#chapered | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

twistedwonderlandwriting · 2 months ago

Text

Fragments of Loyalty

-Bound by ruin

.......................................

Wordcount:1,151 |readerx:Malleus|Style:Angst

Warnings⚠️:Angst,Blood,Injury Mentions of death

.......................................

Blurriness

The only thing in his vision. Malleus Draconia could never ever remember feeling this pounding this in his head like someone had grabbed him by his horns and repeatedly slammed his head against a indestructible force.

Was this what pain felt like?

The fae blinked to clear his vision, from whatever had been faltering it. Though as soon as the light refraction processed in his mind and displayed the image of his surroundings he winced, wishing that he was blind.

All that was left of Diasomnia was its ruins, quite litterally, most of the walls having been knocked over. His ears picked up a collective sigh of relief from everyone in the surrounding area. The beaten, bruised, and fatigued bodies of his peers littered amongst the rubble. The only people standing amongst his ruin being the housewardens and vice housewardens, though even that was shaky with most of them being on the verge of collaps with the rest leaning against their familiars. No one attempted to move, it was if all had turned into a crumbling tower.

The air was filled with tension, all eyes were on him...it was not a look that the male was unfamiliar with. They looked at him like he was a monster...but why? He was doing it for all of them. Didn't they understand he did all this for their benefit. Malleus took a micro step forward and he could see their visibly tense hunched over bodies straighten out. He didn't care though, completely unfazed by their fearful behavior. It was expected from the crowd. He immediately began scanning the crowd once more looking for the spark to this forest fire, his green eyes gazing across the mass of beating hearts pupils narrowed into snake or rather dragon like slits that shook all he glanced at the the very core, a sigh of relief passing through them as he moved on.

Cowards, all of them.

Eventually they landed on a familiar group at the forefront of the ruins, the three battered and bruised as the rest of them. The silver haired male stood in a guarding position in his hand lying his magic pen that was tightly gripped ready to cast a spell at a moments notice, next to appeared to be sebek. The spiky haired male looking not at him but and down to the side with a unusual amount of concern considering this was not something involving his lord. Tears appeared to be swelling in his eyed and the half fae seemed to be frantic and panicked. Following his eyes Malleus would find whatever sebek was looking at covered from his view by someone crouching in front. At second glance the figure appeared to be kneeling rather then crouched, the most noticeable feature immediately from the back being his black and magenta choppy hair.

He stepped forward having found what he had been looking for, caring not that the others readied themselves, their most powerful spells on standby. The heels of his boots clicked against the floor with each quick step twords the trio, his eyes locked onto the short fae.

Protect them. Keep them safe. Keep them from leaving.

When he was within 5 feet of his family Malleus broke his narrowed in stare at lilia, glancing to back at eye level freezing in his step his eyes widening in suprise at silver staing directly at Malleus his magic pen drawn pointed directly at his face. Hearing nothing but shifting of rubble and heavy breathing he looked over to where sebek previously stood finding no one he glanced back down at lilia to expecting some sort of reaction to find Sebek now kneeling where he previously stood now hovering and fretting over whatever has Lilias attention as well muttering something, only every other word being audible.

"Stupid human.......weak.......feeble........stupid....... waka-sama......better not die..... dont have time...attend the funeral...dont make me"

Glancing back to his other retainer that currently had his weapon pointed at him, his face was no longer unreadable now having a firm express with his eyebrows furrowed together and his lips turned downwards. A silent message to not take another step.

His eyes narrowed at the retainer for a moment, his lips turning downwards, every fiber of the fae wished to stubbornly continue on his path. Though instead he stood in place out of respect for the boy he had watched grow.

For Lilia.

At the thought of Him he turned his gaze back to the two kneeling over something, the action finally catching his attention making Malleus wonder what exactly Sebek was fretting over and lilia was turned twords. He stepped forward, the warning silver gave him completely cast aside, the step taking him just close enough that he could use his height to look over the two.

His eyes were drawn to the dark red substance dripping from a gash on lilias forehead, following the drip down to below his eyebrow right above his eye on his eyelid, but despite how close the metallic liquid was to his eye the former war general was completely unbothered his eyes full of determination and focus with a small flash of panic and concern passing through his composure that only one that had lived a hundred lifes and a thousand tragedies could maintain. His eyes locked onto the thing in front of him.

What could capture his attention so?

His eyes drifted down before landing on said object of attention. His eyes widened as he immediately recognized the person the two were crouching over. You were beaten badly every inch covered in blood, dirt, scratches, cuts, and dark purple and blue bruises the type that constantly ache. His eyed jumped from bruise to cut before landing on their head that lilia was holding between his hands, the dark red substance pouring out of your head soaking you hair in the metallic odor, their blood pooling on the floor.

"Child of Man" He gasped before rapidly approaching the group that was surrounding you preparing to drop to his knees next to his friend and hold them. He didn't care if he needed to snatched them out of hid mentors hands himself he just couldn't bear letting anyone near them so vunerable needing to heal them and quickly. He could not loose his only friend.

Sensing Malleus the fae whipped around and drew his magic pen prepared to strike down the boy he mentored if need be to keep everyone safe. His gaze burning holes into the boy. Besides lilia Sebek seeing his mentors action he quickly scooped your body into his lap cradding it against him with one arm, resting his hand on your head gently muttering every healing spell that he knew magic pen in hand prepared to turn it against Malleus if need be.

They were not letting him near you.

136 notes · View notes

aihoshiino · 3 months ago

Text

chapter 162 thoughts!

Chapters Since The 143 Kiss Happened And Went Entirely Unacknowledged And Unaddressed Count: 19

Aqua Hoshigan Status: uh oh, gamers

damn they dragged his ass right to hell, huh

I was perhaps overly optimistic in expecting an immediate resolution to last chapter's setup. It's becoming increasingly clear that this handful of chapters covering the Aqua-Hikaru confrontation are intended to be read in one go but because I am pedantic I will continue to review them one by one <3 This chapter very much has all the same issues as the previous chapter without quite as many of the things I liked pulling it up, but Mengo's art is back to going absolutely crazy and I got to see 2.5 new panels of Hoshino Ai so who can say whether it was a good or bad chapter.

Like last time, we're starting with Hikaru again and… basically everything I said I didn't like about this handling of him is still the case but with this almost definitely being his final appearance with no more opportunities to explain anything about him, it really sucks that the note we seem to be ending on is just "damn, bitch be crazy". Given that Tsukuyomi mentioned his previously 'noble soul' last chapter, I was really hoping we might get some sort of flashback or Hikaru POV giving some proper context to his actions but all we got this chapter was him being like "ughh i miss ai. GOD i love killing people" which is, uh, underwhelming as a final note for an antagonist like Hikaru to go out on, to say the least

The thing is, I didn't need or expect Hikaru to be totes 100% an innocent bean or anything like that (ch109 looms large), but if he was going to be the final boss like this, I wanted his antagonism to come from somewhere, to have any kind of connecting thread with the story's themes or to at least tell us interesting things about him both in coming to understand where his behavior came from and why he went down this path. But we don't know anything about Hikaru, really - we know facts about his life but as person and a character in a story, our image of him is shockingly unclear. As far as the story seems to be concerned, he came into existence as an 11yo boy being abused by Airi, blipped out of reality when Ai broke up with him and then idk digivolved back into society into a guy from a yandere otome game when Ai died. Like, how in god's name did Hikaru go from the boy we see being broken up with as a teenager to… whatever the fuck this is? How did he start killing? Why? What is it about killing that makes him feel Ai's supposed presence? And most importantly - why does he pursue killing Ruby as his means of achieving this when the narrative is doing everything it can to convince us she's Ai 2.0 and therefore a living person in whom Hikaru should be able to feel Ai's presence the most strongly since her death? Hello? Can anyone hear me????

We don't get textual answers to any of that - hell, we don't even really have any textual confirmation that he is actually serial killer, despite it being something I guess we're supposed to assume at this point?? Like, whatever happened to Aqua seemingly crediting Yura's death to Nino's involvement? What happened to Aqua saying that Hikaru being the mastermind made no sense? Like, I guess he was right, but jesus

Even things I can take the time to try and infer (which, see last review's discussions on Inferring Things) just make me feel like I'm doing the work the story should have done in terms of trying to get his character to cohere. As it stands, Hikaru isn't in opposition to Aqua because he has harmful beliefs or behaviours born from his participation in society that stem from or are in conversation with the story's wider themes, but because he has one very specific unhinged belief totally disconnected from reality focused on one specific person and manifesting in such a way that caused him to just be Ontologically Evil And Broken.

And it's not like this would even be hard to do! Hikaru is literally, explicitly an affluent and powerful person in the entertainment industry despite being someone who was broken by abuse perpetuated by those very systems of power. Why not lean into that? Why not examine the ways in which Hikaru and Ai converged in their experiences of abuse - Ai able to truly sever the chain and begin healing while Hikaru ends up making Airi's mistakes and enacting abuse and control on people with less power than him to try and regain agency and dignity?

Ryosuke (even post retcon) and ch154 Hikaru work so well because their specific beliefs about Ai reflect real world misogyny and parasocialism that are rife in the entertainment industry (and even outside of it) so they're able to contribute to the story's wider themes pretty well. But as of this chapter, Hikaru's stated beliefs about killing and apparent overall worldview are so fucking detached from reality and so lacking any foundation or grounding in textual events or theming that it doesn't even feel like an exaggeration of real world issues to a logical conclusion like Ryosuke does. He just feels like a cartoon character.

Not only is this shallow in general and really a huge wet fart of an ending for a character who has been built up for 4 actual years and 150 chapters of manga, it's also just bizarrely inconsistent. There's no proper connecting thread in the text between the seemingly emotionally disarmed and remorseful Hikaru of 154-5 and fucking joker slenderman ass here. The story spent so long making Hikaru deeply and viscerally sympathetic through exploring his history of abuse and exploitation mirroring Ai's that I'm not sure of what the point of that was in terms of authorial intent if we were always gonna end at this point of "you are Ontologically Evil and must die". Movie Arc backstory Hikaru flows quite naturally into 153-5 Hikaru but these specific beliefs and fixations on killing almost feel like they popped up from nowhere to force this confrontation to happen.

Ultimately, despite being given ample opportunity to do so, it just kind of feels like Akasaka just kind of lost interest in trying to develop Hikaru into a fully fleshed out and coherent character. We get flashes and teases of what could have come together into a fascinating and compelling antagonist but he ultimately fails to evolve past a vague sketch of a character, full of unconnected ideas and loose threads. In the end, Hikaru is only ever a cipher for the story to enact tragedy through with no real interest in his own feelings and interiority in relation to it - not even his own.

To scooch back a bit into the chapter, I will say that him being dragged down specifically by Gorou is interesting, especially since he seems to have returned to his scary ass Tokyo Blade rage ghost form. This seems to represent Gorou and his rage being sort of 'exorcised' from Aqua now his revenge is complete (as I theorized might happen last week) - his memories and existence obviously live on in Aqua (F… FOR NOW…..) but as a character in a narrative, this feels like a fine enough place to leave him.

Anyway, speaking of Aqua! How ya doing, champ?

that bad, huh

The back half of this chapter revolves around giving Aqua some emotional resolution of his own and even though I've been kicking and biting to get some Aqua introspection for so long now, this one left me feeling pretty cold. After all this time of floating around the 'why' of his reincarnation, the answer we're finally given is….. just that Aqua was reborn to be Ruby's guard dog lol.

The idea that the twins were specifically reborn to be together has been imo pretty obvious for a good long while and I think it's a perfectly fine idea on paper, but this framing of it just kind of falls flat to me. I don't like that it positions Aqua's rebirth not as a second chance for him to love and be loved in a way he wasn't able to as Gorou, a gift from Tsukuyomi to two people who showed her a selfless, thoughtless kindness but as just yet more of the story using other characters and their stories to try and prop up Ruby or imbue her with more importance in a way that I think feels forced and does the characters who are used in this manner a huge disservice. I'm sure we could conclude that this is just Aqua's feelings on the matter and I really, really hope that Tsukuyomi fishes him out and gives him a slap while yelling YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO LIVE FOR YOURSELF AND BE HAPPY IDIOT or something next chapter, but the extremely warm framing this is all given makes me think this is something the narrative both agrees with and approves of and as an Aqua enjoyer I just kind of hate that for him.

I also have to say that like… it doesn't not make sense for the story's finale and this aspect of the reincarnation plot to center Ruby specifically. She is one half of the titular Oshi no Kos and at least hypothetically the co-protagonist of the story. But suddenly making her the answer and central turning axis of basically the biggest ongoing mystery in the story like this feels kind of jarring when Akasaka spent a solid half of this entire manga not really doing her justice. This attempt to tug on our heartstrings via flashbacks to the twins' childhood also doesn't really do anything for me because as cute as it is, it's just disconnected flashbacks to brand new events in their childhood we never saw or heard about before. And it's weird because it's not like we don't have in-story examples of Aqua being over protective of Ruby, so why not flashback to those?

Idk. It's hard for me to articulate why this left me feeling kind of cold, but it feels like a symptom of this being part of an ending that Akasaka set in stone too early on and hasn't compromised for he way the character dynamics and story that made it onto paper have shifted and changed in ways that don't one hundred percent line up with the ending he wanted. If the twins' relationship was going to be this important to the ending and be so central to Aqua's existence as a character, I wish we'd spent more time on it. One of the major critiques of OnK that people had from like chapter 12 onwards that I still agree with is that Aqua and Ruby's relationship doesn't feel like a close knit connection between two people who grew up together for 1X+ years, and that continuing issue makes it kind of hard for me to feel the warm and fuzzy sibling feels right now. Which sucks because I LOVE the Hoshino family trio and I love Aqua and Ruby's family dynamic when we actually get to see it - their chapter of interlude and some of the scenes in their home in early OnK are some of my fave parts of the story for that exact reason. But this just kind of whiffed for me.

It also isn't lost on me that Ai is basically absent from these flashbacks despite them primarily taking part in the part of the twins' childhood they spent with her. I get that the idea was to focus specifically on Aqua and Ruby's dynamic there but it still feels kind of…

I've already written a short essay on this topic as it pertained to the initial reveal of Tsukuyomi's role in AQRB's reincarnation and the TL;DR of that post is that early in the series, Ai is centered as a character of as much significance to the reincarnation plot as Gorou/Aqua and Sarina/Ruby are, with the togetherness of the Hoshino family as a trio and Ai specifically as Aqua and Ruby's mother being emphasized as having a great deal of meaning and importance. But this chapter doubles down on essentially erasing her as a figure of weight and consequence in the twin's reincarnation in a way that is both inconsistent and just kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Like… I'm sorry, but given how much of Ai's character revolves around her being the victim of exploitation, of objectification, sexual and otherwise, of being forced to warp herself to response to the filthy desires thrust on her by the people around her, it's really just gross and a huge misstep for her to be reduced to a convenient walking uterus. It is yet another example of Ai being reduced to just a stepping stone in Ruby's narrative and part of a pattern in this regard I've come to really dislike. Framed like this, Ai's own act of bravery and love in giving not just herself but Sarina and Gorou the family all three of them were denied all their lives is now nothing more than a vessel for Sarina's wish fulfillment. As you can imagine, I kind of hate this too!!

Depending on if volume 16 follows 14 and 15's trend of being 11 chapters long instead of 10, vol16 will end on either 162 or 163 - based on how 162 ends, my guess is that this is our volume ender so I'm curious to see what form 163 will take - straightforward continuation of this scene or focus switch to other characters to maintain suspense? I guess we'll see in THREE FUCKING WEEKS……. Akasaka i swear to god……………………….

sidebar but tsukuyomi just out here floating is kind of wild. what happened to 'it's a normal child's body' ya little twerp?

#oshi no ko #oshi no posting #onk spoilers #chaper reviews

43 notes · View notes