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genericpuff · 1 year ago

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Honestly it’s getting tiring seeing the sobbing chronically of the cast ; Hera , Demeter, Persephone and probably more . Like it’s giving big baby cry cry energy instead of idk something proactive. Not sure if It’s just me getting that from the latest chapters???

I have two schools of thought on this.

On the one hand, I can fully understand wanting to show the vulnerability of these characters, to not send a message that emotions are bad and that people should just "toughen up". This is trying to be a "feminist" piece of work after all, and much of feminism preaches vulnerability and empathy and allowing oneself to get back in touch with their own emotions, rather than shutting themselves away from them which is often perpetuated by the societal expectations and norms of toxic masculinity.

Persephone crying as she confronts Apollo - the man who she now understands assaulted her - is understandable and real. A reasonable reaction to an emotional situation that many people can empathize with.

Hera crying as she reveals the true extent of the damage Kronos caused her is understandable and real. He's quite literally been stalking her in the recesses of her mind and it's reaching a breaking point.

But on the other hand, there's a difference between wanting to show a character showing their emotions and then learning to overcome the challenges they've presented with - whether they do it independently or learn to trust in others to help them - thus growing in the process and coming out stronger on the other side vs. using a character purely for torture porn. As much as we preach concepts like "normalize crying" in a very simplified way for the sake of being easily understood, such simplifications often result in a lack of nuance.

An entirely other subject to use as a comparison point to explain this nuance - it's like the difference between having a character who's become so jaded and disconnected from the concept of empathy that even murder becomes just a menial task to them vs. murderhobos. Murderhobos are not interesting or complex or empathetic or relatable, they're just written (and in the case of where the term comes from - Dungeons & Dragons - played) for the sole purpose of having an edgy uncaring character who thinks they're free from consequences while they fuck up the lives of everyone around them in a completely irredeemable way (and is often protected from such consequences due to plot armor, unless it's in D&D, in which case you'll likely be politely asked to either change your character for the sake of the campaign or leave.)

There's nothing to gain or learn from murderhobos. They only exist for the satisfaction of an ego complex - "I don't care what you want or how it affects the people around me, I want to kill people without consequences because that's as creative as my imagination can get in my own personal fantasy."

There's nothing to gain or grow from anymore when we get another scene of Hera bleeding mascara as she cries over her situation with Kronos while still refusing to actually tell anyone what's going on with Kronos, despite the fact that we had an entire fucking therapy speak episode where she realized she needed help. So it feels like it's purely there just to play on the trope of "sad woman is saaaad, won't anyone help herrrr?" which is really starting to learn into learned helplessness.

This is especially apparent with Persephone, who, upon causing a massive problem for everyone, has taken it upon herself to shut herself away while her loved ones deal with the problem. If she needs the time to cry and process what's going on, that's fine. But while that's happening, we know mortals are dying and that she's turning the situation into a learned helplessness pity party of "I'm a monsterrr and no one likes meeee :((((" while having zero self-awareness that yeah, she did cause this problem, and her locking herself away in her literal mansion isn't exactly going to help the situation.

I've already used Tamberlane as an example of approaching the subject of learned helplessness and how it's fundamentally different from simply being vulnerable and having emotions, but I'm gonna share it again here because it's really relevant and Persephone needs someone to give her this same wake-up call.

Considering Demeter was the one to approach her at the end of the last episode, I'm hoping she'll be the one to broach the topic with her, but judging by how Rachel's treated it so far with every character reassuring her with empty platitudes that accomplish nothing but comforting Persephone over something she caused like "Noooo you're not a monster, you're the best queen ever and you're trying her best!!" (and the fact that Rachel has spent so much time turning Demeter into public enemy #1 that her readers still can't fucking give her any shred of empathy even after finding out she lost a child, fucking yikes) I'm not holding my breath that this week's episode is gonna actually have that same level of emotional maturity or growth. This is the second time in the entire comic we've seen Persephone suffer the consequences of her actions out of many that have been harmful, some accidental, others very intentional (which Rachel has even supported her doing in a very unironic sense, it's safe to say Rachel really truly does believe that Persephone is entitled to abuse people). And judging by how things went the first time, it's hard to have the benefit of the doubt and assume Persephone is gonna actually take accountability and learn and grow from this. She didn't the last time and her character has only devolved since.

Sure, feeling like you've fucked up to such a monumental degree that you'll never be able to show your face in public again is something that's real and relatable and worth crying over... but crying is an emotional response, not the actual solution. It is a PART of expressing and processing emotions, but ultimately those emotions are not actions, just REactions. Crying is okay, crying is a normal response to grief and sadness, but if you don't actually take steps forward and continue to wallow in the sadness, blame everyone else around you for it, and simultaneously rely on everyone else to carry the burden of your own actions for you, then that's when it exits the realm of healthy emotional processing and broaches the unhealthy realm of learned helplessness and emotional manipulation.

If anything, her entire monologue in the last FP episode was more about Rachel being upset over criticism of her comic and her self-insert that, like Persephone's deal with Erebus and the "plague" that followed, she earned over not addressing the issues in her work sooner and instead choosing to double down - both through Persephone's abusive behavior within the narrative and Rachel's passive aggressive meta-commentary on that abuse being okay because "she's earned the right to lash out".

The only people in this entire comic who have "earned the right to lash out" are the women that Rachel has villainized along the way in the pursuit of giving her self-insert everything without effort or sacrifice. And even then those people would still have to rightfully answer for their wrongs and grow from them - because there is no right to abuse, there is no right to harming others, especially not if the "others" you're harming are people who were victims in their own right that you turned into imaginary enemies so you could have someone to punch down at in the absence of a spine to stand up for yourself against the real perpetrators. And in doing so, Persephone herself has become a perpetrator, who sheds crocodile tears that no one is buying because the writing is on the fucking wall.

#lore olympus critical #anti lore olympus #lo critical #ask me anything #ama #anon ask me anything #anon ama

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nightbringer117 · 4 years ago

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The Dead Venus, or "why the Darkness statue has big tiddies"

The Darkness is the Destiny universe's ultimate evil. When we finally entered the Pyramid in Shadowkeep, a space made by the Darkness, we found a statue of a large-breasted woman covered in a cloth. This is obviously a pretty weird image. Considering how proud Bungie seems of their visual storytelling and symbolism, and the care they've taken with the design of most of their female characters, I'd like to think there was a reason beyond "big woman sexy" for the statue to look like this.

This may very well be putting more thought into it than the designers themselves, but finally personifying their universe's greatest evil with a humanoid figure had to involve some deeper thought and discussion of the symbolism before they committed to it.

I think there's some really great symbolism here, and I'll explain below.

The statue is obviously not what the Darkness looks like, but instead it's a representation of what the Darkness is, or its beliefs and motivations. In case you haven't been marinating in Destiny lore for years, I'll give a quick summary of what the Darkness believes:

Crash Course in Darkness Theology:

- Conflict is the one truth of existence.

- The weak must die so the strong can prosper.

- If you die, then you've failed the great game of existence and proven the strength of the thing that killed you. (This is why necromancy and Guardian resurrection are great sins to the Hive)

- To nurture or protect something is a sin, because it prevents that being from being tested by violence.

Given those conditions, the Darkness is a god of death. Bungie could have easily made the statue a skeleton in a robe with a scythe and we would have gotten the idea.

However, given the Unveiling lorebook, where the Darkness sends us messages, it's clear that the Darkness often defines itself in opposition to the Traveler. It tries to convince us that charity, peace, and kindness lead to stagnation and decay, while conflict is a force that renews and improves life.

Let's instead look at the Traveler, and what we know of its values (with the caveat that some of these were explained to us by the Darkness in a mocking and dismissive way).

- Life can flourish when it's protected from violence and conflict.

- The whole of society will be stronger and more resilient if everyone is allowed to thrive, not just the strongest and most ruthless individuals.

- Violence is necessary only when it comes to protecting others, and should not be pursued for its own sake.

These nurturing qualities, along with the Traveler being called the Gardener, draw strong associations with a "mother goddess" figure. It's a being that guides and protects those under its charge, and sacrifices itself to keep them safe.

Here's my point: The mother goddess figure in many cultures is represented with a figurine of a pregnant woman, often called "Venus", even though the practice is older and more widespread than the Greco-Roman pantheon, going back to the Upper Paleolithic.

The Darkness statue has big breasts because it's supposed to be a mother goddess. But it's not just a mother goddess. It's covered up. Not with a robe, or a veil, but a shroud.

Symbolically, the mother goddess is dead. Instead of a nurturing parent, the statue represents the loss of a parent. A child forced to grow up too soon when their caretaker dies. A previously innocent and carefree youth being exposed to the true horror of the world through loss and tragedy. That is what the Darkness is.

The Darkness is a being that celebrates grief and pain as catalysts for change, and I think the statue does a surprisingly good job of conveying that, if you look past the weird first impression it gives.

#destiny 2 #destiny the game #the winnower #the gardener #destiny lore #my stuff

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thechekhov · 5 years ago

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Hi! I saw on a post that you're agender and I'm kinda questioning my gender (again) but what interested me more about that post was that you said you believe that gender is a social construct and I'm not really familiar with that theory. I was wondering if you could explain to me what the whole idea is? (bc I kinda only feel like a have a gender in social situations? In my head, my dreams and how I picture myself in the future, I'm genderless idjskahwksjejensj) Sorry for bothering you if I did.

This is a BIG topic and it opens a LOT of wormholes.

We’re gonna do this in pie slice statements that will hopefully help explain what I mean. Please keep in mind I’m going to simplify many things for the sake of readability.

1) What is a social construct?

Social constructs are ideas that are negotiated by social groups. Something being a social construct does not make it ‘not real’.

For example, money is a social construct. Yes, we have cash - coins, credit cards - but these are physical props that are REPRESENTATIVE of the idea of currency. You have some form of credit to your name - the money is a socially agreed-upon idea of value being represented by bills in your hand, by numbers in your bank account.

[Description: Two humanoid figures are standing side by side. The right-side figure is holding a rock in its hand.

Right side figure: Let’s agree that this shiny rock is worth 2 sheep.

Left side figure: Sounds fake but ok.]

Technically, countries are also social constructs. We, as a society, negotiate what a country is, and this can be changed.

[Description: Two figures are standing on either side of a dotted line drawn on the ground. The left figure is pointing down at it while the right figure watches, its arms crossed.

Left figure: Let’s pretend that everything on this side of the imaginary line is mine.

Right figure: ...ok but my house is over there.

Left figure: ... for 3 shiny rocks you can come visit.]

Does that mean canada isn’t real? No. (I mean, obviously canada ISN’T real, but we all agree to pretend it is.) The thing that makes it real is that we are in agreement, and all follow the social rules of pretend to make it seem like the Canadian border, the idea of Canadian citizenship, etc... is an objective fact. (It’s not. These are in fact, negotiable limits and parameters. We have laws in place to define it in legal terms, but those laws can be changed, or may change in the minds of communities. That’s why it’s a construct.)

By that same token, I hold the view that gender, as we largely perceive it in modern society, is a construct. Why? Because it is not inherent; we, as a society, negotiate its meaning.

2) What is gender?

People will probably fight me on this and that’s fine, but here’s my (simplified) understanding of gender (from someone who personally has none)

Gender is a social category negotiated by cultures based on your assigned or desired role in your community that influences, among many other things, your physical appearance, your role in family units, your expected position in jobs, etc.

How I think it happened:

[Description: Two figures are standing on either side of the panel, both holding children-looking figures. The one on the left is wearing purple. The one on the right is wearing green.

Green figure: Hey, I’ve got an idea. What if we separate the babies into two groups based on physical traits they have no control over?

Purple figure: Wh-- okay...?

Green figure: And then limit the jobs they can do and the community ritual involvement available to them based on that!

Purple figure: ... I feel like this is going to backfire on us someday.

Green figure: Nah, it’ll be fine.

The past panel is a dramatic closeup on the purple figure’s face - which is featureless - betraying a deeply doubtful emotion. It says nothing.]

Important points to remember: what gender looks like, what the limits are, what the expectations are... are not inherent to any human biology. We make up gender roles. This is evident in the fact that across the world, gender roles differ by culture. The positions people of a certain gender are allowed to take up are different. What is perceived to be ‘girly’ or ‘boyish’ is different across cultures.

Simply speaking - currently the (western) model we have, dumbed down, is:

You are assigned male at birth because of physical characteristics

You are raised being told to ‘toughen up’ and ‘boys don’t cry’ and encouraged not to show emotions

You are taught to wear male-coded clothes and discouraged from female-coded fashion choices

You are given more opportunities to participate in sports, encouraged to engage in physical activity, etc

You are not expected to need time off for child-rearing

Here’s where gender as it works in society breaks down into being not a real thing but instead something we thought up:

Nothing about having a penis necessitates wearing pants. Nothing about having XY chromosomes means you need to keep your hair short. Nothing about your genome makes the experience of nail-polish different for any human being.

All of these are arbitrary traits we decided were allowed or not allowed to a specific group of people based on entirely unrelated physiology.

Even if we delve deeper, there is MORE variation among individuals of the same ‘sex’ than there are, on average, of members of the ‘opposite sex’ when compared to each other.

Many people use the excuse ‘women are physically not as strong as men’ to say that this has an evolutionary aspect driving these cultural, historical, socially-constructed gender requirements.

But if there was a physical reasoning behind the culturally-set gender-limited job expectations, then we actually WOULDN’T need a traditional binary gender system to sort ourselves into categories. It would simply be decided as a meritocracy - stronger individuals, regardless of gender, would be given physically-demanding jobs. (Also we know that many jobs thought to be ‘traditionally male’ are just the result of sexist bullshit, so this reasoning doesn’t fly any further than I can throw it which is, coincidentally, not very far. Politics is one such area. Doctors are another. We can go on but I think you get my drift.)

My own example of this is an anecdote when my grandparents came to visit my partner and I in Japan. While we were driving down to Tokyo, my grandmother - who has a PhD in entomology - began to say that driving is a masculine activity and women shouldn’t be driving as it was ‘un-woman-like’. My partner almost immediately fired back that in Japan, studying insects or having any interest in them whatsoever was considered a heavily masculine-coded activity. In Russia, there is no such assignment, and my grandmother was left silently blinking in confusion, unable to come up with any excuse except ‘well, all cultures are different, I suppose...’

Do either of these things inherently have a gendered aspect? Of course not! But we assign gendered ideals to them anyway.

3) If gender is made up and constructed by society, then does that mean trans people aren’t real?

No.

Even if you agree that gender is a social construct, trans people are still real. TERFs don’t get a pass. Why?

Because gender - as a social construct - still affects our everyday lives, dictates our social position in our community. Transitioning is still a thing that has to happen. The fact that you are NOT easily able to decide your own gender and are ostracized for wanting to transition, abused for dressing the way you want to be perceived, and bullied for wanting people to refer to you with different pronouns - all those are the effects of a social construct that has very REAL impact on our lives.

This is also why I dislike defining trans-ness by dysphoria. Because transgender people are not only their suffering - the suffering is coming from the outside!! Many trans people remember not being concerned about their gender identity in their childhood, because they did not yet perceive the world as being hostile to their desire to fulfil a specific role in society. The issues and self-hatred and dysphoria begins when they express wanting to be themselves - a life which they are forbidden from pursuing based on physical characteristics they were born with.

Does this mean we should try to remove gender from society? If we constructed it, we can deconstruct it, right?

Realistically, I highly doubt this is possible. Gender is so ingrained in our daily lives that it would be difficult. Nor, I would say, would it be necessary to achieve world peace.

Having social groups - having gender - isn’t inherently a bad thing. The bad thing is when we limit those social groups to specific basic human rights, like voting, or when we forbid them from transitioning from one to another based on things that are out of their control.

Also, I’m not saying genitals and secondary sexual characteristics aren’t real. Please don’t bother sending me that angry message, I’ll ignore it, I promise.

But the concept of gender IS something we thought up and maintain and negotiate with each other to this very day. It’s not granted to us by a higher power, nor is it a constant, unchanging thing. It’s a part of the human experience and like everything, it has the potential to evolve - as a concept in our communal memory, as well as on an individual level, for people who feel they want to be perceived differently.

Thanks for coming to my TEDtalk!

#hiimholalate #gender #agender #queer stuff #gender is a social construct #social construct #genderqueer #long post

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strange-lace · 4 years ago

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Macaque

I was in the mood to make more content for Inverted AU, so here’s a short-ish fic of how episode 9 would go in this AU with Macaque, Wukong, and MK! Enjoy the shadowpeach!

Another demon defeated but still no sign of Sun Wukong. Macaque let out a sigh before rolling his shoulders to bring relief to tense muscles. Oh well, he'll just have to keep looking, not like he hasn't been at it for years now. At least this city he wandered to was quite nice with pleasant people, nothing too out there aside from demon attacks.

"Hey! Hey you! Shadow monkey man!" Macaque wouldn't deny that the sudden voice made him jump, considering he was on top of a pretty tall building. Apparently not tall enough to stop the young man from climbing up the side, somewhat out of breath yet that didn't deter from the determined look on his face. He simply brushed his messy hair out of his eyes and adjusted his teal backpack, which looked surprisingly heavy. Macaque couldn’t help but be somewhat curious as to what was in that thing.

Wait was that the Monkey King's staff in his hands?

Indeed it was, he'd recognize that weapon anywhere.

“Ah, you must be the Monkie Kid I’ve been hearing so much about, am I right?” That got him a look of suspicion before the young man also seemed to remember the staff in his hands, causing him to let out an amused huff at his own paranoia.

“Yeah, the staff kind of gives it away, don’t it? Name’s MK though. Now whomst is you? Most of the time, demons who ask me who I am are five seconds away from trying to kill me.” Macaque couldn’t help but chuckle at that, already finding that he was starting to like this little guy and his attitude. Perhaps if a person like MK was chosen to wield Wukong’s staff, then perhaps that meant his love had finally started turning things around for the better. Maybe it meant he finally stopped being someone he wasn’t all for the sake of keeping a memory alive.

“The name’s Macaque, though, the Six-Eared Macaque is actually my full name. But what brings you up here exactly bud? I doubt you’d climb up this high just for anybody.” MK’s face showed that he wanted to argue that point out of principle before remembering his purpose for coming up here.

“Simple, teach me.”

Wait what?

“What what?” MK scoffed at the question.

“I want you to teach me to fight, like how you fought that demon back there. I don’t intend on leaving you alone until you do and that is a threat!” Macaque didn’t doubt that he meant it that way and could very easily follow through on that. Sensing he wasn’t going to get out of this, he let out a sigh before giving MK a smile.

“You sure your mentor won’t have a problem with me teaching you?”

“Bold of you to assume Wukong’s disapproval will stop me.”

“Well alright then, I think we’re gonna get along just fine, bud.”

---

“I see what you’re trying to do, you’re afraid of holding back and giving your enemy the opportunity to win. But the first strike isn’t the most important one. Every strike counts. Other people may tell you that patience and focus don’t matter but a fool allows himself to rush without restraint. While you have power inside you, you have to use it carefully. Take the power to defend others, not just destroy those who stand in your way. You’re not a weapon kid, you wield the weapon above all else.”

---

It started with a fairly innocent question from MK after one of their training sessions, him slowly going through a water bottle given to him by Macaque while the monkey made them something to eat. He needed a distraction to stop himself from taking over the cooking, years of feeding others making him feel guilt the moment someone else took over.

“So Mac, how exactly do you know the Monkey King?” To his credit, Macaque only fumbled the slightest bit at that sudden question and was able to save the plate before it crashed to the floor.

“Oh um well… funny thing about that is, well… we used to be together actually. Like y’know… together-together,” he explained while he plated their food, wincing internally at how awkward he sounded. With his back towards MK, Macaque didn’t notice him go tense and grip the couch arm so tightly that the wood underneath cracked at the pressure.

“Used to be together, huh? What happened?” Macaque couldn’t help but shiver at the chill which traveled down his spine. MK’s voice was perfectly even and calm yet he was filled with an overwhelming fear that warned him to not turn around and remain perfectly still until the danger passed.

His ears twitched at the sound of sparks behind him, magic power permeating through the air.

“I… I messed up honestly. We had an argument about something, I don’t even remember what it was so long ago. But I had to leave to just get some space and air before I said something I’d regret, something I couldn’t take back. It was only meant to be a couple hours but some stuff out of my control happened and by the time I got back… Wukong was gone. I had been looking for him for centuries after that and then… well then you found me.”

“What, you hoped getting on my good side would mean that you’d win the Monkey King back?” His tone promised nothing good if Macaque kept digging himself a deeper hole.

“No! No, nothing like that at all. I don’t expect Pe-...Wukong to take me back or anything like that. I just… wanted the chance to apologize to him is all. If he wants anything to do with me afterwards, then I want that to be his choice. Nothing more, I swear.”

MK remained silent behind him before the sudden tension in the air dissipated as quickly as it appeared. Macaque let out a sigh of relief, slowly turning around to see MK still sitting on his couch, placing the staff back in his ear nonchalantly.

“Fair enough, sounds like you both were just idiots who don’t know how to communicate. If you actually intended on using me to get to the Monkey King, you’d have actually mentioned him during our training and yet you haven’t. And you can’t lie to save your life anyway. Just don’t be an idiot again alright? Monkey King… Wukong, he’s a mess and I don’t think he could handle thinking he’s been abandoned again.”

Macaque could feel his heart break at the idea that his Peaches, his love, thought that he had left permanently. He wanted nothing more than to run to him now and make things right. But that was Wukong’s decision to make, nobody else’s.

The two ate their food in silence after that.

---

Sun Wukong may have supposedly “lost his edge” but he was by no means dense or oblivious.

And while he was certainly happy about his successor’s vast improvement over the past couple weeks, a part of him sensed something was off. Like his successor was hiding something from him. And those moves he watched MK use to absolutely demolish the old mural, the Monkey King swore he had seen them before.

But it couldn’t possibly be. He hadn’t seen him in centuries. Not since he… left, like everyone else.

“I’m impressed, my boy! Tell me, how did you do that? Have you been seeing another mentor perhaps?” Wukong asked, his typically serene smile straining the slightest bit at the idea of his son student learning from someone who wasn’t him. The sensible part of his brain was gently poking at him, reminding him that it seemed silly to get upset about such a thing as, if anything, MK had appeared significantly calmer during their training compared to when they started. This could be a good thing, it told him.

Yet it was silenced by the majority of his brain which ran on fatherly protectiveness and had immediately been plagued by images of the worst case scenario. A demon had approached MK, promising him to make him stronger while also poisoning his student as a bid to turn him against the Monkey King before stealing his powers or, Heavens forbid, harming him.

No, Wukong refused to even allow a chance of that happening, logic and reasoning be damned.

“Hey, you’re the one always going on about ‘patience and focus’, I’m just finally putting what you said into practice,” MK answered, the picture of being casual which only set off further alarm bells within Wukong’s head. But before he could question him further, MK’s phone dinged to tell him of a new text message which he quickly read over, his eyes widening slightly at the message.

“Welp, looks like I gotta cut things short for now Wukong, something came up and I gotta head out. See ya later! Don’t forget to eat something tonight and sleep, I will know if you don’t.” And with that, MK was off through the hole he had created in the wall where the mural was before the Monkey King could get a word in edgewise.

Wukong waited long enough to allow MK to get a reasonable distance away before transforming into a bird, flying after his successor.

Something fishy was going on and the Monkey King was determined to find out what it was.

---

“Why exactly are we climbing up to this giant mountain again Mac?” MK wheezed, hating to admit it but this hike had genuinely winded him despite all his training. He had immediately gone to Macaque’s place the moment he got his text only to be told to follow the six-eared demon, leading them to where they were now.

“Well, consider this your ‘final exam’ bud! I want you to use everything I’ve taught you to fight against me, no holding back. Think you can do that?” MK couldn’t help the twitch at the corners of his mouth at the sight of Macaque’s genuine excitement as he explained, all six ears twitching while his tail was wagging like a dog. A demon who was centuries old and had fought countless powerful demons had no right looking that endearing, but here MK was looking with his own two eyes.

MK gave a chuckle before straightening himself out, wordlessly pulling the staff out his ear.

“You sure you’re comfortable getting your ass kicked by me, Mac?” With a smirk, Macaque summoned his own weapon in a flash of purple with the beginning of two shadow clones pooling at his feet. They shyly peeked from the ground from behind their master.

“Oho, a couple training sessions with me for a month and you think you have what it takes to defeat me, bud? Well then, bring it Monkie Kid!” MK didn’t hesitate to charge forward with Macaque mirroring him, weapons at the ready and adrenaline already running through their veins.

“Enough!”

A sudden force landed in between them with enough force to send them both flying backwards.

MK and Macaque recovered in time to see who decided to interrupt their duel.

Both of their hearts nearly stopped at the sight of the enraged Monkey King but for vastly different reasons.

“You have 5 seconds to explain yourself for trying to harm my-” Wukong’s rage quickly deflated as the dust cleared enough for him to truly see who it was he had thought was attacking MK. “Mango Flower?”

“Um… hello again, Peach Blossom. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Macaque joked, voice weak as he restrained himself from acting out of bounds even if he wanted nothing more than to gather the other into his arms. It had been so long, far too long.

He nearly broke at the sight of tears beginning to form in Wukong’s eyes.

His resolve finally shattered as the Monkey King ran towards him, arms outstretched, and before Macaque knew it his legs were moving on their own. The wind was knocked out of him at how tight Wukong squeezed him yet he returned the embrace back with gusto, ignoring the groaning of his ribs. He simply buried his face into the other’s fur, the smell of peaches still there even after all these years. Faintly, Macaque realized he was also crying once he felt a wetness on his cheeks.

Macaque let out a squeak in surprise as Wukong picked him up in the hug and spun him around, the sound of his laughter echoing throughout the mountain. The sight of such unabashed joy on his face was enough to make the six-eared demon to start laughing too, joy contagious in the best of ways.

MK would deny it unless under the threat of death but he couldn’t help but smile as he watched the two monkeys get lost in their own little world. It made the guilt which nagged at his chest at having to manipulate the two to make this meeting happen ease up, seeing how happy the two were.

“It’s been so long…” Wukong whispered as he placed Macaque back on his feet, gently cradling his face as if afraid that if he stopped touching the other, that he’d disappear again. “But, why are you here? I had thought that you hated me, isn’t that why you…” Macaque went stiff in shock before taking the Monkey King’s hands into his own.

“What? No! If anything, I thought you hated me for leaving instead of talking things out and that’s why you were gone when I came back. I always intended on coming back to you Peaches, I swear on it.” Wukong’s eyes went wide at that, extremely close to crying again a second time that day. “I had been looking for you for centuries now to apologize.”

And now the warm feeling was gone, leaving MK to bite down on his staff to stop himself from screaming at how much those two had failed at the simple of communication.

“We’ve both been absolutely foolish, haven’t we?” Wukong couldn’t help but laugh at it all, which only worsened as he noticed all six of Macaque’s ears turn red in embarrassment.

“Yeah, I guess we have been-” His words were cut off as the Monkey King grabbed his scarf, pulling him into a sudden kiss that made Macaque jolt in surprise before he practically melted into the other’s arms. A purr rumbled in his chest and neither noticed their tails wind around each other.

The sound of MK clearing his throat, loudly, was enough to get them to break apart in embarrassment.

“If you two are done being romantic idiots, I have to beat the shit out of Macaque to prove that I’m better than him. I mean ace my ‘final exam’.” The grin on his face showed that he was lying through his teeth.

“Don’t think I forgot about all your trash talking, young man. How about it Peach Blossom? You willing to go all out with me and the kid?”

Wukong’s face was the epitome of ‘Every part of my body wants to say yes but I shouldn’t.’ He was already terrible at saying no to MK and now with Macaque’s endearingly earnest face, he knew he was done for, at least with these two working together now.

“...Oh alright.”

The two mutual cheers at his agreement made Wukong feel slightly less guilty in letting his lessons go for a brief moment. But not completely.

But that was okay, Wukong was used to living with constant guilt.

#lego monkie kid #monkie kid #inverted au #shadowpeach #mk #macaque #sun wukong #my writing #fanfiction

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thekingofwinterblog · 3 years ago

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Getter Robo Retospective - Getter Robo Part 1 -Ryoma Nagare

So, Iv’e been wanting to do an overall retrospective of the Getter Robo manga franchise for a while now, and since the Getter Robo Arc is nearing it’s finale as of the time of this writing, and will either give it a definite ending, or be the final nail in the coffin that the series will never be finished before Getter Robo falls into public domain, I thought now might as well be the time to do it.

As such, I’ll be doing an overall analysis over the entire collection of Ken Ishikawa’s Getter Robo manga series, it’s plots, themes, characters, and covers the various ideas this crazy and amazing sci-fi series covers.

Also, this retrospective will NOT cover the various anime adaptations, or the behind the scenes stuff that has gone on with Getter Robo over the years, such as Go Nagai being credited as the writer of the original manga despite only having come up with the overall concept and designs for it(the rest was by Ken Ishikawa), or the way that Ken went back and added in some extra chapters in the original two manga to explain some things and to tie the early manga more closely into what came after.

For the purposes of this retorspective, I will be focusing exclusively on the manga itself, and what it has to offer, without going into anything else.

And of course there is no place better to start, than the beginning.

So, what is the story of the original Getter Robo Manga?

Well, the overall plot of the original manga is about the conflict between two sides of a conflict, as laid out rather well in it’s prologue chapter.

The first is our protagonists, the Saotome Institute of Japan, who’s leader and namesake has invented the titular giant mecha, the Getter Robo.

Powered by a revolutionary newly discovered form of energy called “Getter Energy”, this enormous metal behemoth is a fighting machine unlike any other.

This war machine was originally supposed to be used for space exploration, but due to necessity, it has instead been reworked into a fighting machine.

It’s only weakness is that it requires 3 different living pilots to operate it to draw upon its full strength.

Opposing the Saotome Institute, is the forces of the Dinosaur Empire

An empire of humanoid Sentient Dinosaurs that long ago was forced to flee the Earth’s surface after it was bombarded with a strange kind of energy from space that was deadly to their kind, their only way to survive being to use their incredible technology to hide on the only place on Earth where the rays couldn’t reach them. The Earth’s very core.

Now, after millions of years underground, and the rays that forced them beneath the earth to begin with having seemingly ceased, they have finally returned to reclaim the earth’s surface for their own. At it’s disposal, it has incredible technology, and giant cyborg dinosaur monster in it’s quest to wipe out the newcomers, the human race, to achieve total dominance over the Earth.

If you think this premise sounds very generic, and you’ve seen it in some form or another in countless other Mecha series, you are not wrong. Ancient evil group attacking the protagonists, and only the new giant robot can stop it, probably the biggest stock plot in mecha overall, having been done in everything from Neon Genesis Evangelion to Megas XLR in some form or another. The set pieces and details are different, but the overall plot is the same.

However, where Getter Robo fits into this, is that it was one of the first giant robot manga there was, and many, many of the tropes and ideas it pioneered would be used and imitated by its successors.

In fact, I would argue that Getter is the second most influential mecha series in history, only second after it’s big cousin, Mazinger Z.

However, we are not here to detail how it influenced the manga industry, but how Getter holds up on it’s own, and in this regard, despite having a plot that has been overused time, and time again by it’s successors, this isn’t really that much of a problem for Getter Robo. Because like any good Mecha series, Getter’s biggest strength is it’s cast of characters.

Starting off in chapter 1, we are introduced to the first of the Robot’s giant pilots.

Ryoma Nagare.

Each of the pilots of Getter Robo is given an introductory mini-arc to set them up, and Ryoma’s is easily the best of the 3.

We are introduced to the main character of most of the franchise at a very unusual spot to open a main character, especially for a Shonen protagonist.

At the end of a revenge story.

To put it bluntly, Ryoma does not start off this series as a particularly likeable, nor good person, as his introductory scene is him crashing a perfectly legal martial arts tournament and beating the everloving shit out of it’s referee, it’s participants, and the judges who arranged it.

His reasons for doing all of this?

Revenge for his old man.

As it turns out, Ryoma had a massive beef with the arrangers for this contest, as his father, Ichigan Nagare was a pro karate champion back in the day, whose reputation was purposely destroyed by those arrangers.

Now he’s come to take revenge by utterly crushing their disciples on national television, to hammer in the point that his father’s martial arts was superior to theirs for all the world to see.

During this whole thing, we also get a very good look into how Ryoma thinks at this point in time.

When the arranger tries to appeal to the “Sacredness” of the Sport to get him to stand down, Ryoma laughs in his face, proclaiming that there is nothing sacred about combat at all. The only thing that matters is who emerges as the victor.

This is backed up by how he doesn’t show the least bit of compassion or honor to the first of the contestants he defeats, easily smashing him to the ground then gloating over him after having demonstrated the sheer difference in the combat prowess between the two of them.

He is very blunt about the fact that he believes that one should pursue strength for strenght’s sake alone, and never stop until you have crushed anyone who stands before you. Always train to get stronger, and always seek out those who can challenge you and beat them too.

Might makes right.

This is a REALLY good introduction for showcasing Ryoma as a character. How he thinks, his immense near superhuman strength, his ruthlessness, his pride in his own strength.

It also ties in directly into the themes of this series, as this kind of thinking is essentially Evolution itself boiled down to it’s bare core. The survival of the strongest. What is the point of Evolution after all, if not this? Those with the traits to survive and thrive will do so, while those who cannot, will be crushed by those who can, who in turn will pass down what made them successful to begin with.

Of course that is not what the actual message of this series is, but it is a concept that this series is rather blunt about, and it’s not a coincidence that the most prominent of all the main characters of this series began his journey while believing wholeheartedly into that ideal.

All in all this scene is just great, and it sets up Ryoma really well, as well as making it clear that this is a boy who has a lot of growing to do as a person.

And so, having achieved his life’s work that he’s trained for for years and years, Ryoma nagare quietly leaves the arena, leaving behind a dozen bruised, battered and broken men on the ground.

Of course this display of power has not gone unnoticed, as in the audience were two men from the Saotome Institute who came here hoping to find someone strong enough to pilot their giant robot.

As it happened, they just found one that fit the bill rather spectacularly.

Then in the next scene we are showcased Ryoma’s home.

Ryoma Nagare, a fighting genius that at the tender age of 16-17 smashed the greatest karate practitioners in Japan with ease while being outnumbered a dozen to one, lives in a ramshackle part of town, in a rundown old building that has broken windows, a leaking roof, and can at best be called a ramshackle cottage.

It’s a rather brutal contrast to the sight of the prestigious, well made and maintained karate tournament building we were just in.

Inside we find the sight of something else rather unusual for a Shonen protagonist. Having now achieved his goals, and avenged his father’s memory, Ryoma is slowly starting to come to the realization that this has all been one giant waste of time. He hasn’t actually earned anything on this journey. His father is dead, he’s still poor, and his only belongings is this shitty building and the clothes on his back.

As we learn here, Ryoma has spent his entire life being trained in martial arts, to insane degrees even for an adult man, much less for a child. All for the purpose of one day doing what he did today, and avenging his father’s memory.

This scene really hammers in the fact that for all his ridiculous strength, Ryoma is a child, and he has a child’s way of looking at things.

He thinks back fondly on being pitted against stray dogs in death matches, and he reveals here that in his mind, this was all about “Redeeming” martial arts somehow, as if this display would really change anything in the grand scheme of things within the sport.

It wasn’t of course. This was all about revenge. Everything Ryoma ever trained for was for this moment, this moment of what should have been absolute and total triumph as he achieved a truly spectacular victory and proved his father’s fighting style the best in all the land and he has proven that he himself is the strongest fighter in all Japan.

Instead he is coming to the realization that so many people that wasted their lives on vengeance have come to over the years. That it was all a giant waste of time.

Revenge is a suckers game.

Having achieved his goals, Ryoma has found them to be completely empty, and has nowhere to go. This is a really fascinating way to open up a character arc, as usually a character that learns the lesson that David Xanatos knew so well, happens either at the end, or somewhere later down their line. Ryoma however, learns it in the very first chapter, and now has to find something else to live for.

However, his soul searching is then interrupted by a few gentlemen from the Saotome institute.

Who immediately tries to kill him.

Now before I discuss the next part, I wanna praise this overall scene, because it really works great within the context of this chapter.

Ryoma has been introduced as a massive asshole, who firmly believes in the mantra of Might makes right, and he doesn’t feel any regret at having brutalized a dozen of innocent people, just the fact that he realizes that there was no real satisfaction to be had from it. Now the other shoe drops, and HE is attacked in his own home, completely unprovoked for reasons that frankly he has no personal involvement in on his own side. While this attack does have an in universe reason behind it, it main purpose is that it serves as a nice cathartic moment for the reader, as while he’s never going to legally punished for what just happened at the tournament, he is punished by the narrative for his actions, which is something i’ve seen far, far too many stories do over the years fail to do with asshole protagonists.

It also serves to put Ryoma’s current belief in Might Makes Right to the test. After all, aren’t these men doing exactly what he said that those who practice martial arts should do? Seek out those stronger than them, then crush them.

All of this makes it a shame that it is horribly undercut by the one, genuine stain on the original manga. Namely that one of the attackers is this guy.

And it’s at this moment you realise, oh yeah, this was made in 1970’s Japan. The unfortunate fact is that Mangaka of this period generally based their depiction of black people on early American comics(Which had plenty of this kind of artwork), and Ken Ishikawa was unfortunately not an exception to this rule.

He would THANKFULLY not repeat anything like this later down the line(his depiction of black people is far more natural and realistic in later manga), but hot damn is it both uncomfortable and distracting to read the pages with this guy. And it’s a real shame too, because frankly, not only is the following fight scene very good as a narrative punishment for Ryoma, but it’s just a good fight scene in general.

Unlike the Tournament fight, which was mainly a beatdown to establish Ryoma’s ridiculous strength, this is an actual fight, which showcases Ishikawa’s ability to draw energetic, exciting fight scenes where action flows very naturally.

It also shows that for the kind of ridiculous strength Ryoma possess, he isn’t some superhuman, as early in the brawls he’s heavily wounded by the rather mundanity of taking a throwing knife to the shoulder. This is in general something that makes action if Getter Robo stand out from other shonen series too. When characters, or Robots for that matter, takes hits, they rarely shrug them off with no problem, instead taking real, genuine damage that doesn't just instantly go away. They might power through them, but that isn’t the same as them disappearing into the ether.

In any case, the battle ends up outside the house when Ryoma is thrown through the wall.

He’s then forced to do the classic, catch the blade between the palms of his hands trope, which is depicted much more believable than most cases I’ve seen, as despite succeeding, it still left him bleeding from those palms.

Ryoma then redirects the blade into the big guy who is attacking him from behind, killing him. I really love how the artwork sells that this is a desperate move on Ryoma’s part. He is genuinely fighting for his life here, and he’s pulling out every trick he has to to win despite his wounds.

He then follows that up by ripping the blade out, and throwing it at the knife thrower guy. I also like that after doing so, he immediately falls flat on his ass, in a rather realistic manner(he is fighting in the rain after all, so the ground is undoubtedly pretty slippery.), while also showcasing the force of the throw. My only main complaint is that for this one panel Ken forgot to include the wound and the knife on his shoulder, as I think it would really sell just how desperate Ryoma is here if we’re visually reminded in the moment that, oh yeah, he’s powering through and using the arm whose shoulder has a knife in it to to throw this thing.

Thankfully, that missed opportunity for visual grittiness is more than made up for by the next part.

Having now effectively won the battle(I think the swordsman broke his foot in the fall, at least that’s how it looks), Ryoma suddenly realises that, holy shit, he just killed someone. The contrast between here and how he looked as he challenged the tournament fighters couldn’t be more different. The cooky, arrogant youth is completely gone, and you're reminded that Ryoma is just a kid. A kid who just had to kill someone. The bravado is completely gone, leaving only a kid who is tired, confused, in pain, and probably pretty scared.

He is then approached by the man who just had 3 grown ass men jump and attack him, Dr. Saotome.

Wounded, and mentally exchausted as he is, he is in no position to argue as Saotome declares that Ryoma is what he’s been looking for, and as one of his men rips the knife out of his shoulder, Ryoma screams before losing consciousness from the pain. Afterwards he is dragged into a car, and bandaged up.

Then as they're driving, the’re attacked by a giant flying dinosaur that grabs unto the car and flies away with it, Ryoma and Saotome barely managing to get out in time, alongside one of Saotome’s unlucky goons who breaks his neck in the fall.

And so ends Chapter one of Getter Robo.

All in all, other than the horribly racist black guy, this is a really good first chapter, that sets up Ryoma Nagare really, really well, showcasing his way of thinking, his origin, and where he needs to grow, while also showcasing his ludicrous strength, and that he is fully capable of going balls to the wall to win a fight, which will be showcased many, many times in this series. It also ends on a reminder of the fact that oh yeah, this is a series about one side vs dinosaurs, as Ryoma gets his first introduction into the enemy he will be fighting time, and again in this manga. It also gives a distinct first impression of just how ruthless Saotome is, as he is perfectly willing to send 3 dangerous goons on a teenager just to test his prowess in battle, which is absolutely going to come into play in future chapters.

All in all, it’s a good start. Not an amazing beginning, but certainly a good introduction to our first main character.

#Getter robo #getter robo retrospective #ryoma nagare #character study #getter robo manga #dr. saotome

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nohoney · 4 years ago

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I Just Want It To Be Us - 1.1

note: Part 1 of the Us series which is originally posted on my ao3 here

Us series masterlist

characters: Dabi/Touya Todoroki, Hawks/Keigo Takami

warnings: 18+, drug use, toxic relationships, cheating, angsty-ish

summary:

That question always rang through your mind every time he comes back smelling like one of his side whores and cash in his pocket. He’s your boyfriend but he’s been doing this since way before he met you, and he wasn’t going to stop just because you’re together. It was a condition that you pretty much forced yourself to accept from the very beginning because well… you really did like Dabi that much.

Dabi knows that it makes you upset but he’s not going to stop for your sake.

You know that he won’t.

1.1 ✧ 1.2 ✧ 1.3

Your mother would be so disappointed if she saw you with your current boyfriend.

“Marry a nice man, honey.”

“When you find someone to settle down with, make sure he’s the one.”

“Don’t flit about from guy to guy, it’s not lady-like.”

All these rules your mother set you up with when it came to finding a boyfriend, you knew it came from a good place in her heart. She was only looking out for you when she told you these things but didn’t she get that dating now was different in this age and time? You’re a free person and you can see however many people you want or you could see no one at all and that was perfectly fine as well.

She has a feeling you’re seeing someone but you haven’t confirmed with her. To be honest, you don’t think you’ll tell her anything about your current boyfriend. It would be for the sake of preserving her little, fragile heart. How horrified would she be if she found out her precious daughter was dating the local drug dealer in her college campus?

He didn’t like being called by his surname and he didn’t seem to like being called by his first name either. The first time he speaks in front of your intro to philosophy class, taking it just to fulfill one of grad requirements, he says to just refer to him as ‘Dabi’. It’s curious to the people who don’t know who he is already but who are they to argue with someone how they should be addressed?

So you call him Dabi.

You called him Dabi the first time you spoke to him in class, asking for notes from the day you missed before in class. You called him Dabi when he found you sitting alone in the library and he kicked your chair to get your attention. You called him Dabi the more you spent time together with him, even past the semester once your one shared class is over and final grades were submitted. You called him Dabi the first time he ever rails you on his cock in the backseat on his car.

You almost forget sometimes that his real name is Touya.

In his off campus apartment, he sits in a chair in front of the bathroom mirror and you stand behind him with plastic gloves over your hands, helping him dye the roots of his hair black. The dye stinks, you hate the smell of it, but he kind of suckered you into doing it for him this time. He promised that if you’d help him, he’d sit through one of your stupid romantic-comedy movies you’d been dying to watch for a while. But you had to tack on a condition if he was going to give you an incentive.

If Dabi watched a movie with you and wasn’t entertained by it enough, he’d always leave to smoke a joint and come back high just so that he could get through the rest of the film.

“No break of any kind unless it’s a snack or pee break, you understand me?” you tell him as you put the final layer of dye on his roots. “And no doing it before the movie starts! I want you sober when we watch it together.”

“Yeah, yeah doll. You have my word.” Dabi passively waves his hand at you as he looks down at his phone.

Your eyes casually glance down at his phone screen and see that he’s in his messages app.

Wonder if someone is trying to get him as a connect. You think to yourself as you dispose of the plastic gloves and the remaining hair dye. You’re cleaning up the hair dye tools and open the window to air out the awful smell of the dye, all while Dabi sits in his chair and stares at his messaging app. The sounds of incoming messages from his phone tell you that there’s a conversation going on but his fingers don’t move over the keyboard to respond. It’s not your business how he runs his operations.

“How long do I leave the dye on?” he asks as he stands up from the chair, putting his phone on the countertop, and literally rips the shirt off his body from the neckline down the middle. It’s just a regular t-shirt he bought to protect his skin from the dye dripping onto his body dispensable from the very beginning, but he didn’t have to make a show of it. The shirt drops to the floor in a heap and he kicks it off to the side; you are not picking it up for him.

Dabi’s hot, ridiculously hot, that’s the first thing anyone notices about him. Both his ears have multiple piercings and his nose as well sporting three studs on his right nostril. If he’s wearing short sleeves, the first thing anyone will see that his both arms are tattooed all black, save for where they end, at his hands and shoulders it’s detailed to look like his skin is being held together by staples. On any other person it would look ridiculous to you, on Dabi not so much.

He notices you staring and winks at you, but you scoff at him and push past him to exit the bathroom. “You know how long it stays on, you’ve done this plenty of times before by yourself.”

“I like it when you tell me doll.”

Ah Dabi could be so charming when he felt like it.

You roll your eyes at him but peck him on the lips. “Shut up, I’m going to order in some food for dinner today.”

“Wow, ordering in for dinner tonight. Such housewife material (Name).” Dabi pokes fun at you.

“And you’re going to be the perfect husband Dabi.” you tease back.

You’re not certain if Dabi is long-term boyfriend material, you’ve only been dating for about five months. It’s not a long period of time you’ve spent as boyfriend and girlfriend but you’ve had a lot of fun with him. Although you have to admit that part of the fun you were experiencing with Dabi was because of what he’s introduced you to.

Before Dabi, you’d only smoke a little bit of weed every once in a while or take the occasional edible to wind down. You never had your own stash of it, you’d only partake if a friend supplied or if you were at a party. There was no point in having your own selection if you didn’t really partake in it that much. You were okay with smoking from a joint or a bong every once in a while, maybe take an edible if you wanted something a little stronger than smoking flower.

After Dabi you’d indulge in the occasional gram of coke and maybe some ecstasy if you felt like you could afford to take two days off from work for the come down. There were still others you hadn’t given a try yet, like shrooms or 2CB or do a candy flip, but you were slowly working up the nerve to give them a try when you were ready. Dabi offered you a Percocet but god, never again because you were too fucked up the one time you tried it.

You didn’t really think in your life you’d be involved romantically with a drug dealer but honestly it’s not as bad as you thought it would be.

Oh yeah, try explaining that to Mom…

Dab treats you right for the most part, he’s never yelled at you or ever taken his anger out on you either since dating each other, he just sells narcotics on the college campus and he got you into it too, it’s not a big deal. It helped that Dabi took it easy on you rather than just pushing you to do more than you were comfortable with. The first time you were curious about coke, he made you a little thin line of it and it took you more than an hour to decide you were ready before finally snorting it. After that first one, he let you decide how long and thick you wanted your lines to be. He’d cut it nice and neat for you and point to which one was yours to take. Coke felt good but the drip was disgusting in the back of your throat.

Speaking of disgusting…

“Hey, it should have been long enough so wash that gross stuff out your hair and let’s eat dinner.” you called from the kitchen as you plated the takeout food that arrived not too long ago.

You and Dabi sit at his little dinner table with the television streaming some random drama for background noise. Dinner topics for the evening range from school, homework, family news if there is any, and when to coordinate seeing each other next in between classes and your part time job. Conversations go smoothly and you’re cleaning up the kitchen when Dabi comes up behind you and presses a kiss to the back of your head, nuzzling you as you wipe the plates you just ate off of. You feel a sense of dread because every time he does that it means…

“Hey, there’s a house party this Saturday and I gotta work.”

You bite your tongue inside your mouth and exhale through your nose.

He has to work so he’ll be gone for a while, has to disperse his inventory and has to please his regulars as well as find any potential new customers.

If it was just selling, it wouldn’t be an issue.

The real issue is that you know he fucks some of his female customers. No no no, they don’t just get free coke or acid or whatever they’re asking for by spreading their legs for Dabi. He still expects cash as payment, but if he thinks they’re pretty enough then he doesn’t mind getting something extra aside from money after a sale. He’s handsome so why wouldn’t someone want to hop on his lap and go for a ride?

Dabi saves you the trouble by just being upfront about it, swears to you that you’re his favorite and that he only sees the other girls if he’s making a sale, they’re just customers. He goes to them, he goes to their location and fucks them where they meet him. None of his side whores have ever been brought back to his place, not like how he lets you in so easily when you knock on his door. He doesn’t take them out or treat them sweetly like he does with you; it’s just a sale and a fuck. It still doesn’t matter to you though, it still makes you jealous. It makes you clench your jaw in anger and want to just deck him right where his nose piercings are.

You’re his girlfriend but did that title mean anything if he was still going to sleep with other girls?

Dabi knows that it makes you upset but he’s not going to stop for your sake.

You know that he won’t.

“Fine.”

━━━━✧

If Dabi gets to fuck other girls then surely you have the right to do just the same with boys right?

The thing is though is that you did one time just right before the two of you made your relationship official, you hit up an old fuck buddy of yours while Dabi was out selling at another house party in the middle of the night. He left a measly text saying not to wait up for him and that he’d see you for breakfast. It would have been sweet if not for the fact that he came to your apartment smelling like another girl, just spending just two hours with you before flitting off into the night. Two hours of him on your sofa smelling like someone else, not even offering to shower to get their stench off, and he did his best to placate you before giving up and letting you stew in your own anger.

So you hit up your old fuck buddy and you go to him, you just get straight to the point when you’re let into his dorm and fuck your frustrations out on him. You intended to go straight back to your home but angry fucking took a lot out on you so you just spend the night there instead. “Don’t cuddle me, I’ll be gone in the morning.” you tell him after patting his cheek and pulling the blanket over your body.

It’s a quarter before eight when you’re trudging back to your apartment and you see Dabi leaning against your front door. You’re going to ask how his night was but he abruptly pulls you to him and growls in your ear to, “Get in your fucking apartment… now.”

He knows you went out to get fucked, doesn’t want to know who you went to.

You and him argue for over two hours inside your home, pacing back and forth in the living room. It’s back and forth of ‘it’s just business with those girls’ from him and ‘why shouldn’t I be allowed to do it to you?’ from you. Dabi says it’s just business and they mean nothing to him, claims to you that you hurt him more because you did it out of revenge. He really got you screaming at him after he said that but he didn’t dare back down. He stands firm and so do you, that really gets him angry with you even more.

He didn’t apologize and neither did you.

You were jabbing your finger in his chest when he grabs you by the wrist, irritation and exhaustion evident in his turquoise eyes. “Don’t fucking do that to me.” he growls at you.

“Get your fucking hands off me Dabi.” you spit back, shaking his hand off your wrist. “Get out.”

“No, we’re not leaving it like this.” he insists. “We’re fucking talk about this.”

You throw your hands up in the air in exasperation. “No, you want to ‘talk about it’ until I yield to you which is never going to happen! We’re going around in circles! You’re not going to be sorry and I’m not going to be sorry!”

A tense stare off between the two of you for a few seconds.

Next thing you know, you’re pulling off each other’s clothes and you’re forced on your hands and knees in your own bed. The only foreplay you get is a few seconds of rough kissing and Dabi spitting on his fingers to prep you as quickly as he can. When he pushes in, it’s rough and a little uncomfortable but you’re quick to adjust to the punishing pace. He pulls your hair too hard, you backhand him in the face, he spanks you until your ass is red and aching, you dig your nails into his back and scratch achingly slow down his flesh to make sure it really hurts.

Hate fucking with Dabi was a whole new level of intensity for you but you keep up with him until it turns into slow love making.

The biting, angry dirty talk from the beginning turns into whining praises; from ‘you spiteful, fucking bitch’ to ‘my pretty, little angel’.

“Fuck babydoll, you know how good you feel? I think I’ve fucked you so much that your pussy’s shaped to take just my cock. This cunt damn near drained me dry but I still want more. Cum on my cock more, tell me how bad you want it.” Dabi whispers into the skin of your shoulder before licking a trail up to your chin and pressing a kiss to your cheek.

“Ugh, baby it’s so fucking good, only you know my body like this. I don’t want it from anyone else but you… shit, I’m going to cum again!” you groan as you clamp down on him once more and your pussy strangles his cock for more cum.

You fall asleep after two hours of fucking, your head resting in the crook of his neck and his arm around your shoulders to keep you close. The both of you are all fucked out but your mind is still fixated on the fight. Despite the intimate sex that’s brought you closer together after rounds of hate fucking, it doesn’t change the fact that Dabi still fucks his customers sometimes and you’re still resentful about it.

“If it makes you feel better then fine (Name), you can fuck who you want.” Dabi says to you when the both of you wake up and are pulling your clothes back on your bodies. “But know this, if you want to be in on this then you’re just going to have to accept that I’ve been doing this since before I met you and it’s not going to stop just because we’re together. So go ahead, fuck who you want but as long as you always come back to me. I always come back to you, don’t I sweetheart?”

You’re smoothing your hair down, taking in his words before looking up at him and asking, “We’re together?”

Dabi’s eyes are full of mirth as he approaches you, pulling you close to his body and squeezing one of your asscheeks in his hand. “You’re my favorite, my number one, I like you (Name). The things I do for you, what I’ve done to you, no one else gets that from me.”

He didn’t apologize and neither did you.

But funnily enough even though he gave you permission to sleep with whoever you wanted, you didn’t really have the desire to do so. He comes to you smelling like other girls sometimes and that should be your cue to go find your own rando to hump on but you just… don’t.

Part of you wonders if Dabi is happy that you don’t go around like he does despite his blessing. You’re resentful towards yourself sometimes that you don’t go out and have some fun with someone else too. He gave you permission so you should take him up on it, that makes sense given the circumstances. Apparently the only thing that was important to him was that he always be your priority the same way that you were his.

Maybe at the time you just wanted the rush of revenge and now it was different that Dabi took that away from you by giving you permission. Maybe he knew that once he gave you the green light that you weren’t going to bother anymore with seeking anyone else out.

You were certain that he was manipulating you but you didn’t have solid evidence so there wasn’t much you could do. What the hell were you supposed to say to him?

Hey Dabi you tricked me into not sleeping with other people?

Dabi did always give you a heads up at least when he was going out to sell and he always tried to make you happy when he comes back. He offers to order in your favorite food, bring your favorite bottle of alcohol with your favorite juice to chase, eat you out until you’re a quivering mess on his mouth, or nudges half of a tablet of ecstasy in your hand and says that he just wants to put on music and house roll with you.

It still doesn’t change that you get jealous no matter how many sweet things he does for you.

But you like him enough to deal with his shenanigans… just barely.

━━━━✧

“Why don’t you come with me?” Dabi asks you as soon as you’re back from work. You’re tossing your purse onto your sofa and drop your body onto the cushions, your head in his lap and seeking his warmth. His hand goes to your head to start massaging your scalp, his fingers working magic and making you groan in pleasure. “Come with me tomorrow doll.”

You roll your eyes and turn your head to look at whatever show Dabi was watching while he was waiting for you. “To watch you flourish your business? I don’t think so. I’ll stay behind like I usually do.” you scoff, pressing your cheek against his leg and sighing.

He’s never asked for you to come along before, he doesn’t need the distraction of babysitting you. You wonder what’s caused him to ask you to tag along.

“Come on doll, just come along. Odds are I won’t be coming back the night of the party and Keigo will be there tomorrow, he can keep you company.”

Ah you loved Keigo, he was the only one that Dabi really considered to be a friend to him. Maybe it was because he could keep up with your boyfriend in regards to their drug consumption but you could see that they had a bond beyond just getting high together, more than just pills or powders or tabs that keeps them together. Together they both seemed like laid back individuals but Dabi only seemed laid back due to how apathetic he was whereas Keigo was actually a chill person because that’s how he actually was, it wasn’t just the air about him that made him seem so.

You loved being with Keigo, he always spoiled you silly and made you laugh.

“I don’t know, what exactly will I get out of it?” you shrug your shoulders and huff out quietly.

Suddenly two little baggies come into your view, one filled with white powder and the other with a little pink tablet. “Is this supposed to be a bribe to get me to come along?” you ask, staring at the bags and not bothering to take them from your boyfriend’s fingertips. You won’t lie that it is a little bit tempting, just a little bit.

“Maybe so, you know that my merchandise for you is discounted doll. Nothing but the best for you, my shit is always clean.” Dabi shakes the little baggies as if the contents are going to be more enticing if he does so. There’s definitely a big truth to what he said, the quality to his inventory is nothing less than superb. It’s why his clientele always kept on coming back to him but the absolute best was either for his favorites or it was apart of his own personal stash.

You’re staring hard at the baggies and start debating in your mind. Dabi would still give it to you even if you insisted that you stay home but there was no fun in doing it alone. You had some friends that could help you kill the coke if you asked them over but god forbid they start feening, that’s when they became difficult to deal with. There was no point in you holding onto them either if you weren’t going to do anything with them right away.

Since Keigo was going to be at the party tomorrow and if Dabi was going to give the baggies no matter what…

“Alright, only since Keigo is going to be there. Nothing else.” you give in and pluck the two baggies from Dabi’s hand and sit up on the sofa. “Now how much do I owe you for your merchandise sir?”

Dabi smirks at you as he crawls over you until you’re lying flat on your back, like you’re his prey and he’s the predator. “Just your usual payment madame, if you please.”

#dabi x reader #todoroki touya x reader #dabi #todoroki touya #bnha x reader #bnha #tw drugs #us series

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nissakii · 4 years ago

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Significance of “Madness” in anime

We’ve already established in other posts about significant emotions and concepts in anime or specific media before. The Significance of losing or the one of visuals and metaphors in Haikyuu!! are some of those I would love to mention here, but today we shall delve into a broader topic that goes more along the lines of Makii’s thrilling post about Danganronpa and the Significance of Despair.

Today, our topic of interest is madness.

To ease your mind, in this post we will be talking about the representation of insanity and madness in some anime characters and how that reflects on the story and ourselves as an audience.To make one thing clear, a lot of the times we see overexaggerated versions of unstable characteristics in anime that aren’t realistic.

This is in no way a discussion about actual mental illnesses and not a professional approach to analysing them to our real life standards, but maybe a start to an interesting discussion about how we portray and handle what one may colloquially call “craziness”.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s start!

Artists, and no matter for example if they write or draw, use their platforms to deliver messages in cryptic ways. As humans, we have the innate ability to look at something and consume the facts through entertainment which makes us crave new media to follow and analyse.

We love to question things instead of just taking them as they are, and that is why most writers out there will play around with the perception of their audience.

You may be familiar with the common question that ghosts through your head as you enjoy the latest episode of your favorite anime.

Why did he do that? Is she a traitor? What makes them think that way?

Although one might always do it consciously, we most definitely analyse whatever media we consume and decide for ourselves if it is important enough to keep in mind for future reference.

What the writer or founder of the anime ultimately wants from the reader is a reaction.

No matter what they intend to do with it, if they enjoy the viewer getting excited or traumatised is not of importance, but a reaction is evidently one of the goals.

And as strong emotions always evoke an even stronger reaction, anime characters are often very idealized and have ideologies that make them want to do one particular thing.

Be it save the world or destroy it, we focus and look at these characters and root for them if they give us a reason to do so.

Both sides of good and bad can have deeply rooted admiration drawn out of us, and it sometimes doesn’t even matter because the more interesting part is the lovely grey area in between.

We need a balance of good and bad to enjoy both.

Empathy makes us viewers want to relate to the characters, and if the author gives us the possibility to learn why someone does something, it gets harder and harder to dislike them. That’s why tragic backstories and flashbacks are such an overused tool in anime, because with the extreme behaviour some characters show they also need equal amounts of redemption.

We attach ourselves emotionally to characters depending on our personal tastes as well.

If someone likes and relates to a strong and independent protagonist who would drop anything for the sake of justice, you will find a lot of resembling characters in shounen for example.

On the other hand, if a darker or more obsessive character manages to take over a special place in a viewer’s heart, putting them on a pedestal gets more and more interesting, because you’re not supposed to.

Contrary to that, characters with insane or dark personality traits are often very popular, again tracing this back to human instinct of emphasising with wronged characters and curiously inspecting the fully deranged ones.

As this isn't something that should be put into vague concepts, we’re instead going to look at examples of characters and entities that are seen as ‘mad’ and how they’re interpreted.

It’s not just about villains being unreasonably immoral in this post, as we look into what madness entails and how it's shown, we also have some examples of corruption to look at.

So of course there are the typical evil-thinking evil-doing villains out there.

Some of them have an actual backstory to make them more realistic and believable, some others are just pure evil. While they are often called mad for their actions to achieve their goal, the reason why they are put into that light is the stark contrast between the protagonist and the villain.

If the protagonist loves to save people and always has a smile on his face, of course he will differ from his counterpart when he finds out that his methods are a bit more vicious.

The protagonist perceives the villain as insane most of the time, but what does the viewer think?

We seek to look not only at characters that are enjoyable to watch, but also try to find similarities between us and them or draw lines in their behavior to understand them better. As mentioned before, empathy plays a huge role here as well, since whatever happens in anime doesn't have actual repercussions, we can forgive characters more easily.

For example when they are taken by Insanity as a side effect rather than being insane due to trauma, we often get an 'ally turned traitor' trope through hypnosis or brainwashing, which is just as interesting to look at.

If a person did something horrible under the influence of something they had no control over, are they still to blame?

Does Insanity only involve a separate entity that comes from evil, or are we also looking at the gradual descent into darkness when life just isn't the same anymore?

Insane and with no fear: Soul Eater

A great example of how insanity plays with characters be they good or bad is Soul Eater.

With a premise that one needs a sound mind and body to inhibit a sound soul, we obviously know that people close to becoming Kishin-eggs will have a rotten soul drenched in bad deeds, but what about the good guys?

In this instance we have a lot of different types of madness and insanity that touches multiple characters at different times, and by far the most drastic would be the black blood.

The black blood being a synthesized weapon form of blood that can change form and harden into shape, is a weapon made by Medusa and introduced for the first time with Crona. He was melded together with Ragnarök as a weapon and used the black blood in his proficient fighting style.

Soul Eater as well as Maka and other characters later come into contact with the black blood, and the consequence of the immense strength that comes with it is debilitating madness.

As explained in the anime, the madness makes one deny the soul of oneself and others and takes away your fear. Now with no fear present, the person exhibits extremely erratic behavior and is not scared to hurt others or themselves.

This is an insanity that shows how essential a person's fear is, shown by Maka in one of the latest episodes when she fights Asura. The fact that she learned how to accept her own fear and realise that humans need it to survive is why insanity in Soul Eater is merely a concept to differentiate between what is human and what is Kishin.

A Kishin kills and murders with no fear of anything.

A human protects and masters one's own fear.

The power hungry insanity: Hunter x Hunter

In Hunter x Hunter we have a lot of characters that don't exactly fit the norm of human action.

With people like Chrollo, Illumi and even Chimera Ants there is enough crazy to go around.

Still, the character we shall delve into to look at a different kind of instability is none other than Hisoka Morow.

Yes, in comparison to black blood madness Hisoka is an actual human being with no known influence outside of his own intellect. The contrary to another weapon or entity making someone insane is being shown in this anime.

Hisoka is just insane.

We have no means to see if there is anything that might have caused Hisoka to be the way that he is, but what we do know is that his character is almost too nonchalant for his own good.

His goal is to accumulate power and fight others that he seems worthy, as that is what attracts him. No person is spared if he believes he found a worthy opponent he will make that clear to them and pursue them passionately.

We could rule that the clown is just eccentric, but with the given information from the anime he definitely had some sort of mental difference next to his peers. Harming himself holds no problem to him, and his behavior is deeply rooted only to suit himself. He has no self-preservation except for when he needs to accomplish something, and he even enters the spiders just to get close to Chrollo.

Now we see a single person carry themselves throughout a story only to achieve one thing: a good fight.

After having looked at these two examples of insanity in anime, let's look at how that insanity can be portrayed visually.

A famous way to show someone's psychosis is the “Kubrick stare”. A directorial technique that got named after the director Stanley Kubrick who used a forward tilt of the head with eyes locked onto the camera to show the actors of his movies at their peak of madness. It became a very popular stylistic device and is used still very often in modern movies.

The character is supposed to look menacing, evil-plotting and absolutely unhinged.

Such devices, if used often enough, automatically invoke the message to the viewer.

If you’ve seen the Kubrick stare once in a psychotic character, you will definitely associate it with the same derangement again.

In anime we have a similar thing, and you might be aware of this already.

Familiar with the ‘eye angle just before a character goes insane’ meme?

It’s a running gag that shows multiple characters such as Asura from Soul Eater, Pain from Naruto, Light from Deathnote and Jason from Tokyo Ghoul in a frame where you can only see their eyes and it somehow looks extremely grotesque as if they were looking into different directions with their eyes.

As much as it is a joke, it is a perfect example of something extremely similar to the Kubrick stare used in anime culture. It goes so far that if any anime watcher would see a new character look like in a frame, one would assume they were about to go crazy.

Even Oikawa Tooru from Haikyuu!! was shown with a Kubrick stare in the last moments of the second Seijoh vs. Karasuno game, when his desire to win overtook him with incredible force.

Without loss there naturally can’t be any wins, and without sadness there will be no joy in laughter.

We need the different depictions of what one might call madness, to fill our stories with nuance that relies on our reality.

Be it an unknown entity, hunger for power, lack of fear or the good old fashioned thrive for world domination.

Madness is just another part of what we call life, and to be honest in healthy doses and for effect why not enjoy it in anime?

Now, do you guys know any other characters or concepts in anime that would be worth mentioning? I would love to see them in the comments!

Until then, stay sane!

-Nissa

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obeyme-kaidii · 4 years ago

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Lesson 46 Summary

The adventures continue as MC learns more about Beel.

**SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT**

In the morning, everyone meets Little D Number 2 outside, and he agrees to show them the way to the Casino where Mammon is supposed to be. Number 2 teases Beel about how tired he is, suggesting he had “quite a fun night”, which annoys Lucifer.

Once at the Casino, the group immediately runs into Mammon (who is wearing his Arabian outfit). He seems to thoroughly be enjoying himself within the video game and playing his role, and moves to snatch Lucifer. Just like in a video game, a message pops up announcing his entrance, and then Mammon proceeds to cast a spell.

As Lucifer gets taken, MC remembers Beel and uses their powers to cast a spell that strengthens Beel, causing him to shift into his demon form. Beel comments that his body seems to be moving on its own, and soon he’s canceled out Mammon’s spell. A powerful blast of wind then knocks Mammon backwards.

Beel then returns to his regular form, and asks MC if they did that. Solomon explains that yes, that was a result of MC learning to control Beel’s power. But he also explains that MC hasn’t figured out all of Beel’s power, so the test continues.

Lucifer thanks MC for rescuing him, and then turns his sights on Mammon. Mammon starts to panic a little, and begs for mercy.

The group returns to Number 2, and he thanks them for their help getting his money back from the “Greedy Monster”. As a reward, he gives them Beel’s Lord of Flies armor set at a discounted price. After Beel equips the new armor, Number 2 informs them that there’s a rumor “Demon Lord Satan” has attacked a nearby town.

As they journey towards Satan’s rumored location, Lucifer mentions he’s looking forward to returning to his normal size just so he can punish Mammon. Beel comments that Lucifer used to be nicer to Mammon back when they were in the Celestial Realm, but Lucifer insists he doesn’t remember what he’s talking about. Beel doesn’t believe him though, and brings up that Lucifer and Mammon often used to work together to argue with Raphael (who it seems to be being positioned as the Big Bad for this Season, IMO).

Solomon asks if it was Diavolo’s influence that caused Lucifer to become more rigid. He also points out that since they started as angels, becoming demons of such high status had to be hard. (Which is actually pretty interesting because up until now we’ve mostly been operating on the assumption that Diavolo immediately gave them their positions as Avatars after the fall. But it now sounds like they had to earn the right for those titles.) Beel however seems surprised to hear that that might be the case, and Lucifer once again pretends he’s forgotten.

Solomon then hears a noise that everyone first assumes might be Beel’s stomach, but they soon realize it’s a group of ghosts. At which point Solomon recalls overhearing some towns folk talking about these woods, and he just forgot to mention it, which annoys both Beel and Lucifer.

After running from the ghosts, the group takes safety next to a lake that seems to be protected by some sort of guardian spirit. The decision is then made that they should camp there for the night.

Some time later, MC wakes up and finds Beel already awake. MC is given the opportunity to join him and the two talk, careful not to wake Solomon or Lucifer. Beel tells MC he was thinking about what was discussed earlier - and how Lucifer isn’t the only one who is different. He admits that as an angel he didn’t use to constantly eat back then. He says that he doesn’t remember exactly what triggered the change, but one day he just stopped resisting. (which is pretty interesting, if you think about it, and opens up a whole host of theories and possibilities lore wise 🧐)

Beel also mentions that there are some things that are the same, such as the fact his brothers have always been part of his life and will continue to be. ❤️🥺❤️ Beel then admits to MC that he’s worried about fighting Belphie in the game, and doesn’t think that he’ll be able to protect them and Lucifer if that’s the case. MC is given the option of comforting Beel, who admits that he’s pretty lucky, all things considered, to have a “problem” like not knowing who to protect first because he loves so many people.

The following morning, everyone wakes up and prepares to leave. Beel mentions that he’s glad they weren’t attacked while they slept, and Solomon teases him about his late night “activities” which makes poor Beel blush, and annoys Lucifer.

Once the group starts traveling again, Lucifer points out that it’s been over 24hrs now so Solomon should turn him back. But Solomon is quick to point out since they are in a video game, it’s actually only been a couple hours in the real world, so Lucifer has to continue to stay as he is.

Beel then notices a treasure chest in the road and Solomon immediately suggests opening it. Even if MC urges him to be cautious and warns it might be a trap, he still insists that opening it is the best course of action (how is this man not dead yet???). While Solomon, MC, and Lucifer are discussing what to do about the chest, Beel opens it hoping to find food. Instead, there are 3 objects inside - a magical jar that protects the contents, healing herbs, and a pair of cat ears. (lolololol) Beel suggests putting Lucifer in the bottle and Lucifer glares at him. Beel then looks like a kicked puppy. 🥺

The sky suddenly darkens and Satan appears, explaining that opening the chest triggered the battle. Like Mammon, he too is very much enjoying himself and his time in the video game. Beel and Solomon are both quick to recognize that Satan’s appearance isn’t good, because when things like this happen in video games, you’re almost always forced to lose the battle for the sake of story progression.

Lucifer then turns to MC and tells them to use one of the items from the treasure chest. (Using the Cat Ears I think generates the most entertaining response.) Regardless of what option you choose, Lucifer still ends up in the enchanted bottle and Satan captures him, leaving Belphie behind to deal with everyone else. (yes, Belphie just pops up out of nowhere)

Belphie, however, isn’t too thrilled by this whole thing and complains about Satan. When Beel hesitates to fight Belphie, it’s Belphie who encourages him that it’ll be alright. Because 1) it’s a video game and 2) he’s much stronger now and doesn’t need to be protected. Beel has a moment of realization and turns to MC, letting them know he is confident he can protect them now and won’t hold back anymore, choosing instead to trust them completely.

MC then casts a spell to empower Beel, causing him to once again shift into his demon form, and Belphie is quickly defeated. Impressed by MC’s power, Belphie is eager to switch sides and join their party. All he wants is a chance to poke mini Lucifer, to which MC agrees. Beel and Solomon also admit to wanting to poke Lucifer. 😂 Solomon then suggests they spend the night at a nearby inn.

Meanwhile, Mammon and Levi are talking at Demon Lord Satan’s Castle. Levi is saying Mammon is no longer part of the game because he was too easily defeated, which makes Mammon sad. (Because he’s a geek and just wants to be included 🥺)

As the two bicker, Satan arrives with mini Lucifer, still trapped in the bottle. Both are very excited about seeing mini Lucifer, with Levi even calling him cute. Mammon then suggests that now is the perfect time to get revenge for all the evil stuff Lucifer has done to him over the centuries.

Like the time that he tied him up and tickled him until he cried while he hung from the ceiling.

(wait, what? THATS the worst he’s ever done?)

Levi also chimes in with a memory of one time Lucifer was truly horrible to him and refused to sign for a package that was being delivered by Akuzon, instead returning the item for a refund. 😱

(...may I present to you the Demon Lords of Hell...the most powerful beings in all the Devildom…)

Lucifer reminds Levi, Mammon, and Satan that he is going to punish them for whatever they do to him when he’s small, once he returns to his normal size. Satan then moves to take Lucifer out of the bottle, but the spell on the bottle prevents him from doing so. Levi makes an offhand remark about Lucifer essentially being a collectible figure, which gives Satan an idea.

Satan then proceeds to dress Lucifer up in various outfits using his magic (all his outfits from the events), and Mammon and Levi are both surprised that that is his idea of fun. But Levi points out that Satan is clearly enjoying this and it’s actually like his way of bonding with Lucifer (because clearly admitting to his true feelings would be the worst possible thing).

That evening, Beel, Belphie, Solomon, and MC enjoy dinner at the inn before retiring to their rooms. Solomon has managed to book two separate rooms tonight, which Belphie points out he did just so he could share a room with MC all by himself.

Later that night, MC wakes up to find that Solomon is still awake. When MC asks him what’s wrong, he admits that he was watching the twins earlier and was jealous about the deep relationship they had with one another. He laments the fact that even though he’s lived for centuries he doesn’t have someone like that in his life. If MC asks him about it, he admits that he thought he once had such a person but perhaps the feeling wasn’t mutual. 🥺 (my theory is this is the apprentice mentioned in Lesson 45, the one that founded the Sorcerer’s Society)

After thinking for a moment, Solomon then looks at MC and points out that this scene is another common one in RPG games, where important story points are told. He asks MC if they think that’s what’s going to happen tonight, and MC is given the option of kissing him. (which OMG was the sweetest most heartbreaking kiss scene and goddammit I think I’m now a simp for Solomon) Solomon admits that he didn’t think he ever had a chance with MC since the Brothers are always around them. He then asks MC to come a little closer (and presumably kisses them again).

The next day, Solomon is in a very good mood (I guess finally kissing the person you’ve spent over 2 years pining for will do that to a guy). Belphie is quick to realize why Solomon is in such a good mood, and starts to make the same joke that was made before (about having “fun”), but gives up, leaving Beel slightly confused. Solomon then asks Belphie how they are supposed to get to Satan’s castle, and Belphie says that’s easy - he just uses a spell to summon a portal and BAM they are there.

Beel points out if they had just used the portal last night, they wouldn’t have had to stay at the inn. And Belphie explains that yeah that’s true, but then “fun things” wouldn’t have been able to happen. The comment makes Solomon laugh as he agrees that that wouldn’t have been good at all if they had used the portal and avoided the inn. Poor Beel is still confused. (and is it just me or is Belphie acting like Solomon’s wingman…?)

The group then hears raised voices, and finds Satan taunting Lucifer, who is still in the bottle and now dressed in his wolf outfit. Satan gives the bottle containing Lucifer a little shake, making Lucifer feel nauseated.

MC then is given the opportunity to tell Satan to stop, and Lucifer is embarrassed at being seen as he is (and probably relieved too). Satan asks MC if they are sure they’re ready to battle him, since they skipped a lot of the game by using Belphie’s portal, and might not be strong enough to defeat him.

MC is able to talk to Satan, explaining to him that they value his relationship with his own brothers more than the test, and convincing Satan to let Lucifer go. Beel also chimes in, telling Satan that he knows how much he cares for Lucifer, even if he’s afraid to say it. He also turns to Lucifer and tells him that he needs to be more honest with Satan. Satan is a bit embarrassed by everything being said, but Lucifer lets him know that he never said Satan wasn’t his own demon, or that he wasn't great, so he isn’t sure why he seems to think that’s how Lucifer feels. (which is as close to an apology and compliment as we are probably going to get with this emotionally constipated lot)

Satan decides to accept Lucifer’s “olive branch” and returns Lucifer to MC (by tossing him lol). Once Lucifer is again safe, Beel asks if that means they have beat the game, and wonders what the point of it all was. Solomon then reveals himself to be the true Final Boss, and the one behind the entire thing.

Solomon explains that while he is very impressed with MC and how well they did defeating their opponents thus far, that the test was actually about unlocking Beel’s full potential, which they have not yet done. So, he’s going to give his “adorable apprentice” one last chance to prove themselves.

He then summons Asmo, who complains about how bored he’s been waiting for his turn to join everyone in the game. Solomon uses his powers to strengthen Asmo, who then turns to Beel and the battle begins. Asmo uses his “Charm” to paralyze Beel, but when MC calls for him, Beel breaks the charm. MC casts their own spell, empowering Beel, and he attacks Asmo in return. Asmo is absolutely shocked at how powerful Beel is now. Solomon, even though he’s losing, is very impressed by MC and the power they’ve been able to draw out of Beel. He ignores Asmo’s pleas for help, and MC wins the battle.

(NOTE - in the previous Summary, I blamed Simeon for alerting the brothers. Since it’s actually Solomon that planned the whole thing from the beginning, I guess I kinda have to make a note of that to be fair. But like...I still don’t like Simeon anymore soooo...)

Finally back in the real world, Lucifer (now his normal size), MC, and Beel are enjoying a quiet moment on the back patio near the pool. MC shows Lucifer and Beel their star that they earned from the test.

Screams are then heard coming from inside (presumably Levi and Mammon), and Beel asks if anyone hears anything, which Lucifer denies (he totally hears them). As Lucifer continues to relax, enjoying his wonderful evening, a flashback is shown to dinner time -

Mammon is sobbing, when Solomon comments on how wonderful it is that he must be enjoying his cooking so much that it’s moved him to tears. Solomon encourages Levi to have some more, but it seems he’s passed out already, so he offers the extra portion to Satan instead. Asmo complains about why he has to be there, and when Satan realizes that Belphie is missing, Asmo is impressed with him for having managed to escape. Solomon then makes a comment that he thinks Lucifer is a really nice guy because he didn’t punish him like he thought he would, but instead invited him to stay for dinner and let him do the cooking. (which...damn Luci 😂)

Back in the present, Beel and MC take a walk while Lucifer enjoys the distant sounds of his brother's “screams of agony”.

Beel tells MC that he’s glad he had the opportunity to go through that experience and strengthen his bond with MC. He says the star MC earned is proof of how close they are, and then asks MC if they remember when he gave them his own star at the end of Season 2. He promises to treasure the star, and shares a kiss with MC, telling them once again that he loves them.

Beel then mentions that he feels like he’s forgetting about someone, but decides it’s not important. (hint: it’s Diavolo. They’ve forgotten about Diavolo.)

Favorite Scenes -

It’s a trap!

The power of cats

Geeky Mammon

True evil

Lonely Solomon

Solomon kisses

Emotional manipulation

Lucifer’s revenge

Aren’t we forgetting something...?

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me spoilers #obey me lesson 46 #obey me lesson 46 spoilers #obey me lesson summary #obey me lesson 46 summary

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dangerous-disposition · 5 years ago

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On Tragedy vs. Bad Endings

[Image ID: user @frostyfrogz replied to your post “my mag171 #thots: I fully agree with. I love jonmartin I want nothing but the best for them. I know my answer today was an obvious twisting of dialogue but its just frustrating sometimes because it seems like people dont understand some sort of tragedy will indeed happen. I have never and will never suggest that something will happen to Jon and Martin’s relationship I’ve just been saying the shows not going to end well no matter what.]

So I have a lot of thoughts about this very subject, and too much for the replies on my post, so allow me to try to articulate what I mean, and what a lot of us mean when we say “it does not make sense for either Jon or Martin to turn evil in the end,” even in a show that has been advertised from day one as a tragedy.

First of all, no one thinks this is going to end happy. The few who do are usually unaware that this show is billed as a tragedy, and are quick to be corrected. I didn’t know it was a tragedy until I was on season 3 and someone told me. It’s overall just best to assume that the OP knows it’s not going to be a happy ending, because “reminding” people or “explaining” to people that the ending is going to be sad is a fast way from people to get annoyed and defensive.

Anyway! It appears, above all, that people have either fundamentally different ideas of what a tragedy is or accomplishes, or that people have a fundamentally flawed understanding of tragedy and it’s place as a narrative device/theme.

My thoughts are that tragedies hurt, and tragedies can be devastating, but they have to have a message and they should not be cruel to the audience.

A cruel ending would involve leading the audience to believe one thing for the entire book, show, movie, podcast, what have you, just to rip it away at the last minute like a big “fuck you” to the audience. Those sorts of endings are inherently mocking of the audience, and ultimately disrespectful. The only people in the audience that “benefit” from this sort of writing are the cynics who spent the entire show talking down to everyone for seeing the silver lining in the impending tragedy, even if, up until the finale, the silver lining was always part of the narrative. Like it took actual twisting and outright ignoring of the narrative as it’s written to be cynical and sceptical all the way until the end.

That is, plain and simple, bad writing. Jonny Sims is not a bad writer.

Now tragedies often have “happy endings,” they just also have an element of sadness colouring that ending. A good, tragic ending should, in my opinion, feel bittersweet. We should see it coming, we should know it will hurt, but it should be for the greater good and should further the narrative that has been told from the beginning.

I said a few weeks ago that a tragic ending without a silver lining is just torture porn, and I stand by it.

Now, if Jon or Martin are revealed to be Actually Evil in the end, where is the silver lining in that? What narrative has even possibly hinted at this outcome, without putting on cynic glasses?

Every single plot point and plot “twist” in TMA has been clearly detailed, never relegated to pure subtext that you would have to comb through a single interraction and analyzing the tone in which it was said (which could easily be actor shortcomings or error). They have always been obvious, at least in hindsight. This is why, for a while, I subscribed to the Web!Martin theory, but due to recent episodes I’m more inclined to believe those “obvious things” were red herrings.

Throughout The Magnus Archives, the common theme in every. Single. Season finale is that “we are stronger together.” What do I mean by that? Well, here’s the general idea:

Season 1: The one time someone gets separated by the group for any significant length of time, like I mean the main group, she gets killed by the NotThem and replaced.

Season 2: Jon is alone, due to his intense paranoia and his reluctance to reach out for help. This leads to a disastrous series of events that leaves him a suspect of murder, and his friends even more doubtful of his character.

Season 3: In the episode just before they deal with the Unknowing, Jon literally says that isolation was his downfall, and he was going to work on trusting his friends more. When they got separated during the Unknowing, things went to shit. When they found each other again, they were able to rally and they “succeeded.” Conversely, they are also teamed up with Melanie and Martin who hung back to bring down Elias. They were successful, working as teams on separate objectives, etc.

Season 4: This is, by far, their most “successful” feats while simultaneously their least. The whole season was again showing the downfalls of isolation. In the season finale, Jon has Basira and Daisy’s help, and while bolstering himself with their strength, and the strength in his conviction to save Martin to be with Martin, Jon was successful in stopping Peter Lukas and saving Martin. Conversely, Martin and Jon’s isolation in Scotland could be, theoretically, implicated in how Jonah Magnus was able to succeed in the end like that.

Now evidence of this same train of thought in season 5? Jon literally says it: Gertrude would not have done well in this post-apocalyptic world, because she had no friendships, no anchors, no reason to stay human. And then Jon says “you are my reason” to Martin.

It is in the text of the story that the only way to succeed, or win, or survive, is through trust, friendship, and love. One of the main factors in so many of the statements, on why the statement givers succumbed to the fear in their story, for even a moment, had to do with very little personal ties to anyone else. Many of the statements feature isolation and, as Jon put it, “lack of corroboration.” On the flipside, many of the statements that ended with the statement giver escaping successfully, and surviving long enough to be reached out to for follow-up questions, involved them having close personal ties to someone else that kept them safe, somehow. Like the girl from Italy; remembering her mom saved her from the Lonely. Or, more ridiculously, the guy and his dog that escaped the spiral because he was so distracted by his dog and had to be home for dinner. In MAG170, it was Martin’s love for Jon, and his trust in the love from Jon and his friends, that saved him from the Lonely again. Jon’s incredible amount of love, and respect, and trust in his friends is what’s kept him from becoming another Jared Hopworth or Jude Perry. In MAG155, Cost of Living, he expresses open disgust in how that particular avatar of The End justified her actions, killing and killing and killing again because she viewed herself as more worthy of life than that person. In that same episode, he talks of not blinding himself because he hopes to use his powers to protect his friends, that without them they’re too vulnerable. Honestly, this is the same reason Peter Lukas is unsuccessful, because Martin only helped him at all to protect his friends. The fact that he didn’t see his failure coming was hilarious.

Gerry said in Family Business that there is no “entities of love”, and that might be true, but love and trust is literally what saves you from fear. How many of us deal with things that are scary in our lives, if only because we have some level of trust in the people or things around us. How many of us have been brought out of a panic attack by someone we love and trust?

So all of this has been presented to us, over and over and over again, which is what I, and others, mean when we say “it does not make sense for one of them to be evil.” That’s what we mean when we say “it would be Bad Writing to make one of them evil in the end.” The entire show has driven home the message that we need love, we need personal connections to survive fear. To rip that away from the main characters at the last minute and call it “tragedy” would be a spit in the face of every single listener who took the story at face value, without picking it apart and reading lines out of context. And Jonny Sims and Alex J. Newall have both said they hate lazy writing.

Now, none of the JonMartin fans I follow are deluding themselves to think this show will have a happy ending outside of very self-indulgent fix-it au fanfics.

The way I see this going down is that Jon and Martin will figure out how to put the world back to the way it was, but Jon will not be able to be part of the new world with Martin. That’s the tragedy; that the world gets saved, and Jon helps save it, but he doesn’t get to benefit from his efforts in any way. The tragedy is Jon loves Martin so much, and they deserve their happy ending, but they don’t get it. But, they still saved the world so others can have their happy endings.

Idk about you, but between the “Jon turns evil in the end” and “Jon stays good and sacrifices himself to save the world” endings, only one of them has me in tears right now as I type this out, and it’s not the former.

I’m not against sad endings,I’m against bad endings that punish the audience for having even a bittersweet hope. I’m against sad endings that are just sad for the sake of being sad, with zero pay-off or reason to happen, especially when those endings throw out 5 years of hard work.

And hey, I might just be forced to eat my words in the end, but not before I fly all the way to England and make Jonny Sims eat a knuckle sandwich.

This was a lot longer than I meant for it to be, but I just have a lot of feelings.

#jonmartin #the magnus archives #tma #tma spoilers #THE POWER OF LOVE AND TRUST WILL SAVE THE WORLD #also idk the proper format of like image id's but i didn't want to NOT type out the reply #my mag thots #500 notes

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Star Vs Tom Luictor Retrospective Detour: Skooled!

Dedicated to Jessica Walter 1941- 2021

Welcome back all you still mourning people to Prince of Wishful Thinking, my Tom Lucitor Retrospective... or at least a detour from it as I need to cover the Meteora arc to cover Divide/Conquer properly. When we last left off with Star she and Tom were going closer, but both are taking a break this time. We’ll get back to them in April... oh will we get back to them in april. For now we’re back to Meteora who I forgot was ABSENT for a while. not forever, but while her parantege, the cover up related to her and all of that has been vitally important, Meteora herself vanished after Monster Party and hasn’t been seen till now. But i’ts a good storytelling engine.. it ratchets up tension for her inevitable return, and gives us time to find out what happened with her and let that sink in.. granted i’td also be the last time it sunk in but I can dunk on the series decline later... I still have season 4 episodes to cover after all. So join me under the cut as we get the welcomed Return of Henious, an unexpected hero.. and Ponyhead because this series clearly hasn’t hurt me enough. And as usual for my Star Vs Reviews, i’d like to thank one of my Best Friends @jess-the-vampire for her insight on this episode. It’s always welcome and she always manages to find something I didn’t think of .

So we open at Saint O’s with Ponyhead returning to the school, having previously run it post rebellion before leaving because.. I don’t know. She probably got tired of being a leader, and out of universe they needed her to be around star more. Look the series has far more important things it never explained and never will, not explaining why a recklessly irresponsible asshole left a position of authority and responsibility I can let slide.

She’s come for brunch but things have changed... the school is still a warm, free environment for princesses to better themselves and party hardy, no longer an oppressive brainwashing gulag run by someone who as it turned out was horribly brainwashed herself.. it’s just now it actually has rules and structure.

It now also has an actual leader, Princess Patty Arms who showed up in the school’s previous appearance this season here and.. that’s it. I think she showed up in the background of the original st o’s episode. And it’s a shame because she’s a really fascinating character. No really she’s calm, dosen’t take Pony’s shit, and while a brunch exam SEEMS like a waste of time... it really isn’t. A good meal can loosen up a dignitary and some rulers have sticks up their keisters about things like this, so being able to do it just right can win them over. It’s still a touch ridiculous but given the world of star is a touch ridiculous to start with, it works.

Pony naturally leaves in a rage over this especially when no one backs her up.. but soon the School has bigger issues and we get to why we’re actually here: Meteora is back. And while she has changed, now having grown larger and stronger, easily scaling the wall, she still wants payback and we get a damn fine battle sequence as the princesses all unite against their former tormentor. It’s also sad in hindsight.. because as Jess pointed out to me almost NONE of these characters show up again. And I only added the almost because Penelope is in there. They all seem interesting, the setting of ST O’s itself is interesting, and the idea of a school for princesses of various types is a cool idea. I’ts something the show could’ve come back to to see how they bounce back from this attack.. but like most cool background elements in the show they forget about it. It was intresting to see the schools slow evolution from horrible nightmare to princess ran utopia and like many things coming up it feels like a lost opportunity.

That being said the fight is awesome, with Meteora proving to be a juggernaut in strength and outplanning her enimies, having brought an overide switch for the robots (Patty reprogrammed them to work for the school) and having them throw their hearts/ power sources as bombs. It’s a damn fine sequence as she finds way after way to keep going, with a now restored rasticore helping them simply portal in.

Pony meanwhile.. is hiding , as Patty find sout when she finds her, and Pony assumes this is about her... though for once i’ts not JUST ego.. but because she was one of the two who started the uprising at the school in the first place and THE person who tossed her out. We also get a nice character moment as while Pony tells patti she still hates her.. she puts the princess behind her when Meteora approaches. She may be a selfish twit whose massively unlikeable.. but she has a good heart.. and not just the one she keeps in a jar she got from one of her boyfriends.

But Meteora has more important buisness and finds her way to the depths of St. O’s.. where we meet the Schools namesake and her adopted mother a robot played by tress macneile.. another thing the series never bothered to care about as where did these robots come from and why?

Turns out Meteora came to find out her own personal history, with the remote from before used to find the real dirt.. and what we find .. is heartbreaking as we slowly journey back through Meteora’s childhoods as Henious.. and it’s fucking heart breaking with Tress voicing her younger versions, hence why I didn’t use this as the jessica tribute as while walter’s good in the episode, she isn’t given much.

We see her as a teen, forced to hide her tail and insulted over it by her mother.. and it only gets worse as when her cheeks glow as a kid St. O tries to wash them off and we get the poor child desperately begging that “she can be better”

We do finally get the answers Meteora saught as we see Shastacan dropping off the baby meteora, calling her “Henious”.. which St. O took as her name. Proving the spiderbites minus penelope’s dickishness is indeed genetic and why I have no sympathy for the prick getting eaten later... and hopefully globgor will do an encor with penepople’s parents. Here’s hoping.

So Meteora now knows she’s the rightful queen, and decides to go take it back.. though Pony does try to stand up for her friends... and while we don’t see it hte next episode confirms she got her horn ripped the fuck off. And this horribly traumatic injury.. is magically fixed via 3d printing next time we see her after an episode grappling iwth it instead of having pony deal with not having a horn, or her prostetic not giving her magic powers again. Because this show again really likes to leave good ideas out to rot in the sun like that package of hamburger I left out in the sun yesterday. And I actually had a reason there: I need a lot of Racoons for an elaborate scheme involving a map to tex cruz’s house, a used apache helicopter and a bulk order of tiny parachutes.

We do get some payoff to things though, as Henious comes on to rasticore who not so politely rejects her for being nuts.. before it’s revealed Gemini, her loyal servant is also a robot and she uses his heart to blow up rasticore and take the arm with her... which is ALSO never brought up again. Seriously this episode is so full of loose ends i’m suprised it just dosen’t end with Zuko asking his dad about his mother. Gemini’s death is genuinely tragic as his last words are “If you wanted my heart.. all you had to do.. was assssskkkkk”. God damn. So with that Meteora heads out to reclaim her birthright.. no matter the cost.

Final Thoughts on Skooled!: This one is decent.. but like the last episode I covered, the lack of payoff off for almost anything here, excluding the Meteora plotline and the Pony thing which instead got a BAD payoff, is really starting to rear it’s ugly head as the series greatest weakness. Yes bigger than the romance plot. And given that romance plot after this season can be best discribed as...

youtube

The show just.. forgets a good chunk of things happened to keeep things chugging along. It sets UP plots, what happens to st o’s from here, buff frog and a small caravan of monsters leaving forever, the message from shastacan, who built the st o’s robots, and on and on.. but it never PAYS them off. It dosen’t care to. It just does things so the plot can move but never bothers to think about the fucking consequences. It just gets more and more irrtating to think about as other shows throughly DO: Amphibia has the fact the characters get into shenanigans become a commented on running gag and something they grow past, and everything that happens matters. Every episode of Owl House builds on the foundation of the previous episodes. OK Ko dosen’t forget one episode had the characters not be able to turn back into humans and implies their wearing human costumes for the rest of the series. Which is fucking weird, but it was their memory. My point is other shows around the same time or right after didn’t magically forget things happened for convience sake. While it’s OKAY to loose some things in the shuffle, it happens to the best of us, it’s not okay to do it SO fucking often and with no clear care for the audiences desire for payoff. The show just ignores what plot points, like the huge cliffhanger of Star telling marco how she felt at the end of season 2, it dosen’t care about till it needs them and ignores the ones it never does. You can’t just.. bring shit up like it’s important and then try and forget it ever happened. People remember stuff, we are NOT stupid. KIDS are not stupid. When I was younger I REMEMBERED things that happened on KND, Danny Phantom, Xiaolin Showdown, TMNT 2003, because those shows, which are from decades ago, knew I would and trusted even if I missed something and was thrown off i’d tune in for the quality.

And in an age of streaming and more story based tv you can’t just.. ask kids to act like something they saw didn’t happen because your fucking lazy and frankly YOU never should have. Kids deserve better, my niblings deserve better and frankly the adults your clearly also writing for.. deserve better. This episode is eh, but the problems it represents are so fucking worse.

Next time on tom. If you thought I got angry towards the end of this one, just you wait. Next time i’ts Booth Buddies. Yeah.. yeah that one. Stay tuned.

#star vs the forces of evil #skooled #lilica ponyhead #meteora butterfly #gemini #rasticore #patty arms #rat princess #penelope spiderbite #saint olga #saint olgas #disney xd #disney plus #disney channel

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lyranova · 4 years ago

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A Fractured Diamond:

Episode 9: Neva vs Llyr

Hi guys! I’m so sorry its been so long since I’ve posted a chapter of this, I’ve been busy with other fics and series and haven’t really felt inspired for this lately. But I got hit with the inspiration recently and finally finished it 😁! This is the last part to this ‘arc’ so I hope you all enjoy~!

Taglist: @thoughtfullyrainynightmare @succulentsunrise @jovialnoise

Word Count: 4,528

Warnings: Violence

Neva rolled her shoulders back as she heard the announcer shout. This was it, she felt her nervousness from a moment ago slowly fall away. She needed to put Llyr and Langris out of her mind for now, she had to focus on the task at hand. She turned to look at Sonas and Lavis, they were just standing there, apparently they didn’t have any idea what they were supposed to be doing. She sighed and shook her head, they were useless.

“ Ok, since neither of you have mapping spells can you at least sense mana decently?” She asked as she crossed her arms, they would need to move soon before the other team discovered their location.

“ U-Um…not really.” Sonas muttered softly, Lavis shrugged his shoulder.

“ I’m decent, but not as good as most.” Neva growled in irritation.

“ Well what are you two good at?!” She snarled, she needed to do well, she wanted to be a part of the Royal Knights and she would be damned if she didn’t make it because of these two! “ Whatever. Just stay here and guard the crystal. I’ll take care of the other team.” She quickly equipped her Effervescent Armor and took off before either of her teammates could say a word.

“ Well she’s in a mood.”

——-

Yuno watched as Neva seemed to almost glide across the battlefield, she seemed to know exactly where the other team and their crystal was. Her mana sensing was quite impressive, but it didn’t help that the other team was already on their way to where Neva’s team was situated so she was at least a level 4. He watched as she summoned a crystal pillar to pierce through the other team's mode of transportation. Her armor disappeared and she began to use Diamond Shower to attack from long range and Diamond Palisade to block the team's attacks.

‘She has gotten much stronger.’ Yuno thought somewhat proud, the thing was; Neva didn’t realize how much stronger she had gotten in the past few weeks, anytime they trained she would always mutter how she needed to get stronger, how she was still too weak, how she couldn’t call herself a member of the Golden Dawn until she was able to beat someone with the same magic type as her. He shook his head slightly, she was putting too much pressure on herself. But the more he watched the more his suspicions were confirmed. These three mages she was fighting against, they were all decently strong and she was handling them with ease. Not a single spell was able to hit her. Suddenly, he watched as a single Diamond Arrow shot out of her hand went straight through the other team's crystal; they had left themselves wide open to an attack.

“ Crystal Destroyed!” Rang out through the battlefield, Yuno watched as the teams walked away from each other and climbed onto the small disks that would float them back up to where the other knights stood.

“ I told you; she doesn’t work well in teams.” Klaus muttered as he pushed his glasses up, Yuno turned to look at him.

“ But, she works well with us!” Mimosa argued, but everyone had seen it. She went rogue.

“ Yes. But the key word there is us, she knows us and has learned how to work with and around our affinities.” Klaus argued before they heard heels click against the stone ground, Yuno turned and saw the fair haired girl in question walking towards them.

Neva was breathing heavier than she would have liked, the battle really wore her out, it also used a lot more mana than she wanted. She shouldn’t have used her armor, but she wanted to get the battle done and over with as quickly as possible. She wiped the small beads of sweat off her brow with the back of her hand as she walked over to the others. Yuno’s eyes were narrowed slightly.

“ What’s wrong?” Neva asked as she stood in front of him.

“ Nothing. You did very well out there.” He answered simply, Neva quirked her eyebrow. She was sensing a ‘but’ in that statement.

“ But?” She pushed slightly, Yuno was a terrible liar or at least when it came to little white lies anyway.

“ But you need to remember this is a team test. You can’t just abandon them like that and go off on your own, that’ll most likely disqualify you if you do it again.” Yuno explained, his usual monotone voice held a certain sternness to it. Neva gritted her teeth, she knew he was right, but that didn’t mean she liked it.

“ Says the guy who told me to use them as decoys.” She threw back, Yuno blinked in surprise for a moment before he looked away in shame, he did tell her to do that didn’t he?

“ I shouldn’t have said that.” he admitted softly, causing her to sigh as well. Everyone in this test had been dealt a bad hand. Some worse than others.

“ What do you suggest I do then? Since I can’t go off on my own?” She asked him before crossing her arms, she watched Yuno think for a moment before he did a small half shrug.

“ Adapt.” He told her simply. Neva blinked, that was it? To adapt?! That was all the advice he could give her?! She shook her head before walking past him for a moment and coming to stand next to him, she watched as a small team cleaned the field for the next team.

“ Easy for you to say, you can adapt easily. I...I’m not so lucky.” She muttered under her breath, Yuno frowned, she was decent at adapting in his eyes. Sure she wasn’t as good as others, but she was still decent. Before he could open his mouth to argue his team had been called.

“ Looks like it's your turn.” Neva said as she turned to look at him, a small smirk on her face. Yuno nodded before walking towards his team.

“ Hey Yuno,” he turned as he suddenly heard Neva call him, his breath hitched in his throat slightly. She was smiling softly, like at the Star Festival. “ Good Luck.” All Yuno could do was nod in response before he turned and stood on the small platform that would take him and his team down to the small battlefield. He had seen that smile two times before, so why did it still make him feel...weird? Like he couldn’t breathe. He quickly shook his head, there wasn’t time for any of that, he needed to focus on the task at hand.

———

Neva watched silently as Yuno and his team entered the battlefield, she was nervous, even though she knew he would be alright. She didn’t really know why she was nervous for him though.

‘Maybe because you don’t want him to get hurt, hm?’ That little voice in her head teased. She quickly shook her head, no, that wasn’t it! That couldn’t be it! But a small part of her did wonder if that little voice could be correct, when Neva thought about it she was nervous when Mimosa and Klaus were fighting as well. She paled instantly, no, that was the complete opposite of what she wanted! She had to keep her distance, the walls needed to stay up, for everyone's sake. She heard the announcer begin the match and watched as Yuno and his team split up. He took charge almost as soon as they had landed on the field, he knew what he was going to do, and he expected them to follow.

Neva watched him in awe, the way he moved on the field...it was amazing! The way he used his affinity to carry himself, the way he was able to use both offensive and defensive spells at the same time without using very much mana. It was one thing when she fought alongside him, and another when she was watching him. She never noticed the way he flicked his wrist when he went to use one of his many offensive spells, or the way he clenched his jaw when his opponent made a counter move, or the way he seemed more comfortable in the air than on the ground. He carried himself differently on the battlefield than he did when he wasn’t, he was more confident, more comfortable here. This was his space. Neva hadn’t realized her mouth was slightly open in awe at him until she was snapped out of her thoughts by the one person she never wanted to see again.

“The Honest; always gives, but never takes.

A protagonist; never makes mistakes.

The honorable; always provides solace.

A leader; one that truly intimidates.

The true hero; the honest.

An honest man; is he.”

Llyr closed his poetry book with a soft ‘snap’. He came to stand beside Neva and watched as Yuno continued to dodge the lesser mage’s spells.

“ Are you trying to tell me something Llyr?” Neva asked in irritation, she hated his stupid vauge poems, ever since he was a kid he was always partial to that art form. He chuckled softly.

“ Maybe I am. But sadly, the message probably goes over your poor little head.” He sighed in disappointment. She glared at him.

“ Well I’m assuming the ‘honest man’ you’re referring to is Yuno, yes?” She asked with a smirk, she saw the genuine surprise on his face before he quickly covered it.

“ My, you have changed Neva. What a smart little girl you’ve become.” Neva growled, the way he was speaking to her, like she was a naive child, was really starting to piss her off.

“ You’ve got to the count of three to go away before I kick you across the field.” She warned, Llyr held his hands up in mock surrender before he laughed.

“ Aw don’t be that way Neva, I was only teasing. But you are correct, I was talking about Yuno.” He confirmed with a nod. “ May I ask you something?”

“ You’re going to ask anyway so I don’t see the point in you asking for permission.” She snapped, Llyr always did and said what he wanted, so why should he start asking for permission now?

“ How can you two be so close, and so similar, but yet be so different at the same time?” He asked, Neva turned to look at him in confusion.

“ What are you talking about? Yuno and I aren't very close.” She stated she didn’t think they were very close, or at least not closer than how squadmates usually were, he shrugged simply.

“ You sure? Because, it doesn’t look that way to me.” Llyr smirked slightly, causing Neva to roll her eyes at him. “ Y’know what I noticed? You didn’t deny that you were different, yet similar.”

Neva hmphed a bit, she had noticed their similarities a bit. Both were quiet, focused, and didn’t really want to make friends and yet they were different in the sense Yuno told everyone what he was thinking and didn’t have a problem telling them about his family, about the people back at his home in Hage village, while she, well, she didn’t talk about anything.

“ Crystal Destroyed!” Suddenly rang out, pulling Neva out of her thoughts, Yuno’s team had won and she missed it, because of Llyr!

“ Great thanks a lot.” Neva snapped, she had wanted to see all her squadmates' victories. The red haired man smirked and ‘tsked’.

“ What a shame you missed your boyfriend's overwhelming victory.” He tutted, Neva growled and she glared at him.

“ He is not my boyfriend!”

“ Whatever you say blondie, whatever you say.” He teased before walking away, she glared at the red heads retreating form. He was probably the most infuriating person on the planet, a small piece of her wondered how his fellow squadmates hadn’t killed him yet. She looked over when she saw Yuno and his team come over, Noelle walked past her to go speak with Asta and the other Black Bulls that had come to cheer her on while the man from the Green Mantis went over to be by himself, or that’s what Neva assumed anyway.

“ You did great out there.” Neva said with a smirk, she hadn’t gotten to see the entire match, but from what she had seen, and what she knew about him, it was probably an easy victory.

“ Thanks I guess. It wasn’t that difficult.” Yuno said quietly as the two watched a small crew begin to clean up again.

“ I didn’t figure it was.” She said with a small laugh, she figured most of these matches would be pretty easy for him, unless he went up against the Captain of the Aqua Deer or one of the Vice Captains. That would probably be the only time he would struggle.

The raven haired man and platinum haired woman stood in silence as the next team entered the field, neither really felt the need to constantly fill the silence with small talk like a lot of people felt they needed too, Neva had to admit it was nice not having to think of something to say. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and saw he appeared to be lost in thought, most likely about his next match. She sighed softly, she had been trying to think of a strategy herself, but considering her two teammates might as well be useful as a chocolate teapot in the middle of summer.

Neva blinked as suddenly the next team was already leaving the battlefield, what? When did she miss that? Yuno frowned as he looked over at her.

“ You alright?” He asked, he watched the blonde girl shake her head. The last time he looked at her she looked to be completely lost in thought, he shook his head, she was stressing herself out.

“ I’m fine, just...got lost in thought.” She laughed humorlessly, she frowned when Yuno made a disbelieving noise, but neither commented on it. She wondered why he had made that noise. Suddenly she watched his eyes widen and his mouth open slightly in shock. “ What’s wrong?” She asked before she followed his gaze up to the board. She gasped softly as her own eyes widened at the names.

The next two teams that would be going against each other were hers and Llyrs!

“Seriously?!” She said softly, why did the world have it out for her?! It wasn’t that he was stronger than her, it was that she had to deal with his personality on the battlefield. He was already annoying enough just speaking to him, she could only imagine how he was when you fought against him!

“ Well well well, if this isn’t a pleasant surprise.” Llyr laughed as he came up to stand beside Neva and Yuno, she gritted her teeth and glared at the red head who only smirked. “ I was hoping I’d get to test out your fighting skills today. Hopefully I won’t be disappointed.” He chuckled before walking towards his teammates.

Neva shook her head before she walked over to the small platform that would carry them down to the arena.

“ You’ll be ok Neva. You’ve got this.” She froze as she heard those words leave Yuno’s lips, she turned around to face him and he had his usual look on his face that she couldn’t read, but the look in his eyes showed he believed those words without a doubt. She smirked and nodded.

“ Thanks, Yuno.” She said as she stepped onto the platform with her teammates and floated down to the arena, she couldn’t help but sigh slightly in relief. She felt better knowing someone else believed in her.

———

Neva looked around, they had been dropped in a different location than before, they were in a small slightly worn down building that was surrounded by trees and foliage. She had to admit it was a good spot to hide in, well hidden, secluded. But it was also the perfect spot to be ambushed, so she made sure to keep her guard up. She looked over at Sonas and Lavis who just stood there looking around, she sighed in exasperation; these two were completely hopeless.

“ What’s the plan boss?” Lavis asked as he crossed his arms, Neva rolled her eyes; why did it always fall to her to come up with a plan? Did neither of them have a brain of their own?

“ I don’t know.” She confessed with a shrug, Sonas blinked and looked down at the ground.

“ L-Llyr is a really strong mage and his two teammates are as well, h-how are we going to beat them without a proper plan?” He asked nervously, Neva placed a hand under her chin thoughtfully.

Llyr was not dumb by any means, sure he liked to pretend he was dumb and aloof, but he was probably one of the most intelligent people she knew. She began to pace around the room as Lavis and Sonas watched her. Llyr’s main weakness was his pride, anger, and his ego. He believed he was more powerful than he actually was, now that wasn’t to say he wasn’t powerful, but she had gone against a lot more powerful people than him before. She smirked a bit as she was hit by a sudden idea, a memory from a previous conversation had popped into her head and she knew exactly how to beat Llyr!

“ I have an idea, but I’ll need you both to listen to me very carefully and follow my instructions exactly as I tell you. Do you understand?” Neva asked them, they both frowned but nodded.

Llyr sighed as he used his water magic to carry him, his teammates, and their crystal towards Neva and her team. He lucked out in getting a mage who had a mapping spell, so they were able to locate them pretty easily.

“ Huh.” The Blue Rose knight who was using the mapping spell suddenly muttered, causing Llyr to glance over at her.

“ What’s wrong? We’re almost there.” Llyr asked in mild annoyance, the girl frowned and looked up at him.

“ The group; they’re splitting up and going in completely different directions!” She exclaimed in surprise, Llyr smirked which only surprised the team more.

“ Ah, she’s taking a huge risk doing this. But is the gain really worth it?” He muttered to himself as he suddenly dropped the water transportation spell, he landed on his feet while the others landed flat on their faces.

“ She thinks she can weaken our team by separating us, making us all go in seperate directions.” He suddenly began to chuckle. “ But she forgets; it weakens her team as well. Where is the strongest mana coming from?” He asked the Blue Rose Knight, she looked at her mapping spell before answering.

“ Straight ahead. It’s a large concentration of mana but-.” She didn’t get to finish her sentence before he took off in the direction she pointed. “ H-Hey wait!” Llyr didn’t listen, he knew where there was a large amount of mana meant that Neva was there and, knowing her, she would be guarding the crystal herself!

Neva smirked as she stood in a small clearing, waiting for the red head to show up. She glanced at the crystal behind her, she hoped her plan would work, no, she knew her plan would work. She quickly faced forward before suddenly feeling mana approach her and saw Llyr flying towards her and her smirk widened; he brought his crystal with him.

What an idiot.

Llyr suddenly let out a yell as a wave of water came towards her, Neva quickly used ‘Diamond Palisade’ and a wall of diamond quickly appeared in front of her and blocked the water mages spell. Droplets of water splashed around her, some even landed on her cheeks, but she remained calm. There was no way he would be able to cut through her diamond.

“ Nice reflexes blondie.” Llyr smirked before he sent more and more waves of water towards her.

Neva either dodged or blocked them with her Diamond Wall, she would use her Diamond shower on occasion, but he was pretty fast himself. Llyr would dodge or capture it in a bubble of water before letting it drop to the ground. The more the two fought the more destruction they caused. Tree’s were being cut down, the ground was being destroyed. But worse of all; Neva was getting tired.

‘I...I used a lot more mana than I thought.’ Neva thought somewhat bitterly, she hadn’t meant to use so much earlier but she had no choice. She tried her best to defend the crystal, she couldn’t let him break it, that one thing held her chance at being a Royal Magic Knight!

“ Haha my my, the Diamond of the Golden Dawn is getting tired is she?” Llyr teased as he sent more waves of water towards her, that had been a title given to her shortly after she became a Magic Knight. She usually didn’t mind her title, even though it wasn’t used very much, but she absolutely hated the way it fell from his lips. Like he was mocking her accomplishment. She sent more Diamond shards towards him but again he dodged or captured them on bubbles. Neva began breathing heavily, she didn’t have much mana left.

“ Hah!” Llyr suddenly shouted, he sent a spear of water towards her and she made yet another wall, but as soon as the wall went down he sent a slash of water at her, but she didn’t have time to create another wall. The sharp edge of his water knife grazed her cheek before curving past her and cutting straight through the crystal. Neva heard the crystal shatter behind her and fell to her knees; this was it.

“ Hahaha! I can’t believe it, even after all this time you still can’t beat me and you’re supposed to be a part of the Golden Dawn!” Llyr laughed almost manically as he held his head high in triumph. “ At first I’ll admit, I thought you had really gotten stronger, especially since you’re in the Golden Dawn. But apparently, I was wrong. You’re still that weak little girl from many years ago who knew nothing about her magic and could only make little sculptures with it.” He stepped towards her and glowered down at her.

“ What a disappointment.”

Neva’s head shot up at that comment and Llyr’s eyes widened; she was smirking at him. Why? Why did she look like that? Like she had just won. That’s when it suddenly hit Llyr like a ton of bricks.

The announcer didn’t call out ‘Crystal Destroyed’. His blue eyes traveled towards where the crystal had sat only moments ago, he had destroyed it hadn’t he? So why wasn’t he being declared the victor? He growled as he looked at Neva’s smirking face again.

“ What did you do?!” He shouted in rage, and all Neva did was slam her hand to the ground and a diamond spear appeared behind him and pierced his team's crystal. He whipped around and stared as the shattered remains began to disappear. He gaped like a fish out of water, what the hell did she do?!

“ Crystal Destroyed!” The announcer shouted and Llyr felt his blood boil as the blonde stood up and held her head up high.

“ I listened to a friend's advice and used everyone as decoy’s.” She smirked as Yuno’s teasing words popped into her head. He had meant it jokingly, but it was actually a pretty good idea when she thought about it. She began to walk away from Llyr, he began to follow her and just glared at her back.

“ You see; I used my Diamond Magic to make 3 fake crystals that were nearly identical to the one we were given. In order to do that I had to use a lot of mana, plus I had to insert some of my, as well as my teammates, mana into them so your team wouldn’t be able to tell which ones were real and which ones were decoy’s. The real one was hidden in that old building behind me. I used your ego and against you Llyr, I knew you would come after me if the teams split up because you want to prove you're stronger than I am. Of course you failed because you let your pride get in the way of your intelligence.” Neva finished as she turned around to face him.

Llyr was pale. He had been played like a fool, and that made him angry. He began to shake violently, how dare she be so smug about this? How dare she think she’s better than him! He was able to beat her during their matches when they were kids, he was able to prove to everyone that he was better, stronger, and more capable than she was! He suddenly leapt forward to try and attack her, but Neva was quicker.

Without a second thought, the minute he got close enough Neva quickly kneed him in the groin, causing him to stop instantly and double over in pain. She shook her head and leaned forward to whisper in his ear.

“ You’ll never be better than me, not in a million lifetimes. Sure you can get strong, but I’ll get stronger. After all, I was gifted with more mana than you,” she smirked as she lowered her voice even more. “ commoner.”

The word slipped off her tongue like a slur, she watched as Llyr’s body stiffened and she could feel his rage bubbling. But he couldn’t say a single word to dispute her claim. She was born a noble, he was born a commoner. That’s why he had taken so much pride in beating her as children, because who would have ever thought a commoner would be able to beat a noble. She quickly turned around and walked away from him, sudden guilt beginning to eat away at her. She never threw her status in someone's face, it wasn’t who she was, but Llyr...he needed to learn to stop being so cocky all the time!

She glanced up at Klaus and Mimosa and saw them beaming with pride and happiness, even Yuno seemed to be slightly proud of her. But all she felt was shame. ‘Llyr deserved it, he wanted to call me weak and put me down, he deserved a taste of his own medicine!’ She tried to justify to herself, she quickly looked away from her squadmates and stood on the platform that would take her back up to the others.

Neva had thought she would be happy she had finally beat Llyr in a battle, but instead all she felt was guilt.

———

Ah I apologize this wasn’t very good but I hope you all enjoyed and I’m so sorry for the wait 😅! Hopefully chapter 10 won’t be as long a wait! Anyway thanks for reading and I hope you all have a good day~!

#a fractured diamond #oc neva #black clover oc #black clover fanfic #episode 9

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merakiui · 4 years ago

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Hi sorry if I’m bothering but I was just wondering if you had any general headcannons for Nine or the rest of Noctu? Love your writing by the way❤️❤️.

Noctu General HCs (Aitachi, Kirr, Nine, and Day)

🎯 Aitachi 🎯

He’s always training because he wants to become a stronger Soul Reaper. His main motivation for that is you, his encouraging Manager.

Aitachi likes to train alongside you and Kirr. The three of you make a great team and whenever you seem to grow tired he’ll be there with a cold bottle of water and some healthy snacks to revive your energy.

He won’t admit it, but he tends to get embarrassed when he struggles to interact with modern technology properly. He usually learns from the others how to operate his SNS, but he seems to actually listen when he’s getting pointers from you.

He’s Kirr’s hunting buddy. The two of them probably fish together and they’d be happy to go camping with everyone if it’s brought up.

Introduce him to modern television and he’ll fall in love with all of those survival shows. The more outdoorsy, the better!

Aitachi likes to tell you stories of his tribe. If you ask, he’ll be so happy, proudly explaining more about his coming-of-age ceremony and what it’s like to experience life in his tribe.

He’s very awkward with modern language and will often talk in a stiff manner, sometimes using phrases that are commonly spoken within his tribe.

Despite his age and height, he is quite knowledgeable when it comes to survival and the outside world. Although there are many changes he is unfamiliar with, which is usually the always-updating types of technology.

Aitachi struggles to navigate the Internet and sometimes he ends up on the strangest sites with no qualms as to how he got there in the first place. One minute he’s trying to search up images of the land where his tribe lived and now he’s on a website that’s listing nearby properties for sale.

Autocorrect is his enemy and he can never fully wrap his head around those virtual helpers (Alexa, Siri, Cortana, etc.).

🏹 Kirr 🏹

Aitachi is his best friend and closest ally when it comes to anything and everything. He’s eternally grateful to have someone who understands as much about hunting and survival as he does, especially when he feels so lost in the modern world.

Kirr is probably more accustomed to the modern world than Aitachi is, but there are still moments where he struggles to keep up.

He loves to go on nature walks with the manager, but his favorite outing would have to be hunting with them. If they’re not a fan of that, he doesn’t mind a simple stroll through the woods.

He does not understand many jokes, especially those that use Internet slang or texting lingo. He’s especially confused about words like ‘simp’ and ‘pog.’

Kirr definitely enjoys wildlife shows just like Aitachi, but his favorites are usually about how animals hunt. There’s always a glimmer of intrigue in those quiet eyes when he watches a lion stalking its prey.

He’s not the best at communication and will sometimes say something that may give off the wrong impression or cause a misunderstanding. But for the sake of the manager, he wants to always try his best to improve these aspects of himself.

He does not understand flirting at all. Like jokes and the modern world, Kirr has trouble adjusting to these lighthearted tones. If the manager ever flirts with him, it’s usually one-sided and he always appears confused.

Most of the time he’ll accept whatever it is you’re telling him, especially if it’s meant to be nice. But he won’t flirt back or say anything that’s supposed to be funny because he just doesn’t understand it.

If you’re someone who likes puns and jokes, he’ll probably want to learn a little more, if only to understand you whenever you start to joke with him.

He may be serious and not at all as talkative as the other Reapers, but that doesn’t mean he’s unhappy. He’s just confused, but he’s got the spirit!

🎼 Nine 🎼

Nine is always so graceful and polite, which makes him quite the persuasive Reaper. He often finds ways to get Day to do things for him and most of it is under an innocent pretense.

Despite what some may think, he does genuinely care for those he manages to get close to. He trusts the manager and Day the most, but there are still things he won’t tell them.

He’s very good at avoiding conversations that make him uncomfortable and he won’t usually tell someone if they’re crossing a line of discomfort. He’ll just calmly redirect the conversation.

Nine probably enjoys classic literature and poetry from older time periods. He likes to compare it to today’s writing to see what has changed.

He also enjoys classical music of all sorts and will try to replicate his own versions in unique compositions. Music theory and the history of music are topics that also intrigue him, and he likes to pore over information related to that in hopes of learning more to improve his own skills.

Nine’s the type of Reaper you can rant to if you’re ever feeling down, but don’t expect him to vent about own troubles in return. He’ll comfort you to an extent, but it still seems like he’s reserved.

He likes all things peaceful: melodic piano music, zen gardens, calligraphy, and even simple poetry. He would definitely enjoy stargazing because it’s such a calming activity.

There are days when Nine’s lazy side shows and as a result of this he’ll get Day to do his tasks for him. He’s very clever when it comes to slipping away from patrols and Day’s often left with two times the amount of work.

Nine hides most of his true feelings behind a passive smile and only ever vents through his compositions, which he only shows to those he truly values.

He is surprisingly good at reading the atmosphere in a room and knows how to quell an uncomfortable mood.

🍦 Day 🍦

You’ll never see him sad unless it’s something truly serious and dire. Day is always a constant ray of sunshine like Ell.

He’s very carefree and casual, wanting to be friends with everyone in the 14th Department. Once he believes he’s made friends with someone, he’ll be willing to do anything for that person.

Day is like a huge puppy. He gets excited easily and loves being around people. There’s never a dull moment with him.

He loves to bake with Nine and the manager, as they are his two favorite people in the whole world. Day often feels incomplete without them by his side and he loves to help them whenever he gets the chance.

Day doesn’t like to see the bad sides in people and will focus on their positive qualities instead. He believes that everyone can get along if there’s a happy environment and good food!

He’ll get upset if he finds that his Soul Reapers aren’t getting along and will even cry if anyone acts particularly mean towards him or his friends.

Day loves emoticons, especially the cute and happy ones. He feels like he can fully express himself with a few emojis and he’s probably the type to spam text messages, most of which aren’t actually coherent sentences but just strings of emojis.

Another thing he loves about the manager is when they help him when he’s in distress! Sometimes he’ll trip if he’s running too fast and as much as the injury may hurt everything feels better the minute his manager bandages it. He’ll be even happier if they pretend to kiss it, promising that it’s a charm for faster healing.

When he’s with Kati, chaos and trouble ensues, as the both of them are far too energetic to contain.

He wants to try making his own ice cream with Nine and the manager, but he can never wrap his head around the process.

#afterl!fe #after l!fe #afterl!fe headcanons #afterl!fe hcs #afterl!fe noctu team #afterl!fe night team #noctu #afterl!fe aitachi #afterl!fe kirr #afterl!fe nine #afterl!fe day #general headcanons

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grailfinders · 4 years ago

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Fate and Phantasms #41: Stheno

Welcome back to Fate and Phantasms, where we’re bringing every single servant in FGO to life in D&D 5e! Today we’re building the middlest gorgon sister, Eury- wait, no, wrong one. Today we’re building the oldest sister, Stheno! Stheno has a lot of similarities with her younger sister, but there’s still enough wiggle room to make her own build. Stheno’s a Bard/Sorcerer mix (Sord? Barcerer?) with, surprise surprise, an emphasis on charming foes.

As always, you can check out a spreadsheet for the build here, or read the level-by-level breakdown below the cut!

Race and Background

Like her sisters before her (after her? putting the eldest sister last is a weird design choice), Stheno is a Yuan-Ti Pureblood for the sake of the snake. This gives her +1 Intelligence and +2 Charisma. She also has Magic Resistance, giving her advantage on saves against magic and halving damage taken from magic, 60′ of Darkvision, Poison Immunity, and Innate Spellcasting which we’ll get to at the levels its relevant. Like Euryale, Stheno’s background is kind of a problem to make faithfully, as “Goddess” isn’t typically how adventurers get started. To fit with her personality, we’re also making Stheno a Charlatan, giving her proficiency in Deception and Sleight of Hand.

Stats

Charisma is going to be your highest stat, for obvious reasons. You also can’t prey on peoples’ insecurities if you don’t know what they are, so Wisdom is next. Your schemes rely more on magical manipulation that actual planning, but your physical stats are even worse, so Intelligence is next. After that is Dexterity, you’re not really nimble, but you’re kind of small so you’re harder to hit. After that is Constitution because I’m not dumping that no matter how weak you’re supposed to be. Finally, dump Strength. It’s not you, and we don’t need it anyway.

Class Levels

1. Bard 1: You’re a pretty face that insists goofing off is somehow helping the party, and that’s a Bard to a T. First level bards get proficiency in Dexterity and Charisma Saves, as well as three skills of your choice: here, they’re Persuasion, Insight, and Performance. They also get Spellcasting based on their charisma, as well as Bardic Inspiration, d6 you can throw at people when they aren’t working hard enough for your benefit. They come back on long rests. As a Yuan-Ti, you also learn the Poison Spray cantrip and can cast Animal Friendship at will, as long as you’re targeting snakes thanks to your innate spellcasting. These spells, and others you get from innate spellcasting, also use charisma.

For spells, grab Friends and Vicious Mockery as cantrips. Vicious Mockery is the closest thing you’ll have to an attack for a good 14 levels, so you better practice acting haughty now. For proper spells, grab Bane to make life harder for your enemies and Heroism to make life easier for your friends. Friend. Sorry. Also, pick up Unearthly Chorus and Puppet from Unearthed Arcana. The former gives you background music that gives you advantage on performance checks, and you can use your bonus action while concentrating on the spell to try and charm creatures who can hear your music. The creature makes a charisma save, and on a failure becomes friendly for up to an hour after the music stops. You can make deception and persuasion checks against creatures made friendly this way with advantage. The latter forces one humanoid to make a constitution save, and on a fail you can make the creature move up to its speed in a direction you choose. You can also make them drop whatever they’re holding. Creatures immune to being charmed are also immune to this spell.

Bards are really frontloaded for abilities, and having to explain two UA spells didn’t help. Don’t worry, the rest of the levels will be shorter.

2. Bard 2: Second level bards become a Jack of All Trades, adding half their proficiency to ability checks they aren’t proficient in. You also get a Song of Rest, adding a d6 to healing being done during short rests. Grab Cure Wounds for your spell at this level. Nobody will call your build selfish! (Mostly because you won’t let them.)

3. Bard 3: You gain Expertise in two skills, doubling your proficiency bonus with them. Your Deception and Persuasion are your strongest traits, so now they’re even better. Normally this would be due to your magical interference, but expertise is a much more efficient way of showing this. You also graduate from the College of Glamour like your sister, giving you a Mantle of Inspiration. You can spend an inspiration die to give a number of creatures equal to your charisma modifier 5 temporary hitpoints, and they can react to move up to their speed without causing attacks of opportunity. The number of THP you hand out increases by 3 at level 5, 10, and 15.

You also gain an Enthralling Performance. Once per short rest, you can perform for at least 1 minute, forcing a number of creatures equal to your charisma modifier to make a wisdom save. Creatures that fail are your loving slaves for up to an hour, or until you attack it or its allies. if the creature succeeds on its save, it doesn’t realize you tried to charm it.

Your innate spellcasting gives you another spell, Suggestion, that you can cast once per long rest. For your bard spell, grab Enhance Ability to help out your other self.

4. Bard 4: Use your first ASI to improve your Charisma for stronger spells. Also, pick up the Light cantrip to get proper lighting for your stage 4 art, and the Enthrall spell: you’re already the center of your own world, might as well be the center of someone else’s too.

5. Sorcerer 1: You may be a pretty face, but your magical power comes from your Divine Soul. This means the Spells you get from being a sorcerer can come from the sorcerer or cleric spell list, and in either case they use charisma for casting. You’re also Favored by the Gods, ironically, letting you add 2d4 to failed saving throws or attacks once per short rest. Grab Message to keep in touch with your sisters, Minor Illusion to mess with Medusa, and Prestidigitation and Thaumaturgy for when you need some theatrics. For first level spells, grab Charm Person, which we shockingly hadn’t had yet, and Purify Food and Drink. Sure you can’t be poisoned anyway, but why put up with the insult?

6. Sorcerer 2: You become a Font of Magic, gaining a number of sorcery points equal to your sorcerer level. Right now they can only be used to make more spell slots, but you’ll get other uses for them in a bit. You can also now perform Ceremonies in your name, ranging from coming of age to marriage. I don’t normally tell people how to play their character, but please: don’t mix this with a charm spell, the rest of the party will think you’re creepy.

7. Sorcerer 3: You can now use those sorcery points from last level to perform Metamagic: ways to enhance your spells as you see fit. Grab Subtle Spell because taking over a person’s mind isn’t nearly as fun when they know it’s happening and Heightened Spell to eat up your DM’s legendary resistances.

Grab Blindness/Deafness because instant death spells aren’t available yet, so the suite of instant “no more fighting for you” spells are the best we have.

8. Sorcerer 4: Use your ASI to maximize your Charisma and bump up your Dexterity as well. Grab Mending to fix up your dress for ascensions and Hold Person for another way to shut someone out of a fight.

9. Sorcerer 5: Fifth level sorcerers get third level spells, including Bestow Curse. You’re so beautiful your foes have trouble fighting you! It’s mostly because you curse them, but you insist it’s the beauty thing.

10. Bard 5: Your inspiration dice improve to d8s, and you become a Font of Inspiration. Now you regain inspiration on short rests as well. Grab Fast Friends, because there’s no charm spell we’re not getting this time around. Like a lot of charm spells, this forces a wisdom save on one humanoid, and on a failure it will do whatever you ask of it as long as it’s in a friendly manner. Tasks that cause harm to it or goes against its nature allow the creature to make another save, and fighting the creature gives it advantage. Asking the creature t do something that will obviously kill it immediately ends the spell. Otherwise, it lasts for up to an hour with concentration, and the creature knows you charmed it afterwards.

11. Bard 6: You can now use a Countercharm to bring the rest of your party up to the level you’re on naturally as an action. You also learn to make a Mantle of Majesty from the college of glamour. You use a bonus action to transform yourself into an unearthly beauty and cast Command. For up to a minute while you’re concentrating on the mantle you can use your bonus action to cast command again, and creatures who are charmed by you have disadvantage on command saves. You can use this feature once per long rest.

For your spell, grab Enemies Abound, because frankly having only one way to cause damage to creatures is really boring. What are you, a fighter?

12. Bard 7: Seventh level bards get fourth level spells, and you get Charm Monster. Charming Asterios might seem tempting, but then Euryale will get on your case, and she has an actual weapon. Best to save it for Medusa then.

13. Bard 8: Odd numbers are terrible, and we might as well get something else for our troubles, so for this ASI take the Tasha’s feat Practiced Expert to add one to your Dexterity, gain proficiency in Animal Handling to connect with your dear sister, and gain expertise in Insight to find her insecurities even more easily.

For your spell this level, grab Confusion. Sure it’s a bit random, but you can hit a lot of creatures with it if they’re bunched together.

14. Bard 9: Your song of rest improves to a d8, and you get your first 5th level spell Dominate Person. Charming a person is nice, but sometimes you need a finer touch, you know?

15. Bard 10: At tenth level, your inspiration becomes a bunch of d10s, and you get another round of Expertise. You have three skills that haven’t been expertised yet and one of them is a joke, so enhance your Sleight of Hand and Performance skills. Finally, at this level you get Magical Secrets, two spells from any spell list. We’ve gotten a lot of charms, but not a lot of vampirism so far. Fix that with Vampiric Touch and Enervation. Also, grab Mage Hand so you don’t need Medusa to grab stuff off the top shelf. You’ll still use her to do that of course, but now you don’t need her to do it.

16. Bard 11: Grab Mass Suggestion as your first 6th level spell, because the only thing better than getting a small crowd to love you is making a large crowd love you.

17. Bard 12: For your last ASI, grab some extra Wisdom. No real reason for it, but the boost to your wisdom save is nice.

18. Bard 13: Your song of rest improves to a d10 as well. Also, grab your 7th level spell, Project Image. Why travel all the way to where you’re supposed to be charming people when you can just send an illusion instead? You can’t cast spells through it, but there’s no distance limit on your Enthralling Performance, so you’ve got a loophole.

19. Bard 14: You get another round of Magical Secrets and your final glamour bard feature Unbreakable Majesty. Once again, you can use your bonus action to transform into a more perfect version of yourself, and anything foolish enough to attack you needs to make a charisma save vs. your spell save. On a fail they can’t attack you, and must choose a new target. On a success, they can attack you this turn, but they have disadvantage on your spell saves next turn. You can use this feature once per short rest.

We’ve gotten more than enough charm spells to last a lifetime, so I think we can get a bit monstrous, as a treat. In real life mythology, Stheno was even more vicious than her sisters, so for your magical secrets grab Flesh to Stone because you’re still a gorgon after all and Tenser’s Transformation. It’s like a barbarian’s rage, but terrible because it’s attached to you. It even gives you a level of exhaustion after using it. Is this remotely canonical in FGO? Not really, but frankly she deserves to turn into a monster a little bit.

20. Bard 15: With your capstone level, your inspiration dice max out as d12s. You also get your 8th level spell Glibness, just in case you weren’t good enough at charisma rolls yet.

Pros: Metamagic and bard spells together is a very powerful combination. A lot of your charm spells effectively end a fight, and you can impose disadvantage on creatures giving you trouble more or less at will. Also, thanks to your vampirism and mantles, you’re slightly harder to kill than your 98 hp would suggest.

Cons: You have 98 HP. On top of that, most charms require concentration to function, meaning you’ll have to pick your targets carefully. Plenty of enemies also have immunity to being charmed, meaning you’ll spend most of the fight yelling at them while the rest of the party does the work. Finally, multiclassing unlocks a lot of power for you but it comes at the cost of not getting 9th level spells like Wish, and that’s always going to feel bad.

In a worst case scenario, you and the other you can always run off with your mantles of inspiration and let your big little sister take care of things. Don’t worry, she’s used to it by now.

Next up: An assassin with a very ironic NP name, all things considered.

#fgo #Fate Grand Order #DnD 5e #Stheno #Fate and Phantasms

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aki-draws-things · 4 years ago

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F, K and X? :D

F: Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

Two of them, not just dialogue but the whole part..

- “First, it's on fire. - “well, no shit sherlock.” - Second, you don't know if Rollins is inside. - “I know he is. I feel it.” He kept quiet and knocked the door down easily. - third, if something happens to you for the sake of one man, who's gonna lead them?”

That was the only logical point Brock would agree with, in another moment.

“I've read stories of you storming a nazi base on your own for the sake of one man.”

“It wasn't--”

“Bullshit. It was one man. Everyone else was collateral.”

Steve almost cursed. Loudly. Very loudly and direct. No one he saved was collateral, he walked inside with the specific intention of saving each and every man prisoner.

“He's my one man.”

All right, maybe he did walk inside with one specific man in mind. The others weren't collateral, but they were strangers at the time. Before he could say anything else Brock already covered his face in a cloth and ran inside. For the sake of one man .

(that one, from "for the sake of one man". Because it descrive well Steve Rogers and his primary reason (bucky. It's always been bucky. It will always be bucky. 3 films and buck is the reason behind what he does. 😂), and at the same time shows the human, vulnerable side of rumlow, who in the films is a villain in the end. Willingly risking everything for one person of his team. I like to wrote about teams who are so loyal to each other to seem almost codependent, not in a creepy way but in a very basic "I have their backs because they have mine.", not questioning it and nothing. Just absolute loyalty. I especially like the "he's my one man." part. It's sweet, in his own way.

-"Migraine still here?"

Josh whimpered in response, leaning over the hand on his head.

"Sing something?" a whisper, tired, nothing more. Lawson looked at him like he grew a second head. Given the intensity of the pain he could as well grown one extra head, that would explain a lot.

"what? Josh I'm a terrible singer. Awful. Raise the dead kind of bad. I'll just make your head hurt more."

"nah... Sing for me? Please Laws."

In the end Lawson could tell him no.in the end he never learned to tell him no when he pleaded him. In the end he sat with one knee over the mattress and hummed the first song that came to his mind trying to be as quiet as he could.

"God, Laws... You're really as bad as I remembered." he chuckled making Lawson crack a smile in a "I told you so" manner. "I still like it, though."

"I know, you'd rather have Grace here instead of me. Bet she's a way better singer. She had to go pick up Micheal and Stell. Sorry, you're stuck with me mate."

Josh shook his head slowly, still smiling, eyes almost closed.

"it's good." he stretched a hand toward him, palm up, waiting for Lawson to take it, a gesture they got accustomed to, something they both found comfort in after years in that line of work and danger, grounding when one of them was low, or hurt or sick. "I like you here too, Laws."

("in your arms", the last words part. It holds everything. It's angsty (especially knowing what happens after), it's sweet, kinda funny if you imagine someone sing really badly and out of tune. I really like the last part (then why not posting just that? I liked everything else too, that's why), the hands touching, in a quite intimate way, described as intimate but not between lovers. It's in the safety of that touch, like when you're km a very crowded place with someone and you hold hands to stick together in the crowd, with some people you have a stronger bond that touch goes beyond not getting lost, it translates in safety and grounding, gives some... Fuzzy feels, but not in a romantic "I love you" way. I tried to put that to words.

(also, "I like you here too, Laws" will always and forever break my heart.)

K: What’s the angstiest idea you’ve ever come up with?

Mmmh.... That's hard actually... Angstier idea...

"Et quand viendra la mort On s'aimera encore" counts as heavy angst, illness, miscommunication, fights, make up, death.

"Ninety messages" it has a happy ending but it's a collection of pain and some kinda suicidal thoughts.

The impaled chest prompt is quite angst too, and so will be Darkened Ice, and the lost Verona series, especially the rising tide.

Most angst is psychological, and that makes it worse. It's not for the one dying or getting hurt or sick, it's about everyone around.

X: A character you enjoy making suffer.

I can't choose... Every comfort character is good for angst. The stronger, the better, military background if the story fits that... (JueJue, colonel sebastian Moran, Josh... Any comfort character I have in the marvel universe...) most times morally gray characters, though Josh is very much set on doing things the right way (well, he's a cop after all. A cop who can throw punches at suspects of almost killing their children. A really soft cop with children and dogs 💖extremely soft. Give that man a kid and a dog. Fuck. And angst.)

#Ask answered #💖💖

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