#and maybe their doomed sibling thing would have destroyed me | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

radioisntdead · 1 year ago

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Hi can I request alastor x Vox's sister reader? Reader isn't a tech demon like Vox and kinda the opposite of when it comes to technology.

Basically the equivalent of someone who's so bad at cooking they could burn water except with technology. And maybe Vox didn't know they were down in hell and only found out well spying on Alastor and reader accidently does that destroys a tech thing.

You dont have to do it if you'd dint want to and sorry its so long I hope it's not to weird or specific.

Good evening My dear! I may have gone slightly overboard, I had fun with this request!

You know where to find me, I know where to look.

Alastor x female reader, Vox & sister reader

Warnings!!

Vox being a creepy lil tv creeper, implied Radiosilence, Alastor plots to take out the reader at one point, both reader and Alastor are on the Aroace spectrum, Am I projecting a little? Yes

Reader has beef with microwaves, not proof read apologies for any spelling mistakes, Leaning into fanon territory here! Ending a little scrambled because it's 7 am and I am supposed to be up in three hours.

Vox's sister was something he didn't talk about often or at all, maybe a brief whisper of "[Name] would like this"

when he saw something she would like but nothing more, while Vox had managed to live up until the 50's you had died before him, a unspecified illness had taken your life, he suspected it was from you over working yourself but he couldn't prove it, all he knew was that you were more then likely in heaven with the angels, probably doing whatever you please.

He'd like to see his sister again after all the two of you were little troublemakers growing up, sneakily stealing the freshly baked cookies your mother made, spraying the neighbors son with the hose when he shoved Vox onto the ground or throwing rotten eggs at the neighbors other son who tried to pull your pigtails, although you did fight a fair amount, with you chasing him down with a baseball bat after he had broken the head off of your doll one time.

When the war took the life of your father and heartbreak took your mother's years after, when the two of you were in the middle of your teenage years, the two of you only had each other, you had each other's backs, even if you disapproved of your brothers obsession with the up and coming TV technology, it worked in his favor once he landed a job working with it, managing to scramble up the connections to get you a nice job as some guys secretary, it paid well and the guy wasn't stupid enough to mess around with Vox's sister.

To his knowledge you didn't get involved in the field politics like he did, where he trampled over the weak ones, stealing ideas and parading them off as his own when his own ideas were rejected, And the other things he did to get to the top, you were a decent person, a woman far beyond her time one would say.

However unknown to him his sister was causing up trouble in her own right, finding the weak spots of her bosses and exploiting them via blackmail or something amongst those lines, and if they refused to be blackmailed by her? Not even giving her a pretty penny to keep her mouth shut about their affairs? Their deals? Their tax fraud? Well the newspaper would have a field day with the scoop she anonymously dropped off.

Both siblings were doomed to fall below, maybe if they had perished around the same time they wouldn't had been separated, maybe she would've even joined the Vee's!

But they perished separately, years apart.

You met Alastor not long after dying, the deer radio host befriending you rather quickly.

Deer were ironically one of your favorite animals, and you always did prefer the radio as opposed to your brothers television, maybe that's why you foolishly put your trust in a friendship with Alastor, that was repaid with the Radio demon reluctantly falling for your charms, you falling for his,and not with him trying to eat you or making a deal with him and taking your soul.

Vox similarly had met Alastor after he had perished, and they were on friendly terms up until Alastor had, to be blunt rejected Vox's proposal, and then vanished for seven years.

Not once in those years of supposed friendship did Vox learn about you, he didn't even know the radio demon had a spouse, let alone that it was his own sister,

It's not that Alastor was ashamed of you or anything, he simply didn't think Vox was important enough to introduce you too, even when you were considered just a good friend and not his spouse, he considered Vox a supposed, one friend but not to the level of Rosie for example,

Rosie was the first person to know about you

Most types of modern technology would fizzle out or explode in your hands, you learned this the hard way after purchasing a flip phone and it exploded in your hands once you turned it on.

Alastor did NOT let you live that down, saying that it was your fault for trusting in faulty modern technology, eventually after some experimenting with random technology it was discovered that anything from the 2000's forward were practically expensive bombs for you,

Alastor took great joy in snatching up modern electronics and placing them in your hands to be rid of them before taking care of the unfortunate sinner that owned them, either making a snack out of them or taking their soul in a deal.

You didn't mind it much, was it somewhat inconvenient? Yes without a doubt, everyone kept their electronics away from you, you could be talking to Angel and he'd slide his phone far away from you, was that a bit much? Probably but if he pissed you off enough for whatever reason you could just reach over and BOOM no more phone!

Vox being the nosey control freak he was, used his devices to lurk around the hotel, and for plot related reasons managed to sneak into the hotel undetected with a remote control car with a camera the size of a hot wheels, at first he didn't see much, The princess and her girlfriend having a little date, The cat bartender and Angel Dust chatting while drinking, Niffty traumatizing baby bugs, blah blah boring stuff to him,

However he perked up as he spotted the radio demon, in the kitchen for whatever reason, cooking away, coat put to the side, sleeves rolled up, tail exposed, chopping up celery, bell peppers, garlic and onions while humming a tune,

Vox watched in stalkerish excitement as Alastor chopped the vegetables to prep for the meal he was making, it wasn't anything to be excited about but he was anyway,

Vox's expression changed from excitement to displeasure as someone walked into the kitchen, Joyfully calling out for Alastor while holding up a bag of what looked to be groceries,

Alastor turned, tail moving swiftly back and forth at the sight of his beloved spouse you moved forwards, just barely brushing against Vox's little spy car causing it to burst into flames.

Simultaneously causing Vox to break out in a sting of curses while you and Alastor looked at each other in confusion, before your face twisted into one of frustration, assuming you had bumped into some type of kitchen gizmo

"Can I NOT touch kitchen appliances anymore?!"

"Settle down dearest, and put down the produce please."

Vox came back at later date with another hot wheel camera, managing to sneak into the hotel when Angel dust opened the hotel doors to leave, this time Vox was determined to avoid whatever had caused the first device to explode,

There wasn't anything worth wild for him, The princess was scrambling with papers, the king of hell surrounded himself with ducks for some apparent reason?? Alastor was nowhere to be seen, but the person he was with in the kitchen was, sat at the bar listening to Niffty explain fanfiction while the bartender nursed a drink muttering something about being too sober for that.

Vox squinted as he zoomed closer to you, he stared for a few minutes before recognizing you as his sister, you looked different then when you were alive but it was without a doubt you.

Why the fuck were you down here?! And why were you in the hotel?! Did you know he was here?! Probably not considering he had a TV for a head now and went by Vox instead of whatever normal human name he had before.

Vox observed for the next couple of days, catching on that you and most modern technology did NOT mix, you had taken down twenty-five of his hot wheel cameras just by nicking them, you also had weird beef with Microwaves, sometimes they worked for you, and others times they fizzled down and refuses to work for you,

It annoyed you to no end especially when you were trying to eat a microwaved meal behind Alastor's back.

He wondered what would happen if you touched his head at all, would he explode? He didn't want to find out.

You hadn't changed much from when the two of you were alive, maybe more outgoing and confident but you were still the sister he grew up with, he debated on whether he should reach out, what would he say?

'hey sister, it's been a couple of decades I've been watching you? Join the Vees!'

that's not a normal thing to say, Not to mention Alastor more then likely wouldn't let him get near you

He found that you and Alastor were close, too close for his liking, cooking together, the two of you would dance together, Alastor would bite you when the two of you were allegedly alone, and the two of you even shared a room!

Was Vox in denial about the obvious? Yes, yes he was.

On one side there was that sibling protectiveness on the other he was jealous because why didn't Alastor treat him like he did you when they were on good terms?! Why didn't he? Was this why he turned him down on joining the Vee's?

Was it because of you? How long have the two of you known each other? Why didn't Alastor mention you to him? Did Alastor not trust him during their friendship? Of course he didn't, he was a heartless cannibalistic deer with gross deer hooves,

Clearly you were being held hostage or something, maybe you sold your soul to Alastor?

Alastor was clearly using you for his own entertainment like he had with Vox during their friendship, after All Alastor could never love another person, he was incapable of it.

But he wasn't incapable of it, you weren't an exception to Alastor's Alastory-ness, and he wasn't an exception to your you-ness

Neither you or Alastor were big on the whole romance thing,

You, in life didn't care much for it preferring to focus your time and energy on blackmailing folks and saving enough money to do whatever your heart desired and Alastor was similar, only instead of blackmail and money it was his radioshow and murder.

And that didn't change after death, even after you met Alastor.

You honestly couldn't pinpoint when you and Alastor fell for each other, it came slow like a horror movie where a serial killer was coming up behind the victim, no one noticing the killer until it was too late,

It got you first, at first you thought he just got bumped up from a good friend to a close friend, then a best friend and that's why you were so fond of him,

Until you started wishing to do unholy things,

Like holding hands, or petting his ears!

The minute you figured out what the budding feelings that had begun to weave themselves inside you,

you resulted to shoving them down, hopefully hiding them away until they disappeared completely, or until you gaslit yourself enough that they never existed in the first place, that it was just heartburn or something,

but that didn't happen, they just got stronger up until the point where it hurt, until you had to physically distance yourself from Alastor in hopes they subsided.

Alastor on the other hand, had it slightly worse,

For him it didn't hit him in small gaps like it did for you, it hit him all at once,

he legitimately thought he had somehow gotten deathly ill, perhaps he had gotten cursed? Maybe he wasn't as fond of you as he thought and instead hated your guts for whatever reason?

But if that was the case why did he yearn for your presence? Especially after you for some reason distanced yourself from him?

Why did he desire to chat with you? Why did he wish to cook you a meal and have a lovely dinner with just the two of you??

He eventually went to Rosie, his most trusted friend with this problem

his smile was strained when Rosie laughed at his troubles and told him he was, shockingly more then likely in love.

He acted like he was just told he had an incurable disease, like rabies.

Eventually he got to the point where he decided he should just take you out, in a murder way he couldn't afford a weak spot that he couldn't control,

However he couldn't go through with it when you showed up unannounced to his home, a frown present on your lovely face, you acted like a guilty child who had just stolen a batch of freshly baked cookies, you carried two folders and a board, and you asked him to hear you out as he let you inside,

You began to set up what one can only describe as one of those conspiracy theory boards, only instead of a conspiracy it was explaining how you managed to fall for Alastor, that he didn't necessarily have to return those feelings, and why he should let you live after knowing this information.

Thankfully before you could begin setting anything other then the board up and a few skeins of different colored yarn out, Alastor grabbed you by your shoulders and reluctantly told you that he adored you for some forshaken reason.

And that was that, nothing was ever officially labeled until a ring was put onto your finger many many years later, but it was comfortable, you stayed true to each other, you never went further then a light kiss or a cuddle, the two of you would be deemed odd for a couple, sometimes invalidated by folks who didn't know how to mind their own business, but they were usually dealt with quickly.

You adored Alastor, and He adored you in return.

And that was evident as he twirled you around his radio tower, Vox's hotwheel mini camera watching from the corner.

Soft jazz played as you were pulled back into Alastor's arms, a laugh escaping your throat as you smiled at him, taking a quick moment to reach your hand out and hold Alastor's face, planting a soft smooch on him before pulling away.

At that point Vox was disturbed and a peng of jealousy ran through him, one, because no one wants to see their sister doing that to their ARCH NEMESIS, and second of all, Out of everyone in hell, why did he have to choose you?

Yes you were nice, he guessed, but he's seen you be a feral little menace when the two of you were young, Alastor could do better [No he couldn't]

What did you have that Vox DIDN'T? Sure you didn't have a giant tv for a head but you also weren't an overlord like he was, you didn't have the connections he did, you didn't have a whole company that dominated the tech industry, you didn't HAVE what he did.

But you did have what he desperately wanted

You have Alastor's heart,

You get the adoring looks, you get the whispers of pure affection, you get to dance with him, you get Alastor.

No matter what Vox did, Alastor would never look at him the way he did you, he would never give him the look of pure affection, he would never ask him to dance, he would never give him his heart.

And that tore Vox apart.

So If he couldn't have Alastor, Neither could you.

To him, You either needed to get redeemed quickly and go up above or you were going to be joining the Vee's, whether you liked it or not.

Good evening folks! Thank you for tuning in! I know I said Rosie headcanons where supposed to be up next but I ran into some technical difficulties [my writing app crashed and a big chunk of it got deleted so I am not happy about that] anywho, Vox is a funky TV dude and I like the implications that he's lovesick about Alastor,

I need to finish my Vox fic because he's toxic there.

#hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel x you #alastor x reader #alastor x you #vox x reader #alastor imagine #radiosilence

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winkk-koo · 1 year ago

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For me the ship appeal for shuangshui comes from the following:

Both of them are big brothers who'd do anything to protect their little siblings

If the roles were reversed HX would have done the same to save his sister

"Have you no remorse" if HX truly only hated him why would he care if swd felt bad about what he did? He's invested in the outcome and was desperate for an apology and acknowledgement of his feelings (which SWD only denied him because SQX was at risk)

HX saw SWD's face at death and that's what kept him bound to this world instead of passing on

After killing SWD, if HX was satisfied in his revenge his soul should have dissipated, but he's still here

You can argue this is bc of SQX, but ghosts can't change their obsession, or the resentment tying them to this world, and a ghost king has the strongest obsession of all

Shuangshui as a foil for hualian, basically what happens when you dedicate your existence to hate instead of love (which is, after all, the function of bw arc in the novel)

They don't have a chance in canon since it's very one sided, HX's obsession for a guy who doesn't even know who he is, but that's the tragic appeal of it, destroying the person you should have loved with your own hands, because you refused to understand your own heart, and dooming your soul to wander, unsatisfied, forever

And maybe if things had been different, Shi Wudu could have loved the soft, sensitive Scholar He, who would sacrifice it all for his sibling too

There's a lot of lost potential to explore, in another universe I would have loved to do laundry and taxes with you

Who is being so poetic in my asks!!!!!

Bro wrote amazing character analysis and expects to just get away with it

______________________________________

I really did not think of the actual meaning of both being water themed and why He Xuan Specifically chose this . And now that you say it i find it really interesting

Arrrh and the fact his calamity name is Black Water Sinking Ships when Shi Wudu does the same thing with ships that don't send him offerings before sailing 😭😭

He really copied that man he was supposed to hate everything about

(I also took a break from tgcf right after black water arc to start reading svsss so i didn't take into account that he might still be around. But thats really tragic he dedicated like 800? Years to his revenge and he wasn'teven satisfied with it and since the source of his suffering is basically gone he can't do anything about it now right)

I also- forgor to press "post" on this yesterday

#shuangshui #he xuan #shi wudu #black water arc #tgcf shi wudu #black water sinking ships #mxtx tgcf #tgcf

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orangeoctopi7 · 1 year ago

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New season of Ninjago! I'm currently six episodes in.

(also I'm writing this the morning after I watched these episodes so my thoughts might be out of order)

Awkward teenage Riyu design is cute, but in that awkward, mid-stage pokemon evolution way.

"Intelligent George" is just every adult Ninjago fan on YouTube throwing around theories over the last year.

Sorry Lloyd, prophetic dreams of doom run in the family.

Hey, wait a sec. You know who else has prophetic dreams? Why are you not going to Zane with this?

Please give Arin a "you don't need powers to be powerful" arc.

All this talk of shattering all the good inside someone is reminding me of a certain other spell used to remove all the goodness from Garmadon back in season 8, but I doubt they're actually meant to be connected.

Slightly disappointed that the pink Serpentine isn't Skales' wife.

Euphrasia couldn't take on the master of Smoke, the elemental master she probably has the best type match up against? I don't wanna sound like one of those fans, but jeez, Morro would have destroyed this guy.

The Kai-Nya siblings dynamic continues to be on point.

Wyldfyre continues to be the best character.

I was honestly expecting Sora's fear dream to be more of the same insecurities we saw from her last season, but she actually has moved past that and now she's afraid of having to go back to Imperium. I was pleasantly surprised by that.

Oof, Nya's dream is giving me so many feels. This is foreshadowing, isn't it?

"Jay would never forget me. And even if he somehow did, he'd never be this calm and collected about a stranger coming up and hugging him."

Oh. Oh, we're not seeing Wyldfyre 's fear dream? Oh, she doesn't want to talk about it? *Rubbing hands together* I think we're gonna get some backstory and lore here!

*Bonzle to Cole and Geo* "You are my da-ads. You're my dad's. Boogie Woogie Woogie."

Suddenly Basketball

Ah, the dragon masters. The fact that dragons can learn spinjitzu honestly makes sense to me, all the way back in the pilot, I thought the way the dragons spun around in order to travel to the other realms was obviously related to Spinjitzu.

I like that Rontu is basically just a typical gym coach in dragon form.

Egalt, on the other hand... Well, I do really like his design. But man, he's just every bad "teaching" method from Wu rolled into an even grumpier old man. Talking down to his students, constantly being negative instead of giving positive reinforcement, no clear instructions, giving no answers or even hints to Arin's question, nothing! Maybe I care about this more than other people because I've worked as a teacher on and off for years, but even when I first started watching the show, back when I was still in college, I was already noticing these things about Wu and they already bothered me.

Anyway, calling it now, the students from "last time" Egalt keeps vague-ing were Wu and Garmadon, and Wu learned all his bad "teaching" methods from this guy.

Bonzle being a living spell is weird, but honestly not that out of the question for a crazy fantasy world like Ninjago.

Ok, so I'm going to break the first rule of enjoying Ninjago and think about the timeline. Judging by what Wu said, I'm guessing Bonzle ran into him some time early in season 2? And when did all this with the Forbidden Five happen?

Anyway, very excited to see where this is going, if only I didn't have to work today.

#Ninjago #my thoughts

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jellytheteawolf · 5 months ago

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Finished fof ep 12... will contain spoilers from the series up until then

Me physically gripping my head everytime wen xiao just stands there (or when like the entire crew just. Stands there.... peep the fight with ran yi + li lun against zhao yuanzhou. Or when siheng was killed like. WHY WERE ALL OF U STANDING THERE... HELP.......) I like her as a character bc she can be very playful and witty, but damn the scriptwriter(s) are trying so hard to make her fit the mildly useless damsel hole like GET UP!!! LET MY GIRL LIVEE

Also they love to shove in romance side plots huh. Well technically this is a romance drama I think so it's on brand but damn. Ranyi and qi xiaojie were the best romance side story I cried so fucking hard on ep 6. Cheng huang and og baize shennv were whatever. Qing geng and fei are slightly better bc of the whole tragedy of fei's nature so I liked that.

I'm not on ep 13 yet so maybe it'll be shown but damn qing geng does not hate fei enough, if I was her Id be like trying to kill him yelling at him like bro was the whole reason this shit happened to her :sobs when he reached out to hold her face I was literally going SLAP HIS HAND OFF WHY ARE YOU HOLDING HER FACE LIKE THAT BITCH yea I think she was also talking abt herself when she was talking to yichen "how would you feel if you were forced to see the person you hate everyday." Then again it has been like what a couple hundred years so it's possible her anger mellowed into resignation

Also jump to ep 8 but I think ep 8 is my favorite episode in this show so far. Ep 8 and the ep with yichen in the nightmare (I forgor which ep that was). Man doomed siblings.... I crode so hard... the shackles scene....... man.... MAN

There's some symbolism with the reocurring close up shot of hands and the things with hands (wen xiao writing the character on pei sijing's hand, bai jiu holding onto yichen's bells, the bracelet that brought the plague) something something human connection in it's best and worst forms love and hurt....

Also the thing I like abt qing geng's story is the fact that baize shennv sealed her away. Gods will always be cruel unintentionally to a degree, because they are immortal (okay well i dont remember if the baize shennv were immortal but YOU GET MY POINT) and have duties that a mortal cant shoulder or fully understand. They will almost always choose to look at the bigger picture because that is what a god does, it protects the innocent majority/utilitarianism because that is literally what their job is. It creates situations such as qing geng, because on a utilitarian level, sealing qing geng + fei away is indeed the safest option for defenceless humans + innocent demons. Was it fair? No. Was it done without malicious intent + a desire to protect innocents? Yup

Also the whole pei sijing being a double agent NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO..... my queen........ also Im really scared for pei siheng bc he hasn't shown up/no mention of where his puppet is the past few episodes so it's like. I feel like something's gonna happen to him. Maybe as a punishment for pei sijing if she abandons being an agent for chongwu(?) the puppet will get destroyed or smth idek if chongwu knows about the puppet but anything can happen in this show JUST LET THE SIBLINGS BE CONTENT WITH THEIR BITTERSWEET ENDING

Bai jiu and yinglei shenanigans make me happy they're so stupid /pos.

ZHUO YICHEN head in hands... okay not really analysis related but he's really pretty fml. At first I was like huh his face is kinda square then he put his hair half down and I was like DAMN also young yichen... im typing on computer so no emoji keyboard but imagine a string of sobbing emojis. Him jumping for the fruits and the bell ringing and and "so my brother knew I wasn't lost" I NEED TO BE LOBOTOMIZED and bai jiu going he put the bell there bc he was scared his mom wouldn't find/remember him :sobs young yichen looks so cute in the cream white colors too. Man Im sorry for every bad thing that's gonna happen to you fawk

Also "I dreamed I was becoming a demon and no one would play with me" other than the foreshadowing I am fucking smelling so hard man that's rough... idk I have a soft spot for charas with simple/innocent desires. Companionship. Becoming a chef. Being strong. Like damn. Damn!!!! This fucking show!!!! /pos

I like it a lot so far fml in my mind ran yi and qi xiaojie are alive and sailing the wilderness together idc idc they deserved a happy ending

#jt2w ramble #sorry this is so long #fangs of fortune

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polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup · 2 years ago

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oh my god I binge read sea glass garden last night and the third and fourth chapter DESTROYED ME.

I’m omw to reread the entire fic because it was too good and I KNOW that it’s going to be one of the must-reads of this fandom. I’m literally in love with all your characters (your Tsumiki is so freaking interesting she was READY to get at it with Maki✊🏻) especially your description of Megumi’s situation is killing me, my heart is in pieces. No matter how many stories there are depicting the years before his high school time, there will always be too few idc.

I’m pretty sure it’s canonically stated that Megumi went on missions before being enrolled as a student and that he witnessed the death of at least one comrade, all because he had been bought to be a jujutsu sorcerer. Imagine never having the delusion of a future because you signed your life away to ensure your sister would live happily. Your take on the fact that, maybe, at some point of his life, Megumi didn’t wish to be a jujutsu sorcerer anymore destroys me. I never really thought of it, and he probably never imagined a life for himself where he wouldn’t die as a jujutsu sorcerer either. He was downright begging to be left to die in peace because he couldn’t bear it any longer when he shouldn’t have even gone on missions yet at all😭 And even though his current injuries weren’t caused by a mission, I don’t think he’d be so stupid to try to tame the snake unsupervised a few days after Geto’s death. Like c’mon. It’s all the higher ups fault, because it always is. Damn them. I hope they choke on their rotting teeth😤

ANYWAY I GOT LOST ON THE WAY TO ASK YOU A QUESTION JANSJAJANJAHA I ramble way too much

I noticed the updates have been pretty frequent, so do you have an update schedule with pre-written chapters? No because if you don’t I applaude you for being able to write masterpieces in a few days😩

P.S. I was curious about the meaning of the title and I read your other post about it and it’s so beautiful😭 obviously it’s sad but it also speaks of the determination of humans’ will to survive yk? You are genius😫

No update schedule, unfortunately! I don’t have the self control to not post chapters when I have them. I go on hyperfixation-fueled writing binges and writers block crashes of unending despair. It’s a Whole Thing. Updates tend to come in waves with me. It’ll probably be pretty erratic updates until the story ends. Thank you for reading and for your kind words!

You are speaking my ENTIRE LANGUAGE with Megumi. He is, hands down, the most interesting character in the show to me. His backstory and how it intertwines with his philosophy and approach to morality make him just so unendingly interesting to me.

Like, the Fushiguro siblings and specifically Megumi really were doomed by the narrative from the start. Megumi never really lived in a world where he had a future. Like, the past arc takes place during spring of 2006, and his dad had ditched long enough at that point that he straight up forgot megumi's name. Tsumiki's mom had been gone long enough that Megumi thought she and his dad ran off together, so she probably wasn't around after Toji stopped coming. Megumi was born late December of 2002, so he would have been three then. Tsumiki was, at most, five. And because Gojo didn't go to meet them until after Geto's massacre in late summer of 2007, it was just the two of them for at least a year.

Like, the sheer horror of being two very small children taking care of each other, knowing that the money's running out and that your parents probably aren't coming back. They were living in abject poverty, and Megumi was most likely seeing curses during at least part of this (considering he was right at the age for it and he wasn't all that surprised with Gojo rolling up to tell him his dad was from a magic clan) with no idea what they were, because even if Toji explained anything (which i doubt) the chances of Megumi remembering the explanation aren't great. He's seeing horrifying things every day and doesn't have any support past his sister, who can't see the same.

Tsumiki and Megumi faced parentification at a ludicrously young age. We know that Tsumiki most likely took a pretty strong caretaking/maternal role for megumi from an early age, but the fact that baby Megumi's only question when Gojo found him and made his offer was about Tsumiki's happiness suggests that the caretaking wasn't one sided. Making decisions about your future based on the needs of your family is a very adult concern, and it was Megumi's only concern. While Tsumiki was canonically far more open with her affection and care (grumpy baby Megumi refusing to hold hands, you have my whole heart), Megumi definitely loved her deeply already and was modeling his actions with her interests in mind. They must have both been shouldering the load of raising and protecting the other for as long as they can remember. Tsumiki and Megumi were likely barely surviving day to day. They were already shouldering the stresses of grown ups and likely didn't have any of those childish, starry-eyed dreams about what it would be like when they grew up.

Even when Gojo enters the scene, the parentification didn't end. While he does take on a paternal/caretaking role, his intro into their lives very much heralded a time where Megumi became the family's compulsory breadwinner. I won't break down my thoughts on how Gojo probably wasn't the one who came up with the deal of Megumi being collateral for their survival since I already did it in another post, but however it came about, it doesn't change the fact that Megumi knows that he's the one his family's survival hinges on from a stupidly young age.

We know that Megumi was training/working as a jujutsu sorcerer pre-canon. Gojo straight up tells him at age 4 that he's going to need him to work hard, he references the fact that he's been training megumi for a while in season 1, Megumi admits to nobara that he's lost a comrade on a mission before Yuuji (though Yuuji was the first that was his age), and Megumi knows a lot of the people in this world. By the time canon starts, he's been training with Kamo since before Kamo entered school, so for 3-4 years minimum, and Mai knows him as well. Kamo straight up says that Megumi's got more talent than the head of the Zenin clan by his first year, and his Grade 2 status at entrance means he's considered a prodigy. There's also a lot of little scenes that suggest that Megumi's been doing this a while. When Gojo's talking to Yuuji about the detention center fight, he makes a few comments about how Megumi likely understood the reality of the fight and just how bad their odds were better than the other two, suggesting 1) megumi has the experience already to do that and 2) Gojo has witnessed him in the field enough to get a sense of how he evaluates situations. He's been doing this a while.

But the thing is that he's also passively suicidal the entirety of season 1. And that's probably because he spent his entire life believing he was going to die young.

He probably doesn't think of it as being passively suicidal, but he absolutely is. The sacrifice bunt vs Yuuji's homerun in season 1 is SUCH A GOOD MICROCOSM OF HIS CHARACTER.

Yuuji has the blind confidence of a very young god who was never informed that there were other gods that were older and more powerful and will kick his fucking ass. Like, he will be in Sukuna's throne room after the man ripped his heart out and Literally Killed Him and still be like "I will beat your entire ass." No doubt. No hesitation. I simply love him.

Megumi, meanwhile, walks into fights knowing he will find one that he can't win. Yuuji thinks he can beat anyone, but Megumi defaults to the assumption that he can't win in a way that is really suggestive of a very, very deep underlying mental issue.

I don't know if you're anime-only or if you know what the "trump card" gojo refers to during his training scene with Megumi, so I'll confine it to what's already appeared in the anime. Throughout the anime, there's multiple times where it's alluded to the fact that Megumi has some kind of "trump card" where he can take his enemy down with him. Gojo specifically refers to it as "dying to win." Sukuna even recognized to some degree that he was pulling it during their fight and called it "burning through your own life." Whatever it is, it's a sacrifice play. It's taking someone down with him.

And we see throughout the anime multiple times where he almost pulls it. Sukuna is the biggest example, but he likely almost pulled it twice in the fight against Hanami during the Goodwill Event arc. When Hanami first confronts them, Megumi immediately says "Get Inumaki out of here" to Kamo.

And that's fucking weird. Inumaki's a semi-grade one sorcerer, higher than him. He's his very experienced senpai. He's no slouch in a fight. Kamo is older than all of them, has been training his entire life, and is a first grade sorcerer. Out of all of them, Megumi was the baby kohai who should have been leaning on the older students. Instead, he's trying to get them out of the line of fire. He probably saw an immeasurably powerful special grade and decided to pull the same trump card he almost pulled in the fight against Sukuna as soon as Inumaki and Kamo were safe.

Later, when Hanami has Maki by the throat, after he was already hit by her root attack that would kill him if he used cursed energy, he makes the same hand signals he did during the Sukuna fight while thinking about how he's the one who has to make the sacrifice play. He was absolutely killing himself to win.

And that mentality makes so much sense when you consider that Megumi already made the sacrifice play with him and his sister all those years ago.

He's spent his entire life locked into being a sorcerer. It's the collateral keeping himself and his sister alive. He doesn't have a way out. His future employment is collateral for an already-accrued debt; he just doesn't have the option to quit and do something else the way everyone else does. And the thing about being a sorcerer is that the mortality rate is not awe-inspiring, to the point where the Kyoto students canonically tried not to get close to each other because they knew that a decent number of them would be dying young and it would hurt less.

Megumi's not stupid, and he's been doing this for a long time. He's probably been reconciling with his own likely violent death for a long time by the time canon starts, and it really fucking shows with how he approaches fights until the bridge fight. There's something so tragic and sad about that to me. Like, what age was he when he realized this life would probably kill him? When he realized that he would never have a way out?

When you bring in his own morality structure and philosophical approach to life, that entire mindset becomes so fucking interesting. Because Megumi's plainly fucking furious that people did this to him.

Megumi's middle school bullying days is both hilarious and endlessly fascinating in the context of his history. His entire thing is that he hates bad people and believes that we’re born into a fundamentally unjust world. Specifically, he hates people that look at the vulnerable and lack empathy for them, to the point where he ended up going out of his way to beat up every single bully in his middle school an unilaterally enforce peace. He had an entire dramatic speech about how he was doing this because they had hurt others—the worlds based on social construct, "please don't kill me and I won't kill you." They had broken that to make themselves feel strong, and if they did it again in front of him, he'd kill them. All that jazz. And it's really interesting that he never once looks down on the people getting bullied. There's a huge emphasis on strength as tied to value in JJK--Sukuna and Gojo being some of the biggest examples--but Megumi only looks down on a lack of empathy and compassion, not people who are physically weak.

Once that's contextualized with the fact that the person who was supposed to protect him abandoned him and sold him to some very bad people, it becomes a lot more tragic. He's doomed by the narrative and he's self aware of the fact that he's doomed. He spends his entire middle school years kicking the shit out of people who take advantage of people because they can, and I personally think that's because that's exactly what happened to him when he was a kid. There's always a bigger fish, and some pretty fucking big fish have him in a corner. But he's the biggest fish in the pond of his middle school, and he does not put up with people who hurt others just because they can.

He spends his last years before becoming a full time sorcerer acting as the sort of person that never was there for him as a child, and there's something so tragic about that to me. Megumi just reads as someone who's already accepted he's doomed and is so angry he wasn't saved.

Even his name has tinges of tragedy to me. Like, it's the difference between "blessing" and "blessed."

On his face, Megumi seems like he's blessed. He won the genetic lottery. He was born with one of the most powerful techniques in the franchise, the one that the Zenin clan desperately wants. It's rare enough that no one else alive has inherited it. It's suggested that it's the Zenin equivalent to the Six Eyes, and Gojo's the one who's always saying how he alone is blessed by heaven. Even Kamo, who isn't even Zenin, commented during their fight on how much people wanted someone like Maki or Mai to get it instead. I won't comment on manga events, but as it proceeds, it becomes even more obvious just how valuable his technique is considered to be.

But Megumi doesn't seem to particularly care about his technique.

He said at one point that, in middle school, he didn't really want to be a jujutsu sorcerer because he couldn't imagine who he'd want to save (the fact that his first act in the series is to save Yuuji is another discussion entirely that I am so mentally ill about). Megumi spends the series surrounded by people who are extremely impressed by and focused on his technique, but for Megumi? His technique and its value seems to be the thing that trapped him. No one was ever going to let him live in peace, and he was young enough that he had no real way to protect his own interests.

He never got to be a kid who got to dream about what he'd be when he grew up. Other kids got to say they'd be an astronaut, or an actor, or a veterinarian or whatever, and he has known that he would be lucky to not die in wizard school his entire childhood. He is a blessing for other people, for the Zenin who want his technique, for the higher ups who effectively own him until he repays his debt, but he's not blessed. He's just valuable sea glass with collectors circling. He hates his name, and I think he hates what he is as well. He's an extraordinarily strong willed person who hates people who take advantage, but he's spent his entire life with a boot on his neck. that must piss him off.

I think his relationship with jujutsu sorcerer would have potentially been a lot better if it had been a choice for him, but he's someone who intensely values control over himself who has been controlled by the circumstances of his birth his entire life. There are all these tiny ways in the show that he tries to exert control over his own circumstances because he just doesn't have a lot of control over his life and it's just amazing character design.

He's just so tragic to me. I am so mentally unwell over him.

Tsumiki and the fact that she was fully about to fight Maki for a hot minute was a lot harder to settle on, mostly because we just don't get a lot about her. But I actually kind of like those kinds of characters? I get to play more in those sandboxes and have more freedom with the character because I'm just using what's little known about them as a bouncing off point and making shit up for the rest.

And with Tsumiki we just do not have a huge amount because she's in a magic coma when canon starts. What little we have is coming through Megumi, who is a naturally unreliable narrator when it comes to her. Like, in his mind, her primarily defines her as "a good person," and that makes a lot of sense when you consider that this is his big sister who was, effectively, the only source of stability and care he had growing up and is almost completely lost to him by the start of canon. he's the last person i would expect to be an reliable narrator about her.

Fanon (at least what I've seen) seems to have translated what we've seen to her into "kind natured good girl" which I don't entirely agree with? I just don't think those kind of people exist. Like, the one's who are all sunshine and rainbows and kind thoughts all the time. Everyone has negative emotions; it's just a matter of how they deal with them.

Also what little concrete we have on her doesn't necessarily suggest she fits that kind of eternally-caring good girl motif anyway.

There's the big example, where she says she would much rather think about the ones she loves rather than curse anyone. This very notably isn't an idealistic "everyone has good in them" rationalization, but it's more "I have better things to do with my time." Forgiving bad people is a trait that Megumi attributes to her, but he's an unreliable narrator about her, so it may be accurate or it may not be. There's a difference between forgiving someone and taking a policy of non-interference.

It's also suggested that she doesn't actually look down on the absence of forgiveness--she actually comments pretty favorably on it. She says that Megumi's refusal to forgive people is a part of his kindness. This suggests that, even though she goes after him for fighting, it's not some kind of perfectly kind "forgiveness is the right thing to do" rationalization. She recognizes the nuance in Megumi's actions and his anger. The thing she really gets on him for is the fighting itself, not the anger, and fighting 1) has wider impacts on Megumi (physically, mentally, emotionally, on his record, etc) and 2) it's suggested that she gets on him because of these wider impacts. We never actually see her discuss it at all in terms of the people he beats up, and Megumi thinks, in retrospect, that she was picking him to care about the same way that he picks who he saves. Again, he's unreliable, so this may be true and it may not be, but I find her character so interesting if it is true, especially in light of her quote about not cursing people because she'd rather think of her loved ones.

That takes Tsumiki from the kind of "prototypical good girl" character type into the realm of someone who has picked to only care about certain people and approach the rest of the world with polite indifference. She doesn't share Megumi's anger at the world, but she doesn't exactly approach it with starry-eyed idealism either.

A much better example of starry-eyed idealism within JJK is actually Yuuji (pre-Junpei) or Geto (pre-genocidal breakdown) than Tsumiki--and the narrative immediately deconstructs both cases of starry-eyed idealism, suggesting that it doesn't genuinely tie being a "good person" to those approaches to morality.

Both Yuuji and Geto kind of spout like, baby's first philosophy class styles of idealism. And I don't mean that in a derogatory way towards either of them--they're both highly empathetic teenagers who care a lot about the world and people in it who are trapped in a system that is fundamentally hostile. Yuuji has a stance of "even considering killing would affect my soul" and Geto has a stance of "I exist for the sake of protecting those weaker than me," both of which aren't wholly without merit, but both are overly simplistic and lack nuance. Which makes sense, because they're both a teenager's approach to morality. In a safer environment, they could have grown in nuance and had their world views challenged safely. but the system they're both existing in isn't safe and never has been--so Yuuji ends up having to confront his stance on killing when he has to put literal children trapped in inexplicable torment out of their misery, and Geto goes off his rocker entirely.

In contrast, Tsumiki really isn't as idealistic as either of them, from what little we see of her. She never once gets close to their levels of "I want to save everyone" syndrome--it's straight up that she's picked her people to care about and has better things to do with her time than waste it on hate and anger. Contextualizing it within her background, that reads more like a survival strategy than being a sparkly kind perfect good girl.

She was a very young girl who had to shoulder a huge amount of responsibility at a young age. She was stuck in terrible circumstances, living well below the poverty line, with her only support being a brother that was even younger than her. We don't know anything about her mom or bio dad, or how much she knows about/remembers Toji, but it's interesting that Toji's approach to life is the antithesis of Tsumiki's.

Toji was so caught up in his own bitterness towards how he was treated that a big part of why he took Riko's assassination was so he could prove he was stronger than *checks notes* a sixteen year old miracle baby and his repressed boyfriend. In the end, the fact that he was caught up in his bitterness was his downfall, and he said it himself: he normally would have fucked off the second Gojo showed up after the assassination was done. He directly ignored his instincts to prove a monkey like him could take on the pinnacle of jujutsu sorcery, and that's what killed him.

There's not enough in canon to tell us either way if tsumiki had any impressions of the adults in her life, but I honestly really like the idea of her looking at the a life where the adults are neglecting her because they've been consumed by their own anger and hate and purposefully deciding to not let it consume her as well. To discard that kind of stuff, not because she thinks there's good in everyone or that it's horribly wrong to have negative emotions, but because she has the people she loves and she's building a life with them by sheer force of will. She's fleeing the teeth of a beast, not approaching the world through rose-colored glass.

For another thing, we have legitimately two actions that she's canonically taken in the series. One was nail Megumi in the back of the head with a milk carton during a fight, the other was fling her fucking body off a bridge with a homemade bungee chord. Girl's probably not a nun.

I ended up deciding that the core of Tsumiki's character needed to be that had a, for lack of a better word, selfish way of loving people. Not to say that she acts selfishly (if anything, canon shows she's intensely selfless when it comes to the people she loves), but just that she's decided to conserve her efforts and care to center around the people she loves and not care about the whole world and everything in it. In her mind, Megumi's kindness is in part because he's angry on the behalf of other people, which is a trait she doesn't share. She cares about her brother and just straight up doesn't have the time or resources for everyone else. Megumi is her landmine.

There's not enough in canon to contradict this reading of her, which makes her fun to write. So she's a relatively nice and polite girl until her brother's in danger, in which case she's immediately stealing cars and about to throw hands with a girl holding a polearm. She's so fun.

#jujutsu kaisen #jjk #jjk spoilers #fushiguro tsumiki #fushiguro megumi #sea glass gardens #those that have been following me for a while know that the ask box comes at the risk of 73 different tangents in the answer #that's right folks it's yet another info dump

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diodellet · 1 year ago

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ooohh that ask game has some interesting questions hmm how abt 16, 18, and 23?

i am realizing just how much this ask game is making me bare my soul goshhh (/not srs), thanks for sending me an ask, bibi!

16. What makes you immediately close a fic that otherwise seemed good?

hm...well, most of the time i try to stick it out even if i'm not enjoying the fic from the first few sentences. like, maybe it's just me but a lot of the first words of a fic tends to be the (for lack of a better word) "the gunk" that precedes the actual story? like some stories just have slow starts, but they do get gud.

but to answer the q, i guess stuff that makes me roll my eyes at a fic, in the context of x readers would probably have to be:

disclaimer: most of the time, i don't mind reading these. but there are just moments where they bother me as i'm reading

reader getting carried bridal style (i dont like it, i hate it. id rather be carried like a sack of potatoes. or id rather be carried like a goat by its shepherd. but i do like seeing characters getting princess-carried) just carry me like this instead 🤧🤧👇

royalty AU++CEO/office/corporate-setting AU (like secret princess of a kingdom or being a secretary, for example) i'm not a big fan of those kinds of settings. like ok sure a chara can look good in business formal or in some fine furs, but once the eye candy wears off thats when i exit the fic oops.

fics centered around marriage: i don't really enjoy reading proposals. also thinking of how the rings, the dresses, and the flowers look is hard bcs of my (partial?) aphantasia, but weddings Are Pretty Fun as a background setting. overall, i think what bothers me most is that the chara loses a bit of their personality after they get wed together with the reader.

^^actually in relation to this... im not that big of a fan of prom/dance settings, they both read very similarly, especially since the reader tends to be placed in the more passive role of being asked out. (but when you make it angsty or hurt/comfort, ok i will read it i'm a simple girl)

Oh and ig this is just me wishing for more in the Imposter-SAGAU genre of fanfic (i mean i'm still looking around, i don't feel desperate enough to write smth of my own), but i kinda wish the charas weren't so doe-eyed and quick to apologize to the reader. like, i get the feeling of wanting to write The Good Bits Immediately (e.g. being fawned over, getting to lord that blunder over the characters) but the potential of slowburn trauma recovery and developing a relationship from straight-up antagonism is Right There.

18. What media do you want to get into because of artists/writers you like?

i think i'd want to try reading more poetry? like, if i rb a lot of web weaving, i gotta know sumn other than "deep" pop lyrics (u wont find me saying nice things about ms sw*ft). so far i'm thinking of starting with ocean vuong and richard siken (basic ik but i mean, their works are good)

dunmeshi! i've been putting it off for forever 🙈🙈 (<-girlie watched frieren and forgor abt dunmeshi bcs they got yorushika to do the 2nd OP) but senshi,,,, SENSHI THE MAN THAT U ARE,,,,

Oh! and i'm rlly curious about alien stage! my sibling's dipping into it and he told me it was basically america's got talent x the promised neverland. and he said the magic words "toxic yaoi" and "doomed yuri," i Gotta watch it atp. (also like, carole and tuesday rearranged my brain, im ready to put a sadder spin on it😤)

23. What would you make a 5 hour video essay on, if you had enough time and motivation?

as soon as i read this all my hyperfixations have: left the server HAHAHA

maybe in terms of recent ones, i could try analyzing madds buckley's my love is sick. i wrote about that album for a final paper in a basic music elective, but i was constrained to only 3 pages so i only talked about 2-3 songs. but i could pretend to be a music major and regale ppl with how the leitmotifs tie together and completely destroy me add a new layer of meaning to the songs on subsequent listens. Also like, these songs just Get It (not sure what "it" is exactly, but there's smth related to first love and love lost*)

(but atm im just yoinking songs from there to use for fic/chapter titles, i plan on using one for this ruggie timeloop angst fic im plotting out anyway)

(art appreciation ask questions, please bug me to rb some underrated art and fic)

#dellet-asks #a runner up wud have to be ghost quartet...oh that song cycle has my heart #so many good lines and moments #it haunts me #*like not to say that queerness is a monolith but #there are some quote-unquote universal experiences (to some extent)#and im just floored errytime when i see recent art that just Gets It

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ash-and-books · 2 years ago

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Rating: 2/5

Book Blurb: The riotous Wynchester family has taken on a new case to expose a forger, but the prime suspect isn't at all what he seems in this captivating Regency romp from a New York Times bestselling author.

Marjorie Wynchester has always let her siblings take the lead when it comes to planning their investigations. But someone in London is trying to pass off counterfeits, and this time she's the only one with the skill needed to find the culprit. Soon, all the evidence leads her straight to Lord Adrian Webb.

Adrian is a roguish scoundrel of the first order, but he never meant to get caught up in a forgery scheme. Especially one that’s snowballed out of control. Now a blackmailer is out to ruin him, and the most alluring woman he's ever met is trying to put him behind bars. Every time Marjorie thinks she has Adrian figured out, her assumptions turn on their head. He’s a heartless scoundrel. A loyal brother. A smooth liar. A good kisser. Er…wait… Is winning her affections just one more attempt to avoid the law? Or is it possible he’s not such a rogue after all?

Review:

A new adventure with the Wynchester family, this time involving Marjorie Wynchester, a partially deaf but extremely talented artist who is hunting down a counterfeit money forger only to find herself falling for the roguish scoundrel himself, Lord Adrian Webb. Marjorie has always been looked over, her siblings treating her like glass but she's had enough and when her family's latest client asks for help with a counterfeit case she knows it's the perfect job for her. She proceeds to go undercover and work for the forger... only now she's spending days locked in a room with an extremely handsome and charming but irritating artist who has his own reasons for making the forgeries.... Lord Adrian Webb has a reputation as being a scoundrel, a family disgrace and now he's found himself being forced to make counterfeit money for the man he might have tried to con... and if he doesn't his sister's life is in danger. Adrian will do anything for his family, but when trying to find a way to destroy the blackmailer who has him he only finds himself trying to also save Marjorie who has landed herself right in the middle of his own trouble. Can these two find a way to get out of this alive and take down the man responsible for the crime while dealing with their feelings for one another or were they doomed from the start? This is part of a series but you can absolutely read it as a standalone. While this had all the ingredients to be a book I would enjoy, unfortunately I didn't really have a great time. I just didn't believe the romance between Marjorie and Adrian and found the story to be a bit slogging at points. Overall its a cute historical romance with some flirting and art crime and if that's your thing, definitely give it a go maybe you'll have a better time with it than I did.

*Thanks Netgalley and Forever (Grand Central Publishing), Forever for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

#book review #bookish #my rogue to ruin

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penumbralma · 2 months ago

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Disheartening, it had been, to think that it was a bad thing for Ara as well... Because, if it wasn't good for her, surely it would be catastrophic for the rest. She didn't want to crush her own hopes ever further but... what could she do? She could only depend on Ara to have some semblance of a solution. She looks to the one flickering sign – amusingly enough reflecting the shaky hope she is struggling to keep with her. The dark has always been there, with her and her siblings. Their family name carried it, and they seemed to entrust it to everyone around them, as if they'd be proud of such a heirloom.

Just like the dark, Hell is deep. She can hear those words even after Ara mentioned them. It is deeper than Mitsuko could ever imagine. Deeper than the turmoil of the world she lived in. Yet, even such a shallow world such as this one bore incredible madness, it drove its inhabitants to commit atrocious acts, to lure creatures of the same cloth... But it also brought Ara, the only fortune Mitsuko has been able to witness from that unknown beyond. Hell is deep, and Hell's former guard is here. That was cause for rejoice, right? She'd cling to that small mercy, despite the odds. The sign's light lasts for a few seconds longer, before it continues to flicker.

Her breath comes out in the form of a light chuckle. It seemed even the underworld itself had its friends and foes... Maybe, this world was just a mirror of the one beyond. It made her wonder if she even belonged anywhere – not quite here, but not quite there, either. What did Ara interpret of someone like her? Did she pity her...? Or see herself in her? Mitsuko didn't wish to assume, so she'd keep it to herself. They both could sense it, the doom that lingered here... Much different than both of theirs combined. It was... maddening, if a little saddening. It was a frenzy, but it also stood eerily still... Ever the contradiction – maybe that very anomaly is part of the wonder of Mitsuko and Ara's bond.

"My soul, yes... It was like it took over the man's body and it lost control. Or, maybe, went mad with power. It ended up... destroying the woman near him and even the man's body. But, by the end, I think it noticed me. I think,... for just a few seconds, it was dragging me in." She tries to recall it, the sensation, the calling. Ironically, she has to close her eyes to see it clearer. "I couldn't stop looking, my eyes – they, just couldn't get enough of it." Or was it she who couldn't? She hasn't stopped to think about it. "Just a little longer and, surely, my eyes – my soul, would've been snuffed out. It felt that way."

The more she said, the more she confirmed Ara's words. The fact that she was cursed, haunted, was something that came with a reason. Maybe her family had inherited this from an ancestor. A Kuroiwa that peered too far into the depths of the abyss, the first one to be stared right back... Maybe, a vision of the future to come, somehow chosen to fall upon her hands. Maybe both. For all the things she could've been given, she is given this,... and she can do nothing but see, be only a witness.

But that same curse blessed her with being able to perceive Ara, to understand her better, to watch as she approaches her, steps demanding attention, making her instinctively glance as if in a trance. She speaks of promises and wisdom that Mitsuko would not believe from anyone else. These chains that have bound her since she was born, could be broken. She could be free from this, but did that mean breaking herself from the link she has established with Ara? It is the one thing that makes her otherwise lightened up expression darken. Even the breaking of those chains came with sacrifice. Always, a sacrifice.

Yet, for now, she is not alone and there is no sacrifice to be made. For now, she feels the tight, warm, inviting grip and she welcomes it. She gives herself to this feeling, pleasant and thrilling. To feel the warden's touch, hard but enchanting like a diamond, to be seen and held in an otherwise cold, heartless world. They're not alone, Mitsuko hopes to convey that, too. So, she raises one of her hands, lets it rest on top of one of the hands holding her shoulders, and she nods firmly.

"Right... We're in this together. Which means... you won't be leaving my side anytime soon, right?" She hoped she kept part of her desperation in check. She tried to hide just how much she needed her presence right now. She swallows the doubts, instead concentrating on the opposing eyes. Stare at the abyss, stare at it for long... This abyss is your friend, after all. "I still have pieces to form. This... situation is still a bit of a mystery to me, too. I feel like only you can make me see it clearly."

ㅤ—ㅤAra’s expression hardens as Mitsuko questions. The dim light overhead flickers—old neon, buzzing faintly, casting jittering shadows along the damp. The air is thick with something stale, something old. Isn’t it a good thing, for something similar to Ara to exist in this realm? Centuries of shadow inhabit her. She doesn’t answer immediately—just a slow shake of her head, and thoughts. It’s not. “Especially not for me,” she finally admits, her voice carrying something sharp, bitter, like the lingering taste of iron. She has been alone—ripped from the heavens and hells, thrown into the mortal realm with nothing but time as her warden. A sentence without end. A cruel joke. It is suffering for creatures to be severed from their origins, to exist in a schizophrenia of past, present, and future. She has seen it before. The ones who lost themselves in it. A madness of violence and longing. “Hell is deep, you know,” she says, her voice stretching over the words as if tweighing them. “Deeper than the abyss of any ocean on this earth.” The flickering light hums louder. A shadow shifts in the far corner—nothing there, not really. But the darkness in this place feels thick, like something breathing just beyond the edge of vision. “There are layers there. I used to guard its gates—I know how dark it gets. Even if I liked that darkness, it doesn't have its place in here.” A pause. A bitter smirk. “I had allies. Or, well, I had them.” A scoff escapes her lips, something almost nostalgic. The ones who stood by her side back in the centuries. “But I’ve made just as many enemies, and—” she glances around, her nose wrinkling slightly, “—it reeks of doom in here.” A wry tilt of her lips. “And trust me, darling—if they were friends of mine? They’d have at least texted.” The last words are laced with humor, but they mean something. Whatever they’re about to walk into—it won’t be friendly. Ara doesn’t miss the sad little smile tugging at Mitsuko’s lips, the way her arms cross tight over her chest, a quiet sorrow settling in her eyes. It’s a look Ara knows all too well. Mitsuko’s loneliness is winter—slow, drawn-out, the kind where you sit by the window, waiting for the past to walk through the door. Ara’s, in contrast, is fire and blood, the kind that makes you gnash your teeth and bare your fangs at the world. “What have you seen?” she asks, voice low, edged with something almost hungry as she needs to hear more about this. “Describe it. Piece by piece. Or at least what you could grasp—what you felt. If it tried to take anything from you, like a... like a piece of your thoughts, a piece of your soul? I have met many creatures and so has you,” It’s a missing puzzle piece, a vital thread in a tapestry neither of them fully understands yet. Mitsuko speaks of being haunted. Ara listens. And she relates. Silence settles between them—not an uncomfortable silence, but one that hums with understanding. A curse—a haunt—never breaks easily. “There’s always a reason, did you know that?” Ara murmurs, her voice dipping lower, conspiratorial, like a secret shared between shadows. “A soul doesn’t get haunted for no damn reason, mm. It’s chains. Always chains. Chains that connect you to your demons, your ghosts—sometimes ghosts from your ancestors pasts, sometimes ghosts from someone else's future that has been tied to you.” She steps closer, her black-heeled boots clicking against the concrete, the sound sharp against the heavy quiet. Shadows cling to her like a second skin. She is, as always, dressed in black, a creature of the night itself. “And those chains?” Her gaze is dark, steady. “They can break, yes, we can break them Mitsuko.” Her hands land on Mitsuko’s shoulders—firm, warm. “I would never leave you alone in this.” There’s steel beneath the softness in her tone. “Honestly, darling... You thought I'd leave you alone with some ghosts and demons messing around in the city? it’s almost an insult that you even asked for help.” A smile is on her lips. “Come on. We’re in this together.”

#uroborosymphony #filed under // maybe i am just like him (ic)#subject // ara anthea #i think I extended too much no need to match the length ever!#but god I love them and the whole vibe of this!!

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itshype · 2 years ago

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How I Met Your Brother (DC x DP)

Dan joins the Justice League - not as part of his rehabilitation, but as a reward for doing so well.

Tucker makes the grave mistake of mentioning Dan in front of Jazz. And as an eldest sister myself I would not be happy about an alternate version of my sibling being left completely alone in the world, no support, no family to then be turned into a psychopath. And I would be furious for them to then be imprisoned - not for life but for all time?

However, unlike me, Jazz is the world's foremost authority on ghost psychology. She has Dan out of his Thermos and in a larger enclosure within the week.

Now, a lot of fics have Jazz as a magical therapist who can say a few sentences and make any bad guy cry. Sorry, not today though.

First, they resocialise Dan like a feral cat (solitary confinement does make people get loopy), sitting outside his enclosure and hanging out, doing homework etc. This sort of gets him to figure out emotionally that he's no longer in the timeline where everyone he ever cared about died.

Danny discusses with him how many nightmares he's had over just the idea of losing his entire support network the way Dan did and he can't imagine what he's been through. But no emotions are not, in fact superior to having negative emotions.

After a few months, he decides that he does in fact want to actively try and get better. He goes to a therapist (because family members can't do therapy!!!) who's just unhinged enough to get a kick out of counselling a ghost from an alternate timeline.

There's only one relapse. Clockwork fixed it and they don't talk about it.

A month or so later they let him out of the enclosure for good. They offer to symbolically destroy it but Dan thinks they should keep it just in case.

While Dan's humanity has returned, his actual human half is gone forever. But he's interested in doing something with himself. He can't get a GED, or a degree, or be an astronaut. Maybe something in entertainment?

Tucker makes the grave mistake of mentioning that the Justice League headquarters are in space. Dan isn't as powerful anymore now he's no longer a halfa, but he knows he's handy in a fight. He loves space and due to having them repeatedly and ineffectively implemented against himself - a deep knowledge of international war tactics.

NGL, this isn't where I thought this story was going. But Dan is now an international politics, war policy and foreign affairs expert, I guess.

He helps a fair bit on the team, but his key contributions are his encyclopaedic predictions of how different international communities will react to events. If an out of control meta in Paris takes down the Eiffel Tower, he predicts which countries will immediately 'crack down' on their superpowered citizens - that sort of thing. It's invaluable for their PR team and young meta safety.

He's a friendly guy, doesn't judge anyone for losing control of their powers or going 'too far' on a villain who hurt their friends and family. And he never shuts up about his kid brother who is apparently also his best friend. He briefly mentions a baby sister he's never met and that makes everyone pretty sad.

He doesn't consider this Jazz his sister. He's already had a sister named Jazz and isn't looking for a 1:1 replacement. This Jazz is more like a mum-friend. However, he never had a Danny or an Ellie in his last life.

"My little brother told me about the trick to this level in Doomed 17, want me to explain what you're missing?"

"Sorry, I really can't possess you, even for 'anti mind-control' training. That isn't how overshadowing works, you can't become immune without exposure to ectoplasm in dangerous doses. No, I can't get you some pure ecto, my baby brother would kick my ass to hell."

"Yeah, my baby bro and I both wanted to be astronauts, I died so it's not in the cards for me anymore, but he has a real shot still, we're all rooting for him!"

Most Justice League members think he's a dead eldest brother with living siblings he's still in close contact with.

It's all fun and games until he tries to take a bullet for Batman during an ambush and it's actually an amnesia ray designed to make Batman forget about a specific case until the bad guy can complete his plan.

"I killed you all before, and I will do it again."

#dc x dp #dp x dc #mine #notfic #danny fenton #danny phantom #dc comics #dan phantom #dark danny phantom #tucker foley #jazz fenton #justice league #batman #bruce wayne

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voxofthevoid · 2 years ago

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JJK 216: Well, that's a lot less incest (zero incest, in fact) than what the post-leaks internet reaction led me to believe

I don't really avoid leaks or spoilers before I read the chapter over the weekend, so since Wednesday, I've been seeing everything from Reddit posts to wholeass articles on incest-related developments. I assume it's worse over on Twitter because I always assume everything is worse on Twitter.

Then I read the actual chapter and...what incest? There's not even a hint of it. Yorozu and Sukuna seem headed for a bloodbath, and though the two fighting while possessing siblings is extremely interesting in terms of what it'll do to the remnants of Megumi (and Tsumiki, maybe), I don't understand the "lovers in the bodies of siblings" reaction (I saw that caption with my own two eyes). Seriously, this is disappointing for anyone who'd be into the incest angle, and anyone who's outraged is making one hell of a stretch. The genre could take a hard left into hentai and Sukuna and Yorozu could start full-on fucking next chapter, and it still wouldn't be incest. I lost brain cells to this take.

Onto the actual content:

The bath and the protagonists

I'm very curious how long the bath took, plus all the travel time (Kenjaku's Flying Fishmobile seems... efficient at least). The ten months and ten days bit is for the original process, right? How long has Sukuna been in there? Days or just hours? I'm also dying to see the state of Megumi's soul now. I don't think it's the last we've seen of him as himself, but the longer Sukuna is in him, the more it seems to seal Megumi's ultimate fate. That said, jumping right into fighting/killing Tsumiki for good seems like it will backfire on Sukuna. I hope it will. It's been established that Megumi fights back the hardest when his loved ones are in danger, and while killing Tsumiki might destroy his soul (though it would be interesting if his reaction is unhinged rage rather than immediate grief), it also seems like the kind of thing that would make him fight back the hardest. Sukuna versus Yorozu is shaping up to be pivotal to Megumi's character arc, and I am buying popcorn as we speak.

I also wonder if the bath has taken a long enough time that Yuuji and Maki (and Takaba and...maybe the Angel, if she and Hana survived) have regrouped with Yuuta and Hakari + Kashimo. Yuuta's absence in Sendai hints at that, I hope. I don't know whether I want the next chapter to jump right into Sukuna versus Yorozu or pan back to Yuuji and co. dealing with this clusterfuck.

Sukuna's appearance

Sukuna being shown to retain Megumi's appearance on purpose also resolves my confusion about how Yorozu retained Tsumiki's looks. Guess there's more control involved in that whole process than I'd previously assumed. But Megumi's soul is clearly still kicking inside, so does complete eradication of the soul by the incarnated sorcerer forcibly reset the body? In the same vein, is preserving the original soul to some extent needed for the incarnated sorcerer to retain the vessel's appearance? The fight between Sukuna and Yorozu will be more interesting if there's some of Tsumiki left in there, rather than it just being about Megumi and his pain. It's a doomed end for her either way, I think, but at least give her a somewhat active role in this whole mess.

On a related note, I am cackling at how Yorozu apparently found the time to stop and find some makeup. Way to go, buddy. Fight and fall in style. In all seriousness, I do love how that hair and face make Yorozu look quite distinct from Tsumiki while retaining the same base design:

Hello <3

Also, Sukuna's line about preferring Megumi's face strikes me as particularly hilarious. One, damn, dude, you just won't let up on Yuuji, will you? Kenjaku doesn't seem happy. Hurt parental feelings, hurt mad scientist pride, or both? Who knows.

Two, fandom has been theorizing forever that Sukuna's original appearance kind of resembles Yuuji's (and what that may imply with regard to Kaori-Kenjaku's experimentation with fetus!Yuuji and Yuuji's body/bloodline overall), and from that lens, it's like Sukuna's giving himself a little impromptu makeover.

It's also interesting how his answer to Yorozu is so different from the one he gave Kenjaku. The latter is probably the more honest one, while the response to Yorozu is just Sukuna's usual battle persona, but that brings me to:

Sukuna and Kenjaku

I would read a whole arc of just these characters interacting. I low-key want a full-on flashback segment just to see more of OG Kenjaku's interactions with Sukuna (and OG Kenjaku in general).

I love them, your honor. Guess Yuuji inherited his mum's irreverence for Sukuna.

Seriously though, I think this is the most casual/disrespectful anyone other than Yuuji or Gojou has acted toward Sukuna without any consequences. With Gojou, Sukuna was outclassed, and with Yuuji, he seemed to have been biding his time while getting his kicks where he could. I'm dying to see how it will end with these two. Allies or not, I don't see their agendas, whatever the fuck they are, matching up in the long run.

Overall, I'm still not a fan of Megukuna, the plot continues to be extremely compelling, Yorozu is smoking hot, and I'd sell my soul to Kenjaku with the full awareness that it'll backfire on me.

#jjk #jujutsu kaisen spoilers #jjk spoilers #jujutsu kaisen #jjk 216 #I'm a lot less feral when the chapters don't feature yuuji #it's good i wasn't reading along when the shibuya arc happened #might have lost my mind for all of my blog to ser #*see

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low-budget-korra · 3 years ago

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Comments on Eternals

I was waiting for the movie to get on stream so I could watch again and now that I did I have another time I love it even more

-First of all, this is not our typical MCU movie. It hits questions like "what if the gods become human?" and asks if there's something more in the universe, if we are doom to this cycle of creation and destruction,what centuries of war can do to someone, what are the limits of loyalty. Okay maybe it's just me but I swear I saw all this being hit at some point of the movie

-Yes, Makkari, Thena, Druig...all of them were amazing and deserved more screen time but Sersi and Ikaris are also nice and complex characters. In fact, taking in consideration that this is the introduction movie of all them, Eternals manage to give them all a personality and complexity. And the actors did a incredible work with the time they were given.

-Ikaris is complex af. His loyalty to Arishem blind and betrayed him. And just like a good villain, he believed that he was doing the right thing and his choices make him suffer. He suffered for having to kill Ajak and fight against his friends/family but he did because he thought it was the right thing. But at the very last moment when he had to choose between his love for Sersi and his loyalty to Arishem he realizes that he had gone too far. How Sersi would love him again, how the others could forgive him for what his done? He can't deal with the consequences of his actions and decided to ended all, flying into the sun. Btw I love the reference to the old greek story of Icarus with his death

-Speaking of Arishem, what a dick. He pull a Odin. At the end Eternals and Deviants were siblings fighting against each other because of their father's plans, just like Hela with Thor and Loki in Ragnarok.

-I like the "call for a fight" of Sersi because she wasn't ready to carry Ajak burden of be the leader. Ikaris was the one that wanted this and in theory was the most prepared for it since he was Ajak buddy but no, she was the choosed one and I think Ajak choose her because she was the only one that could bring good sense to Ikaris. Sersi never wanted that leadership, she was fine with just being vibing with us humans. I like stories when the protagonist ain't ready or didn't wanted the power they received. And she became that leader by the end of the movie.

-Sprite was annoying but if I was teenager for 7.000 years I would be annoying too. Can you guys imagine live 7.000 years without not even pretend to be normal like Sersi, Phastos and Kimbo did? No thanks. But I not sure if she keep her powers at the end like, be human but with powers or just be a normal human.

-We all wanted to see a movie with Thena and Gilgamesh at their prime kicking ass and all but I'm fine with what we got. In fact it was cool see those flashback of all them in their prime and see them in present day all torn apart by their differences and internal struggles. And also, Thena was clearing suffering from PTSD(or something like that) and I have a thing for stories of powerful heros who were destroyed but their years of fighting and now have to rebuild themselves and learn who to leave with their traumas.

- The bond between the Eternals is something we can't imagine, they were together for most of 7.000 years only in earth. So I get the ships between Kingo and Ikaris, Thena and Gilgamesh, Druig and Makkari but it they ended up being just friendship I wouldn't be surprised

Yes, Gilgamesh and Thena are both soulmates and cute af together. In main option they were a couple but I also know that soulmates not necessarily equals romantic partner. But cmon, thats a married couple right there.

Makkari and Druig are also so good together. They were either really nice pals or they indeed have deeper feelings for each other. I wonder if Makkari went to visit him after that night when they all split.

-Phastos is way more powerful than people give credit for. He was the only one who was able to hold Ikaris in that final fight. I also love his story, the character who loved humanity, sees humans destroy themselves and stopped to believe in us until he found love.

-Did the whole blip the half of humanity was Thanos way to prevent the born of another Celestial and the destruction of earth? Was that actually a personal attack to the Celestials?

-The cgi is amazing. The cinematography is beautiful. I also love who the beginning and the end is tied together. I will do another post only about this cuz this one is already huge

I don't get the criticism. Maybe because it's not our typical MCU movie, maybe because of the diversity...it doesn't matter, this movie didn't deserve the hate

#eternals #mcu #ikaris #sersi #ajak #druig #makkari #sprite #thena #gilgamesh #phastos #kingo #comments on

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smcc212 · 4 years ago

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Shelby Meets Solomons

Pairings- Thomas Shelby x Solomons! Male reader

Word count- 1,966

Warnings- internalised homophobia, fluff, ooc Tommy, smut-anal, kinda hand-job? Not proofread. I think that’s it, let me know if I missed any.

A/N- Thank you, @follow-donttelltheelf-x for requesting some Tommy Shelby x male reader. I’ve actually wrote two Tommy x male reader fics. I’ll tag you in both. By the way, I’m sorry if I missed up the tag, I have dyslexia so it took me awhile to understand it-hope I got it right. Anyways, Enjoy!!

A Shelby and Solomons. A doomed love if there ever was such a thing. But, Thomas couldn’t help falling for (Y/N). He was nothing like his brother, the only thing they had in common was their name and their accent.

They met for the first time in Alfie’s office. Thomas and Alfie has just made a new deal when (Y/N) came storming in.

“Fuck sake, Alfie! Will you stop having your fucking men follow me everywhere!” He shouted, he knew Thomas was there but he didn’t care. He was pissed. All he wanted was to have a somewhat normal life, but he couldn’t do that when he had Alfie’s men trailing behind wherever he went.

“(Y/N), this can wait,” Alfie spoke sternly, glaring at his little brother.

“No, it fucking can’t! I can’t live a normal life when there are randoms following me around!” Thomas just stared at (Y/N). That part of his mind he’d worked so hard destroy rebuilding itself as he looked at the younger man. He wasn’t much younger, he looked about thirty. As the Solomons brothers continued to argue, Thomas’ eyes took in all of (Y/N). He was a strong, handsome man and Thomas couldn’t help but let himself wonder what (Y/N) Solomons looked like beneath his shirt.

They met for the second time when Thomas went to visit Ada, his sister. He stopped on the threshold on the drawing room, shocked to see the Solomons brother that had plagued his mind with thoughts he’d fought his entire life to ignore.

“Tommy, this is (Y/N).” Ada smiled at her brother who continued staring at the young man. “Fuck sake, Tom. He’s not interested in me... or girls of any kind,” mirth laced her words.

“Ada!” (Y/N)’s eyes widened, darting back and forth between Ada and Thomas.

“Come down, Tommy doesn’t care. He sure as hell won’t go to the police.”

“(Y/N).” Thomas cleared his throat before extending his hand out towards (Y/N). “I’m Thomas.”

“Have we met before, Thomas?”

“I’m in business with your brother I believe.” Thomas’ heart was racing as he looked at the younger man, but on the outside he looked his normal cold, calculated self.

“Ah, so you’ve had the misfortune of meeting Alfie. I promise I’m nothing like him,” (Y/N) chuckled nervously, not only had Ada revealed his biggest secret, but she’d revealed it to someone that knew his brother. He’d never told Alfie,he never planned on telling Alfie. Alfie was the only family he had left, he couldn’t lose him.

“Will you let me talk to my sister, alone for a moment?” Thomas asked, he could see Ada adding everything up in her head.

“Of course,” (Y/N) spoke, his eyes trailing along Thomas’ body before he left the room, left the siblings alone.

“So,” Ada began, “‘re you gonna tell me what that was about?” She asked pointedly.

“What are you talking about, Ada?” Although he maintained his calm appearance, Thomas had never been more scared in his life.

Ada took a deep breath, recognising his fear. “Tom, I know we’ve had our differences, but your still my big brother and I’ll always love you no matter what. You know that don’t you?” Her voice had softened, as had her eyes, she needed her brother to know that she’d love him no matter what; she just hoped Thomas would understand.

“Yes, Ada. I’m aware.” Thomas’ could hear his heartbeat in his ears, could feel bile rises into his throat, feel sweat gathering on his back as his breathing started to pick up.

“So, you know I’ll love no matter what, right?”

“What’s your point, Ada?”

“You introduced yourself as ‘Thomas’, no one outside the family calls you that. And, you let him check you out. Tommy, do you... y’know... like men?” She spoke softly, placing a loving hand on your brother’s shoulder. “I don’t care if you do,” She quickly added, “and I won’t tell anyone if you don’t want me to.”

He tried to talk, but his tongue felt like lead in his mouth. He nodded, so softly it was almost unnoticeable.

“Okay,” Ada said slowly, nodding her head.

“Okay?” Thomas repeated, his eyebrows furrowing. His fear never leaving him.

“Okay,” Her voice was firmer this time. “And, I’m guessing, you fancy (Y/N) at least a bit.”

“For fuck sake, Ada, keep your bloody voice down. He’s in the next room,” Panic was thick in his usually cold voice.

“Tom, (Y/N) likes men too, you idiot. And know that I think about it, I think you’re the ‘good-looking bloke that was in Alfie’s office the other day’.” She smiled, she hadn’t seen her brother act nervous since before the war.

“I wasn’t the only person visiting Alfie that day, don’t be stupid. Anyway...”

(Y/N) couldn’t stop himself, he knew it was wrong, but he listened in to Ada and Thomas’ conversation. He hadn’t forgotten Thomas’ face, how could he? Thomas was beautiful. His ocean blue eyes. His chiseled face. His jet black hair. His... everything.

He asked Alfie who he was, but all Alfie said was: ‘don’t get involved with him, (Y/N).’ But (Y/N) wasn’t known for following Alfie’s orders, why should he start now?

When Thomas started to talk to Ada about business, (Y/N) stopped listening. When he heard Thomas walking out the door, however, he jogged out to catch him. He’d never been more scared in his life, his heart was racing as he spoke:

“Thomas.”

“Yes?”

“Erm... I-I was wonderin’ if ya’d, maybe, wanna get a drink sometime?” It came like a question, (Y/N)’s nerves getting the better of him.

“Well... alright, I’ll... call Alfie I guess.” Thomas tried his best to seem calm and collected, but the excitement in his voice didn’t go unnoticed by (Y/N) not Ada.

“Right, well, erm, okay. See you later I guess,” (Y/N) spoke, instantly kicking himself for sounding like an idiot.

“Okay,” Thomas chuckled. “Goodbye, (Y/N).”

“Goodbye, Thomas.”

They met for the third time when Thomas came to his house.

“Hey,” (Y/N) mumbled as he opened the door, his nerves eating him alive. It didn’t help that his brother was glaring at his date.

“Hello, (Y/N). Ready to go?” Thomas asked, his voice clear and firm.

“Aye. See ya, Alf,” He exclaimed before shutting the door behind him.

“It was kinda difficult to find a place we could go,” (Y/N) began, “I mean there’s clubs but someone might recognise you, so, I thought we could go somewhere more... private. Only if you’re okay with that,” He added quickly.

“Where is this ‘more private’ place?” Thomas inquired. He didn’t want anyone to see him, but he was also aware that he was going on a date with Alfie Solomon’s brother, so, he was wary.

“There’s a spot near by that’s isolated at night, it’s just over there-“ He pointed to the north-east.

“Alright.” Thomas nodded.

They sat there talking to each other for hours, getting to know one another-jobs, interests, aspirations, family, friends, and everything in between. Both men, for the first time since France, could feel butterflies in there stomach as they slowly inches closer towards one another. Hearts race as lips brush together.

The first time the family found out about the relationship was after Arthur saw Thomas and (Y/N) together. They were careless, sharing a moment of passion in Tommy’s office when Arthur walked in to see them with their tongues down each other’s throat. He whipped around to tell the rest of Shelby/Grey clan. Thomas and (Y/N) rushed after them.

Ada knew, and Polly didn’t seem fazed, the boys, however, all looked perplexed.

“Well, what’re gonna say, Tom?” Arthur grumbled, but a wave of worry flushed through his words.

“What do you what me to say, Arthur?” Thomas asked rhetorically before clearing his throat, “everyone, this is (Y/N) Solomons, my boyfriend.” At the mention of ‘Solomons’ the full family-except for Thomas and Ada- went wide eyed, staring at Thomas as though he was an alien.

“Thomas,” Polly began. “Did you say he’s a Solomons?” She asked in disbelief.

“Yes. He’s Alfie’s younger brother, but he’s nothing like him. He has nothing to do with Alfie’s business.” (Y/N)’s eyes darted back and forth between the family members. He was terrified. But he had to stay strong for Tommy, for the man he loved.

“Tommy’s right. I ‘ave nothin’ to do with my brother’s business. I’m nothin’ like him.” He takes a breath. “I love Tommy, I wouldn’t let my brother stop me being with him and I won’t let you. (Y/N) mentally kicked himself for saying that, but then Polly smiled.

“You’re gonna fight the Peaky blinders to be with him, eh?” Polly asked, mirth tracing her words. (Y/N) gulped. Took in a deep breath.

“Yes. I would,” He spoke with his chest. Arthur stepped forward, but Polly grabbed his arm, pulling him back.

“I trust him,” She spoke.

“You what?” Arthur spat.

“Call it gypsy intuition, we can trust him. We’ll still keep an eye on him, just to be sure, but for now, we can trust him.” (Y/N) let out a sigh of relief, as Polly smiled at him. Then Thomas decided to speak.

“If any of you have a problem with my relationship, keep it to yourself. Speak of it and I’ll have to shoot you, family or not.” Everyone in that room knew he wasn’t lying and agreed.

“Very good. Back to work then.” Tommy grabbed (Y/N) hand, dragging him upstairs to his old bedroom.

“Tommy,” (Y/N) giggled, “you can’t be serious.” Tommy looked at him, his eyes blown with lust.

“Deadly, my love.” (Y/N) fell back on the bed, Thomas climbing over the top of him, leaning down to capture his lips. As their tongues danced, they tore at each other’s clothes. Tommy kissed his collarbone down to chest before moving back to his lips. (Y/N) lifted up his hips, sliding down his trousers and boxers. Tommy did the same.

Tommy warms up some oil in his hands, before carefully pushing one finger inside of (Y/N), working him open while sloppy kisses were shared between the two.

Eventually, Tommy rubbed a generous amount of oil over his cock before gently rocking into (Y/N). Low groans filled the room as Tommy starts to softly thrust. One hand grabbing ahold of (Y/N)’s cock, jerking it while his hips pick up speed. Lewd slapping noises fill the room, along side pants and moans.

“I love you,” Tommy mumbled breathlessly into (Y/N)’s neck as they both chase their highs.

“I love you too.” (Y/N)’s about to speak again when the coil within him snaps, eyes rolling back as he comes onto his stomach. Tommy isn’t fair behind. A few more sloppy thrusts and he’s crying in ecstasy as he fills (Y/N) up. Using the last of his strength, Tommy carefully pulls out, rolls onto his back, and pulls (Y/N) into his chest.

As they catch their breath, the door opens and in walks the one and only Finn Shelby.

“Tom, I-“ He cuts himself off as he takes in the sight in front of him. “Erm, shit, sorry, Tom,” He stammers, turns, and walks out, slamming the door shut behind him. Tommy turns to (Y/N) and opens his mouth to speak, but he’s interrupted by his younger brother bellowing through the house: “Stay outa Tom’s room, he’s got company!”

“For fuck sake,” Tommy groaned.

“We know, Finn,” Ada shouted.

“Tom! You takin’ it or givin’?” John asked. (Y/N) giggled at Tommy’s exasperated face.

“I’m gonna kill my own fucking family. If they don’t shut the fuck up,” Tommy complained.

“Aww, you poor baby,” (Y/N) cooed, placing a kiss on his lips and cuddling into him. “Can’t wait for Hanukkah, slash, Christmas this year. Should be great fun.”

“Oh fuck.”

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lightrises · 4 years ago

Text

"Only in allowing her to pass..." — Hornet, The Radiance, and the means by which Hallownest turned its victims against each other

A quick note: I read Hollow Knight as an anti-colonialist text. As such I'll be touching on topics related to colonialism as it's depicted in the world of the game, and said analysis will reflect both a sympathetic take on The Radiance and a critique of The Pale King that won't pull its punches. If this sounds up your alley, hello and thank you for the read! Let us be sad about these bugs together.

———

So!! A while back I realized something about pre-canon that felt rather... "curious" is one way to put it, I think. To wit: for all the effort and scheming and determination The Pale King poured into trying to get rid of The Radiance, neither of his plans involved directly killing her.

Was that his long game? Well, sure, that seems clear enough. His tack changed from luring the moths away from their god and creator to a more literal form of incarceration once the infection became a factor, but at its core the end goal never really changed—The Pale King very sincerely wished to destroy Radiance via obsolescence. The Seer lends us foreshadowing to confirm as much:

[Image descriptions: Two screenshots from Hollow Knight, showing the Seer and Ghost in the Seer's alcove at the Resting Grounds. Across both screenshots, the Seer tells Ghost the following: "None of us can live forever, and so we ask those who survive to remember us. Hold something in your mind and it lives on with you, but forget it and you seal it away forever. That is the only death that matters." End description.]

(Which, by the way and given the context, talk about an extremely unsubtle allusion to cultural genocide huh!!! Whew.)

In any case, we're left with a whole bunch of machinations which build up to... well, two very roundabout attempts at committing deicide. That's kind of weird, all things considered! Why not just do the deed in one fell swoop and get it over with?

This could be for any number of reasons. Maybe the king was devoid of the means to instantly kill another higher being. Maybe his personal sense of scruples stopped him short of signing off on MURDER murder (although, y'know, the aforementioned genocide + eternal imprisonment = still cool and copasectic apparently!). Maybe the long drawn-out cruelty was the point. Maybe the idea of playing fuckign 4D chess with the circumstances was too delicious for him to pass up—that man did love to tinker and stick his claws where they sure as hell didn't belong—or maybe it was a little bit of All The Things. Who knows!!

But interrogating The Pale King's methodology on this count isn't what I'm here for, at least not really. The main reason I raise this question at all is that in her own way, Hornet did too.

"I'd urge you to take that harder path... "

See, going by The Pale King's actions and what The White Lady explicitly says, they both foresaw two outcomes wrt the infection: it can be allowed to spread, or it can be contained. At Teacher's Archives, Quirrel acknowledges the fact that Ghost is expected to do... something about this, but he doesn't elaborate on what HE thinks that's supposed to be apart from the obvious "Gotta bust into Black Egg Temple first". Hornet is the one person who presents to us—to Ghost—what's framed as a third option: confront and destroy the infection at its source.

And she doesn't bring it up like it's just another tactic for Ghost to consider, prim and indifferent to what they would do. She nudges them towards it, actively, up to the point where she throws herself into the fray against Hollow at a juncture that's uniquely dangerous to her and her alone just to make that option feasible.

Even when she's couching it in disclaimers that this is still Ghost's decision to make (and let's be fair, she's extremely not wrong about that lol), no one can pretend Hornet is unbiased. It's obvious in that buttoned-down Hornet kind of way that she is way the hell done with the increasingly tenuous stalemate that's kept Hallownest's desiccated corpse from collapsing in on itself. Personally it's hard for me not to read some Toriel Undertale-esque "My father was too entrenched in his own foolishness to pursue any course of action that would have DEFINITIVELY ended this" shade into her stance here, regardless of whether that's strictly true in canon.

And that bit—Hornet's hopes for an end to Hallownest's stasis, moreover her grim calculation of what needs to be done to get there—that's the bit I find super interesting but likewise tragic and depressing as shit, on multiple levels. In no small part because a) canon itself gestures towards Hornet feeling conflicted about the very plan she's pushing, and moreover b) she has at least two (2) damn good reasons to feel that way.

So, what do I mean by that? Let's look here first:

[Image description: A screenshot from Hollow Knight, of Hornet and Ghost inside the Temple of the Black Egg, standing in front of the unsealed egg itself. Hornet has been struck by the Dream Nail and her dialogue is displayed as follows: "... Could it achieve that impossible thing? Should it?" End description.]

As the curtain is about to drop on things one way or another, Hornet thinks,

... Could it achieve that impossible thing? Should it?

Now, looking at that last bit it's easy to go "Oh no, Hornet's worried that Ghost won't survive killing The Radiance!" And I do think that's part of it: Hornet is, categorically, not her father. By endgame it's clear she's not content to view her Void-borne siblings as tools to be used then disposed of. She's also well aware that as a healthy autonomous Vessel amongst the countless dead, Ghost is the only person left alive who has a fighting chance against The Radiance. Knowing someone is the only qualified candidate for the job doesn't make encouraging them to embrace a probable death sentence any less of a bitter pill to swallow, though. And odds are on that this sentiment extends to Hollow too, who IS going to die no matter what happens here. To put it bluntly, it's more than reasonable to conclude that Hornet hates the absolute fuck out of this.

But I don't think that's all there is to it either. Remember what I said earlier about The Pale King's bids for genocide? Well, it's not like the man deigned to limit his efforts to just the moth tribe.

"We do not choose our mothers... "

On top of everything else—an infected Hallownest being all she's ever known, the fact that she only exists because of the infection, the list goes on—Hornet has spent her life wedged into a position that's been uncomfortable and terminally unglamorous at best: she is both a daughter of her father's kingdom and of Deepnest.

Deepnest, which like the moths and many others was here long before the wyrm and his lady wife swanned onto the scene and the God Become Bug laid claim to everything the Light touched plus a considerable amount of change. THAT Deepnest, which has fought claw and thread to retain its sovereignty against same-said settler king, and for which Herrah not only surrendered her life but also agreed to bed her worst enemy, all in hopes of securing a viable future for her people (put a pin in that last part by the way, I'll come back to it soon).

Two Worlds, One Family (Ft. An Indigenous Woman Trying Her Damndest To Work With What She's Got Versus An Imperialist Who Only Signed Up For This Because He Needed The Political Favor THAT Badly, So It's The Height Of Dysfunctional Actually). Fun times!!!!

The baggage this entails for Hornet is gnarly enough without implications made by The White Lady and the pre-canon timeline of events and even Team Cherry's dev notes that the king may well have looked at baby Hornet, gone "YOINK", then ensured she spent the lion's share of her childhood reared within the pearly auspices of his Pale Court*. That would be rather advantageous for Him Specifically after all, the potential to mold a born foe into a future ally and even have her trained in combat under the same tutelage as her doomed sibling. And far be it from him to stop a grown Hornet—his own flesh and blood too!—from making Deepnest her forever home if she so pleased. He totally wouldn't be reneging on his "fair bargain made" by doing this one simple thing until Hornet came of age, not t e c h nic c a l l y.

If that is indeed the case, there's a non-zero chance Hornet's formative years were a hot mess of cultural alienation and being a good deal more privy than most to just how much of a bastard her father could be. There's an equally non-zero chance that at some point she stood or sat within earshot as The Pale King finally, finally dropped all pretense and euphemism to name the Light for precisely what (for who) it was.

See, in conjunction with the question that started this whole dang train of thought I've been asking this one too: Does Hornet know? When she speaks of confronting "the heart of [the] infection" does she know she's talking about not just a literal person but someone very specific? The Radiance, who god though she may be shares skin in the game alongside Hornet as a native woman screwed over by the same settler king, likewise deprived of her kin and saddled with a life gone horrendously pear-shaped?

I'll assume for the sake of exploring the possibility and because I think it's a likely one anyway that yes, Hornet does know. She knows, and despite everything can't help empathizing. She might even look at Radiance and see bits and pieces both reflected and slightly inversed in her own mother: Radiance was forced to the sidelines while her people—her children, the brood she was meant to lead and care for—died out under The Pale King's rule, and it's no stretch to assume she's at least as upset about that as she has been about everything else; Herrah too took drastic measures for her people's sake, trying to head off annihilation by relegating herself to the sidelines in an act that was as much calculated risk as an attempt to find wiggle room and leverage in the face of a nasty proposition.

A calculated risk that, if things continue as they are, might well amount to nothing as the rest of Deepnest gets eaten alive by the infection. It survived The Pale King's advances for so so long, only to fall here. Herrah's sacrifice would be for naught; the other tribes—themselves the king's victims—would keep succumbing to the infection too.

And this is where things fall apart.

"... or the circumstance into which we are born."

Let's be clear: I think Hornet is wise enough to know what's what here, that all the carnage and suffering falls on her father's head for starting this slow-motion trainwreck in the first place. Hallownest wasn't always Hallownest. This domain was Radiance's home first, along with many others. It was the worm-turned-king who rolled up on the scene unsolicited and decided this was a ""'problem""" that had to be """solved""".

But the fact of the matter is that he's gone and The Radiance is here, raging, seemingly inconsolable. Above and beyond being Deepnest's rightful heir, Hornet isn't in a position to countenance more splash damage even if the grief and fury fueling it makes perfect sense. She can understand without ever bringing herself to love Radiance, and she can bend her knee to practicality even if she hates the everloving shit out of it because the fact that it "has" to end this way isn't fair.

This lends itself to one last awful conclusion: that Hornet has probably considered and (rightly or wrongly) discarded the possibility that Radiance can be saved, at least not without dragging more collateral along for the ride. If even her mother and every other enemy to the king seemed to dismiss talking Radiance down as an option way back when... well. Why should Hornet hope for any better after things have escalated so far?

Again, it's practical. A practical net good is what Hornet strives for. And again, it fucking sucks.

For extra tragedy points, this makes Hornet's extended crypticness around Ghost followed by her last minute casting about for a reason to tell them "Wait, don't; not just yet" that she never voices even more of a gut punch. She can't bring herself to burden Ghost with the context that haunts her so, least of all when it might weaken their resolve to go through with what (she thinks) needs doing.

It's the "same song, different verse" which led to the mantis tribe and Deepnest being pitted against each other: Hallownest rigged the game so that two women who could have been powerful allies—who have a mutual vested interest in driving out settler rule—wound up poised as enemies instead. And how awful is that? The king for all his being extremely fucking dead still gets the last laugh, because outside of a miracle the game never manifests Hornet can salvage what her mother started and look forward to a future where Deepnest pulls itself back from the brink if and only if The Radiance dies.

Resolution comes at the price of a completed genocide. Add two more dead siblings to the unconscionable pile thereof, while we're at it. That's what it boils down to whether or not Hornet can bear to articulate it as such, and there's no grace or even a properly bittersweet ending to wring from this clusterfuck. And that is rough.

———

* This has been better explained elsewhere, but a quick rundown: The White Lady tells Ghost that Hornet and Herrah "were permitted little time together." On its surface this can be taken to mean that Hornet was still very young when Herrah was shipped off to Eternal Dreamland—except this doesn't jive with the fact that we meet Hornet as an adult. If the stasis kicked in once the Dreamers went to their rest, which in turn halted the aging process for every living bug in Hallownest, AND before all this Hornet experienced little by the way of quality time with her birth mother... I think you can see where I'm going with this.

To top it off we've got Team Cherry weighing in ominously from their dev notes on Herrah: "As part of the agreement for her alliance and her role as a dreamer, King gave her a child (Hornet). Was she allowed to keep this child or was she taken away?" This isn't confirmation by itself of course, but given additional canon details (see above): Can I get a "yikes" in the chat fellas.

#hollow knight #hornet (hollow knight)#hornet hollow knight #hk hornet #the radiance #hk radiance #herrah #hk herrah #hollow knight meta #sup folks it's been a minute since i dropped a whole dang essay but Here We Go!!!!!!

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