#I was reading fanfiction and suddenly remembered a scene from a manga

[livingininsomnia]

“Silver, say it again,” you say, smiling sweetly at him.

Silver smiles back helplessly at you. “I’ve already said it so many times.”

“Please,” you pout at him, hand in hand.

He laughs at you, before sitting up. He pulls your hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to the back.

“My love, will you marry me?”

You glow, as if it’s the first time again.

“Yes!”

[womgi]

Naruto is weird in many ways. Especially in terms of worldbuilding. speaking as someone who was into fanfiction from the 2000s, there was so much that changed in the elements of Naruto that people writing fanfiction were constantly having to change their frameworks, or have to put the rather ignoble looking tag of "non canon compliant" at some point. I have sat through so many author notes talking about "the manga/anime did this, so as of volume/chapter, my story is officially an AU". And there was a lot of it. And that's not talking about the shitload of retconning that Kishimoto just loves. Story stuck? Retcon. Need to escalate? Retcon. Anything at all? Retcon.

Remember when the Kyuubi was a demon? As in a full blown mythological demon rather than what it ended up as? Fanfiction went all in on playing with mythology. The whole Inari business, the Fox summoning contracts, the constant and surprisingly persistent use of "kit" as the pronoun of choice from inmate to warden...all of that was fairly ubiquitous. And back then naruto fanfics were much more imaginative too. The worst villain was Orochimaru, that terrifying amoral mad scientist who was willing to let the world burn for his immortality. He got nerfed.

Or Naruto's father? We all thought he was some guy named Arashi, because of that one panel with the name Arashi Kazama in the Toad summoning scroll. The Fourth Hokage was called that name for a long time, enough to have tons of fanfiction about it at a time when naruto being the Fourth Hokage's son was just a fan theory.

I will always find the idea that we all "knew" Tobi was Obito long before the official announcement funny.

The early speculation about what the other villages were like were rather interesting as well. I mean, consider what we learn about other villages from a manga release timeline. We hear about kiri through Zabuza and his posse. Kirigakure became this villainous, murderous place. We see Suna through the chuunin exams and they're basically this weak village which get owned. Hell, their Kage gets taken out by a random missing nin and they don't even realize! Grass is represented by a team that basically exists to give Orochimaru fleshsuits to infiltrate the Chunin exams with. Ame, they're assholes - like, Hanzo probably hadn't even been conceptualized as a character yet, so they are at this point one-dimensional assholes who exist to get beaten up by the Konoha troupe. We learn about Kumo through Neji's tragic backstory. And we learn that Kumo is a bunch of backstabbing honorless villains. And this shaped how the fans saw the other villages.

Like take Kumo. By the end, Kumo was basically Ninja USA. Militarized, aggressive, and expansionist. Outside of that they also had a lot of Black people, which is an interesting choice for a japanese ninja universe, if a welcome one. That kumo did not exist when Neji's backstory was being belted out to all and sundry. That was a much later invention when Kishimoto got baked(or whatever he does when he gets writers block). Yet, by the end, they seem to be Kishimoto's go to for ninja awesome. Oh, the other villages have badass characters? Hey, look at Kumo! They have lasers! and the stuff of original ninja Jesus! That do cool shit! and their leader is so badass he cuts off his hand without looking at explosions! Lots of Kumo wank in the fanfiction. Or maybe it's just where my searches led.

Or take Oto, sound village. I remember a time when Sound village being a Konoha copy because of Orochimaru being a Konoha missing nin was a thing. They had the whole village with tower in the middle and everything. Sadly, canon has forever robbed us of the classic scene of Orochimaru drowning under paperwork. Why Kishimoto why?

And remember when Itachi was a terrifying villain instead of a tragic hero? I remember reading fics that made Itachi a terrifying force of nature, a sadistic mofo that made satan look like a putz. And then Kishimoto was like "nah" and everyone was suddenly "I heart Itachi! UwU!" or something.

Akatsuki as a whole has gone through a wild ride. When Itachi showed up, there was so much speculation about what they were gonna use the jinchuuriki for. Tailed beast WMDs were fun reads, if terrifying to imagine. Zetsu was a grass nin. Deidara ended up Naruto's brother in so many fics. So many fics that are now forgotten because Akatsuki got a canon backstory.

It's kind of funny how the further we went along the Naruto timeline, the more restrictive fanfiction became. We all became collectively chained by canon. Plots became more streamlined, and frankly dull. The imagination just disappeared. It felt like every second fic was basically "Naruto has a bloodline" and after some very energetic academy time and wave mission the story disappears into the abyss of dead fanfics. I'm just saying, if fanfics rose up from the grave, kancolle style, because of grudges against their authors, we'd have a shitload of underdeveloped Narutos with all sorts of weird bloodlines.

Hell, until Dreaming of Sunshine came along, Self Inserts were just about done. Imagine that for a second. That the most self indulgent type of fanfiction ever, the one everyone at least imagines writing, was an endangered species! And DoS was one of the more canon restricted fics ever, carefully plotting out canon while having long introspective monologues. It was a wild time.

The crossovers and smut are a different topic entirely. I've not forgotten those, but not really something a random Tumblr post can touch reasonably well.

We have Boruto now, love it or hate it. And personally I hate it, though I don't begrudge those who don't. My personal issues stem from how they did the original characters dirty. In a Doylist sense, I understand why, considering that if the older generation was the terrifyingly competent bunch they had become, then Boruto would by necessity end up as slice of life with chakra. But the way they completely twisted their characterisation was just sad. That scene where those rookie nine jump in like chumps and get stomped in between frames? Who wrote that shit? And why?

And worst of all, Shino has a toaster of all things for a mask!

In the OG naruto series, the older generation then was shown as impressive people of their own. There was respect there. Anyone remember the Allied Moms? The younger generation had come up to the fore because they had grown into splendid shinobi, children who had grown to surpass their parents, not because their parents had become nerfed. Why does Boruto need to make the characters we love incompetent to make the new generation look better? But I digress

Naruto now is a different beast. It's had time to settle in, mature as a series. The sequel has made things different, but the fanfiction still exists online, showing a side of the fandom that saw it evolve. In the forgotten depths of the interweb are splendid stories of the past, prose written by dedicated and talented fans who crafted amazing tales. Who remembers those days? Who remembers those fics? Do we? Do their authors?

I'll still read Naruto fanfiction. It's a good chunk of my life I've invested there. Call it sunk cost fallacy if you must. But some part of me misses a different era, when Naruto was the frontier, and everyday was a new fanfic, a new adventure.

[centrally-unplanned]

I saw some hot yuri art on the dash the other day which inspired me to check out its source, Alter Ego, a story which highlights a problem I have seen time and again with the “OEL”/Original English Language manga genre (though ironically, in this case the book was initially in Spanish). To set up, Alter Ego is an entry into the “gay girl in love with/jealous of her straight friend and the other people in her life” genre, which means we are contractually obligated to have a scene of our MC yelling at her friend about how she wants her all to herself. Which we get, upon the news that said friend’s pen-pal other best friend is moving to their city:

In the middle of a diner, at like afternoon lunch...on page 15 of the story. I literally could not remember this bitch’s name and she is already throwing plates. And the build up to this scene is *entirely* her being a jealous snot, in public, to classmates and friends. She has two traits at this point in the tale: Being In Love and Being a Maladroit Maniac About It.

Our main girl - who is named Noel btw, I remembered - is an extremely unlikable protagonist; but she isn’t meant to be. As much as OEL manga would seem like its primary inspiration is, ya know, manga....it isn’t. Its primary inspiration is fanfiction, its where it was born; western artists writing fanfiction of Japanese manga, and getting good enough at it to shoot off their own attempts. Now, fanfiction’s primary strength, to quote Folding Ideas, is its ability to “shortcut to the Good Stuff”; if this was Sayaka being jealous of Madoka’s new best friend Homura, I wouldn’t *need* to characterize her, my audience already knows her, already likes her. I can make her an asshat for drama and it won’t ruin the story, and I can cut to the chase. Once you suddenly have to obey copyright law and need original characters, however, this approach falls apart. 

Which might seem obvious - like why not fix this? That is harder than it sounds, however, due to the limitations of the publication market. OEL manga has a far smaller market than Japanese manga does, and is therefore structured differently; it is sold discretely, as individual books telling one complete story. Meanwhile in Japan manga is, almost universally, ‘piloted’ in serializing magazines bundling dozens of stories into one package. This allows stories to be tested out, see if they capture a market, without them actually being finished. But charging an audience for just one story that doesn’t go anywhere is a tougher sell in the US (it still happens of course); which is why this entire story is under 200 pages and fits into one volume, while recently-read yuri manga Bloom Into You, for example, is spread out over 8 books while telling a tale of equal complexity. Bloom Into You got its start in Dengeki Daioh, a monthly shounen magazine with a 130k monthly circulation, its story got tested and proved itself worthy of enough pages to tell its tale. Since OEL manga can’t even attempt that, it has to sell its stories raw, which means it generally is going to sell a lot more of them as a whole package.

Adding to this complexity is the supposedly-core inspiration, that of manga. You can tell a cohesive comic story in 200 pages, but you can’t tell a cohesive *yuri* story of this kind because those stories aren’t built for it. But they try anyway, since its the genre trappings that *are* the appeal, and the rushed, fanfic-y nature just becomes inevitable from that combination of forces. And I mean, we are all fanfic writers here anyway right? We don’t need all that so-called padding, we can shortcut to the good stuff! The problem gets baked in.

But okay, I hear you all asking the question, “Ash, I get that you didn’t like this scene. But high schoolers do dumb shit like this all the time! This girl is like 14 right? Its her first love, she is flipping out, that happens.”

And that would be a decent rebuttal...if Noel wasn’t 23 years old.

...okay I admit her age isn’t explicitly stated, but the girl she eventually does start dating, who seems like a same-age peer, has her 24th birthday in the comic and is a professional author with a book deal, and like look at the classroom they attend!

That is a college lecture hall, no high school shenanigans here. Noel is at the youngest 22 in this comic.

But that starts sitting weird with some of the other elements of the story - Noel lives with her parents and gets woken up by her little sister, her straight friend walks to school with her and brings her boyfriend along, Noel has like no career ambitions or job worries at all. Everything about this seems like its a story about 14 year olds! Why isn’t it?

I am sure its a pretty easy guess: politics. 14 year olds can’t have sex in western books. Or at least, certainly not in the social-justice world of queer graphic novels. So the seemingly-easy fix is applied to this story of just making the characters adults, in their 20′s, their ability to Consent being handed to them alongside their first electric bill. 

That easy fix transforms the previously awkward fit of its Japanese manga source material into a garbled mess. The type of yuri this story is pulling from is *built* on the character’s youth, these are stories about innocence and pure love and sexual awakening. If you want stories about adults its literally a different genre, its called Josei, and its stories of depressed konbini workers trying to Figure Out Life while in grungy Tokyo studio apartments. And in fact, that innocence and youth is exactly what audiences want from this kind of yuri, as this Goodreads review suggests: 

So soft! So young! I bet this person didn’t even notice the birthday line. They wanted to have their cake and eat it too, a 24 year old Ethically Adult girl-child with a crush on her “Best Friend” who has literally never dated before and whose whole world revolves around alternating fits of jealously and jiltedness. Which like, fine, if thats all you want, I am not judging your desires.

But you shortcutted to the good stuff. And I know why. And it bothers me, especially when half the reason you needed a shortcut is that you think its morally wrong to take the long way. That you think you are better than your ostensible source material, while executing worse on the craft. Its not a deal I want to take, and I see too many OEL manga taking it. Grow up.

[riewritten]

what do you do when inspiration suddenly hits you? like do you just memorize it in ur head or note it somewhere or do u work on that idea immediately?? im very very curious about ur creative process PLEASE OVERSHARE because i believe there are things that are new to me. like you write and draw and it's amazing how tou do both! i'm more curious about ur writing process because i don't write much (nowadays i only journal or write diary entries, in the past i did write fanfictions but they're almost all oneshots or unplanned dropped after 2 or 3 chapters). (how) do you plan your storyline? do you consider yourself flexible (like are u comfortable with changing plans in a big project where one change could lead to other changes?). Do you beta read by yourself or is there anyone who does it? if you do it by yourself, what do you feel when re-reading your writings? i literally have sm questions but i don't wanna overwhelm you 😭😭😭 you don't need to answer if you don't want to, that's alright!!!

when u said i could overshare

for whenever the inspiration hits, i tend to start on it immediately. writing is such a mood booster for me and i'm in a low mood most of the time so i seize the moment whenever motivation comes :'D sometimes when i'm busy (let's say school/work) and a great idea pops in (usually in quote format), i just lay it down in my gdocs. for oneshots, 1 doc would suffice. for longfics, the docs per chapter are contained in a folder.

i don't think i'm great in fan arts (i just get the boost from those who draw well—like u!) so i'm glad you appreciate it as well <3

regarding my writing process, someone actually asked me about it before! but to generalize my answer there, i ponder on 3 things (plot, characterization, & chapter study). my first fic (and my first series in general) was dusk in the brightest. i worked on chapter study first: detailed sequence of events from C1-10, vague concept in 11-15, then the rest is just 2-3 sentences of how i want the story to end. the 2nd one, character study, was smth i learned from a professor in one of my subjects when i submitted a one-act play script to her and she heavily criticized my characterization (like so badly i still get jitters remembering it) 😭 since then, i've been very wary with getting things accurate and consistent with my characters. for my plot-heavy fics, that's what i'm most serious for.

i think my flexibility (i dont even think i got that) was v challenged during the last arc of DIB because i suddenly had a complete change of mind with the ending (exactly what u had mentioned: changes that would lead one thing to the other). it was def not comfortable but a great tip (i think) to work around it is that: go back to your earlier chapters, pick up the most random scenarios you had made, then come up with a reason why that random thing ensued. an example of executing it is how isayama worked around aot's first scene (child!eren crying & mikasa being the first one he sees) by connecting it to his last scene in the manga (ofc i wouldn't assume isayama just thought abt it midway. it's just with how he executed it).

i don't have lots of friends in this app so i usually do the revisions all by myself. i'm a type of author that releases chapters impulsively—i'd publish smth that i hadn't proofread yet, read it in the app, then just do all the editing there. i'll repeat the process until i finally get satisfied. i think it's easier for me to point out mistakes when i feel the urgency to do so (like omg i have to hurry in polishing this bc readers might click anytime soon 😭) though someone helped me change POVs (from 1st to 2nd) in DIB C1-13 and let me tell u that i never thought having someone help me beta read my work could bring me so much delight.

and pls don't worry about overwhelming me! using this app and dumping all my work here are literally what keeps me sane from the overwhelming things in my life atm. to have u appreciate it gives me joy & comfort. thats why i'd be honored to answer all of ur questions :'D

[tundrainafrica]

Hi Sav,

I want to ask your opinion about aot in general. We know that Aot is a good show and has great stories.

But, do you have any critiques on aot? I'd love to know...

Thank you in advance 😄

Thank you for the ask! I actually am a serial complainer so I LOVE LOVE LOVE answering things like this because I have complaints about a lot of things lmao.

At the same time though, I’m answering this as a Levihan fan.

Occasionally, I would see AOT material and feel this strange disconnect because I think I’ve read and written too much fanfiction that when I actually see AOT material, I’m like ‘wait oh right, Levi and Hange came from there....”

To answer your question though, here are my general complaints about ATOT as a whole.

The general reason why I kinda feel strongly about the story telling being REALLY weak towards the end is because AOT started strong. Like, I’m sure most people can agree that in the anime at least, or maybe in most parts of the manga as well. every panel, every scene HAD purpose, which adds to the overall quality of the writing and the pacing.

The plot twist and the change in genre was also built really well. Yams left enough to speculate and he also created this story where every scene had a purpose in building the overall plot, the plot twists were done incredibly well. He cleverly planted all the hints, most readers wouldn’t have been able to pick up which was created some really great rewatch value for the previous seasons.

Character death wise, he was also incredibly trigger happy but all of the deaths seemed to have had a purpose anyway so I wasn’t too salty about all the characters dying. And most important characters who died anyway, died for one reason, to introduce a villain or to signal an end of an age, or there was a huge build up/foreshadowing leading towards the death which made it stomachable.

Towards the end though, Yams wasn’t writing to actually build some plot twist anymore. He actually had to pull at the threads of every single plot point he planted and write some semblance ending.

No ending can satisfy everyone but for me, a quality ending is supposed to tie all the loose ends in some tight logic manner which Yams low key KINDA failed to do. This explains why when the purpose of writing ‘changed’ from setting up AOT for a major plot twist and a genre shift to actually tying all the loose ends, the quality of writing kinda diminished.

With the amount of questions left unanswered, I can’t help but think Yams was in a hurry to just end the damn thing. (But really, I’m not too blah about it, because the story telling and world building was great overall, it’s just the ending which left a lot to be desired. At least, it’s not ‘Game of Thrones’ BAD lmao)

Tight Story Telling

Story telling is supposed to have a purpose. Every scene, every death, every scene leading to the finale is supposed to have a damn purpsoe and literally, it’s been months and I still think about Hange’s death as one of the most pointless plot developments in AOT.

HANGE DIDN’T. THEY LITERALLY JUST DIED. And every day, I literally try to fathom why the hell, Yams had to kill her, and I have speculations about it. The strongest one being the fact that Yams didn’t know what to do with Hange towards the end of the show and he needed to kill someone to prove the gravity of the situation I guess. And I guess Hange was the best option since she was old or something or she was just so difficult to write that Yams decided to kill them?

And I dunno it just seems like an asspull.

And Hange’s death wasn’t built up at all. Like there were no signs, there was nothing, no character arc which could have made it stomachable so Hange’s death just seems like lazy writing to me tbh and I kinda take it slightly personally because most casual readers I know tend to gloss over Hange’s death?? Which kinda diminished Hange’s character as a whole

And I thought about who could have died other than Hange and I realized, no one was built up to die in that scene? Or there wouldn’t have been anyone in that scene who I would have been okay with dying? Which kinda points to the fact that maybe Yams just didn't prepare properly for that death scene?

Which brings me to my next point.

Consistency of Characters

If a character is prepared for greatness, it doesn’t make any damn sense to put them through shit and kill them in some anti climactic way (Like Circe in GOT style)

And at the same time, most people might not agree with me here but I guess it kinda doesn’t make sense for me to see Eren redeemed at the end for the sake of love? Or him having to do everything for the sake of JUST the love with Mikasa?

It makes sense, I have to admit, there were plot points which hinted to the really strong bond between Mikasa and Eren but destroying the whole world FOR Mikasa? All I’m getting from this is Eren is just some crazy psycho who is overly obsessed with a girl that he tries to destroy the world and his sacrifice was in vain anyway because the world was kinda messed up too.

I personally think it would have been way more stomachable if Yams just highlighted everyone as a whole instead? Like it seems much more believable for me to think that Eren reached points of irredeemable or maybe if Yams just highlighted the fact that Eren did it for EVERYONE, not just for Mikasa. Because I think with the way that Yams wrote it (putting emphasis on Eren’s relationship with Mikasa), most casual readers would gloss over the fact that Eren had no choice. If he didn’t do the rumbling, Paradis would have been overrun.

Mikasa being there and her relationship with Eren WAS built up from the start so it has some place in the ending. But to put it at the centerpiece instead of Eren’s relationship with the whole Paradis which would have kinda made Eren’s decision to just ‘genocide’ everyone make more sense.

Some parts of the ending kinda remind me of weathering with you and I have a lot of beef with that movie.

Which brings me to my next point:

Values Dissonance (????)

Whenever I read or finish something, the final question I ask myself is ‘so what? what is this piece of media trying to tell me?”

For AOT, I think the most glaring message is ‘the cycle of hatred always continues,’ but I don't think that the message was properly built up? Yams went through the love, the relationships and he highlighted them too brightly for me to even properly stomach the 'cycle of hatred' message as the main one.

It seemed like, towards the end he was jumping from one message to the other in a low key sloppy way and there was no consistent message in all of them.

What was Eren’s purpose? What was the purpose of his sacrifice? What was the purpose of the sacrifice everyone was making?

If Isayama’s whole intention was to tell us that the sacrifice was meaningless and the cycle of hatred continues, I feel like there were better ways to build this up than to dangle ‘love’ in front of us and as the centerpiece of the genocide and the finale before the extra pages in some way where it wasn’t even properly built up in the first place.

That 180 from 'okay Eren did all these stuff out of love’ which is kinda overly mushy and kinda crazy already mushy way and suddenly create this message like the ‘world is doomed, seems like a sloppily placed 'plot twist' to me. Like the type of plot twists authors just put to surprise the reader but it doens't seem well thought out in the first place.

Why highlight something as hopeful as love and make Eren start the war over it when you’re just going to create some major dissonance with a plot twist. Like with the values Yams was highllighting towards the end, I feel like it was a roller coaster with a lot of abrupt twists and turns and there was no time to really reflect on the overall message because he was highlighting too many opposing points at once with no clear thread connecting all of them

I don’t know if I make any sense here haha but yeah, those are my general complaints with AOT as a whole. Don’t get me wrong, I love AOT as a whole but I guess like all shows it has its flaws especially towards the ending.

And hey Yams, still made Levi and Hange and I think anyone who built a world complex enough to inspire others to write fanfiction and draw fanart is a good author either way.

Disclaimer: These are just my thoughts on what I remember from reading but I have been trying to forget a lot of the plot points so I can enjoy it again when the anime comes out. My thoughts might change depending on what I think after rewatching.

[fourangers]

Hi Fourangers,

First of all, I love your blog so much. It's like going through a history back when Naruto Manga chapters were released weekly and your reviews were so Golden, Hilarious and spot-on. Am a new fan though (especially an SNS fan), I just got into this fandom only this year. I don't know if you'll answer my ask, but I just wanted to try and ask you few questions and I pray that you might answer me....

1. Since you've written in a post that you were active in the eastern part of the fandom, How was chapter 698 received in Japan? Because this is the chapter I inherently realized they both love each other. Yeah, I was too late but somehow whenever they interact with each other in previous chapters I always find them to be 'Weird' for just to be friends. Chapter 698 is just blatantly obvious that they love each other. Considering Homophobia and Shounen genre, I have no idea how it was perceived over there back then in 2014.

2. Which scene made you to ship SNS?

3. As an SNS'er how do you feel about the ending, where everyone was married off when they were just 19 just to make some shitty sequel??? As a new fan, I felt betrayed and It would've been perfect if they had stopped at chapter 699, leaving an open ending.

4. How do you face with the accusation about Naruto and Sasuke as brothers and we, SNS'ers are Incest shippers??? I don't care about that Indra and Ashura thing. But Naruto himself told he considers Sasuke as his Brother couple of times. And in Chapter 699, Sasuke acknowledged, 'He finally understood what it meant'.... It's the only thing that confuses me and I don't even have an answer!!! Plus, Kishi himself gave an interview that he based Sasuke on his Brother... I really wonder how he gave such an interview when he literally made them wear necklaces with each other's faces.

5. How was Naruto and Sasuke's sexuality perceived in the fandom back then??? Man!! Kishimoto just made lot of comic reliefs on their sexuality by making Sasuke on Sai jutsu, Naruto not interested in Icha Icha but making Reverse Harem no Jutsu, Naruto was angry when Konohamaru made Boy on Boy jutsu whereas he had no problem with him doing it. LOL. And all those homoerotic posters. What do you think about their sexuality, personally??

6. Why did Kishi had to develop their bond as Soulmates with some unintentional or intentional romantic undertones, if he was eventually going to pair them up with girls??? He easily could've gave many such romantic tropes to other girls and keep the bond between N and S as purely friendship or brothers. It still would've made sense.

7. Final one, Was Naruto really Nosebleeding when Kurama made a joke about Sasuke's kiss in Chapter 572???? We had a lot of heated discussion with other shippers where they claim that it was just a splotch of snot.

Sorry for the lengthy ask....... I am so eager to know your answers and I don't want to spam your ask box by sending multiple asks.

Thanks 😊😊😊

Hey yo! Welcome new SNS fan! I'm so glad that you joined us and I'll try to answer as best as I can. I'm not very active here on tumblr (except browsing lol) but your ask was such a delight to read.

1. I honestly don't remember. I think I didn't follow the japanese boards until the eventual 699-700 disaster. People were craving for reactions and I was curious about it too lol. And well...it's been years, I doubt I'll be able to find the reactions from that time. Imo, most readers don't care much about pairings, they just wanted to read about power-ups and abilities and the basic Naruto Vs Sasuke. Though there are some backhanded jokes about how gay Naruto is for Sasuke.

2. Hah. It's going to be very anti-climatic but it was when Naruto and Sakura were eating in Ichiraku Ramen. Naruto just used Rasenshuriken against Kakuzu and he busted his arm. Sakura was healing his arm and her attention was focused on Naruto. I used to be a NaruSaku shipper so I thought "Oh hey! This is the moment that Naruto would have a candid romantic moment!" But nope. He talked about Sasuke. And I was already getting suspicious about Sasuke's feelings towards Naruto ya know? And the whole "SASUKE IS MIINEEEEEE" in Orochimaru's lair. It was that moment I thought "you only have Sasuke in your head don't you, Naruto?" and started shipping SNS.

3. Hooo boy was I surprised when it was suddenly revealed that they had the basic heteronormative, boring marriage with bunch of clones of themselves. Everyone thought that it was almost like a bad fanfiction come true and some thought that it was fake. It was a pandemonium lolololol. I also thought that it was too lame to be true and lo and behold, when it came true I was floored. And then whenever Kishimoto threw new material, I got insanely pissed off because S*arada and B*ruto becoming pairing material is ok because they are a girl and a boy, and then they paralleled with Naruto and Sasuke which are only FRIENDS because they are both men. ARGH. Open ending was what Kishimoto planned from the very beginning but wrote a sequel to earn more money.

In that aspect, I made peace with it because of the whole anime/manga industry. I learned that, as a mangaka, you don't earn a lot of money with selling books, but rather with merchandise and profiting with sales right. And that guy have a family to raise, have two kids (which is hilarious about how B*ruto movie is his self-insert story), he needs a steady income. Also, I read reports about how anime studios are so poor and animators don't receive a decent income not to mention they are overstaffed and tired, and B*ruto is a good money cow for them to earn money so they can invest later on other anime they have more passion about it. So even though I hate this story with a strength of thousands suns, they are putting meal on people's tables and making them pay rents. I'm ok.

4. Lemme roll my eyes because in the Last movie they said that Hinata is related to Kaguya and so is the Uzumaki and Uchiha clan so they are all related woo hoo. But in the aspect of brothers because reincarnations bla bla bla, didn't Naruto himself said that he's no longer that brother, he's himself? Hmm...I gotta re-read it. One day. Maybe. lol. But I'm sure that he said "Sasuke is not my brother but I'm sure we'll understand well as friends" so there. Honestly, there are a lot of interviews out there and a lot of them are fake, so I'd always take the interviews with a grain of salt lololol. I do know from artbooks that Kishimoto wanted to create Sasuke as a rival-esque character and that was it. As he was developing Sasuke and Naruto's relationship, since he liked the whole yin-yang concept, whenever he wrote Naruto's story, Sasuke's was developed at the same time as his shadow.

5. I can tell from Naruto Forums (I used to participate back in that day) MOST of the non-shippers thought it was gay as hell, but you know...it was a relic of that time. While they thought it was gay, they didn't put too much thought about you know? Because it was shounen, and we knew that it was a joke that it couldn't be taken seriously. Of course, in the SNS fandom, we did make more analysis and there were a lot of instance when Naruto and Sasuke's sexuality was questioned. Some other non-shippers also thought that Naruto was totes gay for Sasuke (including a IRL friend).

Imo, Naruto is definitely bisexual in my view. Sasuke I think he's asexual or gay. He's attracted to Naruto, but mostly because of his connection to him, not because of his physical attributes, so yeah...asexual. Or Pansexual. Sasuke is more complicated lmao. Imo, Naruto could be pansexual too, come to think about it. Yeah, I guess both being pansexual can be valid.

6. He developed Naruto and Sasuke being soulmates from the very beginning, that was proven in his comments in artbooks and in the manga. He probably created with the intention of making it purely platonic, going beyond physical ties. Then he shot himself on the foot by drawing Naruto thinking about Sasuke on bed, talking about how Sasuke is cool, meanwhile Sasuke waxing poetic about how Naruto saved him. What gives? Lol. Yeah, I think he got too enamored writing their relationship that he didn't have time to write romantic ones. What I noticed that Sakura's popularity never was really high, so I could see some editors putting their fingers all over it and making her less relevant. Also, Kishimoto didn't know how to handle her, so when she got her time to shine was the whole fake confession disaster. Coupled with Kishimoto sexism and, in his words (Kurenai's flashback), women are useful to spout more babies, women was never really relevant in his story, unfortunately. Even Kaguya who was technically the big bad boss, was never really fleshed out in comparison to Madara. So the null het romantic moments it's not because he wanted to elevate SNS moments, it's more about how he's incompetent about it. It's either Hinata slowly elevating to a relevant status because forced interaction (Pain's sacrifice and Neji's death) or Sakura being obligated to be pining over Sasuke because she's a girl. It's even more painful to see that, if we ignore B*ruto, both girls are shown to be just talking with their kids and dusting shelves, basically being housewives, even though thorough the story (especially Sakura) it was implied that both of them have much more potential than being their husband accessories.

7. It was a splotch of snot. I can confirm myself lol. Whenever the chapter is out and fans would scan it to scanlate it, the editor usually would amp up contrast to max. So usually the lines get much more thicker than usual, when you read the official release which gets straight from the source, you can notice how the lines are more delicate.

Oh lol...but then we also have a lot of controversy about translating style. THAT one is a whole new can of worms to open.

Man I had fun answering your questions! Please send more :P

[ciuri1]

Hello everybody!

This is a DN's fan theory!

During Mello and Near's confrontation at the SPK's HQ, Near thanked Mello for his help and Mello got a bit mad (😅), pointing the gun at Near and saying: "I am not a tool for you (...)"

Few months ago I read a Death Note's MelloxHalle ff based on the manga (I can't remember the title but it was utterly well written, if I'll find it out I'll link it here!)

In the fan fiction, Mello, while advancing towards Near with his gun, pushed Halle behind him, in order to get her away from the line of fire.

Since I recently re-read the manga, I just wondered if this part was an invention of the fanfiction's author or not.

In the manga at first Halle is in front of Mello, he is holding her by the arm.

When he got angry she is suddenly behind him but (it seems) he is still holding her by his right hand.

Maybe Mello just didn't want Halle to die since it was her who passed information to him? Maybe it was just a reflex action or indeed a voluntary act of "protection"?

Mello showed no regrets in killing SPK members (his own spy being among them) or in kidnapping Sayu.

But at the same time he clearly had no intention of killing Near and he was sincerely moved by Matt' death, so maybe it could be the case also with Halle

Anyway, this could be an interesting scene for the fandom's shippers !

What are your opinions?

Have a good day 😊!

[schrijverr]

The Media in a Quirk Society

An essay or more a thought piece about how the media adapted to the appearance of quirk. How genres changed and how the media influences and is influenced by society.

On AO3.

Ships: none

Warnings: none

~~~~~~~~~~~

Something that makes me so very curious is how media must have developed in the BNHA universe after the appearance of quirks.

We hear almost nothing of media other than the news within the universe itself. For now it escapes me if All Might Cartoons are actually mentioned in the show or something of fanfiction. But another fanfic phenomena are pre-quirk movies, aka movies of our time.

The latter is a thing we must agree on, since there was a time before there were quirks wherein movies were made. This also implies that the pre-quirk superhero genre has existed (think MCU or DC)

I want to examine how that must have changed with the appearance of quirks based of what we’ve seen in the show.

When we see the beginnings of a quirk society, we meet AFO, who rises in the chaos and especially the scene where he takes and gives a quirk stand out the most. Quirks weren’t excepted yet, especially visible quirks, while at the same time a quirk means power. We also know the hero profession rises here, because it was too much for just law enforcement.

So we have these components, which all make for really great stories… in hindsight.

After the fact there must have been many stories about a lone police officer, becoming a hero as he saw the force around him crumble. Or a weak person, suddenly developing a powerful quirk that helps them get out of an impossible situation. Or maybe even about someone who feels they are deformed and shunned from society by their quirk and how they overcome it.

But at the moment it was happening there was still a lot of resentment about quirks and people who had them.

When quirks first entered the stage, people who had them plunged the world into chaos or had to hide like the man who goes to AFO to get his quirk removed.

I can imagine that if movie productions could continue in those turbulent times they would focus on the normal guy, still fighting against a suddenly super-powered villain or a quirkist (as I shall refer to it) take on a person who gets a quirk and turns evil.

Or they might even ignore the whole quirk situation in general with a new genre that can be boiled down to ‘No Quirks – AU’ wherein the movie is based in pre-quirk times. This genre would have a lot of nostalgia at first, probably, trying to call upon how simple life was when villains weren’t terrorizing the streets and heroes were just a funny thing of TV.

Maybe it will develop later.

Maybe it will become how difficult it must have been back then with no simple quirk solutions to problems. It might even turn into a genre about invention, mostly, with a fascination in the public of how things that run on quirk-solutions now, could have been solved by a quirkless scientist in the before times.

But back to the developing genre that is set the BNHA real world. Wherein quirkless people might have gotten a center stage in the early years, before quirks became so entrenched in society that quirkism developed against what used to be a majority.

I can picture a young Midoriya watching old movies wherein the quirkless protagonist was the hero against the evil quirks, telling himself that one day that could be him.

However, with the rise of heroes the media attention probably shifted.

The manga/anime describes it as ‘ordinary civilians with their own Quirks decided to take matters into their own hands to bring order to society, and thus the first "Heroes" appeared.’ as it says on the fandom wikia.

This shifts the narrative of quirkless hero against the chaos of quirks, to brave citizen stands up using the power they’ve been granted. Maybe they gave it religious undertones or maybe it was the story of taking the moral high ground and doing what was right for your country and neighbors.

In those early days you probably have more stories reflective of the pre-quirk fictional heroes, wherein the main character has to hide that they’re out there every night breaking the law to bring order.

It can be that at this time the narrative that the police is just the ‘villain taxi service’ starts to originate among bitter storytellers, who have seen the police fail where heroes did not. Though this would be more older filmmakers after this era is over, who start this. When heroes have become accepted, but they still remember how bad the police reacted before.

But on the topic of heroes becoming accepted, that must have been a civil right movement, a right that had to be debated with villains reflecting how bad an idea public quirk use could be.

You can see in the ‘Liberation War Arc’ how something like that could have played out and how it makes for interesting media entertainment as it is a story arc in our world, meant to amuse. Mixed with the fact that the first heroes created order in the chaos, there must be a ton of movies following activists or a hero not only having to fight the villains, but also the system.

And then over time heroes morphed into what they are now.

Hero became a profession and quirks the norm. After a while, just focusing on quirks got less interesting and using quirks as just a backdrop became more interesting.

Sure, you still had the hero genre and with actual figureheads these can range from documentaries to inspired by real life movies or just fictive fights with characters that are obviously based off a real hero or just the real hero. Especially when heroes became depended on their popularity, there must have been plenty that signed an acting contract in the hopes of getting their name and image out there.

With Midoriya’s comment about Todoroki having the backstory of a protagonist, it is clear that the hero genre is far from forgotten.

However, the “normal” genres also developed with society and with quirks becoming normal and no one truly aching for the before times, they must be set in the BNHA world we know.

The tropes we know (and maybe love) will get a new twist to fit this society or maybe disappear completely. New stereotypes and assumptions based off quirks appear, even quirkism might become prevalent in media, teaching kids that those without quirks are freaks or weak and weird.

In my mind I picture a movie trailergoing “She has a water quirk, he has a fire quirk. Will they fall in love despite their different personalities?!?” or “When his family is murdered, he must track down the killer with only the quirk as clue. Will he find out what happened on that faithful day or will the path this sends him on be the last of him???”

The horror genre will also be transformed with the fear of people misusing their quirk being a big thing in society.

As for fantasy, this genre will change with super-powered people being the norm, you can have to get more creative to make it truly fantastical. World building, visually, will be more important to distinguish it from our world, creatures too since there are literally people with bird heads, for example, walking around.

Not to mention the potential of quirks being hereditary that can be used in dramas where the partner has cheated or as plot point as grant reveal of a main character being related to one of the antagonists or even in gang movies as them training together to use their quirks and them all being the same. That would make for a cool visual tbh.

Disaster movies also will be different than they are now. With protagonist who can have quirks that work against them in their situation or if it’s a more hopeful movie how they work together, piling together their quirks and other skills to survive.

And the crime genre will be so intrinsically tied to hero society and with the police being seen as kinda useless, it will be so different than how we know it now. Did crime become part of the hero genre? Is this a piece of cop propaganda left wherein the police tries to save their reputation? I don’t know, but I wanna think about it.

It’s just interesting to me how in a world where the super is normal, media has adapted and this has been keeping my mind busy over the past few weeks.

The transformation in society of quirks as something dangerous that needs to be stopped, to a few brave people standing up for what’s right to finally the commercialization of heroes so that they can keep doing their job.

You see these changes, that’s unavoidable.

Media is such a powerful tool and it’s hardly referenced within the source material (which I understand because there are already so many movingparts), but with the fall of hero society it is interesting how all that propaganda for heroes might disappear back to when quirks first appeared and how the cycle may start again.

~~

A/N:

There are probably so many genres and other stuff thatI haven’t considered, so tell me your thoughts about the media in BNHA!

((also I didn’t want to dive in how racism, homophobia, ableism will develop with quirks and notions people will have about them. It is important to think about, but I do not think that I am the right person to talk about it. If anyone does, tag me or comment the link, because I will 100% read it))

[quicksilverlightning]

The All Might Fan Forum Discussion Board

 ALL MIGHT FAN FORUM

General Discussion All Might Battles Meeting All Might     Rescued by All Might     All Might Encounters     >Small Might Encounters (New!) Fanart and Fanfiction

CaptainCelb09 So, I've met All Might before. I just didn't know it was him.

It wasn't a big deal or anything - I tripped walking home one day and this really tall skinny guy stopped to make sure I was okay. I was embarrassed someone saw me and brushed him off, practically ran away. Now I'm sitting here with my face on fire cause I tripped in front of ALL MIGHT and he tried to help me up and akslhsdfouashefgoawu I cannot fucking believe this I should have taken his hand

070809 Pudding Cups

Time - 6:53 PM

Scene - Shofu Park

Your Narrator - crying on a bench

My girlfriend had just broken up with me. Through text. Like, ouch, right? Anyway.

I'm just kinda staring at my phone, blurry eyed, kicking at maple leaves, wishing I could text her back cause she just blocked my number when this tall blond guy shuffles up and takes a seat at the other end of the bench. Doesn't say anything, just sits, placing his grocery bag beside him. It's a public park, whatever right?

I'm wiping my eyes, putting my phone back in my pocket and suddenly there's this white thing in front of me - blond guy is offering me a napkin, Still doesn't say anything, just smiles a little. I take it and wipe my eyes, blow my nose, try to get it together cause apparently I look bad enough that this complete stranger is worried about me. I'm stuffing the napkin in a pocket when he holds something else out - a chocolate pudding cup, one of those with the little spoons in the lid.

I'm kinda like wha? but take it anyway and he takes another one out of his bag, he's got a six pack of them in there, and he tears off the lid and starts snacking and I do the same cause fuck it, right? I eat the whole thing and he gives me another one, like we're old friends or something and I'm halfway through it when he finally speaks.

"Bad day?"

And I can't help but laugh. It's so dumb. I'm single and heartbroken and eating pudding cups with this stranger on a public park bench as it gets dark and I don't know what to feel anymore. I tell him what happened and we eat the whole six pack together, shootin' the shit until the street lights come on. He calls me "young man" and claps me on the shoulder and it's so dumb but it cheered me up. He puts all the trash back into the bag and tosses it in the bin and tells me he needs to get going and hell, I do too.

I didn't even get his name. I thought about that encounter a lot though. I have a new girlfriend and she's great. We were together when All Might's last battle happened, watching everything go down on the TV at a bar and we're all losing our shit and I lose it even harder when the smoke clears cause that's the guy I ate pudding cups with what the hell

The last three years, any time I'm having a bad day, I go to the store and get some chocolate pudding cups. Whenever the world was just a shitty place, I'd think about that blond guy, shuffling through the park and making things better as he went along.

And I guess it figures that man would turn out to be All Might, cause that's what All Might has always done - moved forward and made things better.

spite-and-aesthetic my dumbass cat

small might plucked my stupid cat out of a tree wtf kinda cliche is this guy

AM_FAN0112 i cannot BELIEVE

TWO YEARS. TWO FUCKING YEARS ALL MIGHT HAS BEEN COMING INTO MY SHOP ARE YOU SERIOUS WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL TOSHINORI

I'M DEADASS SERIOUS HE COMES IN EVERY FEW WEEKS AND BUYS A BOOK AND SOMETIMES WE CHAT ABOUT MANGA AND HE ALWAYS ASKS HOW SCHOOL IS GOING AND HELPS WITH MY ENGLISH HES SO NICE AND TOLD ME TO CALL HIM TOSHINORI IS THAT HIS REAL NAME?? A CODENAME?

I GOT HIM HOOKED ON SUGAR SUGAR CAT CAFE ITS THE DUMBEST SYRUPY SHOUJO ROMANCE AND WEVE BEEN READING IT TOGETHER FOR OVER A YEAR WHAT IS MY LIFE

Sexi-tery Long post is long

Lemme set the scene; it's raining buckets, and I'm on my way to a job interview in the ritzier part of town. I've got my best clothes on - nice, crisp suit jacket, smart-looking skirt, a decent-but-could-be-shinier pair of heels. I've just left lunch with a friend and I've got an hour before the most important interview of my life.

That's when a bus rolls by and drenches me in the greasy puddle-water of downtown Tokyo.

Y'all, I was trying not to hyperventilate. I don't have time to go home and change. Even if I did, these were my best clothes. I'm screwed, no one is going to hire me looking like a sopping mess, *I* wouldn't hire me looking like this whatdoIdo

Someone picks up my umbrella. I didn't even realize I'd dropped it. I'm still freaking out. Someone is pulling me, I'm not even on this planet right now, someone is talking to me, I have an interview, where are my anxiety meds?

There's this blond guy hunched over, trying to bring me back down, telling me to breathe, calm down, you'll be okay. He's breathing with me and it's working and I think I might be crying but my face is so wet I can't tell.

He gets the story out of me once I'm back on planet Earth, and gets this determined look on his face. Drags me across the street into a clothing store. A really, really nice clothing store. Outta-my-budget, outta-my-lifetime sort of clothing store. Pushes me to the racks, tells me to pick out whatever I want.

I don't even question it - I may be back on Earth, but I'm still in the upper atmosphere somewhere. I grab a few things to take to the dressing room and fit myself into an extremely nice pantsuit. An attendant comes in to help, gets the tags off so I can wear the clothes out, bags my soaking wet puddle of fabric and blond guy pays for it all without even blinking.

He leads me back out, hails a cab, and I'm like, what now? And we pull up to a salon and he gets my hair dried and done, I KNOW he must have tipped the hairdresser a crazy amount to get me in and out that quickly, and the cab is idling outside the whole time, waiting to take me to my interview when we're done. All the while, blond guy is smiling, cracking jokes, and just being all-around charming. I'm wondering what I'm going to owe for this, what he wants, maybe he's some sort of creeper? But he seems so nice?

And when we're done, he prods me over to the cab, but doesn't get in. Doesn't ask for anything, just wishes me good luck. Like, who even is this guy? Who does all that for a total stranger?

All Might, that's who. Holy crap you guys, All Might got me to my interview on time and it's the best job I've ever had. I'd still be pushing pencils in a miserable office if he hadn't been there that day.

 Kirasagwa74

A train ride

I remember a time before All Might. I remember when the Yakuza worked out in the open and villains took what they wanted without fear.

I'm old, is what I'm saying. These bones ache and creak every time the weather even thinks about changing. I don't complain too much; I'm used to it. I'm used to being out of the loop and lost in the shuffle. It's alright - I have my routines and I stick to 'em.

One of them is riding the train to a favorite cafe. They have an excellent coffee blend. I've seen All Might on that train many times, though I never knew it was him until a little while ago. He's a good man with kind eyes. If it was crowded, he would let me have his seat. Chat about the good ol' days, heroes from another generation. I haven't seen him on the train in a while. I miss him.

SingleSuperMom31 Carried Home

This was pretty recent - just a few months ago. Long post up ahead.

Context: I'm a single mom. My ex didn't want kids, so I've raised Aya by myself. It's been a little difficult lately thanks to a broken arm, but I've managed.

Anyway, I took Aya to a local park a few months ago. It's a few minutes walk from the apartment, and I wanted to grab some things from the store anyway, so I took her out to let her burn off some energy. Her Quirk is Photosynthesis, so she has a lot of it!

When we get there, the first thing Aya wants to do is get on the swings. She's almost three and my arm is broken - I don't want to put her in a regular swing in case she falls, so I'm trying to maneuver her into one of the strapped swings with one arm. Aya isn't heavy, but I'm still struggling to manage when a thin man with blond hair walks up.

"Ma'am? Would you like some help?"

He's tall, super super tall, and gaunt, but he has a kind smile. Aya likes him right away and helps her into the swing and pushes her a little while she screams to go higher.

He was so, so nice to my little girl. He let her call him Toshi and played with her for over an hour, lifting her on the monkey bars and holding her hands on the balance beam since I couldn't manage it at the moment. He sits with me when some other children come to play, and we talk a while, about Aya, about how my arm got broken (it's quite a story), about being a single parent.

It's hard, you know? I love my kid, I'd die for her, but it's still hard, and it's even harder with this arm. He was just so nice - he had this presence, like you could tell him anything and I did. I told him about my ex, that he left, that he didn't want to be a part of Aya's life. You could tell he was really listening, not just being polite. I've gotten a little teared up, and he just smiles and pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket. He's quiet for a little bit, watching the kids play. Then he turns back to me, and I know I'll remember this for the rest of my life, word for word -

"I don't have any family of my own, so perhaps it doesn't mean much coming from me," he looks a little awkward. "But for what's it's worth, I think you're doing a fine job. One day, Aya will be old enough to appreciate what a strong, lovely mother she has."

Aya sees me crying and comes rushing over, hugging my knees and I'm a mess and maybe a little bit in love. He's just so kind and Aya has crawled into my lap and hugs my neck. It's sunset, so her Quirk is finally slowing down and she falls asleep while I'm still reeling over the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.

I'm apologizing, it's late, I still haven't gone to the store, Aya is asleep on my lap and I'm trying to figure out how I'm gonna get her home with this broken arm and he offers to walk us home. He lifts Aya up and puts her head on his shoulder and I know she's drooling a bit, but it doesn't seem to bother him. He radiates this goodness and warmth and safety; I don't even hesitate to invite him in for a cup of tea. He comes in long enough to put Aya on the couch, but doesn't stay. He wished us both well, and that was it. I took Aya to the park every day that week, hoping to see him again, but I didn't.

Until two weeks ago - I was making dinner and Aya was watching cartoons. I thought it was cartoons anway, when she yells -

"Mommy! That's the man who carried me home!"

And that's definitely him, there's no mistaking it. I shouldn't be letting a three year old watch this, but I can't look away either. All Might played with my Aya. All Might told me I was a good mother. All Might carried my daughter home. All Might is fighting for his life on my television right now.

I didn't know what love was until I held Aya in my arms. I didn't know what heroism was either, not until that night. Not until I connected two people together and realized they were the same person. I didn't know what a hero was until I realized that "hero" wasn't a title All Might put on and took off, it's something he IS, 24/7, on and off the clock. I'd live the rest of my life with a broken arm if I could have half of the strength and kindness that exists in this man, if I could be even a fraction of the person he is.

I think about him every day. I got an All Might keychain, so I'd always have something close by to remind me that heroism isn't always about punching villains and holding up buildings; sometimes, heroism is about talking to a stranger. Sometimes, heroism is about pushing a swing.

Sometimes, heroism is about carrying a little girl home.

[rosaline-kei]

Don’t Go - Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own Attack on Titan/Shingeki no Kyojin nor the characters.

Parts: 「1」「2」「3」

Chapter 2′s Title: Mikasa

Synopsis: Even after what was thought to be the end of the chaos, Mikasa Ackerman struggles with conflict, confusion and her emotions. The Raven plans to leave for the Kingdom of Hizuru—without a proper goodbye to Eren Jaeger. What is she running away from? What is she afraid of? Are apologies enough to heal? (Contains Manga Spoilers)

Prompt Summary (from a user): The reunion of Eren and Mikasa after Eren comes back from Grisha’s memories. Even though Eren’s head got blown away xD, I think that he will transform into his Titan Form. After reading the latest chapter I Think Eren will apologize to Mikasa for everything he did to her after the time-skip and will probably tell her not to join that Kiyomi and the Hizuru Kingdom. Thank you!!!

Eren wouldn’t let Mikasa leave for Hizuru because he knows that she loves him and that her love has nothing to do with her Ackermann genetics.

Takes Place after the war is finally settled. When Eren apologizes to Mikasa and Armin and ofc to all the members of the 104. Squad

I don’t think that Mikasa will accept his apology immediately since she is the Person that got hit the hardest by Eren’s deeds and especially his words in chapter 112

Rated: T

Read it also on / Leave a Review at:

Ao3 or FF net

Author’s Note: I hope this was okay haha. T-T, like I said, long time since I written something so I hope this isn't shit lmao. I hope I managed to convey Mikasa's conflict and confusion well. The next and last update, which is where the apology scene will occur, will most likely be posted in December (Hopefully, December 1st) since I still have things I want to touch up in part 3, which I feel is still missing stuff. I also really want to focus more on and finish the next chapter for my other two ongoing AOT/SNK fanfictions (Bloodlust and Love; which you can find on my ff net or ao3 account) since I hadn't update them for a while due to exams, and I really want to update them before November ends. ALTHOUGH, if Love and Bloodlust are done earlier than expected, part 3 (the last part) will come out earlier too soo, wohoo? Haha. 

“…How do you know I’ll be able to stop her…?” Eren mumbled out subconsciously. Undoubtedly, he did want to stop her. He… couldn’t bare the idea of her leaving, especially when he hadn’t had the chance to speak to her. But given the fact she had given the red scarf back to Eren, he wasn’t even sure if she wanted to see him, or if she’d even listen to him at this point.

Armin only scoffed, followed by a brief laugh. “Because you’re Eren Jaeger… you would never let someone you care about so deeply, leave for a reason like that.”

--

“Mikasa! Wait!” Armin called out as he ran after her. “You’re… You’re not serious about leaving are you?”

The meeting had just ended. Kiyomi Azumabito had sent them a letter. In the letter, Kiyomi wrote that she’d like to invite Mikasa to stay over at Hizuru—to which was where the money-eyed woman stated was her home, her rightful home.

But, Kiyomi didn’t state how long she wanted or planned for Mikasa to live there.

All the letter contained were those persuasive words and the time their ship would be at Paradis’s docks to escort Mikasa back to her homeland. And should Mikasa agree, she was to meet them at the docks, wearing a ruby necklace (that came along with the letter), which was a welcome gift.

The meeting was short, because Mikasa was the first to speak, and to conclude. “I will go.”

Truth be told, everyone was caught off guard by her response. “Mikasa Ackerman,” Commander Hanji said in a rather reassuring tone, “Nobody’s forcing you.”

Whatever Hanji had assumed was Mikasa’s reasoning for wanting to leave, was most likely wrong. But Mikasa didn’t seem like she was going to correct her anyway. “If you feel obligated to go because you want Paradis to remain on good terms with Hizuru, then—”

“It’s not that.” She had cut her off, “I… I just want to go back home.”

And just like that, the meeting ended. There was no stopping Mikasa, everyone knew that. Plus, this was her choice to make.

Armin watched Mikasa leave the meeting room, feeling a surge of worry running in his veins.

Because she didn’t state how long she planned to stay there either.

And that’s how he ended up chasing after her.

. . . . . .

“I’m serious. I already said I want to return home—my homeland. I want to see what it’s like.” Mikasa stated as she continued to walk. And despite her attempt at sounding convincing, Armin wasn’t easily fooled nor tricked by her lies.

“Are you sure you want to leave?” Armin frowned, “You haven’t even had the chance to have a proper conversation with Eren!”

Armin knew he was pushing it. He could tell from the way she suddenly froze in her steps that he himself had stepped into a dangerous, sensitive territory. Eren was a touchy subject for her, he knew. But someone had to say it—someone had to remind her what, or who, home actually was.

Silenced diffused into the air. The chilly air grew colder as a cool breeze blew by. Mikasa never knew she’d ever find herself hating the cold this much… it made her miss warmth. A warmth that she once grew so attached that was later forcibly taken away from her by a twisted fate. Her hand went up, wanting to adjust the scarf around her neck… to only realise she wasn’t wearing it.

Ah, that’s right… ever since then…

Mikasa shook her head. No. She didn’t want to remember any of that now.

“Mikasa?” Armin called out again, but in a gentler tone as his hand reached out, gripping her shoulder tightly. She felt comforted by his gesture, at the same time she still felt a sting in her heart from the words he spouted out earlier.

“… I have nothing to say to him.”

Lies. And even Mikasa knew she was lying to herself.

“Try again.” Armin murmured, urging her to be a little more honest with herself, “Do you really have nothing to say to him?”

Mikasa bit her lip before she proceeded to admit some truth, “I… don’t know what to say to him.”

“Trust me, Mikasa… if Eren could’ve apologised to you personally—if he had the time to apologise to you, to everyone a million times, he would… but he didn’t have time, and now he’s detained.” Armin sighed, “But when he’s released, he—” Armin cuts himself off halfway as he noticed a troubled expression forming on his beloved friend’s face. And because he knew her for so long, since childhood, he was able to read her like an open book.

“Is what he said back then still bothering you?”

Mikasa flinched, which confirmed his thoughts.

“You know… he didn’t mean it. He—”

“He had to.” Mikasa completed Armin’s sentence, her obsidian coloured eyes meeting his gaze briefly, before staring down at the ground. “I know that…” She muttered.

Yes, for the most part, she knew that he didn’t mean what he had said. But there was this haunting voice—and this other small part of her brain—that couldn’t help but still believe in his words. There was evidence to support it after all, like how she pinned Armin onto the table when he had tried to attack Eren when he had belittled her.

And as that image flashed in her mind, Eren’s distressing words began to echo.

Do you know what I hate most in this world? Anyone who isn’t free.

Slave. Slave. Slave.

I couldn’t stand to look an undoubting Slave who only followed every order.

SLAVE. SLAVE. SLAVE.

Ever since I was a kid, Mikasa…

Ever since. Ever since. Ever since…

I’ve always hated you.

HATE. HATE. HATE.

Always.

Out of the blue, Mikasa suddenly stumbled as she felt a sharp, and familiar piercing pain in her head. The headaches never left, huh?

Armin quickly supported her before she fell, but before he could say anything, Mikasa started to murmur in a stressful way, as if something was haunting her. “I have to leave…I need to… leave… then maybe I…”

Armin’s eyes softened as the raven trailed off. To some extent, he knew what Mikasa was trying to do by leaving. To some, travelling across the world would mean one is trying to understand… trying to comprehend, and trying to find themselves. Perhaps that’s what Mikasa wanted, to find herself. Or, she wanted to get away, run away… to find some form of distraction. But the blonde knew better—that her leaving and running away wasn’t going to resolve anything.

“You’re not a slave, Mikasa.” Armin said firmly, but he already knew that she would know that he never once saw her as that. Armin knew that these words were what she wanted to hear, it’s just… that it wasn’t him that she needed to hear those words from. “Remember that time, you defended me from Eren when were kids? You—”

Before she could let Armin finish, she pushed herself away from his support and began to walk off again. “Maybe that was because my Ackerman instincts hadn’t fully manifested…” She mumbled.

Armin frowned as he followed after her, “I thought you knew that he didn’t mean what he said? You know… his words weren’t true, right?”

“I know… I know that he didn’t mean what he said, but it doesn’t mean what he said wasn’t true.” And before Armin could retort, he found himself standing in front of the house Mikasa currently resided in. “Wait here.” She muttered before entering.

And when Mikasa came back outside, it wasn’t what she came out with that surprised Armin, it was what she said next.

“Return this to Eren after I leave…” Mikasa mumbled, as she passed the red scarf to the blonde gently. It took a while for Armin to process what she had just said.

It wasn’t like Mikasa to… give away something that she once treasured so much.

“I heard it doesn’t snow as often at Hizuru…”She quickly excused.

And we’re back with the lies, Armin thought tiredly.

“Oh, but don’t tell him I’m going to Hizuru. Nor this. I wouldn’t want to… he doesn’t need to know.” Mikasa added on, forcing a smile that made the blonde began to lose his patience with her lies.

“Mikasa! You’re overthinking this. This scarf… it means a lot to you… Eren… he… Mikasa rethink what you’re doing! I know you’re still hurt after what Eren said. But… time will eventually assuage the pain you have in your heart. And… Eren didn’t mean it! If you just talk to him, I can pro—”

“… Then tell me, Armin…” Mikasa said with the forced smile that remained plastered on her face, “What Eren said to me on that day… is there any proof that what he said was wrong?”

“Yes! Yes there is! Like I said, you…when we were kids, when Eren was talking bad about me, you punched him—”

“—And I also slammed you on the table when you tried to defend me.” Mikasa bit her lip as she said this, her tone suddenly overflowing with regret. “I’m… sorry for th—”

“Mikasa.” Armin didn’t seem interested in her apologies, he was keener in knocking some sense into her. “Please rethink about what you’re doing.” He persisted.

“…Don’t worry.” She reassured, and with the smile she had forced on her face, she made her way back towards the door of her house. “You have to face it!” Armin suddenly exclaimed with his fist clenched, “You’re running away now… from Eren… from everything… you need to face it! You… Just talk to him, Mikasa!” Despite his pleading tone, Mikasa continued to walk.

Is she really going to leave?

By now, Armin knew he can’t stop her but he continued. The only person who can stop her right now wasn’t here. He was somewhere else, lying in a goddamn cell.

“Why don’t you want to talk to him? What’s there to be afraid of?!” Armin began to shout. And that’s when the next four-word question slips from his tongue, that made the raven paralyse. “Don’t you love him?”

Once again, Mikasa felt a sharp arrow stabbing her heart, piercing it all over. And just like that, she remembered a question Eren had asked her before.

What am I to you, Mikasa?

And honestly till now, she doesn’t know. She answered him saying that she saw him as family. But now, with everything… with all these overwhelming emotions. She doesn’t know.

Most of all, she doesn’t know if what her heart was feeling was due to her raw emotion or due to her Ackerman genetics that supposedly made her cling to Eren.

Was everything a sham? She wondered. What am I so afraid of?

Ah, that’s right.

“I’m afraid… of my emotions.” Mikasa didn’t care to elaborate on what she meant by that. Regardless, that was the truth. She was never great with handling emotions—especially the overwhelming ones that she was currently suppressing, with much difficulty.

She was afraid of seeing Eren, because he had all the power to evoke one too many emotions out of her. And she was afraid, so afraid that one of those emotions would be associated with the pain she felt during one of the previous meetings she had with Eren.

Most of all, despite all reassurances, there was a small part of her that was afraid of confronting Eren to only hear him say: Yes, I still think you’re a slave.

Maybe Mikasa did love him, and maybe if she stayed, she’d realise how much she was in love with him.

But love can be painful, and it was pain that Mikasa was running away from.

The world is a cruel place. And sometimes, it can be so cruel to the extent it can make anyone forget about its beauty.

“…and what good will it do to your emotions, Mikasa, if you leave…?”

For some reason, Mikasa felt an itch at her eyes, but she chose to ignore it.

“You’re just confused, Mikasa! Just stay and you and Eren will—”

Mikasa turned back towards the blonde before he could finish his sentence, causing him to pause mid-way in his sentence and his eyes to widen. There were tears forming in her eyes.

If only she could be more honest with herself… if only she could understand her emotions better, Armin thought. After all, those tears of hers that streamed down her cheeks revealed all too much.

It just showed that she was still conflicted, about staying, about leaving… about everything.

“Armin,” She said in a tone meant to soothe, though it made him jump a little, “It’s getting late. You should go to bed… goodnight.”

The raven then reached out for her door knob, twisting and opening it, entering her house… but not without uttering, “Thank you, Armin.” before closing the door.

--

At the Dock – The Day when Mikasa is due to Leave for Hizuru.

--

Eren was now running.

The moment he heard the key unlocking his damn cell, he sprinted away and towards the docks. Clenched in his fist were a red scarf and a piece of paper where Armin jotted down the exact location where Mikasa would be at.

As he ran, he began to remember the things Armin said to him the other day…

The things he said about Mikasa.

But before his thoughts could dive any further, he spotted a figure standing at the docks, which he didn’t fail to recognize immediately.

“M…Mikasa!” He called out hastily.

He hoped it wasn’t too late.

The figure turned, and his pair of emerald orb finally meets her obsidian orbs that soon widen in shock.

“E-Eren?!”

[slifers-executive-writer]

My Thoughts on the Potential Personality of a Certain Pharaoh We Never Met

Hey guys...It’s been a while since I wrote something about YGO specifically and well since that is the main focus of this blog, I thought I’d create another discussion. 

This particular tidbit (more like a brain fart to be completely honest) is from scrolling through this website and other social media pages and therefore stumbling on the fandom making their theories and headcanons on what Atem’s true personality is. I think we have all seen the jokes on how we as a fandom like to write him off as this super gay, suave, smooth talking, prideful king. The counter argument I often see is that he is socially awkward, fumbling serial killer, with an identity crisis. All of these claims tend to be backed up by people recalling numerous amounts of the original source material from Mr. Takahashi, but sometimes I wonder what could have been. 

Popular headcanons asides (that means we are not using any ships and/or made up assumptions with no basis), let’s talk about this for a minute. What has Kazuki provided and what can we assume about Atem’s actual character. Despite being a 200+ episode anime, several movies, and over 30 volumes of manga, our favorite author has left a lot to be desired from this guy. Once we’ve discussed the material, I’ll make a personal evaluation of what Atem could have been like had we been able to meet him after he had retrieved all his memories.

Okay so perhaps the fandom is right about one thing, Atem started out as a borderline serial killer. Well, according to the manga, he has got quite a bit of red on his ledger with multiple violent injuries/deaths by his hands.

Right at the moment Atem’s spirit was reawakened by Yugi completing the Millennium Puzzle, we have an individual very determined to protect his vessel at any cost. Of course not without his own enjoyment in participating in his “Dark Games”. So we can tell Atem is very protective of Yugi, his group of friends, and generally any other innocent bystanders. We can argue he is a little over protective via his deadly methods but I guess it’s the thought that counts right?

Luckily for Atem’s victims, he stops his magically mind-fucking bullshit after the Duelist Kingdom arc. He never explains why he stops. Perhaps it has to do with his development as a character to not be as ruthless in an attempt to comfort Yugi.  

One attribute Atem does not lose throughout the series is when confronted with any sort of enemy, we see Atem is very confident in his abilities. Another thing the fandom got right is well... he is quite the smooth talker. Despite being from a completely different era, this guy always knows what to say to enemies and rivals alike. Not to mention his motivational speeches to his friends are always quite powerful. If anything I would almost consider Atem a bit of a life coach. He more or less helped raise Yugi and company into the individuals they become. 

Along with giving everyone their moments of support, Atem does a pretty good job blending in with modern society despite being locked up in his own head for thousands of years. I find some individuals, thinking Atem is a complete fumbling socially awkward dork and well, maybe not so much. Sure he has his moments, I think we can all look back on the ‘Date’ episode, but we have to look at which version we are watching/reading. For the sake of accuracy I tend to interpret the Japanese material as it is closest to the manga. As I said, Atem isn’t perfect, he can be very blunt to people when they ask him for an opinion (or telling people it’s the end of the world if he doesn’t win a card game), but I certainly wouldn’t consider him completely ‘socially awkward’ in general. 

But honestly that can be a whole other essay and I’m just talking about basic character traits overall. Now let us discuss some of Atem’s flaws.

So to make things easier, let us list the flaws as they appeared in both manga and anime:

When Shadi was first introduced to us (manga), we got a glimpse of seeing our favorite dark spirit sweat in the heat of a shadow game. It was revealed that Atem knew little of his true identity and sharing a Yugi’s body meant, that the two would share each others emotions. Moreover, this spirit had fears and doubts just like the rest of us.

As time passes we see more of Atem’s doubts emerge as he becomes more comfortable with Yugi and company, and therefore he expresses his confusion about his past. Where did he come from and who is he and such. This guy needs to have a sense of purpose and being Yugi’s guardian is fine, but at the end of the day, it would be best for him to become his own person.

There is another interaction in the manga (and in the Japanese version of the anime) that I found interesting. When Atem addresses this identity issue and whether his time on this plain is limited, Yugi kind pushes it off as something he doesn’t want to think about. The kid does it again (god I can’t remember exactly which arc this is, I wanna say DOMA), Atem mentions the issue and Yugi says “You can have my memories���. 

For fans of the pairing (to be honest I’m a boring canon-ish shipper so not my cup of tea, but I get it...this scene is pretty gay) this moment is viewed as tender love and care but I can’t help but notice a pattern and another character flaw. We have a guy with no memories of his own and having an identity crisis but every time he wants to discuss this issue, his best friend tends to push it away. I understand Yugi’s reasoning, that Atem is basically the catalyst for all the good things to happen in his life, but the constant ignoring of the problem for the first half of the series is borderline toxic. Furthermore, it shows Atem is a bit of an enabler when it comes to Yugi. Unlike Joey who loudly addresses the behavior to Atem’s face, Yugi finds comfort in it and for both of them it only makes the journey harder for them in moments of separation.

Just something I thought I’d bring up since I don’t see a lot of people talking about moments of toxicity in this friendship. Not that it is a bad thing, I find it quite interesting and realistic. Not all relationships with people are perfect.

Last by certainly not least, Atem’s biggest character flaw, is he is one prideful son of a bitch. Yes, I said it. He likes to complain a lot about his rival (Kaiba) about the characteristic when he is also guilty of it. It’s always duelist pride this and duelist pride that, when a lot of the times this bullshit is what almost gets people killed. Atem’s pride kind of ties in with the ruthlessness of his character, where in the ride to victory he sometimes forgets the people he defeats are still humans beings. Take the incident with Arkana, it took Yugi switching back to keep the guy from getting his legs cut off. (Move out the way Jigsaw, Atem is gunning for your spot.) 

But his pride works against him when individuals such as Yami Bakura and Dartz use their words to question his morality. What would Atem do just to obtain victory? While our hero tends to grow from these experiences and beat the bad guys in the end, it does not negate the fact that the pharaoh’s greatest strength also tends to be his greatest weakness.

Okay so I’ve gotten most of Atem’s characteristics down pat before he retrieves his memories. In summary here is a list of some of his qualities I’ve gathered from the source material.

PROS

-protective & caring nature

-generally is confident in his abilities

-good with his words, knowing when to pick someone up and put his enemies down

-Adapts to modern customs and his friends pretty well, especially for someone locked up in a pendant for so long

-easily takes a leadership role (probably a projection of his kingship past) although he is often humble about his status as pharaoh

-his pride keeps his head held high and rises above all challenges

CONS

-let’s be real the guy is incredibly blunt (this could be a pro or con depending on preference)

-can be an enabler to Yugi at times

-ruthless nature (let’s be real his kill count is like 5+ people in the manga, probably more)

-has an overall identity crisis

-tends to put others above himself, which at times can be toxic or detrimental to his character

-his own pride can be used against him, placing fear and doubt into his mind (DOMA was a great example of this)

I feel like every time Takahashi draws him in a new movie, he just adds more flair and muscles (not that I’m complaining)

So now we come to a head and the big question is what are we missing out on? Perhaps one of the reasons Yu-Gi-Oh DM has so much fanfiction and forums about it is the general sense of emptiness the ending of the series left behind. I think dub Tea put it best, (these are not the exact words, I’ve already spent an hour writing this) Atem was leaving us just as we were getting to know him. Finally a season where we get to see him as his own character, and honestly him fighting bad guys and dying for it, was not the way a lot of us would have wanted to see him go. Instead he comes back to duel Yugi but Atem feels so stiff and mysterious. The guy doesn’t even talk to the poor girl crying in front of him. This isn’t a guy who just wanted to up and leave from the get go. But now that he got the information he wanted, suddenly he just says fuck it and gives a thumbs up walking into the light? Nah. I’m sorry to say the Yu-Gi-Oh is not on my top list of anime endings, but it can be one of saddest. 

I often wonder time and time again, what would have Atem been like around his friends. Maybe he would have more of a sense of humor (like he was with Mana). Would he have more wisdom? Would he be more charming? These are just a few question I and many others have about our favorite pharaoh. But hey that’s what we have headcanons for right?

Now some of you may be wondering, especially as a fanfic writer, what are my own headcanons about Atem? As I mentioned before I guess you can say I’m boring, I prefer canon-ish ships and I try to keep my headcanons as much in line with the source material as I can. Of course I add a tad of my own flair to it so it isn’t completely the same. If anything I try to fix so of the errors I see in the original. 

My headcanon for Atem (post memories): A lot of the qualities I mentioned before would most likely remain the same, if not positively amplified. He certainly wouldn’t be as ruthless as he used to be, the anime/manga has shown his growth from that. He would definitely still be very protective of those he cared about. Although I can’t help but think that after remembering his past, he would carry himself in a regal manner. Possibly even without him noticing because he was raised from birth to become a king. Considering the strong connection with his father, I can see the guy having a keen sense for family bonding, perhaps even wanting one of his own. It is traditional for pharaoh to want to pass on their legacy. I’m also sure we all like to think the guy would be incredibly charming, considering how he always seems to know exactly what to say. Although he would still be blunt with his statements, he isn’t one to lie or hold back. If you ask Atem a question you will get the truth and the honest truth. Pride and honesty are incredibly important to him. While he respects honesty, I can imagine he would like to keep personal matters to himself and not worry others. If anything he would rather stay quiet than create a lie. Lastly considering how humble he tends to be with the people around him and how he values everyone as equals, I can see Atem being very open-minded to try new things and explore various ideologies. He would not judge, or have prejudice. He would be accepting and encourage others to be who they are as long as they were good people.

 Okay so maybe he would be low-key nervous around pets lol.

Well, that was longer than I planned it to be, but thanks for reading all that if you did. Feel free to add to the conversation or blow up my inbox!

[name-me-regret]

Till I Touch The Sky - 2/9

Till I Touch the Sky Chapter Two: And Away We Go

Summary: Peter decides to explore more in his dreams, and in the waking world, he’s finally finished his medical webbing...

Read on AO3.

FANFICTION MASTER POST

- ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

“All your life, no You couldn't be mad about it You've been sailing, sailing oh You couldn't be sad about it And it's been all this time And you haven't lived without-out it You are shining, shining it seems though That your life, you've found it

No oh oh oh But you've never No, you've never seen the rain...

And it gets you down But that's okay You've been pushed 'round You feel the pain And when you fall Just lean on me 'Cause you've never known Never seen, never smelt, never felt The rain...”

~Never Seen The Rain - Tones and I

- ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

April 10, 2015, Friday

Peter tiptoed out of the apartment even if May couldn’t see him where she was balancing her checkbook at the table. He’d gone to bed early due to having had a hard day at school. Coach Wilson had insisted he at least try to do the fitness challenge even though he had a medical note from the doctor. It hadn’t been so bad when he’d started, since the sit-ups weren’t too strenuous but he just hadn’t been able to do more than ten (that last one hadn’t really counted). It was the pull ups and the rope climb that had done him in, although it was a combination of everything.

He wouldn’t say he had collapsed, but he had needed to lean on Ned as they’d gone to the boy’s locker room to shower and change. It hadn’t been fun to hear Flash taunting him about his pathetic attempt at the challenge (even if he hadn’t done much better). The most embarrassing part was Liz asking if he was alright as they’d left the locker because she was a nice person and Captain of the Decathlon Team, and it was mortifying that she now knew how out of shape he was.

It had thankfully been his last class of the day, so he’d headed straight home, and after finishing his weekend homework, he’d decided a nap wouldn’t be too terrible. His Aunt was off that day and she’d said she’d wake him after she’d finished balancing her checkbook, and as was started to become a constant, he started dreaming again. He dreamed her balancing her checkbook because she’d said she was going to do it.

This was the first time it had been daytime in his dreams, and he guessed it reflected what his mind knew was the time of day. So, since it was daytime, in his dreams it was also daytime.

He knew that Riley and Hailey should be home by then, and decided to pay them a visit. Hopefully, his teenage hormonal mind wouldn’t have them undressing or showering this time. As he passed through his door, he yelped as he had to step back as he was almost run over by the someone rushing to catch the elevator. Then he remembered that he passed through objects and apparently people as he’d seen when he’d seen when he’d tried to touch his Aunt May before.

Peter went through the front door this time, looking around curiously to see what his mind thought the Jones’s house looked like. Of course, since he was very familiar with his own apartment, theirs looked like his except with everything on the opposite side like a mirror. The decorations and other stuff weren’t the same, but the same windows were visible from the front door as you walked in.

That’s where the living room was at, between the door front and the windows, and like their apartment, the couches didn’t exactly match. One was a light brown couch that while it seemed big enough to seat at least four people, there were only two cushions; whether they could be removed was debatable. The other was a light brown loveseat, and both of them were around a a small coffee table that was cluttered in sheet music and some art supplies.

There was an old but well kept acoustic guitar in the corner, leaning against a cabinet with nice looking decorative china. On the other side of the cabinet was an easel, folded up and leaning more against the wall than the cabinet. There was a small paint stained bucket close to it sitting on top of a haphazardly folded folded canvas drop cloth.

He hadn’t known there was someone that could paint, wondering if it was Riley or Hailey. Peter also wondered which one of the two was the musician. For someone that had no artistic talent, Peter thought being able to either paint or make music was amazing.

He carefully made his way out of the living room and down the hallway. This apartment was a bit larger than his and his aunt’s, since it appeared to have three rooms instead of the two theirs had. He poked his head through the first door and saw that it was obviously Miss Jones’s room, judging by the more ‘adult’ things inside. The second door was Riley’s room, since he saw the older boy in there when he peeked inside the ajar door. That meant the room at the end of the hallway was Hailey’s room and the door between both rooms across the hallway was obviously the bathroom.

Peter went into Riley’s room, the opening in the door too narrow for a normal person to pass through, but it wasn’t a problem for him since his body passed through half the door. He was in his bed, obviously doing his homework and Peter wandered curiously over to see what he was working on. His textbook showed that it was Algebra, but not the kind he was taking, since he had all AP classes. He was a grade behind Riley, but he easily understood what he was working on.

’Questions ten and eight are wrong,’ he said even if the other couldn’t hear him. He felt bad that his subconscious thought the other was bad at math, but maybe he’d overheard a conversation and that’s why his mind dreamed it so. Although, he always wondered at how vivid and real his dreams felt and nothing weird, like an elephant suddenly appearing, had happened. He was more use to those kinds of dreams, just not elephants appearing per say; just weird dreams.

A few wet dreams here and there as well, but no one needed to know that.

Riley groaned as he got lost on a problem and erased his equation hard enough to almost rip the paper. “I hate math,” he growled, free hand running through his brown hair. He had straight hair and not the unruly curls that Peter had, which he hated since tangles were a hassle.

“It probably hates you too,” a voice said from the doorway. Peter and Riley both turned to see Hailey there. She was wearing a tank top and these tiny shorts that would have made Peter’s cheeks heat up if he’d actually been there. The girl walked over and plopped on the end of her brother’s bed. “I’m pretty sure ten is wrong... maybe eight, I don’t know.”

The teenage boy cursed and erased ten but hesitated on eight. ’It’s wrong,’ Peter confirmed even if, again, they couldn’t hear him. The other sighed and erased it as well.

“You need a tutor,” Hailey said with a laugh. “I probably do too, cause math probably hates me too.”

He frowned at her. “A tutor? Like who?”

Hailey shrugged, pulling back her hair into a ponytail. “I don’t know.” She thought for a moment and then snapped her fingers. “Oh, I know, that kid down the hallway. I think he goes to a brain school or something. He’s probably pretty good at math.”

Peter felt excitement at realizing she was talking about him. “The twelve year old?” Riley asked with one eyebrow raised.

He felt embarrassed at Riley’s words. He did not look like he was twelve!

She giggled. “I think he’s our age, actually,” she said, rolling her green eyes at her brother’s incredulous face. “Seriously. He’s just got that cute baby face.”

Peter groaned at his face being called ‘baby face’, but smiled at the cute part. Although, he maybe didn’t want a girl to think he was cute. Handsome, yes. Cute, no.

“You should ask him to tutor you.”

He looked at Riley to see what he’d say and Peter wished this was really happening. It would be like a scene out of a manga or something, having your crush asking you to tutor them. Peter wished this wasn’t just a dream. Besides, he wasn’t even sure if the other liked boys anyways, since he liked to think he had a good gaydar being bisexual himself, and he didn’t get that vibe at all from Riley.

“Nah, I don’t want to look stupid in front of some twelve year old,” Riley said with a shake of his head.

Hailey laughed again. “You are stupid, stupid,” she taunted.

Riley promptly kicked her out of his room then, the girl laughing the whole way back to her room. He sat back on his bed, stared at his textbook and then his notebook, closed it with a scoff and tossed them both on top of his backpack. Then he stood and left the room, and Peter went over to look at the textbook to see what kind it was. Just as he thought, a standard Algebra textbook for a high school freshman.

Then Riley was back and Peter’s eyes widened in surprise to see him carrying the guitar. So, he was the musician. That pleased Peter to no end, since while he had no musical talent, he loved music. So, he sat on the edge of the bed, and was glad he’d finally managed to walk and touch things without passing through them. He couldn’t physically move or affect them. At least he didn’t fall through walls anymore, and the floor once, which had been shocking since he’d ended up one floor below.

He strummed on the strings for a while, and then he started on a song that was very familiar. Peter closed as he listened to the notes of the Bruno Mars’s song. Then Riley started to sing in a low scratchy voice that went well with the love song. He was confused at the wording though.

“Oh, his eyes, his eyes make the stars look like they're not shinin',” he sang. “His hair, his hair falls perfectly without him trying. He's so beautiful and I tell him everyday.”

As he continued to sing, he replaced the words in the song that had ‘her’ with ‘him’ and ‘she’ with ‘he’. Peter could just stare at the other as he sang the whole song in this manner. Finally, the song came to an end. “The whole world stops and stares for a while. 'Cause boy, you're amazing just the way you are... Yeah,” he finished off.

When the song ended, Peter had one thought in his mind; Riley was gay. There was no other explanation. He was either gay or he was bisexual like Peter.

Riley had just been talking with Hailey about him, and then he started to sing a well-known love song... to a boy! So, maybe it was slightly possible he had a tiny chance with him. When he’d thought he was straight, he knew there was no way Riley would ever be interested in Peter. It wasn’t even that he was a asthmatic, skinny nerd, but because he was a boy. Now that he knew he was maybe gay, he had a chance; a slim chance but at least it was something.

Then Peter remembered a crucial bit of information: this was a dream. A very vivid, coherent dream, but a dream none the less. That meant that his desire for his crush to like him had made his mind insinuate that Riley was gay in his dream. So, that meant that Riley was not gay.

Peter just wished he was.

- ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

April 15, 2015, Wednesday

Peter looked over his formula, confident that it would work this time. He poured the next chemical and started to stir it and then pulled out the stirrer. The fine webs stuck to it, and he fist pumped the air. He was glad he was alone in the lab, or that would have been embarrassing if someone had seen him.

He was just so excited since his project for medical webbing was looking like a reality now that he’d figured out the formula. The only thing he had to figure out now was what he wanted to do with it. He’d presented the idea and a basic outline for his idea and his first attempt of medical webbing at his school’s science fair. He’d won so now he was going to have to present his finished project at the next Stark Expo in May.

When he had won the science fair, he’d gotten a booth at the next Stark Expo. It had blown his mind to learn that he would be able to present his medical webbing where someone would be interested in it, and that his project would be looked over by the Tony Stark.

It was a dream come true for the fourteen year old to meet the man, since he’d been a fan of him. He’d been amazed by the man’s brace actions to shut down the weapon’s manufacturing part of his company, even if that would mean his company taking a hit financially. He had even blown the whistle on his partner selling weapons illegally behind his back, but unfortunately, the man hadn’t wanted to surrender to the police. Stane had taken the CEO, Pepper Potts hostage and had then been sniped to lessen casualties, since he’d already killed the woman’s secretary and two security guards.

Afterwards, there had been no opposition from the board for the company to shut down weapons manufacturing and instead concentrate on other inventions. Even if they had a late start, Stark Industries was now more advanced in phones and digital watches. They had also started to work on prosthetics when one of his friend’s best friends lost an arm while serving in the Army, and Tony Stark’s own best friend had an accident during a training op that left him paralyzed from the waist down. He’d created leg braces that were almost out of the realm of possibilities for this day and age, but he’d managed it.

So, that’s why Peter was sure (at least hopeful) that his medical webbing would get him one of those coveted high school internships. Usually, the internships were given to college students, but there was a few rare high school internships/scholarships. A person had to be super smart to get them, and while Peter had never been one to brag about his intelligence, he knew he was smart. Also, if he got an internship or scholarship for school, then he would be able to go to Midtown School of Science and Technology next year and his Aunt wouldn’t have to worry about paying his tuition.

Now that he had a working prototype, he knew that he wouldn’t feel so inadequate.

Peter just had to figure out how to make a dispensing tool for the webbing. Also, it had to be small enough to fit in a first aid kit. Well, maybe making a smaller version would be for later, and right now use a dispensing tool that actually worked.

“Alright, this shouldn’t be too hard,” he muttered, but made sure to keep the dissolvent close by, just in case. He didn’t want to be stuck in the webbing for two hours (more or less).

- ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

 May 15, 2015, Friday

Peter hated that he had to have some kind of adult accompanying him as he set up his booth, and since his Aunt May would be working until noon. That meant Christopher had to accompany him until the afternoon. He didn’t let this ruin his enthusiasm though, and he could admit that he had needed help setting up. It wasn’t such a professional look, not like those around him in the other booths, but he was proud of his accomplishment. He’d even tested it already, since he’d cut his hand the other day and had used his medial webbing to stop the flow of blood.

He’d made sure he had recorded it, using his phone camera as he used the web-shooter (which was a tentative name for it) to spray on his hand. It had stopped the blood almost immediately, so he could say it was a complete success. When the webbing had dissolved two hours later, his wound had already started to clot and the bleeding had stopped. He’d taken screenshots of the wound in the video, as well as him applying the webbing, and then of the end result when the webbing had dissolved. The printed pictures had been used in his presentation, and he had the web-shooter as well as the canisters of the medical webbing set along the table.

Christopher suddenly bumped hard into the table as he fumbled with the empty box his stuff had come in, and the whole table shook. Peter gasped as the web-shooter almost clattered off the table, but he clumsily managed to grab it before it fell. “Oh shit,” he gasped, clutching the instrument to his chest safely.

“Language, bud,” the man chastised, acting like he hadn’t almost ruined his whole project. After all, he only had one web-shooter, and if it broke, then it was all over. Sure, he could repair it, but he didn’t have the parts at the moment. If it broke, he wouldn’t have a working model for the Expo.

“Christopher, you... you almost broke my model,” he accused, setting the web-shooter down on the table more carefully than necessary.

“Oh, I didn’t notice,” the man said, face the picture perfect expression of remorse. “I’m sorry, buddy.”

For some reason, his apology didn’t sound at all remorseful, but he knew he couldn’t be ungrateful. The man had taken time out of his busy schedule to be here with him today, and without adult supervision, he wouldn’t have been able to be here in time for registration. So, he decided to give the man the benefit of the doubt.

“Yeah, alright,” he sighed, fiddling with the canisters. “T-thanks for coming with me today, Christopher.”

The man had undone the box, folding it up and placing it at the back. It’s almost like he’d already forgotten about the whole incident of him almost destroying his prototype. Peter was annoyed by the whole thing, especially since he’d bitten back his previous anger and even thanked him for his help. “Yeah, no worries, Peter,” he said with a dismissive hand wave.

Peter grit his teeth, and then paused. He took a deep breath and then slowly let it out. He needed to just forget about it, about any frustration and anger. Peter had to concentrate on his project, his presentation in case someone came up and asked him about it. Especially, since he knew that Tony Stark was going to show up at some point and look at some of the exhibitions. There was a chance his could be one of them, so who cared about Christopher? He was just his aunt’s stupid boyfriend.

 The start of the Expo wasn’t that great, since the exhibits that were around his were more elaborate and better put together than his own. He shrunk down a little bit every time someone passed his exhibit and laughed or sneered at his cheap prototype. There were a few that did come up and asked him about it, seemed a bit fascinated about the idea of medical webbing. The exhibits at the Expo mostly had to do with technology, so there were likely few went there looking for exhibits that had to do with biology, or in the medical field.

Even so, he knew there were a few. It was just, the chances of them find his in all the ones here were slim. Still, Peter wasn’t going to give up. Just being here was a big opportunity, and he wasn’t going to let it go to waste.

A hush fell over part of the room, which was almost as large as a football field and then shouting started and people started to rush toward the entrance. He realized soon enough what it was, which was that Tony Stark had arrived and was starting on his perusal of the exhibits.

Christopher had been sitting one of the chairs they’d been provided for them, on his phone all this time, which was just fine for Peter. He’d been alternating being on his phone and talking to the few people that came to ask about his project. Now, he ran around his table to peer in the direction of where the other people were running, wanting to go, but knowing full well that he couldn’t leave his booth. Besides, he didn’t trust Christopher to take care of his project, especially after he’d almost broken his web shooter.

Peter couldn’t see anything, but he still felt excited to be in the same place as Tony Stark. The man was a legend in the engineering field, and was one of the scientists he most admired. He frequently collaborated with Dr. Bruce Banner, who was very renown physicist and something that Peter wanted to major in when he reached University. That and chemistry, and a minor in mechanical engineering. He’d probably also look into Biology as well. It was just, that he was not from a well off family, so this Expo was his chance to be able to get a scholarship and study whatever he wanted. His medical webbing was equal parts three of the subjects he wanted to study: biology, chemistry, and mechanical engineering.

He didn’t think the man would even look twice at his project, but Peter had the hope that he might. It was a nice thought, even if it wasn’t very realistic.

“I’m going to head to the bathroom for a second,” Christopher abruptly said as he stood. He hardly waited for Peter to nod before he was walking off. The man hadn’t even asked if he’d be alright by himself, or to call him if anything happened. Well, he would be alright since he wasn’t a little kid anymore. He was fourteen already and in a few months he’d be fifteen.

The atmosphere changed suddenly, the constant cacophony of chatter had gone, and he was still working on the smaller version of the dispenser. His aunt had convinced him that when he could, he’d get his invention patented.

Peter lifted his head and saw someone standing in front of his exhibit, and not just anyone, but Tony Stark. Tony Stark who was looking at his poster board and reading the information he’d written on there with cheap markers from the dollar store. The poster board he’d also bought from that same dollar store, and the pictures of his using the medical webbing on his own hand.

“Hey, kid,” the man said when he finally finished studying the poster board, which hadn’t taken long. He was known for being the smartest man in the world, and reading a poster board wouldn’t take him too long. “You’re the winner of the science fair from Midtown Middle?” Peter nodded dumbly, not able to say anything with the famous man right in front of him. He was half afraid that he’d start fanboying and look like a total idiot.

“So, tell me about this... medical webbing idea.” He tapped the pictures. “It obviously works, judging by the pictures. I’m nothing if not skeptical, so how about a demonstration?”

“A-a demonstration?” Peter stuttered, not understanding. “I got... a video of it if...” He paused as Tony reached into his pocket and took out a Swiss Army knife. It looked like the kind that might be given to those in the Army, but he wondered why Mr. Stark would have one. He pulled open the blade and to Peter’s horror, he cut into his palm.

The crowd behind him was shocked at the man’s actions and some called for a medic. As for Peter, he stared at the man as his blood quickly started spilling from the shallow cut. “Well, someone is bleeding. What can your medical webbing do, kid?”

Peter snapped out of his shock, reached for his web shooter, snapped it around his wrist, pointed and pressed the button with his ring and middle finger. Thwip! The webbing shot out of and hit the man’s bleeding palm dead on, the webbing immediately turned partially red, but that was it. The bleeding was stopped.

Tony whistled as he turned his hand around and the webbing stayed in place, even when he shook his hand as he tried to dislodge it. He touched the top of it, and it stretched away from the clump covering his cut, but even then it didn’t pull away from the cut like a bandaid might. He used his knife to cut it off his finger before putting it away. “That’s mighty impressive. How long does this last?”

The teenager let his hand drop at his side, his other hand pushing his glasses back up his nose, and he felt the eyes of the other people around them on him. His heart was beating wildly and he took a deep, slow breath to keep from suffering an asthma attack from his nerves. “A-about two hours,” he told him.

He nodded and held his hand out. “Could I see the dispenser?”

“Y-yeah, sure!” Peter hastily took it off, fumbling with the latch and feeling his cheeks fill with color and heat. He handed it over and the man tried to snap it onto his wrist, but found that the kid’s wrist was more slender than his own.

“Made for your wrist, so not everyone can use it.” He tapped on the board where the rough draft of the smaller dispenser was drawn. “This indicates that this isn’t the finished prototype,” he said as he lifted the larger web shooter. Peter nodded. “What about a severed limb? Do you think it would be able to stop the bleeding on such a large extremity?”

“Please don’t cut anything off, Mr. Stark,” Peter fretted, eyeing the pocket that he’d put the knife back inside after he’d cut his palm.

Tony chuckled. “Not even I’m not eccentric as to cut a body part for a demonstration,” he said. He titled his head toward Peter.

“Oh good,” the boy sighed. “And yes, I believe it would be enough to stop the bleeding on such a large area, and the severed limb as well. The tensile strength of it is pretty strong.” He held his hand out and Tony the web-shooter over, and Peter snapped it on his wrist, stepped out of his booth and then lifted his head, spotted a support beam above their heads that he was sure was close enough for the webbing to reach. He aimed and pressed the mechanism and sure enough, it stuck to it, and he used the special glove (red colored) he’d designed so it wouldn’t stick to it and jumped up a bit, grabbing onto the webbing. Peter hung there for a moment, the webbing holding his weight even as he kicked his feet to swing back and forth.

Peter let go, the glove not sticking as he landed back on the floor. He gave it to Mr. Stark when he held out his hand, and the man slipped on the glove as it stretched to fit his larger hand. He grabbed the webbing and yanked on it lightly, before he snapped his arm back as hard as he could. The webbing held.

“Well, I’ll be damned. Happy, try ripping this off.” He stepped aside and handed the glove to his bodyguard, a burly man with a stern expression on his features. He put on the glove to tried to rip the webbing away, the muscles on his arm bulged as he groaned, but the webbing refused to budge. “I’m sold. What’s your name, kid?”

“Peter, sir. Peter Parker.”

Tony flashed him a grin, slipping his sunglasses off at last. He took out a card from a wallet in the inside pocket of his Tom Ford suit. “Here’s my number. Have your guardian call and we’ll see what you can do in a real lab.”

Peter took the card eagerly, looking over the series of numbers on there as well as what appeared to be the man’s personal email address. It was made from a special titanium material and the Stark Industries logo and everything else had been engraved on there. Peter thought it was most impressive.

“See ya around, Mr. Parker,” he said with a wave, starting to move on to the other exhibits.

“Yes! Thank you, Mr. Stark!”

“Call me Tony. My father was Mr. Stark.”

“Of course, Mr. Tony!”

The man laughed and shook his head, and then he was gone.

Christopher returned a few minutes later. “Your aunt should be here soon. I’m gonna held out. Will you be fine by yourself for a minute?” the man asked. Peter looked at the clock on the wall nearby and saw that it was almost 1pm. He noticed the card in his hand. “Hmm, what’s that?” he asked as he reached for it.

Peter snapped his hand back, shoving it into his pocket. “Nothing, just a part of my web-shooter.”

The man’s eyes narrowed a bit, glanced in the direction where Tony Stark had gone and shrugged. “Alright. I’ll see you later, bud.” He grabbed his messenger bag that he’d left behind and walked off without so much as a wave, but Peter had already gone back turned his attention back to the card as he pulled it out of his pocket. He sat down and a dopey grin crossed his face, fist pumping in the air in excitement.

“Whoa, kiddo, something good happen?” May’s laughing voice asked.

Peter jumped to his feet, face alight with happiness. “May! You won’t believe what happened!” He started to tell her with great detail about meeting Tony Stark and how he’d been interested in his idea.

Peter might have needed to use his inhaler after a while, but he didn’t let even that bring his spirits down. They called the next day even if it was Saturday, and Peter wasn’t even surprised when someone named Friday answered.

They set up a interview for Monday after school, which as it turned out, was just a technicality. Mr. Stark had apparently already given him a scholarship for his medical webbing idea, and even had the papers sent over for him to have it patented.-

[rwbyconversations]

Why has Adam proved controversial after Volume 6?

Fandom is a culture that is constantly changing. It’s a culture effectively built around self-sustaining itself through fanart, music videos, fanfiction and discussion theories about the content the fandom is built around to tide them over until the next big release. Taking the RWBY fandom for example, it’s a fandom that’s really only alive for less than two fifths of the average year, from October to January when the volume itself airs. The rest of the year, RWBY’s fandom has to keep itself afloat through self-generation of ideas and the sharing of the aforementioned means of content to tide people over until October comes back around and the season starts anew. Headcanons and fan theories become commonplace and can become exponentially more popular than ever intended thanks to the gap in seasons giving it time to form and gain weight as a theory before canon can prove it wrong. 

What that long period of downtime means is that you can see previously loathed characters come back from the brink and gain a lot of fandom support and approval in the turn of a season. Or alternatively, popular characters can take a swan-dive in popularity, being reduced to joke status that they never recover from. People who swore up and down that “this character is trash and I don’t care what they do with them” suddenly next hiatus are on the other side of the trenches. One season can do a lot for a character in either direction is what I’m saying. 

Because that’s what’s happened the past two years to Adam Taurus. 

Adam after Volume 5 was a turbulent wreck of a character. Humiliated at the end of the season and forced to run with his tail between his legs, while his character lost much of the appeal that it had garnered over the prior four volumes, making him resemble a whiny child LARPing as a doomsday villain. It was a pathetic display for his character, one so infuriating it inspired me to begin writing analysis essays after a heated Discord discussion, and that essay struck a note with many of the people who read it and agreed with the contents therein, especially in regards to how much Haven damaged Adam’s threat factor. People simply weren’t scared of him appearing like they were prior to his smack from Blake, several comments even derisively writing off Blake and Yang’s rematch against Adam in advance because “they made him job before, they’ll do it again.”

 And yet interestingly, within the span of a year, the tides partially turned. With Volume 6 Adam wasn’t widely derided as a joke anymore, but in spite of that, the discussion around him was just as heated as it was last year. Adam was still the core topic of the argument but now the battle lines had been redrawn thanks to his death in the climax of Volume 6. Now it’s become commonplace for RWBY’s discussion communities to deride many of the dime-a-dozen posts about Adam and his “wasted potential” that have been arriving nearly daily like reinforcements to batten at a wall. But why? What changed in just one year that changed the entire argument around Adam? Why are his fans and critics embroiled in a new war to enter the hiatus?  

That’s what I’m trying to set out and accomplish in this essay. I am going to hopefully explain the primary reasons for why Adam is a controversial character following Volume 6, in particular why his fans are dissatisfied with the way his characterization was taken over the course of the show. Keep in m ind that parts of this essay touch on Adam’s abuse so if that’s a thing you’d rather not see, avoid going further. 

1) Headcanons were proven wrong

No one likes being wrong. Just look at students who get fail grades in exams, they’re usually despondent. It’s never something you lose as you grow up, in fact, Being wrong just sucks, to put it bluntly. 

Remember how I mentioned at the beginning that because of the content droughts fandoms experience, headcanons and theories can grow far further than anyone intended? Adam is an example of that happening for three years. 

Adam’s first appearance was in the Black Trailer, released on March 22nd, 2013. He wouldn’t make a significant appearance in the show until Heroes and Monsters, the penultimate episode to Volume 3, released on February 6th of 2016. His only significant appearances between those two dates was a cameo in the Volume 2 finale and V3C7, Beginning of the End, released on January 2nd. 

Adam’s initial appearance left much of his personality vague, barring that he was Blake’s superior, a stoic swordmaster and that he was fighting to liberate the Faunus from humanity with the full intent of taking a pound of flesh from humanity for what they’d done to the Faunus- to quote From Shadows: 

From Shadows, we’ll descend upon the world, take back what you stole, from shadows, we’ll reclaim our destiny, set our future free.

As such, the mental image of Adam that the fandom was given had nearly three years in real life to set in stone, that he was Blake’s former mentor who had fallen into extremism and terror attacks. Some even suspected going off Oobleck and Blake’s interactions in Volume 2 that Adam would receive a redemption from his wicked ways to show as an example of how Blake would redeem the White Fang from its own muck-filled past, or that Adam would need to die in an alternate variant of that story to show how far down the dark path he’d gone. Tauradonna was even a fairly high-profile ship in the early days of the show, being on roughly the same level as Blake/Weiss.

The headcanons were only given further room to grow thanks to adaptations of the Black trailer and early RWBY not taking the time to more properly setup Adam’s true character, in particular the Shirow Miwa adaptation. Miwa’s version of the scene, or at least the localized version, was released across two chapters in April and May of 2016, with the full book getting a physical print in the West in August 2017. Adam in the Miwa adaptation is far more talkative than his canon counterpart and even makes several dry quips throughout the fight:

When they first see the AK-130 guards (”Looks like we’re doing this the hard way” in the trailer): “Looks like all the seats are taken Blake.”

When asked who they are (Adam doesn’t have a line here): “We’re thieves.”

Upon seeing the Spider Droid for the first time: “Tch! He’s one serious baggage clerk.” 

Adam’s dialogue is also softened from his original dialogue to boot: 

“Buy me some time!” “But-” “Do it!” instead now is “Blake, buy me some time.“ “But that’s-” “I just need a second.” Blake also gets to make a quip that “You know... You’re fairly high-maintenance.” 

When Blake’s barrage ends, she says “I did all I could,” and Adam thanks her with “It was more than enough, get back.” All Adam says in the animated version of the scene is “Move!” 

The manga makes a significant addition to the aftermath of the battle, where Blake chides Adam for the ambush being sloppy. Adam initially just smiles as “that’s what you’re here for,” before Blake quickly rebukes him, cutting the train car as she says that the White Fang “not lower itself to bloodshed.” The last we see of Adam in the manga is him standing on the train carriage, pondering to himself “You think this is wrong Blake?” 

A similar change is And “Perfect. Move up to the next car, I’ll set the charges,” is now “There’s at least 5,000 cases. All right, let’s kill the engine.” “What about the crew?” Adam is silent and when Blake presses him for information, the Spider Droid attacks 

Prior to the train attack there is a scene added by the Manga where Blake says that the Dust will be redistributed to Faunus in need. She asks Adam to confirm this and he looks back over his shoulder, lips parsed, and says “Of course.” However the next page has a black box of him saying “Don’t overthink it Blake.”  

The point of this extended summary of the Black Trailer in Miwa’s adaptation is to show that even in adaptations of the trailer, RWBY didn’t do much to dissuade people from forming the headcanon that Adam was simply a fallen revolutionary. In fact the manga smooths out Adam’s rougher edges, making his dialogue less harsh and more sarcastic. Remember as well that these were initially released soon after Volume 3 wrapped and before the commentary confirmation of abuse, meaning that these gave Adam fans one last bit of material to bolster their ideas of what Adam was. 

Obviously, all of these ideas and theories went out the window with Volume 3 Chapter 11 and the subsequent reveal by Miles and Kerry in Volume 3′s commentary track that Adam was in fact an abuser. A lot of his fans didn’t take to this reveal well, which I’ll return to in a future section of this essay, since in part it shot down all of their theories about Adam and made him an irredeemable monster. Adam’s potential redemption was destroyed the moment he slapped Blake. 

It is telling that most of Adam’s more passionate fans are from the early generations of the RWBY fandom who were around since the early trailers, since there’s a sharp divide between those fans and the more common Adam fan reaction of “I like him in spite of the abuse or explicitly only work with AU stories where he isn’t as bad.” Again, no one really likes being wrong, especially when it means accepting you were wrong for nearly three years.

2) The abuser twist

Something that I’ve never liked about Adam’s turn as an abuser was how looking back at Volumes 1 and 2 for evidence of the twist in advance, it’s difficult to find anything concrete. I had this discussion on a server lately where looking at all of Volumes 1 and 2 along with 3′s first half, there was really only one agreed upon sign of abuse prior to V3 in Volume 2- Blake’s flinch when Yang goes to hug her in Burning the Candle. But the problem with that is that even this can be taken into a different context, as one of my friends pointed out. As she reminded the chat, Yang had already shoved Blake several times by that point in the conversation and Blake may have flinched instinctively when she saw Yang’s arms raise again. 

Of course given the context of Adam’s abuse, Blake flinching may in fact have been foreshadowing, or it may have just been her instinctively preparing for another shove. We just don’t know, and that vagueness around Blake’s past and the abuse twist is partly why a lot of fans argue that the abuse twist was never planned in the early stages of the show and was an idea introduced during production. This is not a concept new to RWBY- Monty came up with the Maidens one day while working on Volume 3 after all- but it does mean that for sudden character turns like Adam’s abuse, the question will be raised of “was this always planned or was it just something you added as the story flowed along?” 

Much of the cited evidence that Adam was planned to be an abuser from the early show is in a similarly murky place. Blake speaks of Adam in Volume 2 as a mentor (”I had a partner... more of a mentor actually”), Monty himself called Blake the “apprentice” in an interview after the Black trailer, and much of her subdued behavior compared to her more affectionate self seen in Volumes 5 and 6 can be simply explained as Blake keeping a low profile to avoid Faunus discrimination and the attention of the White Fang. 

Even in Volume 3 Chapter 7- Adam’s last scene before Chapter 11 and the confirmation of his abuse- things are kept vague. Adam even sharply rebukes his Lieutenant when he offers to hunt Blake down following the Black Trailer, saying “Forget it.” Adam’s plan is to go to Mistral without a care for Blake, which goes against his obsessive behavior seen later in this very season. 

Much of the evidence given for Adam’s abuse- him gaslighting Blake in the Adam short, Blake talking about him in Volumes 5 and 6 to Sun and Yang, his dialogue during the Volume 6 battle- is all retroactive evidence, which does not solve the initial problem of the initial seasons poorly setting up Adam’s turn. Much of the evidence for and against the twist is shady at best, and reaching at worst due to how vague the wording is around Adam. Blake only ever speaks of him as a partner or mentor, never belying a romantic connection outside of the volume 2 premiere with the drawing of him in her notebook. Certainly with the benefit of hindsight some may find evidence in Volumes 1 through 3, primarily that Blake is simply an unreliable narrator, but I still feel like the lack of clean foreshadowing to such a large part of Adam’s character it weakens the twist, and some of Adam’s fans remain bitter that his character underwent a drastic 180 out of relatively nowhere.

3) Simple preference

Being blunt, a lot of Adam’s fans just prefer the Adam shown in the early seasons to the one the show closed out on. This idea is often mocked by some that his fans just wanted to see a Vergil knockoff, but for some of Adam’s fans it just came down to wanting to see cool fights. After all, RWBY was built on the initial idea of well-designed characters having well-choreographed fights. The show advertised itself initially as “From the maker of Dead Fantasy and Haloid,” which to surmise, weren’t shows that lured people in for their narrative quality. Monty’s loyalist fans who followed from his freelance work and from Red Vs Blue followed for cool fights, and Adam’s fighting style and design made him an instant fan favorite. It has only been from Volume 3 onwards that the show has advertised itself more as a drama than an animation showcase, and as such some of Adam’s fans don’t care less for his character turn other than that it makes him whiny and edgy and they’d like to see him swing his sword a bit more.

While the idea of preferring Adam as a revolutionary over his Yandere self seen from V3 is also a mocked concept as it tends to be used by people less well-versed in expressing critique of Adam’s character and makes for a popular strawman tactic, a morally gray villain may have worked well for RWBY. Especially as Adam and Cinder both show in different ways that the series should stay away from villains with no redeeming qualities. 

Though I suppose at least unlike Cinder, Adam actually has a backstory, so I should count my blessings. 

To surmise, for some of Adam’s fans it was a purely physical love affair

4) Adam’s death and its connection to Bumblebee

Blake and Yang’s final confrontation with Adam in Volume 6 marks a significant step in their relationship, which means if you like Bumblebee then the emotional climax of the volume hits home for you. If you shipped literally anything else then at least the choreography was good, but if you didn’t ship Bumblebee and never liked the Adam abuser turn... hoo boy. 

Being blunt, a fair few Bumblebee shippers don’t mind the abuser twist since in the long run, it helped their ship and gave Blake and Yang plenty of angst to work through both alone and as a pair. I’ve said before that Blake’s recovery arc made for some good content in Volumes 4 and 5 barring the Sun slaps, and Yang’s PTSD arc, while bare-bones in Volume 4, was some of the more consistently good material that year when shown. And as such, Adam being made a one-note psycho who wanted to kill Blake suited them well, as it gave a clear villain for Blake and Yang to overcome while developing past their respective traumas. The problem of course being, Adam’s fans not appreciating this turn and definitely not appreciating the names they were called when they expressed this dissatisfaction.

This led to a litany of hot takes- “Adam’s fans only cared for the show and the character as an outlet for a male power fantasy,” “Adam’s fans were entirely made of sexists who just hated women,” “Adam stans are abuse apologists.” (Like 40% of the Adam fans I know are actual abuse victims so fuck yourself on the front of trying to use their trauma as a low blow) And to be fair, Adam’s fans responded with their own disappointing share of bad takes involving the dreaded words “wasted potential,” alongside murder and nerfing, but I go over those later. 

(also you know genuine homophobics but trying to avoid braindead reasoning here for my own sake)

Getting back on topic, I quite obviously detest this lumping in of all criticisms. For one it means that simply shipping something that isn’t Bumblebee and disliking the fight can get one labelled with accusations of homophobia. A disgusting tactic on its own, to say nothing of how some people use it just to deflect criticism. Liked Adam? Then you’re an abuse apologist now. It’s interesting to compare the response to Adam last year and this year, where suddenly the fandom went from dismissing Adam after Haven to suddenly being very insistent that his death was well done and that only bigots opposed it; a naturally insulting statement to any members of the LGBT community or racial minorities who took umbrage with the handling of the Faunus.

And speaking of, my largest gripe with Adam’s turn personally is how it overshadows his previous commitment to the Faunus. Even though Adam’s short shows him fighting for the Faunus, to the point where Lionized and From Shadows are both expressly about how the Faunus are subject to inhumane treatments, it all gets tossed aside for the sake of Adam’s obsession with Blake and I’ve always found the almost-retcon of “Adam only truly cared for his own equality” a bit.. hard to get a read on? Since the original reason for his fall was because of his rabid devotion to his cause/getting vengeance on humans. Adam in-setting had been prepped as a Malcolm X style analogue before most of these traits were pushed over to Sienna. I feel like there is a lot that could be said about how RWBY handles its racism narrative, especially when it pertains to Adam given his own placement in the narrative, but that such a thinkpiece would likely be hit with accusations of homophobia or abuse apologism likely curtails that idea in anyone’s head. Some voices in the fandom have even come forward and expressed their dissatisfaction at how the arc depicting racism got curtailed for a romance. Adam rather sadly could have been part of a cornerstone on a narrative about the natural consequences of violent extremism, but instead the writers went with a far shallower option in my opinion.  

Also being blunt the whole “Adam was just a secondary character for Blake and Yang’s arcs” feels a bit like revisionism of weak writing. 

5) Damaged goods

Adam lost a lot of fans thanks to Volume 5. You can argue about this all you want but the facts don’t change that the volume was overall one that shot his character in the leg. Alongside having him go completely bananas out of nowhere with the “THE BELLADONNA NAME HAS BROUGHT ME NOTHING BUT GRIEF” scene, Adam’s humiliating head smack from Blake that knocked him out for an entire episode and his Naruto run escape from the Battle. Put bluntly, people didn’t give a shit, especially after CRWBY’s own attitude was to mock Adam, further undermining any threat factor Adam was meant to have.

It’s quite obvious in hindsight that Adam’s short was made quickly, and was almost certainly damage control made to counter the backlash from the Battle of Haven episodes. Sienna’s inclusion has eve been admitted by Miles on RWBY Rewind to be done as pure fanservice for the fans who wanted more from her design, and it shows with how Sienna dominates the back half of the short. But the short’s nature as damage control, while ultimately well received, still marked it as a fix job for Haven. Even last year fans wondered what was the point of trying to hype Adam back up as a threatening villain given he would almost certainly lose any future battles he fought in. 

Ultimately, a lot of people just didn’t care about Adam. The damage had been done by Haven, and even a lot of his own fans wrote off him being allowed to be even half as competent as his Volume 3 self again. With even his own fans having written off his chances of being a fearsome combatant again and the crew openly reviling Adam, not to mention his own voice actor despising him, a mood of “why should we care if the crew don’t?” began to settle in for Adam’s fans. Some even looked forward to his death since it would mean at least in death, Adam was free of being written as a psycho Yandere. For some of Adam’s fans, his writing had been so schizophrenic that death seemed like the only way forward instead of dragging it out.     

6) “Wasted potential”

This is a point I don’t entirely agree with myself, but as this is an essay about why Adam has been controversial after Volume 6 I only feel it fair to include it, even if solely for the purposes of rebuttal. Wasted potential has become a set of dirty words to portions of the fandom thanks to the many, many, many arguments about Adam post-season. 

A rather large complaint is that Adam “jobbed” for Blake and Yang, despite neither of them really having gained much experience onscreen since Beacon. I disagree with this notion since it does take some details out of consideration for this angle- B&Y were both tired from earlier fighting in the day, Blake was shocked to see Adam out of nowhere and that’s why he overwhelmed her, Adam still actually defeats Blake at Argus and it largely comes down to Yang to win the fight, and V5 had actually set up her changing her fighting style to better combat Adam’s own style. 

One idea of potential for Adam that I will admit to liking is the idea of Adam as an ideological villain to Blake. Adam and Blake could have both represented the differing sides of the Faunus debate and how to achieve results, perhaps even going for a scenario where neither side was truly correct or wrong. Such a plot would have even had the benefit of tying the Faunus narrative into the wider stakes of the show while also humanizing it on a base level through their struggle. But at this point, this is becoming me wishing the show was something else. I’m sure a great fanfic could bloom from this idea in the future and I hope I get to see it one day. 

There’s also the entire idea that Blake and Yang “murdered” (it was self-defense) Adam since apparently this is a big deal. I dunno fam, you just ignoring all those White Fang goons RWBY killed in V2 by leaving them in the tunnels? The ones they smacked around during V3? All those people Yang probably killed in the Yellow trailer? Now seems like a bit of an odd time to draw a line in the sand about the RWBY girls killing someone. 

7) Conclusion

To conclude, there’s a lot of controversy surrounding Adam, and a lot that will surround his character for years. I feel like arguments around him will still be going by the end of the hiatus, if not for years to come. Adam has attracted a fandom from varying walks of life, but one thing I’ve noticed with some regularity is how many of of them themselves have histories with abuse. What unites a lot of them in their reasons for liking the character is the tragedy of how Adam is a person who has been persecuted then gained the power to bite back, but in his blind rage winds up lashing out at someone he is supposed to love. With permission, they let me share their accounts so I could put them here:

Be it purely visual/choreography appreciation, falling for fan theories and headcanons, his allusions to the Beast, the mystery of his mask and later branding, his potential as an ideological rival for Blake or for personal reasons, Adam gained a fan following from all walks of life over the past six years, who may not have learned everything they wanted to about him but who wanted to learn more regardless. Even if they only liked him just to watch him fight, Adam has a small if passionate fanbase, and I hope I’ve explained some of their grievances with the show as a whole now, particularly following Volume 6. Adam might have been a scumbag, but ironically his fandom has actually been quite pleasant to talk to, so I hope I’ve presented their more accurate or personal issues in a fair light. 

Thank you for reading. Please consider sharing the post around if you enjoyed it or think someone you know would. 

[themattress]

More bullshit from Mod A in regards to Xion.  Mod M is more reasonable (although I question if toxic male fandom does hate anything that reads like fanfiction at first glance...I think that if it reads like the kind of fanfiction they like, then they’ll eagerly accept it. I like to consider myself equal opportunity in this regard: if it reads like any kind of bad fanfic, then I dislike it.)

I’m with @riniuchihaa here. For me, Xion, far from being the best KH character, was the first glaring neon warning sign that the series was going off-course, that an original character was being created for the sake of it despite not being able to impact much of anything given her placement, and then was not ever let go of even though the excuse given as to why she was forgotten by KH2 should have rendered it impossible for her to appear in the series again.

“not a damsel in distress, action girl or sex object”

Is she not those things, though?  She has to be rescued or protected several times throughout the game. She wields a Keyblade and can even be better at it than Roxas if she’s absorbed enough of his strength. And there are a lot of creepy guys online that will argue that she is sexy, particularly with KH3′s model of her suggesting that she’s not wearing anything underneath that coat, which is open all the way to just above her chest. By KH3, she’s even taken Namine’s “plot device to make convoluted shit happen” status. If anything, people take issue with her being all of those things, and not even being them as well as other KH girls. She’s very derivative with little to add for herself.

“she’s a regular human being with a regular human emotional arc”

I would actually say that of Xion in the manga.

In the game, I think this is a case of projecting. Xion’s personality and arc are written as such a blank slate, with more people talking about Xion and what she’s going through than her and it being onscreen, that it’s easy to project on to. But when looked at objectively, there isn’t much humanity to it at all.

Ask yourself this: what is Xion like when she’s not around Roxas and Axel, doing missions and eating ice cream? What are her likes and dislikes, her own personal hobbies or aspirations? What are her feelings on matters completely unrelated to her friends?  For the life of me, I can’t come up with an answer. The closest I can get is with the text of her Secret Reports, where she honestly shows more character than she actually shows in the game itself (but then, that’s the same with Roxas and his Diary entries.) 

Before her identity crisis kicks in, all of Xion’s scenes are shared with Roxas and/or Axel, in the context of missions, ice cream, and being good friends with them, simply going along with whatever they’re doing and saying. Any feelings of inadequacy she feels during periods of time where she’s “malfunctioning” are skimmed over, and again is talked about more by other people than by her. Once her identity crisis happens, any scene she has apart from Axel and Roxas either still works them in somehow (they are consistently her biggest motivations in her own personal conflict, the only reason she’s conflicted about her existence is because of them since they give her a reason to exist) or just focuses on her freaking out about the fact that she’s a replica whose personality was formed based on the fragmented memories of another person that leaked into Xion through that person’s Nobody, which makes her less fit to exist than those who aren’t meant to exist. Yeah, totally a regular human emotional arc right there!  Can’t count the number of times in the history of the human species that people have had to go through that!

Kairi in KH and Namine in COM actually felt like human beings with emotional arcs in spite of their extraordinary circumstances. Xion feels more like KH2′s Kairi and Namine, where I get the basic trope behind their personalities and development, but can’t really pin them down as three-dimensional and realistic. That’s Xion - the writing for her is very trope-y, not human. The main points of how she was written were three-fold: as a plot device (a means of getting Roxas from point A to point B), as a wish-fulfillment character (she’s basically Tomoko Kanemaki’s self-insert), and as an exploration of a theme (the “What Measure is a Non-Human?” theme that Kanemaki is obsessed with). The humanity being inferred in regards to her being a trans girl case study was not at all intended to be there, and it can only happen because she was sketched thinly enough for it to be applied to her. 

“complains that she’s taking too much space or stealing the spotlight”

I’m sorry, but this is a valid complaint. When it was announced there was going to be a game about Organization XIII set between COM and KH2, everyone was wanting and expecting more development and focus on the members who had already been firmly established, most of whom were in desperate need of such development and focus. So to suddenly have Xion introduced and be the major focus of the game, whether she’s actually on-screen or not, would be very jarring and disappointing. 

What’s worse is all the games she pops in after Days, as not only does it destroy the established rules of canon in regards to her fate, but she ultimately steals the spotlight in an even more harmful way in KH3: Kairi, the original KH girl, who had been receiving build-up for YEARS as a Keyblade-wielding Guardian of Light, is literally screwed out of this role in favor of Xion, her Mary Sue copycat whom no-one asked for to begin with and whom many people weren’t keen on having return, as not only did it destroy the main thing she had going for her (her nature as a tragic character) but it robbed Kairi of development and focus that, again, she was in desperate need of. But Xion got over 30 more votes than Kairi in a Japanese popularity poll, so...priorities?

“Xion’s story is about the right to define her own existence, to live as her own true self, etc.”

No, that’s not what Xion’s story was about. It was about her learning that she had no right to her existence because it was actively hurting the existences of others, including her best friends’, and that the right thing to do is to disappear. I take some issue with how it played out (mainly that Xion accepts this way too easily and becomes a “Too Good For This Sinful Earth” type who does the right thing for the sake of her friends even when a more angry, selfish and conflicted Xion would’ve been more engaging and human, and that Riku is OOC in his treatment of her considering his treatment of Roxas), it was still incredibly tragic and it owned that. So for that tragic story to be undone in favor of a “lol, just kidding, Xion can exist and get a happy ending with her friends after all, no tragedy here!” way of appeasing the fans who called foul and raised a stink about it (especially in Japan) will never sit right with me, especially when the writing doesn’t even TRY to justify it. It just happens for the sake of it.

“It has a lot to do with the fact that Xion is a young girl whose story expects us to genuinely empathize with her”

OK, here’s a tip: it is rarely EVER a good idea to expect your audience to all feel a certain way toward something and try to force that reaction. “Death of the Author” is a thing, which is why you’re best not taking sides or playing favorites when making a story, you’re better off putting your personal feelings aside and just letting things play out, allowing people in the audience to make up their own mind. When the story pushes for the audience to genuinely empathize with Xion, with lines by others such as “poor Xion!”, then it’s not surprising that the opposite effect happens: some fans don’t like or empathize with her because they resent the hamfisted attempts at being told that they should. 

“That’s like saying Kairi didn’t matter in KH1 because Sora forgot her in COM”

That’s a false equivalence if I ever saw one. KH came out before COM, and Sora didn’t forget her so much as she was replaced by someone else, Namine, in his memory, which drove that story’s conflict. Its resolution was Sora learning the truth and remembering Kairi again. Kairi is still a factor in COM, a very important factor at that. Days came out after KH2, where there isn’t even a hint of Xion, she is not a factor in that game because she wasn’t invented yet. Sure, Xion matters to Days, but that mattering doesn’t feel like it amounts to much when she isn’t seen, heard from or mentioned for the entirety of the game it was leading up to.

“But so what?”

So, it feels incredibly unnatural to have a character jammed into a pre-existing timeframe and pre-existing dynamic prior to KH2, with mass amnesia being used as a plot device to explain away why she wasn’t present in any way in KH2, only for every game taking place after KH2 (and thus after Days was made) to suddenly start featuring Xion again, with the mass amnesia plot device being casually discarded. What’s worse is how canon rules were obliterated so that Xion could return in KH3 and reverse the tragedy element that made her story effective to begin with, at the expense of characters like Kairi who have been around longer than Xion and who desperately needed exposure more than Xion. Seriously, in addition to the point I already raised about Xion taking Kairi’s place, just think about this: characters that were created as a trio, Sora, Riku and Kairi, are no longer a trio, just the duo of Sora and Riku, while characters that were created as a duo, Roxas and Axel, are now a trio thanks to Xion. It feels like a slap in the face to all the fans who liked Kairi and the Destiny Trio, and it’s a big reason as to why Xion’s inclusion in the series feels like a mistake to those fans and thus why she’s such an off-putting character to them.

The only statements made here that I agree with is that Xion sadly wouldn’t have gotten as much hate if she was a badass, older male character, that her being forgotten due to memory magic isn’t really a mark against her since that’s a cheap plot device that happens to a lot of characters in the series, and that you can’t really do the story of 358/2 Days without her since she’s so integral to it...but on that note, the story of 358/2 Days didn’t need to happen. The KH series during its early days was meant to be Sora, Donald and Goofy’s story, so leaving the period of time where they were asleep a blank made perfect sense. We never needed to know about Roxas’ time in the Organization beyond what was said and shown in KH2, and to this day I honestly wish we hadn’t.  In game form, anyway. The manga is great, it can stay!

[luki-fanfic]

So…my original plan was to get all of my ongoing fics updated before New Year’s.  However, I’ve had several 14 hours shift one after the other the last few weeks, so I haven’t even been able to THINK about updating fanfic.

Since getting my fanfics done wasn’t going to happen, I decided to take a look back at what has been a much longer time in the fanfiction world than I realised, and list some of the writers that I’ve admired and appreciated, even if I’m no longer in their fandoms or reading their work, as we ring in the next year:

Macx

Macx is one of the very first fanfiction authors I can vividly remember reading and going ‘wow.’ I discovered them back when I was in the Godzilla: Animated Series fandom (and boy am I showing my age with that revelation).  Until then most of the fanfiction I’d read was short or pairing heavy, but Macx’s stories were long, and heaving with plot, well written characters, and fascinating ideas that I loved more than the original series.  Every now and then, Macx would pop up in other fandoms I was in, but their greatest gift to me was inspiring another author -

Vathara

Vathara, Queen of the Crossover.  Who liked Macx’s Godzilla fanfiction so much they got permission to write in their universe, and is responsible for getting me into so many fandoms I’ve literally lost count.  

Every time they bring out another crossover, I usually find myself digging up information on Wikipedia so I can understand the other half of the fic.  They also are one of the very few authors I know that almost always releases the full fanfic in one go, which allows no cliff-hangers, and essentially a must-read novel showing up overnight.  And novel is the word.  Vathara is like the Michael Crichton when it comes to writing, there’s so much detail, and what feels like an insane amount of research into various ideas.  I have no idea how much of it is accurate, but nearly every fic I read feels like a deep dive into the meta of the original canon, to the point that with many fics, I have to remind myself that her work isn’t canon (and when it comes to her Yu-Gi-Oh fics, that’s kind of gutting)

Cywscross

Here’s a name that wont surprise anyone.  I think I found them via Harry Potter, but honestly, I can’t quite remember.  They can almost rival Vathara in the number of fandoms they’ve sunk me into.  For one thing, I never would have given Katekyo Hitman Reborn another chance had it not been for their Harry Potter/KHR crossover, and considering how much KHR is part of my fanfiction career, that’s a pretty big thing.

What I loved about Cywscross was that when I found them, I was getting really exhausted from reading nothing but pairing after pairing after pairing.  It was getting really hard to enjoy fanfic, because that’s not what I was reading it for – later I’d realise I was asexual and this suddenly made a lot more sense – but Cywscross wrote interesting ideas that were focused on the characters and plot.  There was next to no romance, just friendship and interesting plots – everything I was looking for.  The only downside was that the fics were usually unfinished, but that’s the way with a lot of fanfiction.

It also gave me hope that my own work could be popular – Cywscross was regularly at the top of the favourites in the fandoms, despite no pairings or sex scenes.  I didn’t write a lot of longer fanfiction at the time, but I hoped that when I did, people would want to read it despite the lack of relationships.  

Sadly, I don’t read a lot of Cywscross’s fics anymore, since they’ve migrated into Teen Wolf, which, despite my best attempts, I really can’t get into fully.  They’ve also started to focus more on pairing fics, which are still good and something I’m into more now than I used to be, but not what I enjoyed reading their work for.  When they leave the Teen Wolf fandom, maybe we’ll wander into the same fandoms again.  

Esama

No surprises here. Esama might be a pairing writer, but their ideas are always so interesting.  Especially when they decide to pull off a crossover.  I nearly had a heart attack when I realised they’d stepped into the KHR fandom – and mourned when they chose to remove all of their fanfics from the net.  So happy that decision was reversed, especially when it comes to their Final Fantasy fics, which have always been some of my favourites.  Also have a very special place in my heart for their Doctor Donna fic, which I so sorely wish was canon.

John Tomorrow

Of all the writers I ever read, John Tomorrow is the one whose talents I envied the most, as they could achieve something that many writers can only dream of.  Engaging fight scenes.

John Tomorrow wrote in the Final Fantasy 8 fandom – and wrote a tournament fanfic.  Just stop and think about that for a minute.  The arc most anime’s get that almost feels like filler and an excuse to introduce new characters, and he wrote one intentionally.  On top of that, it was astonishingly good – his talent was bringing characters to life, to the point that you could genuinely visualise them fighting right in front of you.  

As an added bonus, there was a genuine mystery to the plot.  It wasn’t fighting for the sake of fighting, which took it from good to fantastic. He also managed to achieve something I’ve always wanted to do, a ‘rashomon’ fanfic, which took the events of a single day from several different characters points of view.  

They’ve since left fanfic to try and publish original work, but I’m not sure if they ever achieved it. You can still read some of their work on fictionpress though, under the name Michael Kenny.

Red Witch

When X-Men Evolution was my favourite show, Red Witch became my go-to author.  Ironically, unlike a lot of other crossover writers, I really don’t like her most popular works.  Instead, I prefer their more comedic canon-adjacent fics involving the Brotherhood.  Are they canon? Dear god no. Are they hysterically funny to the point I genuinely didn’t care?  Hell yes. Half of their fics had me in literal tears of laughter, and considering I was going through a bad time when I was watching X-men Evolution? That was everything I needed.  I haven’t read their work in years, but I still smile thinking about some of her pieces.

LittleMewLugia

LML was my definition of guilty pleasure for a very long time.  The Transformers (live action) fandom was my second major fandom, and by far the biggest I’d been in.  Up until then I’d mostly been in small manga fandoms and Final Fantasy 9.  So, coming into a fandom where you could get a thousand views overnight was just a little bit overwhelming.  

I found a lot of great writers here, but I admit I had a certain weakness for a very particular type of fanfic.  I’m a sucker for transformation stories, and Autobot!Sam was pretty rampant here – I had my own attempt, but then I found LittleMewLugia, who also clearly had a passion for the transformation genre.  I’d also grown more into pairings after going through so much glut (you either learn to appreciate pairings or just don’t read fanfiction after some point), so I was looking for transformation and simplistic pairings.

And by GOD, did they deliver.  Admittedly, a lot of the fics followed a very similar plotline, but I didn’t care – a lot of pairing fics follow the same plot.  Movies follow same plots – why fix what works?  I just loved reading their stuff.

I’ve long since left the Transformers fandom, but I’ll always remember her work fondly for always giving me something that might not be unique, but would familiar, and something I knew I would like.

Blackkat

The newest writer to make it to this list.  Although I’ve never been a big fan of Naruto, the fanfics are so much better than the canon, and enough of my favourite authors have dipped their toe in the waters here for me to keep reading.  Especially when it comes to time travel fics – which given the fiasco that is the canon timeline, can only make things better.  And Blackkat not only delivers unique time travel fics, but a word count that makes War and Peace look like some light reading – in a timespan I refuse to believe is possible without a TARDIS.  Seriously, where do they find the time and dedication?

[panjiku]

The OTP Game

Pick your 10 top OTPs without reading the questions: 1.  Mimato (Yamato Ishida × Mimi Tachikawa — Digimon Adventure) 2.  Clerith (Cloud Strife × Aerith Gainsborough — Final Fantasy VII) 3.  Zutara (Zuko × Katara — Avatar: The Last Airbender) 4.  VaniHopu (Hope Estheim × Oerba dia Vanille — Final Fantasy XIII) 5.  LuluShir (Lelouch Lamperouge × Shirley Fenette — Code Geass: Hangyaku no Lelouch) 6.  KAIMiku (KAITO × Miku Hatsune — Vocaloid) 7.  MaouEmi (Sadao Maou × Emi Yusa — Hataraku Maou-sama!) 8.  MikoChiyo (Mikoto Mikoshiba × Chiyo Sakura — Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun) 9.  Lancaster (Jaune Arc × Ruby Rose — RWBY) 10. SasuSaku (Sasuke Uchiha × Sakura Haruno — Naruto)

Do you remember the episode/scene/chapter that you first started shipping 6 (KAIMiku)? In 2011 I got curious about wtf Hatsune Miku was and watched World is Mine then Another: World is Mine and it all went downhill from there :’D

Have you ever read a FanFiction about 2 (Clerith)? Yeah, but I haven’t read any in a VERY long time. I think the last FF I read for them was somewhere between 2002 and 2005, ahaha.

Has a picture of 4 (VaniHopu) ever been your screen saver/profile picture/tumblr? No, actually.

If 7 (MaouEmi) were to suddenly break-up today, what would your reaction be? *SOBS GROSSLY*

Why is 1 (Mimato) so important? Mimato was the first fandom I ever truly was a part of when I was a teenager and then got back into when I picked up drawing again in my 20s. I made an LJ community (yamatoxmimi) and was friends with a lot of FFN writers back in it’s heyday; I keep in touch with a few oldfarts of the fandom. And it’s amazing that such a crack ship has so many supporters even to this day :> In their respective world though they’re 1/4 of the Chosen Children. As a pairing, they’re not important towards the story at all considering they only interact once in the series, bahaha... *cries softly*

Is 9 (Lancaster) a funny ship or a serious ship? More of a funny ship though they have their serious moments.

Out of all of the ships listed, which ship has the most chemistry? Ahhh, it’s so hard to choose?! I’m going to say Zutara. They went from bitter enemies to trusting each other, a betrayal and then earning that trust back to eventually becoming a power duo. They’ve both had similar life experiences that they’ve bonded over and the tension between them urrghh. And they just work so well together. I’ll be honest though, Clerith probably has the best chemistry, especially since they pretty much were attracted to each other on their first meeting. But instead of having this entire post be about Clerith, I figure I’d talk about another pair, hahaha.

Out of all of your ships listed, which ship has the strongest bond? CLERITH, fosho. Their love transcends death *cries* Aerith’s presence lives on in Cloud and helps him even in the Lifestream; they’re connected to each other spiritually. Though literally SasuSaku has the strongest bond. I mean Naruto as a whole is about bonds, especially within Team 7, hehe. Y’know maybe I should switch my answers for this with the last one, lmao.

How many times have you read/watched 10’s (SasuSaku) fandom? Hoo boy, going through all of Naruto is a job, but I think I’ve re-read part 1 of the manga like 2-3 times while it was still in syndication. I dropped it a little bit into part 2 then picked it back up near the end and I don’t follow Boruto at all, but I did read the Sarada side-story after the original manga ended. I’ve watched all of Naruto’s original anime once, but only about 5 episodes of Shippuden.

Which ship has lasted the longest? In real life? Clerith. In universe? SasuSaku.

How many times, if ever, has 6 (KAIMiku) broken up? Hard to say since I don’t know all of their songs. Also depends on which version of a certain song you consider your canon (i.e. From Y to Y). But that’s the beauty of Vocaloid: you can use the characters as you see fit :>

If the world was suddenly thrust into a zombie apocalypse, which ship would make it out alive, 2 (Clerith) or 8 (MikoChiyo)? LMAOO, Clerith, hands-down. I can’t even imagine Mikorin and Chiyo in a zombie situation unless it was one of Nozaki’s manga ideas xD

Did 7 (MaouEmi) ever have to hide their relationship for any reason? Yeah, as individuals they do. Emi as the Hero Emilia Justina and Maou as Demon Lord Satan. And it’s very strongly hinted that Emi harbors feelings for Maou which she denies/hides. I’d imagine if they got together they might try to hide their relationship for awhile if they were to ever return to Ente Isla but we’ll just have to wait and see since HataMaou isn’t over yet :)

Is 4 (VaniHopu) still together? QAQ noo… They’re doomeddestined to be star-crossed lovers till the end of time. In fact the last time they were together were in the original FFXIII ;^;

Is 10 (SasuSaku) canon? *flails and cheers* It’s the only pairing on my list that’s outright confirmed and shown being canon. And it still feels so good after 15+ years of shipping it.

If all 10 ships were put into a couple’s Hunger Games, which couple would win? HMMM. About half of my list is power couples so this is a toughy. BUT I think LuluShir would, if only because Lelouch would use his geass to come out on top, lmao. Though thinking about eye powers now, SasuSaku might because of Sasuke’s Rinnegan. Definitely a tough choice between those two pairs; depends on whose eye would trump the other :D

Has anybody ever tried to sabotage 5’s (LuluShir) ship? Beeeeesiiiiides the other Lulu ships…? *shields* Not really sabotage, but C.C. said it was a bad idea for Lelouch to get involved with Shirley if he wanted to pursue his dream (please excuse is this is wrong, it’s been so long since I’ve watched Code Geass. Definitely need to do a rewatch soon esp with the upcoming third season). And… oh… well, I guess Rolo >_> *cough*

Which ship would you defend to the death and beyond? Alllllll of theeeeeem~ But my OTP of all OTPs will always be Clerith, so them first and foremost.

Do you spend hours a day going through 3’s (Zutara) tumblr page? Not at all until very recently (like since a week ago). It was always a ship I idly supported until I got back into ATLA again, and now I’m hopeless :’D

If an evil witch descended from the sky and told you that you had to pick one of the ten ships to break up forever or else she’d break them all forever, which ship would you sink? I… well, most of them are impossible or separated somehow anyway… but… M-Mi…mato…? Because it’s utter crack and they only interacted on-screen once (thanks to tri) so nothing would change anyway ;-; I was going to suggest MikoChiyo, but at least they have their canon friendship (which is BEAUTIFUL btw) so I gotsta pick the obv pair that has no chemistry except in fanon.