you at your lowest. there's no gaudy extravagance or pampering from the acolytes waiting for you because your own acolytes have turned on you. for all intents and purposes you aren't a "god" at all. which is why i don't think she meshes well with normal cult au reader. the Fatui are made up of outcasts, basically, and imposter au slots right in just perfectly. you're weak, at your lowest, when you meet the Fatui in the imposter au. and the Fatui can help you, too.

a mutual exchange, really. the Tsaritsa sees a tool she can use to one up the rest of the nations and especially Archons, and she has no qualms about you using her and the Fatui in turn. you both want something out of it, after all. whether you just want to be safe from the rest of the acolytes, or you want revenge, or whatever else..she'll give you the power to fulfill it, and she gains the strongest piece on the chessboard when all is said and done.

the best way i can describe the first meeting is "practical", i suppose. she sees an opportunity in you. the ultimate gamble. because if she "saves" you, and you dont trust anyone else because they tried to kill you, well..she holds all the cards, doesn't she?

but the Tsaritsa, imo, is just as capable of being just as fanatical towards you as anyone else. she just won't worship you as the creator. but as yourself? clawing your way back to your divine power and taking back what belongs to you? the Tsaritsa is, to me, a character who's character flourishes in long-term fics more because she changes a LOT between "just met reader" and after having been with reader for some time. she's practically apathetic at the beginning but a lot of her character, in my characterization, shines through LONG after the first meeting.

[tarucore]

there might be, theoretically, a limit to Dick Grayson’s forgiveness and my favorite Bruce Wayne is one who wonders if one day he’ll exhaust it completely

[muntadhir]

lies of pp experts, please explain this to me or else my sleep will be haunted

?????? am i forgetting something. it's been so long since I've actually played. there are 8 legion arms but the game files have 9

anyway, it's called Shot Gun and it has gallery info. conversely, it's the only legion arm that doesn't have the workshop symbol part inside. you can probably look up more details in fmodel but I'm too tired for that, i just opened umodel for a drawing reference

[anglerflsh]

my favourite passtime is making up incredibly unaccurate armour designs. That's a lie my passtime is researching but this comes at a close second

[atopvisenyashill]

Was Jon/Ygritte nonconsensual?

idk if you’re the right blog to ask but, I see a lot of people hate Jon/Ygritte and specifically Ygritte for “raping” Jon and these ideas are in most circles that involve another ship (Jon/Sana (tho not that I’ve seen you say it, I don’t think) and Jon/Dany mostly) but I don’t get why it’s popular opinion at all?

if there was any lack of consent on anyone’s part it was Ygritte bc Jon lied and slept with her to keep up appearances of being fully with the Free Folk. But a lot of these Ygritte haters claim that bc she’s older and tells everyone they’re fuckin before if actually happens that that’s not consensual. 

like I said idk if you’re the right person to ask maybe if you’ve come across it before you can lead me in the right direction unfortunately people only seem to talk about it negatively to prop their own Jon ship which is not a legit answer imo, comparing ships instead of clarifying the situation

i would say i'm the right person to ask in that i have complex feeling towards this ship & ygritte as a character. but if what you're looking for is a clear "yeah she's a nasty rapist and i spit on her whole character" (which is reductive & hypocritcal of anyone to say especially with main characters like tyrion, victarian, and theon) or "no she's a perfect uwu baby and jon snow is completely at fault for leading her on" (also incredibly reductive and completely ignores the context in which he's making these decisions) than no, i'm not what you're looking for. i do think she takes advantage of jon’s feelings to a degree i feel is sexually exploitative yes, but i would frame her more as like, the dark gray version of gendry (someone lowborn and baseborn, with a romantic story with someone who has immense privilege over him yet is much more naive and younger than him), on par with other characters that Are bad but also not beyond the point of redemption, like theon, dontos, sandor, than a female khal drogo. and a lot of my feelings on that stance is because like you say, you can't ignore that jon is from a people who are at war with ygritte's, that jon is part of a group that is specifically gung ho over oppressing the wildlings, and that jon specifically is engaging as essentially a deep undercover spy. that element is not present in any of the other dubcon romantic dynamics we have in this series and I think that gets glossed over a lot when discussing whether this relationship is toxic or not. like, it is toxic but it's toxic for a lot of reasons that can't be easily summed up because you can't divorce either jon or ygritte from the politics they are currently involving themselves in. you didn't just fall out of a coconut tree, etc.

when it comes to the undercover, lying, honeypotting, whatever, thing, that's where things get complicated. there's two prongs to this - what ygritte is willing to acknowledge out loud and what ygritte actually knows. it seems very clear to me that ygritte is fully aware that jon has not truly broken from the night's watch, that he isn't pulling a mance 2.0, that he's concealing things from her and the other wildlings because he is planning to betray them. she just doesn't want to believe it - she basically calls him out on this when they're flirting during the "is that a castle" scene. and of course, there is a context here that imo people overlook which is to say - jon is a member of the martial force that believes their sole purpose is to keep wildlings from crossing the wall, purely because they are an out group culturally. ygritte is a soldier in an invading army that has banded together because they think it’s invade or die. mance - and several others - are already suspicious of jon. if they didn’t fuck soon, jon was going to be killed and not by ygritte. i think similar to sandor stopping sansa from killing joffrey, ygritte feels this is a stupid thing to die over, and wants him to live to fight another day. is it her place to do this? well, she thinks it is even though jon doesn't think so, because she's vouched for him to mance and taken him on as her own "responsibility" so if he fucks something up, she has to face some level of consequence.

i think in general, ygritte is fascinated and challenged by jon snow, and genuinely falls in love with him while they're together. she's lying to herself about jon's feelings because she's hoping that if she gives him a reason enough to stay, he'll stay. i think this is really clear in the cave scene, where she asks him to stay in the cave and get lost together - she knows his loyalties are pulling him away from her, and she wants to deal with the problem by promising him a future with her, a happy future, where he doesn't have to break his vows any further because they aren't involved in the conflict anymore. so when it comes to “it’s dubcon because jon is lying” the thing is that ygritte is very aware jon is lying to her face; unlike drogo, who just does not see dany as a person with thoughts, unlike arya who is too young to realize the class differences between herself and gendry, and unlike tyrion who swallows sansa’s lies hook line and sinker because he genuinely believes she’s a sweet idiot, ygritte knows jon is playing her, she just thinks she can convince him that his life will be better, easier, more fulfilling if he leaves the night’s watch and stays with her. i guess this depends on your opinion of honey potting - if ygritte knows he’s lying, and jon knows ygritte knows he’s lying, does that make it better or worse? if ygritte knows jon empathizes with the wildlings, but also wants to go home, and jon knows if he doesn’t betray his vows well enough he’s getting shanked, and they have sex, does that make it better or worse? if ygritte knows jon is uncomfortable having sex, but knows if he doesn’t have sex mance will have him killed, knows he is interested in her sexually, knows he is lying to her, and puts him in a position that both protects him and backs him into a corner, and doesn’t understand how cornered jon really feels bc he isn’t telling her, and also she just does not have the framework to understand his hang ups and thinks his hang ups are stupid and don't matter, does that make it better or worse? i think this is really obviously meant to be incredibly dubious consensually, bordering on sex crime territory

this is a woman who has lived her entire life in that grey area - she’s got an even worse idea of what consent looks like than most characters, she has lived a life that is physically and mentally much more strenuous than nearly any other character bc of the extreme climate and lack of freedom of movement than even most smallfolk have. the rest of westeros can be truly ugly when dealing with the wildlings in the vale and wildlings in the north - they don’t have the option of being Westerosi the way everyone else born on that continent is allowed. osha doesn’t even do anything wrong but bc she exists as a wildling south of the wall her entire EXISTENCE is illegal. “but they rape and kidnap-“ yeah so do the ironborn but because they were born on the right side of the wall, they’re allowed freedom of movement. what is the difference between ygritte’s view of life and theon’s, at the end of the day?

if u want my opinion here, i think people just don’t like engaging with ygritte because of this complexity. she is right to be angry and hateful, and she’s even right in who she’s directing it at, but you can’t ignore the fact that her very one sided view of morality has her making a lot of decisions on jon’s behalf that he wouldn’t make if he had a choice. because she is just another cog in the machine, she has no way of making any sort of meaningful change; she’s just another nameless soldier that dies in battle. in a way, she’s exactly like the broken men septon maribald mentions. these broken men are not good people, but they are victims as much as they are perpetrators. and THAT, the idea that her relationship with jon can exist in this complex gray space where two gears in the wheel can meet, find commonalities, and it doesn’t matter because their lives don’t matter, they are just two people in a conflict that’s been going on for a long time, and they can’t fix it, and they can’t escape, so they hurt each other again and again until it finally kills them both - i think the senselessness of it all makes both fans and antis of her uncomfortable. she’s not easily consumable, so she has to be either the snarky fiery great love or the evil pedo rapist (once again madonna whore complex coming for us all) and i just don’t think she, the wildlings, or this entire series are meant to be engaged with on that level.