#don’t expect a lot of art of them from me rn

[gummidon]

They weaseled themselves into my brain

[solastalgiart]

.

[sordidmusings]

Thirsty Thursday with Mihawk - The Hat Stays ON

Art by koitosoup

A/N: This is very indulgent because I needed desperate and needy Mihawk to exist and this prompt tumbled right on into that to sate me 🤡 (at the airport hoping no one is looking over my shoulder rn too LOL)

Word Count: ~2.5k

Warnings: afab!reader, NSFW, p in v, forceful undertones towards beginning, desk sex, creampie, begging, praise, lots of the pet name "love", Mihawk is like super needy he moans "please" dude, he's also very in love, and trying sUPER hard not to finish first by the end 💀, stress relief before Cross Guild meeting, brief moment shit-talking the other two lol turns real sweet at the end cuz I couldn’t help myself

Please enjoy this man being as close to a mess as I think I can convincingly get him ╰(▔∀▔)╯

~ ~ ~ ••• ✦✦✦ ••• ~ ~ ~

Mihawk is usually the type of man to fully take his time enjoying every inch of you.

Usually.

“I know, love, I know,” his voice is full of panting desperation, worn to a fluster by his pressing need and his frantic firm thrusts into you. “I’ll make it up to you later, I just -nnhah- just gotta fuck you now -nnnhg fuck- don’t wanna think about anything but how fucking good it feels inside you.”

When Mihawk came to your study not thirty minutes before the next Cross Guild meeting, this was the last thing you were expecting. Though, it did fly right to the top of the list when you saw the intensity of his shining gold eyes on you and the rigidness of his figure, all coiled muscle waiting to pounce and gritted teeth waiting to tear. You’d barely been able to get just his jacket over his shoulders before he was on you, speaking his need and hunger with persistent lips and hands. He was so set on getting his fill that he simply let his prized coat be dragged down his arms and thrown to the floor. Somehow, his hat survived the rush of his motions and the beloved closeness necessary for his demanding kisses.

Though they were rare, you loved the times he was like this, using you for his pleasure, clinging to you and taking you like nothing else in the world would ever suffice in sating him. You got just as much out of these times as he did, but you played it as a favor, partly for the delicious flavor it added to the dynamic to hear him apologize, beg, and thank as much as the stalwart Dracule Mihawk can and partly to earn the long and worshipful treatment he’d reward you with later. You’re not sure how he hasn’t caught onto you yet. Seeing the meticulously controlled man lose himself in his desire for you has you dripping, shown in the wet slap on each strong thrust. It was surely enough to give your abundant eagerness away.

Beyond that, you are just as ravenous for him, thighs clamped around his sides, hands gripping tightly to his tense forearms as he fucks you on your desk. You feel the jump of each muscle from their work sinking a bruising grip into your hips, manhandling them forward and back opposite the motion of his hips to fuck you just like he wants - like you’re a lifeline and if he just digs as deeply as he can into your sweet cunt as quickly as he can then he can finally breathe again.

Your heels pull him in on each quick thrust, the clench of your legs and abs for the motion helping a rhythmic pulse stroke at every inch of your walls and further firm your swollen lips and clit to absorb each delicious impact of Mihawk’s hips. The soft, sweat-damp skin of his back and sides teases your sensitive inner thighs and calves as he fucks you, his obliques dancing especially sinfully against your flesh. You loved admiring the look of his chiseled figure but absolutely nothing compared to the bliss of him using it against you.

The urge Mihawk has to collapse down over you and continuously drag you as close as possible is strong, but it is beat out by the erotic sight of watching the slap of his hips bounce your body. It lets you have a beautiful sight too; Mihawk backlit and looming over you, muscles fully displaying their strength and tone with the lack of his jacket, his curled hair and the feather on his cap swaying in time with him fucking into you. The hat still resting on his head only makes you feel smaller captured under him; he always looks impressive with it on and it makes the shadow he casts over you that much larger.

Mihawk uses an iron grip to throw one of your bare legs to hook over his shoulder. He uses his other hand to grip the inside of the other and shove it to the side, flat on your desk, trapping it down by putting his weight into his hold on your thigh. It forces your hips to turn on their side, giving him a new angle to work you open on his thick cock. The change has each forceful drag of his cock in you feel new again, recharging your nerves in their pleasant screaming. You tell him their call through whiny panting, chants of his name, and streams of “yes! like that, so good, fuck me harder, need it, need you so bad-”

There’s a firm thump and rattle of your desk as his hand plants next to your head to keep from collapsing over you. It leaves him crouching over you like a predator, but the hazy need in his eyes begging you to let him keep feeling this forever betrays the fact that he’s as deeply in your clutches as he tries to snatch you into his. The thickness of your thigh trapped between you helps keep him up as well as his other hand still pressing your leg down. His fingers that are sunk into your thigh dig deeper and tremble with his pleasure and overwhelm.

“Gods, love, you’re perfect, want to live between your thighs,” Mihawk groans, so close you can feel his panting breath cool the sweat on your face. He’s fighting his eyes to stay open, needing to see the pleasure scrunching your brow, loosening your jaw, fogging your eyes. The fluttering of his lids catches your eyes and swells your heart, shooting arousal through you from knowing he’s feeling so desperately good from fucking you. The amber of his eyes is so bright trained on you that it seems to glow through the shadows haunting his face. It makes him look all the more feral as he grips, spreads, bends, and fucks you like he wants to eat you whole. “Just -hahn- need some more from you, can you -nngaaah- do that for me, little love?”

You sob out a moan as you snap your eyes shut against the onslaught of sensation. The soreness his weight is pressing through your thigh and the tender stretch from your other leg being folded to your shoulder add more buzzing chaos to the sensations swirling their way through your body to flood your brain. The way he holds you open lets your clit take a soft impact every time he shoves his whole length into your plush pussy, giving the bud more little teases with how your body reverberates from the impact. 

“Look at me while I fuck you,” Mihawk snarls, but there’s desperation bleeding through the growl in his voice. You want to whine back at his request but you want to please him even more. You blink your eyes open and the raw need in them has Mihawk collapse just a bit more over you, feeling the want you and your pleasures ravage through his body begin to burn him alive. The brim of his hat taps lightly on your forehead from his closeness while he pants and moans to you, “Like that, love, fuck you’re so good for me.”

Meeting your gaze is a double edged sword; his arousal magnifies, his soul lights up, and his cock twitches hard but it also throws him to feeling right on the precipice of cumming and he’s not ready to stop feeling you. The siren song of the wet slapping of your hips, the slick sound of your pussy gushing around him and trying to keep him sucked as deep as he can reach, and your panting breaths carrying high moans and pleads and praises all tempt him to let the torrent of pleasure rush over him, promise him it would feel like endless blissful sin. It is all the harder to resist because he knows exactly how delicious it feels to sheathe himself from root to tip in you and pump stream after stream of hot cum into your welcoming walls while your cunt clings to him almost as tightly and desperately as his hands cling to you.

“Love, need you to cum,” Mihawk rushes out. He palms the hand on your thigh up so he can rub circles over your swollen clit. Your moans gain even more volume, filling the air in your office almost as thickly as the sweet, musky scent of sex.

“Need it, please,” he whispers breathlessly, “Need to feel you -nnnnhhah- love, love, need to feel your cunt sque-heeze me.” 

His vision begins blurring from the strain of staying right on the edge of cumming, barely holding back the powerful orgasm built from the burning in his muscles, the tingling in his fingers, the swirling in his head, and the throbbing of his cock. Giving up on trying to refocus them, he scrunches his eyes shut and lets his forehead fall down to rest on your temple, finally bumping his hat to fall onto the desk next to you. His closed eyes allow him to focus in better on all the other ways you are filling his senses, latching especially to your open mouth serenading him with needy babbling and fucked out moans.

“Can you be -ghahh- good and do that for me?” Mihawk pleads against your cheek. “Can you cum for me?”

“Y-yes, please, wanna be -mmmngh- good for you,” you whine back to him. His hips stutter at the tone and you feel his lips pull up around gritting teeth, an airy “fuck” sneaking past them.

“You are, sweetness, you are sooooo good for me,” Mihawk praises, swirling his thumb more insistently across your slick clit. The increase and pressure and perfect timing with his firm thrusts has your core tightening in threat of bursting. Your thighs had already been shaking in warning of your coming orgasm, but now the trembling is seating itself in every clench of your walls around Mihawk’s thick cock, wringing tighter and longer on each pulse. Your nerves sparkle and buzz more with each clamp down, the blazing rub of his throbbing dick and its bulging veins whiting out your mind. “Now come on, love -nngh- cum on my cock -fuuck please- let me feel you, make me cum -nnnghah- need to fuck you full.”

With a sob of his name, you finally fall over the edge. It feels as overwhelming as you had been expecting since he first stormed in and threw you over the desk. Your hands and cunt cling to him in need of a tether and in need of more; while your body is trembling with the bliss of your orgasm a tiny piece in the back of your mind is waiting for the final thing that will melt your whole body into a honey drip of heaven.

Mihawk doesn’t leave you waiting long; he is only able to feel your pussy milk him a handful of times before he can hold his end off no longer. With slurring groans of endearments and praises, he is overtaken by pleasure and can think of nothing beyond the relief of pumping you full of his cum with his twitching cock and grinding hips. The force of it has his thighs quake and numb out, making his weight crumble over you as he can no longer hold himself up. He nuzzles his face down the side of yours until he’s tucked panting against your neck, forehead pressed snuggly against your racing pulse.

You welcome his weight with open arms, one dragging him ever tighter to your heaving chest and the other winding its hand into his thick dark hair to ensure he never leaves. Both of you are still gasping for breath, your pressed chests rubbing and shaking against each other much like your greedy hips do as they ring out the endless pulsing beats of your orgasms. Your cunt and core continue to massage down on him and wring every bit of tight and bubbling bliss from his still hard and pumping cock that they can get. 

The feeling of being not only filled with his large and achingly hard cock but also the swelling heat of his cum makes your eyes roll back. He’s filled you full to bursting, now leaking out of you on every grind and the warm sticky sensation and sound matched with his pelvis massaging small sweeps across your clit prolongs your peak. You get to spend a long time suspended in the feeling of your body bursting with heat and joy and relief and electricity, all shoving your soul right out of your skin only for Mihawk’s presence to trap you right back into the storm raging in your nerves.

Mihawk begins to feel foggy and a bit delirious as he finally releases his pent up need in you, finally sates his ferocious hunger for your delicious touch, finally finds his comfort and peace stuck as close to you as he can possibly get. He makes a halfhearted attempt to bring his mind back to his body but is happily distracted by the aftershocks that jolt your body and flutter your cunt. They pull extra little spurts and groans from him each time and he’s defenseless to the contentment he feels following their slowing pace into the warm hover of affection that always envelops him after sharing bodies with you.

It takes a long time for either of you to actually come back to yourselves. The whole time you are afloat, you guide each other with trailing touches from limp but loving hands, quick kisses stolen between smoothing out your breath, and gentle squeezes in the embrace you keep on each other, needing those little moments where it's even more of a hug than a hold. Mihawk chases the touches that tease across the dips of his lower back or scratch up the back of his neck and across his scalp just a little bit more than the others. You feel too boneless to lean into almost any touch at the moment, but you do manage to roll your head to the side so you can gaze at your grandfather clock in the corner.

“I don’t think there’s time to make you presentable for them,” you sigh out with no real remorse. Mihawk is of a similar mind.

“Not my fault if those two don’t have anyone to take care of their needs,” Mihawk mumbles dryly. “Also not my problem if they’re mad I’ve had mine met.”

The laugh you give at his attitude earns you one of your favorite prizes: Mihawk’s lips making the slow curl then spread into a real smile. It is only topped when they close again to press a kiss in the shape of that smile on their resting place against your skin with enough love to reach straight through that skin and nurture every beat of your heart.

[ieetbeez]

Small Rant About RE

Hello gang... This has been on my mind for awhile. Today we're talking about Resident Evil and particularly Leon stans. Now I'm gonna come out and say I am one of them! I love that silly little blonde man and he's like number 1 on my favorite capcom white boy tier list next to Cody from Final Fight/SF.

tw: mentions of rape, pedophilia, incest, abuse, and my opinion

Let me make it clear, I'm not kink shaming, I'm not advocating for censorship. Art and literature shouldn't be censored. Sex is cool. Kink is cool (when safe and consensual).

I'm gonna be one of those fans real quick and say, I've been an RE fan since I was like 7. That doesn't really mean much since I can't drink legally but I've been in love with Leon since elementary school. I watched my Dad and brother play RE6 co-op and man... Aka I've been in the fandom for a fat minute. Before the RE2 remake came out I'd see the occasional Dead Dove fic but that's whatever. But I have never seen this much dark romance about Leon of all people!

Like. Call it the T-Virus the way it's everywhere I swear I can't scroll down the damn tag without getting hit with a sexual crime. And let me say, I'm not new to fandom culture. I take don't like don't read to heart (I'm super picky LMAO). And I understand that, that's just how big fandoms are, more people, more bad eggs. I'm sure the majority of y'all are sweet people.

BUT I feel like I shouldn't have to say that romanticizing things like pedophilia, rape, abuse, and incest is disgusting in the big year 2025 but here we are. Honestly, I feel this way about a lot of the fics of other fandoms I'm in. I feel crazy seeing it everywhere and it makes me feel like some sort of sexual puritan. Am I insane for wanting freaky smut and not ...freaky smut??

There for sure is a bigger conversation here about how easily accessible porn is and how quick people to fall into these pipelines. Or how booktok caused a rise in the normalization of dark romance troupes and just pure porn writing (I still hate icebreaker). Or how quick form constant content is slowly leaking it's way into everything. But we’d be here for forever…

And like, it's just completely out of character?? Like if you're gonna write about that can it at least be in character? Wesker fits the dark romance thing LEAGUES better. But LEON?? THE POLICE OFFICER?? Did you even watch a walkthrough? Leon is a sweet upstanding guy with lots of trauma, that is the last thing he'd do to ANYONE! Not saying fics have to be completely accurate all the time but there's literally nothing fun about "Omg what if Leon RAPED you!?" HES NOT THE EVIL RESIDENT HERE GUYS! At some point it's not even about Leon (or whoever the fic is about) anymore, it's just someone wanting to share their sexual fantasies online.

These topics are almost never written with any care and are insanely insensitive to the survivors of these acts. I don't know, sexual crimes are literally some of the most deplorable acts of hatred and depravity someone can do onto another person. I can't imagine getting off to the suffering of others (in a heinous crime way not BDSM way) (BDSM is cool). Have some fucking empathy and stop thinking with your goon wad guys <3

Like at least take it to AO3 so that I can filter it out or smth...

Edit: I just woke up and remembered what else I was gonna say.

You can tell a lot about a person by how they treat their fictional characters. Another thing I don’t like are the Gooner mods for the games. Like they’re fun every once in a while and like if it’s a capcom game you have to expect it. At some point though, it just stops being sexy and feels gross or uncomfortable.

Idk maybe I’m in the minority here but there has never been a single time where I was playing any RE game and thought to myself, “man… I wish I could see Leon’s end rod whipping in the wind rn…” Obviously, I wanna see that man oiled up butt booty naked doing jumping jacks like as most normal people do but… zawg…

That’s also like an actual person?? At least for the remakes. Maybe this just isn’t my dove to eat but the treat Leon like some sort doll. I know it’s kinda weak to be like this for a fictional person but yeah </3

[burn-before-reading]

hiii! could i pls request reader x joost where reader meets his friends??? (stuntje, apson, tantu etc.) :3 thank u!!

Smitten

Joost Klein x shy! reader

word count: ill count it later

warnings: anxiety, imposter syndrome

a/n: This one got away from me. it was supposed to be shorter hahaha. idk if its what you expected but i had fun writing it :) not related to this fic but i love this picture so much Joost in skirts yall <3

also mini life update im finishing school rn so thats my focus. won’t completely abandon this blog but ill be offline a lot

RPF Below the cut ——

“We komen te laat, liefje” (we are gonna be late, love.)

You quickly slipped your shoes on and grabbed your jacket before meeting him at the door. opening your arms you do a little spin to show off your outfit.

“I look okay?”

“Yes, you look beautiful don’t worry.”

“Okay okay. Do the shoes match tho? I think maybe the black boots went with it better, and the shirt feels too fancy, gimmie like five-“

“Schatje,” he coos, grabbing your shoulders to steady you. He starts rubbing them slowly and you take a big breath in and out to relax yourself. “Its just my friends, they’re gonna love you I promise.”

“I know I know, I just wanna make a good impression.” you smile up at him sheepishly and he goes to kiss your forehead. he lets you go but moved his hand to grab yours and intertwines your fingers and tugs you gently out the door.

You make it to Tantu’s apartment about twenty minutes later, and you feel like you need a pep talk all over again. Joost feels your hesitation at the door and squeezes your hand tighter for reassurance before knocking. You can’t really say for sure why you are so nervous meeting his friends, but then the door opens and you are greeted by tantu himself. He introduces himself and immediately pulls you into a hug.

“we’ve heard so much about you. come in come in.”

The two of you walk in and you quickly scan the guests of the house party. Joost is familiar with most, but to you its a room of strangers and you feel all the butterflies in your stomach begin to turn. Joost leads you to where his main group of friends reside and you try to just focus on him and the feeling of your hand in his.

“Hey guys, this is y/n, my partner.” Joost introduces you to the group. “y/n, thats Apson, Alanis, Stuntje, and you met Tantu of course..” he takes the time to introduce each of his friends, and they all quickly wave or say hi to you. The girl you learned was Alanis stands up to shake your hand and go in for a hug as well, startling you again, but once again appreciating how friendly they are being.

“Hi, we’ve heard so much about you! great to finally meet you.” She takes both your hands and holds them. “You should sit.” she starts to pull you away from Joost and you turn and make a face that implies help? he just shrugs. “Theres drinks in the kitchen, Joost, if you guys want something.” she says and he hesitates before walking away.

“ill be okay for a second i promise.” you reassure. you see him slightly mouth something, probably in dutch, to Tantu, but he just shrugs and smirks before following behind.

You sit down and start to feel all their eyes on you. Tapping your foot nervously, you try to find the words to start a conversation, but Apson beats you to it.

“So you work at a coffee shop, right?” he asks. you nod.

“Yeah, for the last couple years or so. Its where I met Joost actually.” You see him just nod and smile, like he’s heard a version before.

“So, uh… what do you guys do for a living?” you ask and they start going around describing all their different creative jobs. Director, music production, art, content creation. The whole variety of creative jobs and it just makes you feel small. They are all so successful. Joost is so successful.

What are you doing here.

“So you and Joost have been dating for Three months, right?” Alanis asks, and you turn to her again.

“Uh, something like that. Its probably a little closer to 2 actually, but I guess we’ve been talking for a but longer than that so uh..” You feel a lump in your throat and start rapidly checking the room for Joost but he is no where to be seen. In your scan, you see a balcony that seems mostly empty so you quickly stand up and make an excuse to leave. “sorry, Uh, im gonna check on Joost.” you say and quickly walk the exact opposite direction of the kitchen and to the balcony. Two seconds later Joost comes back with two drinks in his hand and sees the empty spot where you should be. Glancing at the looks on his friends faces he just sighs.

“what the fuck, guys.”

-

On the balcony you try and use the fresh air to calm yourself down. Taking a breath in and out you just close your eyes in an attempt to center yourself. The sound of the screen door opens and closes behind you and you hear a voice pipe up.

“Sorry if we overwhelmed you. Joost told us you might be shy.” Alanis apologies. You open your eyes and smile at her.

“Its okay. Just feeling a bit out of place is all.” you reply and she tilts her head at your comment.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, you guys have all these super cool creative jobs, you’ve all known each other for so long it seems. Ive just barely met you all and I can already feel the talent and charisma radiating off you guys. I just make boring coffee.”

“Oh thats nonsense, you’re not boring at all. Joost wouldn’t have gone out of his way to go to your work every day if you were.” she smiles, “If we came off as overly friendly, its just because we were excited to meet the person Joost has been so taken with these past few months.”

“Guessing he talked about me a lot, huh?”

“Since day one.”

that admission piqued your interest a bit. “really?”

“Im serious. He walked out your shop that day and immediately texted Apson, ‘Just met the love of my life’ I don’t even think he had your name yet.” she laughs and you laugh a little as well learning about this side of Joost. You had known that he had been going out of his way to visit the shop you worked at as often as possible, but you didn’t know how taken he was with you right away.

“ I knew he started stopping by often, I just thought he liked our pastries.”

“He was Smitten. sorry again for being so overwhelming. Joost came back and lectured us all the second you left.” she admitted. The idea of Joost being so upset at his friends being too welcoming made you laugh.

“Its alright. Just feeling a bit overwhelmed i suppose.”

“Mind if I smoke?” Joost knocks on the open glass door before joining the two of you. He wraps his arm around your waist and pulls you closer to him before lighting his cigarette and taking a drag. he takes his cigarette with his free hand to lean a little closer to you and whispers. “alles goed, liefje?" (you alright, love?)

you nod and Smile at Alanis. “Yes, just needed some air. your friends are nicer than I expected.”

He nods and squeezes your waist before taking another drag and offering you his cigarette.

“I think im gonna head back inside. you two will be good?” Alanis asks and you smile and nod.

“I’ll join you in a sec.”

She heads back in. the second she is gone Joost immediately asks. “so how much did she spill?”

“only the good stuff.” you look at him and grin. “don’t worry I was smitten from day one too.”

[boydepartment]

quiet nights- hwang hyunjin x reader

a/n: i am sorry this was completely self indulgent :( ik i have requests rn but like… i finished all my work and im just laying down next to my mom watching hyunjins vlogs on the tv so this is FOR ME :(( your girl has been a little tired lately and mentally stressed i usually don’t even write or take requests for skz anymore but……………. omg what’s that behind you???!!!?

warnings- none, fluff, they just talk in the hotel room. not proof read.

wc- 400-500

MASTERLIST

curling up beside your cool hotel pillows was the standard while traveling. you didn’t expect your boyfriend to get back to the hotel room until later tonight. hyunjin was a busy man and his errands for this trip were later than your errands. your errands finished when his started, so needless to say you really missed him.

you fumbled around trying to get comfortable in the dim hotel room, you had all the lights off and you could see the city lights from the open curtains.

since the room was so high up you felt comfortable leaving them open, there was no balcony or any openings so you could enjoy truly enjoy the view of the bustling city.

you sat up and took a seat by the window, taking the throw blanket you and hyunjin bought from your last trip with you.

it was amazing to you that there was so many people living so many different lives, so many lights to signify different things. before you knew it you had grabbed the sketchbook and charcoal out of your bag. hyunjin had bought you and him art supplies while you were out earlier.

you started to sketch out the city in front of you, so focused on the scene. you wanted to challenge yourself to not try and erase or clean up your lines unless it was with the medium.

your brows furrowed and you started to get in your head, not even realizing your boyfriend was back in the hotel room. hyunjin thought you were asleep so he set down the bags of surprises quietly. when he walked further into the hotel room he saw you sitting by the window with the sketchpad in front of you. smiling to himself he watched you for a bit, changing from his outdoor clothes to indoor.

once he was done he went up to you and put his hand on your shoulder, the thin piece of charcoal snapped and you looked up at him.

“you scared me.” you felt yourself laugh a little before smiling up at him. hyunjin looked down at you, his smile never leaving his face.

“i’m sorry, my intended…” he mumbled and leaned down to kiss you.

you smiled into the kiss and set the art stuff down on the small table.

“let’s get your hands cleaned up and then we can head to bed alright? it’s late…” hyunjin caressed your face and kissed your forehead. you nodded and you both walked to the bathroom.

he helped you wash the charcoal off your hands as he told you about his day, “then this lady complimented my jewelry and i found out she was some like high political power that i didn’t even know!” hyunjin whispered through giggles.

“when did you find out?” you asked, giggling aswell, your boyfriend always found himself in weird positions like this.

hyunjin started laughing again, “literally four people came up to me and were like, ‘do you know who that is?’ and obviously i was like ‘nooooo what?’”

that sounded like something he would do and you could so clearly imagine it, “how does this keep happening to you?”

he dried off your hands and kissed your palms, “i don’t know my love! people just talk to me i guess. i don’t even know what they’re saying half the time.”

you started to giggle again and you guys walked over to the bed and got in. it was finally comfortable to you with your boyfriend next to you.

“so tell me about your day?” he laid on his side facing you, tracing your hands with his fingertips, “i had to leave when you got back so i didn’t get to ask…”

“it was busy, i had to talk to a lot of people too, not political powers though.” you teased him, he threw his head back and laughed.

“but it was good, i walked around a bit when you left, picked up a couple things for us too. there’s leftovers in the small fridge.” you spoke softly. hyunjin nodded and scooted closer to you, you could tell he was getting tired. sleep finally knocking on his door.

“i found… i found a nice cafe…” he yawned and pulled you closer to him, “healthy food… nice breakfast…” hyunjin started to shut his eyes.

you relaxed in his arms and started to place with the ends of his hair, “want to go there for breakfast tomorrow?”

he nodded, “then a museum…”

“then a museum…” you repeated and smiled to yourself, sleep starting to come for you too, “we better get rest then…”

hyunjin nodded into your neck, “mhm….” humming.

“i love you..” you whispered, your hand moving back and forth on his back.

“i love you most..”

[tizeline]

I just finished binge reading everything under your separated AU tag and I have QUESTIONS!! (that mostly just stem from me being a mikey fan) Be prepared as I will ramble.

So. My #1 burning mikey question is as follows. Why does he decide to, you know, NOT eradicate all of humanity? Does he just do it because all of his family is? Ugh it’s hard to phrase this but I’m wondering if Draxum’s word means so much to him he changes his entire world view, since draxum was the person who made him believe humans are evil, if he changed his mind he must be right? If he is the very last one to change his worldview, how does he react to the person who essentially indoctrinated him into believing humans are evil just going back on his word? Would he just, idk, try to keep going by himself (proper villain arc style!) Or does he get his own little human/outside friend to convince him, like his two other brothers do? What would happen if instead of a human/outside friend to convince him humans are okay, he gets someone like say, leatherhead, who was experimented on by the earth protection force?(Since in 2012, he was experimented on by the Kraang, but I don’t see a way of that happening when they were locked away his entire life) Huzzah for conflict! or better yet, That same leatherhead convinces him humans are okay? Though that those seem out of character…. And of course maybe it would be mondo gecko, who he befriends and then finds out was human just a few months before and still views himself as such…. So many possibilities!!

speaking of other characters, do the Drax trio have any Yōkai friends? Like one Sunita, or maybe even one yoichi usagi, per chance? Though I’m pretty sure they’d be pro-human so… idk how that would work. The question still stands.

Also, seeing as you mentioned Raph starts to hang out with Leo,Donnie and April, how does mikey react to that? Would he feel abandoned or left out? (Who am I kidding of course he would but like. It does t hurt to ask!)

And seeing as he’s alone now and he’s not training all the time (I hope) this feels like a good Segway into asking: does he have as much of a love for art as in canon? What are his and Raphs interests (since we know Leo’s!)

thanks! I love ur work and ur art and ur Au and ur mother for creating you.

P.s. I had another question I wanted to ask but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was rn so you can expect more asks from me in the near future ;)

Hoo boy, long asks mean long answers, strap in folks!

So EXACTLY what causes Mikey to change his mind on everything is something I'm still working out the details of. Draxum definitely plays a part in it, considering how much faith Mikey has in his dad, Draxum of all people changing his mind would be one of the biggest reasons for Mikey to also second guess himself. It's not like he'd instantly change his entire worldview though, after Draxum gives up on the Evil Plan, Mikey, or rather Dr. Positive, tries to motivate him to come up with a new plan for a short while. He gives up after Draxum makes it clear that they're Done™ with that, and Mikey isn't very keen on trying to do the Evil Plan all on his own considering HIS ENTIRE FAMILY decided to just give up on it. That doesn't mean he'll suddenly start liking humans, he still thinks they suck ass, he just isn't actively trying to cause their downfall anymore.

For both Leo and Raph, a big reason why they changed their minds on humanity was because they interacted with humanity and learned how wrong many of their previously held assumptions about them were. It makes sense that that's the catalyst for both of their redemption-arcs, and in that sense it also makes sense for Mikey to unlearn his prejudices against humans by interacting with them. HOWEVER! You bring up an interesting point, for Mikey specifically it would probably be more effective for another yōkai/mutant to give him a new perspective considering he'd be a lot more willing to listen to them rather than a human. I haven't been planning on including Leatherhead or Mondo, but it would be fun idea so I might do so.?That being said, getting to actually know a human later on would still be a good learning-experience for Mikey, I'm kinda tempted to bring in Woody from the IDW comics into the story too, for example.

So then we get to the topic of friends! Despite The Drax Bros growing up in yōkai society, they're still a bit isolated. They can go and hang out in The Hidden City basically whenever they want (as soon as they're old enough to do so), but when it comes to actually getting close to other yōkai and forming proper friendships...? So first of all, Draxum has a Reputation™ amongst yōkai, he's a well known figure and a lot of people are honestly a bit intimidated by him. Most yōkai thinks it's best to just stay out of his way, which includes staying out of the way of his weird kids. Basically, the bros' association with Draxum has a tendency to get in the way of them actually befriending anyone :/ Not just that, but while there are certainly yōkai who don't have the most positive feelings about humans, the Draxum family's stance on humanity is very extreme, which even most "human-critical" yōkai will find off-putting.

All of this is to say that no, they don't have a lot of friends haha. Leo hangs out at Run Of The Mill all the time, and Hueso definitely has a soft spot for him, but at most he's only acquainted with the other employees and regulars there. I'd imagine that includes Sunita, considering her dad works there and as such they've interacted on occasion. But again, Leo's extreme view on humanity makes most people uncomfortable and as such they'll mostly indulge him in civil small-talk to avoid getting on Draxum's bad side. Raph and Mikey...? They might have some casual friendly connections with some yōkai in The Hidden City, especially Mikey can be quite sociable if he can keep himself from ranting about humans for two seconds lmao. But for the most part, honestly, I think The Drax Bros are content staying a bit closed off from others outside their family. The three of them are very close and they know they can trust each other, that last part's important considering their Big Plans aren't exactly.... legal.... and as such they need to remain secretive about everything to others. I feel like they'd mostly start bothering finding new friends after they decide to abandon their Destroy All Humans Plan.

(Sidenote, I really like when Usagi shows up in TMNT stories, but I've never consumed any Usagi media myself. Almost all I know about both Miyamoto and Yuichi I know through TMNT and as such I don't feel confident enough in my knowledge about the Usagis to include either of them in the story. I HAVE been planning on reading the comics, so maybe I'll include him at a later date??)

But OH BOY Mikey's reaction to Leo and Raph starting to hang out with Donnie and April?? :D Both of Mikey's older brothers ditching him to hang out with their new little brother and his annoying human friend??? :D OH BOY YOU HAVE NO IDEA! :D

Listen, look at this from Mikey's perspective: You finally find your Long Lost Brother™ after thirteen years of him being presumed dead, great! Small problem, he's been brainwashed by the evil humans who kidnapped him and now thinks YOU'RE evil for some reason? No matter! He just needs some time to adjust! So you're patient with him, you show him kindness and understanding while gently trying to guide him back to the good side, to his REAL family. You do EVERYTHING right, and how does that bastard repay you?? HE instead turn your brothers against YOU! He ruins your plans of saving the world! Everything was PERFECT before HE showed up and started complicating things, and now your family is BROKEN and everything sucks! And it can all be blamed on Donnie.

...Hate is a very strong feeling, I don't feel like Mikey is really capable of feeling something like that, at the very least not against someone he does still technically considers family. Rather, I think the best way to describe the feeling Mikey is about to start feeling about Donnie would be bitterness. Mikey takes all the negative feelings, all the hurt and confusion about the situation he's ended up in and directs it all at Donnie. Because it all comes back to him, doesn't it? It was only after Donnie got reunited with them that things started going wrong. And from Mikey's point of view, Donnie has basically stolen Mikey's brothers from him. Needless to say, Mikey is dealing with a lot of negative emotions that he doesn't really know how to cope with them aside from taking it out on Donnie.

Donnie, who is so used to being love-bombed by Mikey is VERY flabbergasted over him basically just completely flipping a switch overnight. Mikey will just be glaring at Donnie like he's trying to explode him with his mind and Donnie's just "???who are you and what have you done with Mikey???". He starts acting really hostile towards Leo and Raph as well, it's all very weird!

Back to me not having figured out the details of the entirety of Mikey's character arc, one thing I'm contemplating is how long I wanna drag it out for. For example, I know I want to change up the events of the movie at least a bit in the AU for the sake of novelty. One way of doing that could potentially be for it to focus not on Leo's and Raph's ever growing tension in their relationship, but rather focus on Donnie's and Mikey's relationship? It'd be extra interesting if Mikey hadn't at least completely gotten over his hang-ups about humans when we bring Casey Jr into the situation. CJ looks at Mikey and sees a younger version of the man that was basically an uncle to him, like family, and Mikey looks at CJ and is just like "ew. human." and that'd be a whole dilemma to deal with. But as interesting as that could be, I'm scared that it'd just get tedious if Mikey is stuck in angst-mode for too long. We still have the entirety of season two to get through before we get to the movie, it's gonna be a while is what I'm saying. Then again, character growth takes time, maybe Mikey reconciles with his own family and starts the path to befriending Donnie by the end of season two, but they run into some roadblocks along the way. They ARE very different people, even in canon, I'd imagine it might take some time for them to properly befriend each other.

But next question - Mikey and Raph's interests! Mikey already likes to draw, but he'd definitely start doing it way more after the season 1 finale (oh wow, a healthy coping mechanism, imagine that!) Raph... Raph likes training. Even after it becomes clear that they're not doing their Big World Domination Plan anymore and as such don't really need to train as much, he still does it just because he genuinely enjoys it. He becomes proper friends with Casey the season one finale and she also really likes training, so it becomes a bonding experience for them. Leo and Donnie later on also introduces him to human media like Jupiter Jim and the Lou Jitsu movies and he gets really into it too XD Nerds!!

... Oh man, I think that's everything! Anyway, thank you, I'm glad you're enjoying the AU so much :D

[firehazard64]

AWESOME INTRO!!!

Helloooo welcome to my goofy art page :DDD

Read plsss ⬇️

Im new to tumblr. I’ve been drawing for most of my life and animating for about 7 years now… I hope to get better in the future :3!! I am into lots of medias but my brain is too fried to think rn. My hyperfixation right now is obviously regretevator. But also I draw more then just regretevator so expect that from me as well. I have a lot of ocs I’ll post in the future and hope you guys enjoy them as much as I do! The little orange guy in the corner is an Oc I’m mostly recognized for in other social platforms. I made it when I was 8 that’s why it has a basic name lolz. Currently working on regretevator.mov au.. but I take breaks from here and there. I’m usually a very busy person and post when I want to either it being art or spam. Im very awkward and quiet so just be patient with me. You are free to @ me whenever I will respond eventually.

This page is open for everyone!!! You are also free to ask questions or request doodles!!! Just some rules tho…I’m not against shipping I just choose to not draw stuff like that in my page. I’m pretty picky with my shipping but please don’t request those…crackships or stupid things is a maybe tho. I’m hella sarcastic and annoying so remember that but I am in general a nice person to my mutuals/friends and the rest of y’all too :3 I hope you all have an epic sauce day/night

Waterflood32 is my enemy…

[brucebocchi]

Winter 2024 anime, Pt. 2: Mixed reactions, the bench, and the gems

hey y'all, this is also up on my ko-fi! it's free to read both here and there, but i'm struggling financially rn so i could appreciate if you'd throw a few bucks my way if you liked it! part 1 can be found here.

And we're back for part 2! Here's all the new stuff I finished this season, and one more I'll get back to later. As with before, these are sorted alphabetically within each category and are not ranked as of yet.

Also as before, the OP for each series is linked in the title. Check them all out if the header images aren't giving you the right feel for each show, but also check them out because most of them were actually pretty damn good this season.

[Solo Leveling OP voice] LET'S GET IT!

Mixed Bags:

Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable!

Your standard, quasi-harem “easily flustered Regular Guy wins over hot girls just by being really nice” shonen romcom. I really don’t have much to say about this one other than if you’ve seen My Dress-Up Darling, you’ve basically seen this already. The only thing that really sets it apart is the setting.

Tsubasa (voiced by Nobunaga Shimazaki, in a FAR cry from his turn as Mahito in Jujutsu Kaisen) is a straight-laced Tokyoite whose family situation lands him in a small city in the frozen boonies of Hokkaido. While looking for the bus to his new house, he runs into a gyaru in the snowy wild, the underdressed, hilariously-proportioned Minami, and they hit it off. It turns out they go to the same school, there are other cute girls there who take a shine to him as well, it’s nothing new.

I ultimately don’t have much to say about Hokkaido Gals, but I do have a soft spot for series like this, and after reading ahead in the manga I felt obligated to see it through. This is all junk food, but it’s all stuff you’ve seen done better in other series. I also have a soft spot for gyaru in anime and manga, and while I do like Minami just fine, she isn’t Marin Kitagawa or Rumiko Manbagi. I don’t really have it in me to recommend this show to many, though, at least not until another season rolls around, if that ever happens. The manga genuinely does get a lot better as it goes on, but the really worthwhile stuff may not happen until a third season, and I just don’t see that happening. 

The manga has issues that the anime isn’t willing or able to solve, chief of which being the visuals. The art style of the manga is wildly inconsistent, and getting a mediocre animation team on this didn’t help matters at all. While the colors often pop nicely against the pretty, snowy backdrops, nobody looks all that great overall. The characters are recognizable, but they just plain don’t look great a lot of the time, nor do they look consistent from one cut to the next; I said that Minami’s proportions are hilarious, but just as hilarious is how wildly they vacillate from one scene to the next for the sake of trying to titillate the viewer.

My biggest takeaway from both the manga and anime was everything I learned about Hokkaido in the process, and if the series is taking subsidies from the island’s tourism bureau, then it’s a job well done. I want some goddamn jingisukan now. The OP is a great time, though. I’m shocked it took over a decade for us to get a proper “Uptown Funk” knockoff in an anime.

Metallic Rouge

I’ll be upfront in saying that this was my biggest disappointment of the season by far. This show had so much going for it, and what we got was… ugh.

There was an unbelievable amount of promise from the outset: This was Studio Bones’ commemorative 25th anniversary production, and coming from the studio that gave us all-timer adaptations like Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood and Mob Psycho 100, not to mention later works from Cowboy Bebop creator Shinichiro Watanabe (including the Cowboy Bebop movie), you can’t fault anyone for having high expectations. It looked to be a fitting production as well: Watanabe’s influence shines through immediately in the gorgeous, lived-in cyberpunk off-world locales and racially diverse cast. Action takes the form of dope robo-tokusatsu transformation fisticuffs, and it’s entirely in 2D animation to boot. The first couple of episodes were killer, too; everything looked and sounded amazing, and there were just enough plot threads teased out that I just had to see how they’d unravel.

It brings me no joy, then, to say that Metallic Rouge collapses into a jumbled mess. I don’t even want to bother talking about what happens in the show because I don’t fucking care anymore. There are few media experiences more sobering than to have it dawn on you over a span of several weeks that “oh… this isn’t actually all that good, is it?” Episode after episode piles on with sloppy lore, weak worldbuilding, warring factions whose names you immediately forget, pointless double-crosses, and the most predictable twist you’ve ever seen. For a while I was willing to accept the fact that I didn’t know what was going on half the time and expected things to become clearer, but now I’m not entirely sure the writers knew either. The stakes apparently kept rising and everything just kept getting more claustrophobic. I’m glad it’s over, if only because if I had to hear “Clair de Lune” one more fucking time, I was going to go ballistic. 

There are several attempts at emotional beats, as the story is rife with tragedy and sacrifice, and every single one lands with a wet thud. Nobody gets enough time, motivation, or characterization for any of these things to feel like they actually matter, and that’s especially a shame because the finale might have been able to stick the landing if the previous episodes were less dense and better paced. Emphasis on “almost,” though, because just before the season ends, we get the absolute most pointless fakeout I’ve seen since The Rise of Skywalker, which is the lowest point of comparison you can make for any work of sci-fi.

This is especially frustrating because on paper, there is so much to like here. Rouge and Naomi are likable-enough deuteragonists with a fun dynamic, and they’d make easy yuri bait in a better show. The characters are all pretty and uniquely designed across the board, and the overall aesthetic, almost a pastiche of late-90’s anime futurism, is undeniable. The toku suit designs are neat and several of the action scenes are gorgeous. The score and soundtrack are outstanding (except for the aforementioned Debussy indulgence). I have few complaints about how the show looks and sounds; the style is great! All of my issues lie with the substance.

Metallic Rouge may have had all the ingredients, but it just needed more time to cook; whether that would have been by doubling the episode count or by more carefully planning the pacing and trimming some of the fat from the lore, I’m still not sure. Probably both. It probably needed better writers, too. Maybe it just isn’t as smart as it acts and there was no way to satisfyingly resolve the clumsy civil rights allegories that bring it uncomfortably close to the likes of Detroit: Become Human. So all of the above, I guess. I tend to adore stories that involve artificially-intelligent beings developing their own wills and emotions and learning to cut their own strings (the likes of Blade Runner, Nier Automata, even a couple of character arcs in the Persona series), but this ain’t it. I’m not even mad anymore. I’m just disappointed.

If there are two positives that will stick with me, though, they would be the absolute banger of an OP and, of course, Naomi Orthmann herself (pictured above, left). Outstanding character design. I’m mildly obsessed. She deserved a better show.

The Unwanted Undead Adventurer

This one isn’t even worth talking about, so here’s a brief synopsis, then I’ll add some commentary, and then we’ll all move on with our lives. 

Rentt, a beloved but mediocre adventurer in a fantasy town, gets lost in the mysterious labyrinth that all adventurers explore for personal gain, gets waxed by a dragon, and awakens as a shitty-looking CGI skeleton. He notices, though, that he’s able to level up better as a skeleton than he did as a human, and with the more monsters he defeats, the more he evolves into something closer to human. The rest isn’t really worth discussing.

If I’m being honest, I should’ve dropped this show much sooner. It looks kinda lousy most of the time, the plot (inasmuch as there even is one) is boring, character designs are forgettable (except for Rentt’s closest ally, Lorraine, holy hell) and it seems wholly uninterested in actually building its own setting. If it returns for a second season, I won’t be there, nor will I feel like I’m missing anything. Each episode felt like a chore to watch. I probably only saw it through because 1) I liked looking at Lorraine, I know what I’m about, and 2) I didn’t want to lump it in with the shows I did drop. The Unwanted Undead Adventurer isn’t as patently upsetting or frustrating as those three, but it just plain isn’t a very good show.

The Witch and the Beast

This show could have been so much more. I was drawn in by the gorgeous character designs and intriguing blend of Victorian gothic aesthetics and architecture with modern infrastructure, and very quickly disappointed by just about everything else. The first episode is an exceptional proof of concept, and almost everything that follows is an upsetting showcase of what could have been.

The story centers around Ashaf, a languid, chain-smoking agent of the governing church with a big-ass coffin strapped to his back, and his partner Guideau, a snarling hyena in a young woman’s body, as they investigate abuses of magic across the continent in search of nefarious witches. Guideau in particular has a bone to pick with witches, as the body they presently inhabit is the result of a witch’s curse, and they remain in furious pursuit of the one who cursed them. The curse can be temporarily undone by a kiss with a witch, allowing Guideau’s true body, a hulking brute confined to the coffin, to escape and wreak havoc. Meaning that on a few occasions we get a girl-on-girl kiss followed by a big dude wrecking shit. There’s also other investigations of serial killings, necromancy, and a cursed sword, and here’s hoping you like those, because the coffin breaks are few and far between.

This wasn’t great! By the third episode I had the sneaking suspicion that the animation talent on hand just wasn’t enough to support the aesthetic. While the character designs are exceptional, almost everyone looks awful in any shot that isn’t completely focused on them. This is especially true of Guideau, who looks so inconsistently off-model from one shot to the next that I’m still not entirely sure what they’re supposed to look like, and that’s kind of unforgivable when we’re talking about a main character. Everything looks too dim and too shiny at the same time, and action scenes look like shit more often than they look interesting. I can see so many flickers of something excellent (or at least really good-looking) in Witch and the Beast, and everything else that keeps those flickers from actually igniting makes it so much more frustrating to watch. Maybe just read the manga instead; the panels I've seen from it were uniformly gorgeous.

Actually, yeah, you should probably just read the manga, because for a season of anime, the pacing is atrocious too. It’s clearly trying to angle for a monster-of-the-week format, but each of these mini-arcs is a little too dense for a single episode, so multiple episodes are dedicated to these one-off curiosities, most of which do nothing to advance the plot or show off what the show does best. And if one of them isn’t particularly interesting, you’re saddled with it for the next two weeks like you've been stuck munching on a mealy apple. And I know you can only adapt so much in a 12-episode season, but the decision to end the season on a flashback arc and a lore dump was baffling. That’s not world-building, that’s lazy, and it made the show’s existing pacing issues feel that much more inane.

I feel like I was sold a false bill of goods. I can only imagine how the mangaka feels about this. Dull and uninspiring all around. What a waste.

The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic

Isekai, unassuming high school boy gains a unique power, impending war with the Demon Lord, yadda yadda yadda. The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic isn’t anything new or special by any means, nor is it particularly well-animated or -paced, but at its best it’s silly and charming enough that it made a nice, brainless palate cleanser on Fridays.

Usato, your standard quiet high schooler, ends up walking home on a rainy evening with the popular, attractive student council president and VP, when an isekai portal happens. It turns out that it was just the seito-kai that was invited along for the ride (and President Suzune, as it turns out, is fucking psyched to get to be in an isekai), and Usato got caught along with them. When tested for magical aptitude, Suzune and VP Kazuki hit the jackpot with electric and light affinities, respectively, but things go awry when Usato’s reading turns up with healing magic. Terror strikes the palace as the intimidating dommy-mommy Captain Rose barges in to spirit Usato away from his new friends and into her squadron of goons to train him as a combat medic.

As character comedy goes, this one is actually pretty solid at times. Shogo Sakata is plenty of fun as the put-upon, lippy Usato (a much louder role than Chainsaw Man’s Aki Hayakawa), and Atsuko Tanaka (Major Kusanagi herself!) is a blast as the terrifying Rose, an uncompromising slave driver of a drill sergeant with a secret soft side. The dynamic between them is great, too; Usato is over Rose’s shit from the beginning and isn’t afraid to talk back to her, but before you know it, this transforms into friendly banter as Rose clearly takes a shine to Usato and knows he can handle any punishment she doles out. Suzune’s also a bunch of fun now that she’s broken away from having to be the competent, popular girl at school and gets to fully lean into being a complete dork.

Wrong Way also works decently as an isekai, because it makes an effort to stay rooted in high fantasy rather than fall back on JRPG mechanics, meaning there are no stat screens! It also avoids the trappings of wish-fulfillment isekai series by having Usato start out as a regular-ass guy; he’s not a Kirito type, just someone Rose sees as a rough gem in need of cutting. There are no cheat skills or OP weapons or anything, just a kid training every day to get stronger so he can protect the people close to him, and that’s the kind of anime protagonist you should want to be.

For better and for worse, I get serious mid-00s vibes from this one; watch the OP if you don’t believe me. Some of the colors pop uncannily in that early-digipaint-era way, and the animation is pretty middling; the most fluid animation we see is whenever Suzune is acting like a creep. Much like those mid-00s anime, though, Wrong Way may have benefited from being weekly (or twice as long) rather than seasonal. There’s a ton of planting with very little payoff, and it doesn’t feel like the actual scope of the story has even been addressed yet. We don’t even learn why the series has the name it does until someone literally says it aloud in the 11th episode. I may have to reevaluate this season after a possible second, if we ever get one, because this doesn’t stand too well on its own.

Of the anime in this “mixed bags” segment, I’d say I enjoyed Wrong Way the most, but it still had enough problems for me to keep it here. It’s not a particularly bad anime, but it’s not especially good either. I guess we can slot it into what Hazel refers to as “good mid.”

On Hold: 

Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! (three episodes watched)

Man, what a title. That was the main draw for this BL series, which on paper is basically a gay version of the Mel Gibson vehicle What Women Want. 

Adachi (a surname that will always make me laugh thanks to Persona 4), a gloomy salaryman, has hit the big 3-0 without getting any, and now he can somehow read anyone’s thoughts just by making physical contact with them. Just as he laments that this is his life now, he accidentally bumps into his handsome, popular coworker, Kurosawa, whom he learns has been harboring a massive crush on Adachi this whole time. Well dang, what now? Kurosawa’s a really nice, thoughtful dude, but Adachi’s never even thought about being with a man before! And isn’t there something wrong with already knowing this secret? How can he even go into the office and look Kurosawa in those big, handsome eyes… every single day…

What I’ve seen so far has been pretty solid, if not particularly well animated. The visuals are really my only gripe here; I just put it off for way too long and didn’t have it in me to finish it on time to actually get this thing written and published. Yaoi isn’t my forte, which feels like a shortcoming on my end as a fledgling bisexual, and I’ve already remarked on the solid LGBT representation this past season, so I do plan on hopping back on this one.

I gotta say, the co-leading voice actors put in serious work this season. Adachi is voiced by Chiaki Kobayashi, who continued his role as Stark in Frieren, returned to Mashle as Mash Burnedead, and contributed to Metallic Rouge’s cluttered cast as Noid. Kurosawa’s seiyuu, Ryota Suzuki (of whom I’ll always be a fan for his masterful turn as Yu Ishigami in Kaguya-sama), also held down leading roles in Bang Brave Bang Bravern and The Unwanted Undead Adventurer. They’ve been great in the few episodes of Cherry Magic! that I’ve seen so far, and they’ll be a huge part of what brings me back.

The Gems:

Bang Brave Bang Bravern

I feel like the mark of a perfectly audacious piece of media is in the moments where I find myself incredulously shouting “WHAT THE FUCK AM I WATCHING” at the screen, and Bravern made me do that at least once per episode. I have so many things to say about what makes this show great but all of it can be summed up as “it fucks so goddamn hard.”

A joint military exercise in Hawaii between Japanese and American mech pilots goes south as a sudden invasion by metalloid aliens portends certain doom for humanity. Just in the nick of time, though, a bombastic, autonomous mech named Bravern arrives from space and insists that ace pilot Isami Ao take his reins. Isami reluctantly agrees, and to his consternation, Bravern goes full tokusatsu on everyone’s asses, complete with fully-diegetic theme music, and keeps the threat at bay. With Bravern continuing to pester him to act as a pilot, Isami is forced to take up the mantle of a reluctant hero as everyone rallies around Bravern to save Earth. Tagging along is blond-haired, blue-eyed American pilot Lewis Smith, who gets to live out all of his Top Gun fantasies, right down to the latent homosexuality.

That last point isn’t a projection or anything: This show is legitimately gay as hell, and it rules. Bravern’s feelings towards Isami feel far more romantic than what you’d expect from a literal robot, and his description of how it felt to have Isami pilot him for the first time, as relayed to a grim-faced military council, is riddled with hilarious innuendo. Isami struggles not only with shouldering the burden of needing to be a hero to all of humanity, but also being beset on both sides by a loud, insistent mecha and a dewy-eyed gaijin, both of whom very well seem to want to get in his pants. Intricate rituals punctuate Isami and Lewis’ angsty relationship as these broad-shouldered, muscular men grow ever closer. It’s also worth reiterating that Isami is voiced by Ryota Suzuki, who also voiced Kurosawa in Cherry Magic!, and that may not have even been his gayest role this season. I’m not super well-versed in mecha as a genre, but I do know that there’s a lot of Warrior’s Bond-type stuff in these series, and Bravern lays it on thick. And hard.

This show looks killer, by the way. CGI implementation in 2D anime is still a touchy subject, but Bravern features some of the best I’ve ever seen. Simple cel-shading goes a long way to the point where, outside of some uncanny motion, Bravern himself feels perfectly blended into the hand-drawn animation. Mecha designs range from realistic military-style tech to otherworldly sentient robots, and battle sequences run the same gamut as the stakes rise. As goofy as all of the above may sound, it’s committed to being a grandiose, big-time mecha showcase.

This is as good as camp gets in anime; Bravern does for the mecha genre what Akiba Maid War did for yakuza film pastiche (I have also heard positive comparisons to Samurai Flamenco, which I’ll have to get on ASAP). It’s an excellent mecha show in its own right, and wildly hilarious to boot. Bravern himself is very genre-savvy and seemingly a bit of an otaku himself; he loves acting like a mecha hero, to everyone else’s chagrin. Several of the villains (also mechanical beings, voiced by an all-star seiyuu roster that includes Kenjiro Tsuda, the aforementioned Atsuko Tanaka, and Rie Kugimiya) are total dorks themselves. A CIA interrogator tries to waterboard a mecha at one point. Bravern is a deeply silly show, but its heart is planted as firmly on its sleeve as its tongue is in its cheek: For as wacky as it can get, the story still unfolds with a straight face and excellent emotional beats. 

This show also has the most unskippable ED of any anime since Chainsaw Man dropped a new one every week. I will not say what happens. You cannot predict what it is. Just watch it. One of the top YouTube comments on that video says “When I saw this ending after episode 2, I thought I was going crazy.” That’s a ringing endorsement.

Chained Soldier

On the heels of 100 Girlfriends completely rewiring my brain, I was raring for some more good old-fashioned anime trash. I was told that there would be plenty this season, but you can consult the “dropped” section to see how well that worked out for me. Chained Soldier came with some significant hype, and soon enough into the first episode I realized that I’d actually skimmed through this manga before (don’t ask why), so I was on board immediately. Now here’s some nice trashy fun.

The world is in peril thanks to creatures called Shuuki that can advance on our world via portals from another dimension. Women primarily lead the charge against these monsters, as this dimension produces a special fruit that can lend them (and not men) otherworldly powers to help them in the fight. Yuuki, a perfectly normal young man, ends up in grave danger as he stumbles into a portal, where he is saved by the beautiful Kyouka, a commander who is able to subjugate Shuuki at will and use them to fight others. In a bind, she asks Yuuki if she can subjugate him, which he agrees to by licking her finger and transforming into a monster himself, at her beck and call. Because of his utility in battle, Yuuki is enlisted into her squad of baddies (and also an 11-year-old), living in their home as a caretaker and answering directly to Kyouka as her “slave.”

I know. Hear me out.

I put “slave” in scare quotes because Chained Soldier fortunately isn’t going full Shield Hero on us; this arrangement has a give-and-take baked in. See, every time Yuuki completes his service, Kyouka (or whomever else takes advantage of this anomaly) is compelled to carry out whatever suitable “reward” springs from his unconscious, and this is where the ecchi kicks in. Sometimes it’s a kiss, and sometimes it’s something a little more; the reward corresponds to the length and intensity of Yuuki’s contributions to battle, so the heat can turn up in the form of, say, clothed face-sitting, a good scrubbing in the bath, or some nice, casual CBT. All of this is to say that “slave” is a bit of a buzzword here: It’s more of a dom/sub situationship with a lot of extra steps.

Yes, just about everything that isn’t an action setup is full-on harem trash, and Chained Soldier lays it on thick, right down to full-on nudity. Nothing about this show resembles high art, but I can’t help but admire such a high level of commitment to its aesthetic, including the sleaze. It fully commits to the bit and doesn’t even bother lampshading its own trashiness. Chained Soldier knows what it’s about, and I respect that. It also has the good sense not to sexualize the youngest girl, which is a point in its favor that I can’t award a couple other shows previously discussed.

And while this show is plenty fun, the action sequences often excellent, and the character designs usually delightful, there’s not actually a whole lot going on here. As I said with Mashle, I know that battle manga like this can take a minute to really get cooking, and as I said with Witch and the Beast, 12 episodes may not always be a sufficient runtime to adapt enough to break ground, but the debut season feels more like a proof of concept than anything else. That being said, Chained Soldier’s manga has a very effusive audience, and its praises don’t seem to entirely be about the boobs and butts, so I’ll wait patiently for the second season. I think it’s earned that much.

Delicious in Dungeon

This is the one I’m having the hardest time writing about because it so confidently and so completely speaks for itself that anything I could add would feel like scattering sawdust at the beach. Dungeon Meshi (I refuse to call it by its official English title) is a widely beloved manga among those who’ve read it, and for Studio Trigger to do an honest-to-goodness manga adaptation for the first time might as well be front page news among anime fans. 

The story follows Laios, the deeply weird human hero, as he delves back into a bizarre and mysterious dungeon to rescue his sister Falin from the belly of a dragon, along with his misfit party: The neurotic half-elven mage Marcille, the temperamental halfling rogue Chilchuck, and the dwarven warrior-slash-chef Senshi. The party is frequently low on supplies, so to survive the trip they’ll need to subsist on the most abundant resource in the dungeon: Monsters. Senshi’s aptitude in the kitchen helps ensure that everything is edible and sufficiently tasty, regardless of how nasty the monster it came from may have been. With monster obstructions out of the way and their bellies filled, our party delves deeper into the dungeon as the mysteries deepen in kind.

I love the character dynamics in this so goddamn much. Marcille and Chilchuck are frequently put off by the dubious monster food presented to them, but their consternation is worsened by the fact that Laios’ fascination with the monsters it came from annoys the shit out of them. I referred to him as “deeply weird,” but that doesn’t begin to describe his absolute galaxy brain, and I mean it as a term of endearment. Laios is deeply knowledgeable and curious about the fauna in the dungeon, and not just how they taste: He is vocally curious about how certain monster attacks may feel, sings along with siren songs, and even keeps a hardcover bestiary inside his breastplate. He’s one of those people you turn to if you have a question on a hyperspecific subject, but you have to be careful how you ask it or else you’re trapped for the next two hours. And I love him for it.

Even putting the comedy aside, there is a fascinating human element at play in Dungeon Meshi, and I can tell that that surface has barely even been scratched yet. Marcille is just as dogged in her pursuit of saving Falin as Laios is, maybe even moreso (remember what I keep saying about LGBT representation this season?). Chilchuck continues to convince himself that he’s only in the job for his own personal gain, but you can see that mask slipping. And I still wanna know what Senshi’s deal is. Even with the five major players I listed, there’s an increasingly deep roster surrounding them—showcasing a broad spectrum of races and ethnicities, both real and fantastical—each with their own histories and motivations, and I cannot wait to see how they play out and interact with one another. There seem to be much deeper themes at play here as well as we learn more about perceptions and grudges between differing races, oppositional magics, clashing ideologies, and the monetary incentives that drive both the dungeon’s exploration and its very existence. I’m here for it.

I’ve been holding off on reading the manga until the season is up in June (though I could crack any day), but I know a loving adaptation when I see one. Not that Trigger ever slacks off in the animation department, but they absolutely brought their A-game here. Everyone looks bouncy and cartoony in the way only Trigger can pull off while still looking as close as possible to Ryoko Kui’s source material (as far as I can tell). As with Frieren, the action sequences aren’t frequent, nor are they entirely what the show is about, but they look incredible every single time. And the food, of course, looks incredible, no matter how weird. This is practically a cooking anime and a fantasy dungeon anime at the same time, and both aspects are visually on point at all times.

I’m obviously speaking from my own bubble as one of the six people who still use Tumblr in 2024, but I rarely see new anime make a splash like this on social media every single week, and the ones that I do are usually the monster shonen hits like Chainsaw Man or Jujutsu Kaisen. Dungeon Meshi deserves the exposure and success it’s attained, and I’m excited to see it continue. I’d easily slot this right up there with Bravern as one of the best new anime of the season.

A Sign of Affection

I’ve seen a hell of a lot of shonen slice-of-life romances in the past year and change, so a nice fluffy shoujo like this was an excellent palate cleanser. There were a hell of a lot of Big Action Setpieces and panicky teens and grim dungeon crawlers this season, and at the end of the week I wanted to unwind with a bunch of pretty twenty-somethings falling in love with each other.

The show centers on Yuki, a young woman living with congenital hearing loss, making do at a public college after growing up at a school for the deaf. Though she’s able to get by with LINE messages and lip reading, she’s unprepared when a foreigner asks for help, but she’s saved by a handsome and mysterious young man named Itsuomi. He’s able to help out, and takes an interest in her when he realizes his fellow undergrad is deaf, and Yuki takes an interest in kind because he’s really goddamn hot. It turns out that he’s a polyglot and an avid world-traveler, but sign language is not in his purview. This mutual interest sparks the concern of her childhood friend, Oushi, one of the few people in her life who already use sign language, who wants to be sure that nothing untoward is happening. And it isn’t, because this is just a really lovely, low-stakes romance story.

This is pure, unfiltered shoujo at its best. Yuki’s internal monologue is peppered with flowery prose, and everything and everyone looks soft and beautiful. Fashionable, doe-eyed women and pillowy-lipped ikemen abound (seriously, holy shit, the lips on these boys) as the scope widens and the main love interests’ friends explore their own possible love stories. Itsuomi is very much of the “mysterious boy” archetype you’ll find in romance stories in this demographic, but he’s not hiding any sort of dark past like you’d typically expect; he’s just an interesting guy who keeps his personal life close to the vest. He’s a self-appointed world citizen who loves learning about how people of all cultures live their lives, and in Yuki he sees someone within his home turf who happens to live in her own world entirely. And it’s easy to see his forward behavior with Yuki as infantilizing at first (Oushi sure does, and I’ll get back to him in a second), but as they grow closer Itsuomi quickly becomes much more considerate of her boundaries and learns to accommodate her as he studies sign language and gestures that help ensure her comfort. This is a story about Yuki’s horizons broadening just as much as it is about Itsuomi wanting to be let into Yuki’s narrow world, and that sort of synergy makes for some exceptional romance.

A Sign of Affection deserves some credit for refusing to shy away from Yuki’s disability and making a point of depicting her world as one that does little to accommodate her. Very few people in her daily life ever bothered to learn sign language, she relies on a friend to take notes during lectures, and work is hard to come by. It’s an honest depiction that makes an effort not to be exploitative, which is a breath of fresh air. Not only that, but there’s some interesting meta-commentary in there: The only major conflict in the story stems from Oushi’s jealousy, and his reservations about Itsuomi possibly “taking advantage of” Yuki almost feel like he believes that he’s the only one who knows what’s best for her just because he’s done the bare minimum to accommodate her. He thinks he’s coming from a good place, but he winds up accidentally infantilizing her in exactly the way he thinks Itsuomi might. That’s a particularly interesting bit of irony!

I’ve seen enough shonen-oriented romcoms where an unassuming Regular Guy gets flustered as a way-too-casual girl pushes his buttons (hell, I’ve already reviewed two of those this season), so it’s nice to see the formula flipped for a shoujo as Yuki and her best friend Rin blush and squee over Itsuomi and his coworker Kyouya, respectively. A Sign of Affection isn’t afraid to get a little silly with it, either; plenty of these moments are punctuated by characters’ faces going low-detail or full chibi, and they are cute as shit every single time.

This one was just cozy as hell. If you’re into this sort of thing, swaddle yourself in it and bask.

Solo Leveling

I let this one collect dust after the third episode and didn’t pick it back up until the season was almost up, and honestly, I was kinda dreading it: The trailers didn’t look too promising, the show was slow to start, and it looked like yet another derivative JRPG-style dungeon crawler that managed to get popular. Turns out, nah, this show actually kinda fucks and the web novel series and webtoon it’s based on are popular for a reason. The story is nothing special, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a perfectly serviceable turn-your-brain-off action spectacle with a bit more lying beneath the surface.

In a modern-day South Korea where portals to mysterious dungeons open up and threaten the populace, those who can brave the dungeons, known as hunters, are an invaluable human resource. Once someone is assigned a grade as a hunter, they have that grade for life, barring some rare occurrences. Sung Jinwoo is at the lowest rung on that ladder as an E-rank, incapable of improvement, assigned the epithet “the weakest hunter of all mankind.” He mostly shows up to portal raids as a warm body to fill a quota, and one such job goes haywire as most of the raid party, Jinwoo included, is brutally slaughtered in an arcane secondary dungeon within a portal. He somehow wakes up in a hospital, unharmed, and able to access a digital menu before his eyes that exhorts him to do the One Punch Man workout every day, lest he incur punishment. He gets hilariously chadly in the span of a few days in the hospital, including an inexplicable haircut, and finds access to dungeons only he can enter and levels up within this new system.

This one gets off to a slow start and may have benefited from a longer premiere like Oshi no Ko or Frieren, but once the table is fully set, Solo Leveling really starts to cook. Jinwoo’s titular leveling process is a blast from one fight to the next, and as he moves to work in the dungeons that other hunters can access, it turns out he’s been training with the weights on. He’s suddenly fighting way above his pay grade, and after staving off attacks from hunters taking advantage of portals for nefarious ends, he is recruited by an ambitious corporate scion to make some real coin and establish an independent association of hunters.

While it can feel like there’s a whole bunch of table-setting between portal sequences, it’s some smart worldbuilding on Solo Leveling’s end to establish how portal hunting became a central pillar of this society, and doubly so how political and capitalist interests can leave a wide berth for corruption and bad actors. If there’s money to be made in hunting, of course people will find ways to make even more at the expense of others, both at the corporate and individual levels. There’s a lot of talk in there about “survival of the fittest” and “natural selection” and that… makes me nervous.

Those are terms that can be used to justify immoral actions in the name of money, sure, but Jinwoo also uses them to justify his own process. To what end is he constantly improving himself? Sure, he's doing what he can to provide for his younger sister and their ailing mother, but I see less and less humanity in him as this goes on. There are constant hints at something far more sinister at play than just a dude getting stronger for himself, not the least of which being “the system,” the UI that implores him to keep taking on these “quests.” Something, or someone, seems to be guiding him. Whenever another hunter turns on Jinwoo, of course his self-defense instincts kick in, but system pop-ups instruct him to defeat X number of hostiles like it’s a normal video game scenario. There’s something eerily depersonalized about these encounters, despite them being full-on mortal combat, that gives me serious Ender’s Game vibes. Consider me intrigued.

I’d heard that the Solo Leveling manhwa’s main draw was its visuals, and though I had my doubts early on, I'm sold now. This is a pretty solid presentation! Hiroyuki Sawano turned in yet another banger soundtrack to punctuate all the action setpieces, helping to stitch together a fairly complete tapestry. Said setpieces are exhilarating and almost impressively bloody, and while the animation is nothing impressive in the day-to-day, it goes absolutely batshit when the gloves come off. Movement is inhumanly fluid and the visuals can go into the same loose, psychedelic territories we’ve seen in the likes of Mob Psycho and the second season of Jujutsu Kaisen. If this is the new meta for shonen action, I’m not complaining.

By all rights, this is a pretty decent show, but if I’m being honest, this one just hasn’t stuck with me much. And that’s fine! Sometimes I just wanna see some nutty action stuff and move on with my day. Solo Leveling hits that spot perfectly, and I'll be right back there when it returns for its next season.

‘Tis Time for “Torture,” Princess

I was surprised to learn that the gag manga this is based on, with such a seemingly simple premise, has been running for well over 200 chapters and counting. As the anime progressed, I was far more pleasantly surprised to learn that it actually works.

In a standard anime fantasy world where the forces of good are fighting the demonic Hellhorde, an unnamed warrior princess and her talking enchanted sword are taken prisoner and subjected to torture as they’re squeezed for intel. Said “torture,” as the title’s scare quotes would suggest, is mildly unconventional, as the demon baddie inquisitor, aptly named Torture Tortura, attempts to ply the princess by presenting her with tantalizingly delicious-looking food that she can only partake in if she coughs up some info. Naturally, the princess caves every single time, but her intel is often inane and useless, so the “torture” continues. It’s not all food, though: The princess is soon held out of arm’s reach of adorable baby animals by a gyaru beastgirl, pampered into submission by a spa-loving giantess, and is faced with a tsundere vampire faildaughter, who… tries. 

And you’d think that would be it; the joke wears thin and you move onto something else. Before you realize it, though, something’s changed: The princess and her captors are quickly becoming friends. The premise almost feels perfunctory: These inquisitors are actual people just doing their jobs, and whatever happens after the princess’ myriad confessions is fair game. There’s no malice or animosity, even during the “torture” sessions themselves: Everyone will have a blast and grow closer as friends, and then the princess will voluntarily go back to her bedless cell. It’s like Sam and Ralph after they clock out, except they’re almost always off the clock. Everyone is genuinely looking out for each other in all directions, and the only thing that keeps the torture going is the need for a status quo to return to, even as it grows more elastic. If anything, Time for "Torture" is a good example of committing to the bit without having to necessarily rely on it.

The real irony in all of this is that it becomes increasingly apparent that the princess is having her needs met in captivity far better than she ever did back home. In her proud proclamations about how she’ll never cave to the temptations before her (shortly before she does just that), the princess often talks about her upbringing and her time as the head of an imperial legion, but these stories often betray her lack of friendship or any of the little things that make life worth living. Her life as royalty was one of isolation and deprivation, to the point where she finds more freedom and fulfillment as a prisoner. She truly lives in a society.

Hellholm, on the other hand, has a surprisingly healthy approach to things like work-life balance, food, and leisure, and its most valuable prisoner is no exception. The Hell-Lord himself is a surprising exemplar of this; for as much as he looks and talks like your standard terrifying JRPG demon king, he’s a surprisingly good dude! He looks after his family, employees, and even the captive princess as if they are all one and the same; he exhibits strong principles and an aversion to conflict, sees to his employees' needs and wants alike, and is a supportive, loving father to his unbelievably precious little daughter (who also serves as a “torturer,” to the princess’ delight). He’s also a big time anime dork, and even bonds with a knight attempting to rescue the princess over their shared otakudom before sending him off peacefully. As “villains” go, he’s top tier.

Time for "Torture" is nothing groundbreaking by any stretch, but it’s a cute, silly time and it plays with anime fantasy tropes in the same way a six-month-old German shepherd “plays” with a cheap stuffed toy. How long the premise holds up is entirely up to you, but I had a lot of fun with it. I have no idea how this ended up being one of the better shows this season, but I guess it just scratched the right itch for me.

[paperplain7]

paperplain7 intro post!! ^_^

it’s long overdue but since my posts r gaining a bit of traction here is my introduction!!! >:D

(also rq almost this entire intro is ripped straight from my carrd & strawpage, so if you want to you can read it there instead!)

about me!

hiya!! :3 im paperplain7! im a minor and i really like to draw among other kinds of art. i’m currently focusing on nothing in particular but i’m also interested in splatoon, utdr, rhythm heaven & rhythm doctor, among a LOT of others (ask if curious)!

what i post

- mainly fanart! usually of what i’m into rn

- i’m taking reqs rn (preferably on here or strawpage) but it may be a while till i do them if at all ;^^ i’ll draw anyone!

- and some original content as well!

- on twt & here i might post some random stuff too but i’ll try and limit it, perhaps to alt accs

boundaries

- i dont usually fb so if you want to be moots on anything just ask! :D

- using my art for pfps or banners is a-okay with credit

- DMs are generally ok, especially for comms, any concerns and everything else along those lines. all i ask is don’t be weird!

- please ask for permission before reposting my art to other platforms

more info

- i get a bit nervous when talking to people im not super familiar with so if i take a while to respond to anything pls be patient! ;^^

- this includes on discord / disc severs so i won’t be very active if i’m in one!

reqs info

- all requests follow (mostly) the same guidelines as my commissions but there are some differences (and my commission info isn’t done yet.. sorry) so read below!

- i will draw pretty much anything even if they're not in a fandom i'm from or if they're OCs!

- i am willing to draw furry/mech stuff but don't expect it to be very good :sob:

- i will NOT draw gore nsfw or anything else really along those lines

- also reqs will NOT be fully finished or rendered!

and that’s pretty much it… thanks for reading and i hope you like the stuff i put out! ^_^

[toytle]

any chance you'll be making flash fam merch? i'd love to buy a barry and bart keychain from you !!!

started rambling abt the technical stuff and my own experiences as a dc fan/fanartist in general, so that’s below cut. long story short:

there’s definitely A chance that i’ll make merch of barry and bart. probably not high enough of a chance that you should hold your breath, but don’t be surprised if i do a dc merch drop one day. i mean i’ve already drawn those two as stickers lol, i’d hate for that to go nowhere

the thing is, i can design as much as i want (i’m always chipping away at my little lps superheroes in between comms and other fanart), but comics imposter syndrome is Serious. after you’ve drawn all your favorite characters, it gets harder to confidently capture their personalities the less familiar you are w their material, and i refuse to make comics feel like homework. it was easier last year when i had ppl to talk abt dc with, but i’m not active in fandom servers anymore and anyone i knew that was into dc has lost interest since :”) as for the characters i DO know, it just feels weird to launch “incomplete” merch. what kind of sticker batch only has guy gardner but no other GL members, yk?

dc especially is tough bc it’s simultaneously mainstream AND niche, so it’s harder to budget for demand (interest checks have failed me in the past unfortunately). everyone wants their special little guy as a sticker or keychain, and i wanna rep as many characters as possible, but sometimes that special little guy has a fanbase of 6 ppl. this ofc makes restocking a lot less practical too, unless i produce the merch myself. which is what i’m trying to do at least! that’s always been the trouble for me in the past, but i’ve got ideas to trial and error this time, fingers crossed 🤞

and yes, ik i could just make merch without reading anything, i don’t have to be a fan of smth to draw it, but i want ppl to feel that their character was LOVED. some characters are niche enough that it wouldn’t make a difference to their fans as long as they had merch at all, but i’m too much of a perfectionist to halfass even one sticker. the idea that i’d do a whole set of, say, batfam, and everyone looks awesome and in-character except for stephanie or duke bc idk them that well… it would keep me up at night. sometimes i’ll even get reqs for characters idk and it’s like the walk of shame opening up the search bar to look them up. and you wanna trust ME w your favorite character??

realistically, there’s no way i’ll ever be able to read enough to know everyone as intimately as i do my faves, but i want them to be able to withstand comparison at the very least. i want ppl to put any random character next to barry and not be able to tell which one’s my favorite. not to mention the fact that i have a strong vision for my own art, so asking for direct advice doesn’t help. i don’t want ideas for what type of animal you think i should draw arrowette as, i need to know the essence of arrowette’s being, and THEN i’ll know which lps to draw for her

maybe this level of expectation is self-sabotage, but at least i have smth of a game plan: 1) troubleshoot merch production, 2) gauge vibes from fandom osmosis, and most importantly, 3) give less of a shit and enjoy the journey. if that means i end up making dc merch years from now, then at least i did it without sacrificing my love for the media. and against my own perfectionism, i might even do a test run: if i can’t draw all the superhero groups rn, i can set a goal for just the JL and make a limited batch to sell at a local market and see how that goes. maybe not the strongest of promises, but it’s a start!

[nijigasakilove]

The way these girls save me every week.. jaw on the floor, best episode of the season, from any anime. I’m so moved. Wrap it up, this is AOTS. So much to go over in this one

Ok for starters, them uploading the wrong video and still going viral is hilarious 😭 luckily it gave them a lot of attention and still helped build up their brand.

But what made this episode so special for me was Yoru dealing with her insecurities about her art. As a content creator I really empathise with her getting upset about other people drawing her art and going viral.

Even though it should’ve been something that was flattering, it just makes you feel like “what am I doing wrong, why am I not getting that attention”. Combine that with the rude comments some people put on her posts and her general insecurities with her friends’ accomplishments and it’s no wonder she went into a depressive state.

Even with Kano telling her she loved her art, it wasn’t enough because she was constantly comparing it to everyone else’s.. The scene of Kano pulling Yoru’s face into her stomach, they were teasing us hard😩

The biggest thing is how she didn’t just give up, but used that as fuel and actually improved her art significantly by the end. You can either quit or just work on improving yourself, ultimately the only validation that’ll work is from within.

After all their hard work, a shrine visit to ring in the new year and pray for success in the upcoming year... but WHAT THE FUCK, a KISS??!? “Yuri bait” copers are seething rn. They laid crumbs throughout the episode like Yoru and Kano in Yoru’s room, the train, “I like your singing and you” but I didn’t expect a proper kiss out of nowhere like that. Please don’t walk this back next episode because I need this 😭

[ladylyra]

Personally I’m up for whatever you’d like to do, referring to your big post on alpha sapphire. Personally I really love your art!! Obviously I love seeing your gijinkas and would be sad if they disappeared completely, but I’m also curious about your other ocs! Regardless I know time/energy is limited, so you should do what makes you happy, personally I think at very least seeing the designs for alpha sapphire might be fun? Even if no comic comes with it. I granted don’t use tumblr a ton but I do stop by every once in a while just to see your art. I hope you have a good day!!

ty for the message!! i'm honored you'd just hop on here to see my stuff. i don't think i'd ever completely give up gjinkas, what i have rn feel just as much ocs to me as any "completely original" design of mine so i see myself always revisiting them. tbh what keeps me from completely dropping alpha sapphire as an idea is that i do like the plot/theme i have in mind & a lot of the character dynamics i've laid out in drafts, it really is about time and where it fits with other projects i could be doing. i guess i'm not satisfied with the thought that i'm shelving my oc groups (some that ive had for like a decade) to start something new again >_> there's probably a balance in there somewhere lol

but ANYWAYS about the designs i've done: not a lot HAS been done, its mostly been in writing. i'd say the ones that are the most "done" or close to final draft are of grimoire and clover (protagonist). others are kinda in a limbo state design-wise and i haven't focused on as much, but i can share what i've done so far. i've focused a lot on them because their dynamic has endeared itself to me. clover's on the serious, cerebral, "warrior of logic" side and grimoire is, in many regards, an agent of chaos. he has the ability to hop into peoples shadows and practically lives in hers. i'd say one of the biggest reasons i'd be sad to shelve this project is because i've had a lot of fun writing them. others shown here are finn and solaris. solaris wasn't a member of my team and is more a composite character that would fill a similar rival role of brendan/wally. if i ever did something you may expect these to change a bit (or a lot idk future me or what she's up to) i have other sketches of other characters but they're in my physical sketchbook lol

bonus image at the bottom that was in my alpha sapphire folder for some reason

[lovesick-desires]

LOVESICK DESIRES

. ݁₊ 🗒️ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . 💸 ₊ ݁.

23 Y/O ★ HE/HIM/THEY ★ ENFP 4w3 ★ TRANSGENDER (FTM) ★ AUDHD

REQUESTS: OPEN (READ REQUESTING RULES SEGEMENT BELOW BEFORE REQUESTING) CURRENTLY WORKING ON: SUBTERFUGE (CH. 3)

NSFW ACCOUNT: @lustsick-desires

INTRODUCTION

Hello! My name is Lovesick and I am a fanfic writer (shocker, I know) and this post is to tell you a little bit about myself and what to expect on this account! I have been writing for the past 12 years and I have my Bachelor's of Art in Creative Writing as my secondary degree. While I am moving forward in my professional life into becoming an Artificial Intelligence Researcher, I would like to use this blog to post my various fanfics. I am currently really into Arcane and will be posting mostly that as well as other various fandoms listed in my masterlist linked above. My requests are currently open but understand that I work full-time and I am also a grad student, so writing fanfic isn't my top priority lol.

DISCLAIMER

I do not condone any of the actions done in my fanfics. I am also saying to not romanticize these actions in individuals in real life. I understand fully that yandere can be seen as a slur(?) to people with BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) and it is not my intention to mock those with the disorder. This blog is strictly for fun and nothing more.

GENERIC ACCOUNT RULES

As most fanfic writers do, I have a list of rules you must follow:

I. NO PEOPLE UNDER 16

While this blog will not contain sexual content, I am still uncomfortable with people under 16 reading my content here. Sorry.

I. DO NOT RUSH MY WRITING

I have a life outside this blog. Working full time while being a graduate student is a lot of work. I will try to be consistent with uploads as I understand people want the next chapter asap but understand that I have a life.

II. I WRITE WHAT I WANT TO WRITE WHEN I WRITE IT

At the end of the day, this is my blog and I will post what I want when I want (not to be rude lol). Just understand that I will not do every request sent to me or immediately post chapter after chapter of a fic. Sometimes it could be weeks to months. Understand that please.

III. DO NOT REPOST MY CONTENT WITHOUT PERMISSION

I do not mean like the reblog function, I mean copy-pasting my fics onto another site or using my art without permission. Just so you know, I am a witch and all my fanfics and art are protected with a protection spell, so I wouldn't test me if I were you. (damn that sounds mean, sorry lol)

IV. DO NOT USE MY HEADERS, BANNERS, AND IMAGES FOR YOUR OWN USE

I don’t know if y’all know this, but I make all the headers, banners, and other images for my fics and account with ibisPaint. They take a lot of effort and I would appreciate if no one would reuse them for their own fics.

WHAT I DO/DON’T WRITE

This is a list of what I will write: (ignore the format I’m doing this on mobile rn I’ll fix it on my laptop later)

➼ Yandere x Reader Fanfics (One-Shot or Chaptered) ➼ Yandere Character Headcanons ➼ Yandere Character Alphabets ➼ *Yandere Oneshots w/ Prompts (LIST A) (LIST B) (LIST C) ➼ Non-Yandere Character x Reader ➼ Fluff/Angst Character X Reader

This is a list of what I don’t write:

➼ Platonic yanderes ➼ Teacher X Student Cliché

* you must list the list you pick the prompt from in your request so I know which list to use for each prompt (unless they are all from one list then just state the list) (I also won't do any of the prompts entailing physical or sexual abuse even if they are on the lists provided)

REQUESTING RULES

If you are interested in sending a request, please follow the rules below.

I. NO RUN-ON SENTENCES

I know this is a weird rule, but I am neurodivergent and run-on sentences make it hard for me to properly understand the request. Simple requests would be preferred such as: Character: [CHARACTER NAME] Fandom: [FANDOM NAME] Concept: [yada yada yada] This would help me a lot to better comprehend your request and I would be more likely to do it!

II. BE CONCISE AND CLEAR

Please don't ramble for a while about possibilities, just give me the basics of what you want the fic to be so I can at least get some creative liberty.

III. NO STRICTLY GENDERRED/PRONOUNED READER REQUESTS

Please do not ask the reader to be a specific gender, biological sex such as Male, Female, AFAB, AMAB, Transgender Male (FTM), Transgender Female (MTF), Nonbinary, he/him, she/her, etc... I want my fanfics to be enjoyed by all and grouping them into a subgroup like that makes it harder for others to enjoy.

IV. NO REQUESTING THE FANFICS WITH THE FOLLOWING TOPICS

➼ Non-Con/Dub-Con ➼ Forced Pregnancy ➼ Physical or Sexual Abuse ➼ Significant Age Gaps (unless its like a mythical character who is like 100+ like Malleus Draconia, Lilia Vanrouge, etc...) ➼ Suicide or Self Harm ➼ Incest/Psuedo Incest ➼ Questionable Kinks (Piss, Feet, etc.)

V. NO SMUT REQUESTS ON THIS ACCOUNT

My NSFW account is @lustsick-desires! You can request smut there ONCE I GET THE MASTER POST UP!

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to comment on this post!

[drinkinboilingcoffee]

heyyyyyuuuuhhhhhggg

Hi! Little info about me!

Don’t have a name I’m comfortable using on this site rn (I avoid using my real name, and I’m thinking of finding a more gender neutral version of my name irl)

Ok with the username-nickname Coffee, though!

He/They preferred

MINOR (I might have put this somewhere here sorry)

I draw stuff??? Write when I can? I’m probably gonna do a FNAF AU fan comic if I ever get the motivation.

I’m pretty opinionated on fandom topics (especially theories and shipping discourse), so please be aware of this and expect I do rant a lot, especially about the FNAF community.

Fandoms:

-FNAF (all posts part of my AU)

-TADC

-Beastars

-Batman (again, AU)

-SCP (just getting into it)

-Dungeon Meshi

-My Eyes Deceive

DNI: Pro/comshippers, M@PS/p*dos, zoos, terfs, bigots, trolls, etc (you guys know who you are). 18+/NSFW accounts can interact, but don’t send me inappropriate content or reblog my content.

Content warnings (I tag these things): blood, violence, gore, mental illness depictions and fandom-typical abuse. Suggestive/raunchy jokes may show up but I don’t post explicit content ever. SA implications or mentions may show up in some of my content for my stories (mainly with my William A.’s backstory) but ONLY in implicative form (do NOT interact with such posts if you are trying to get off to them- it’s serious content matter, not a kink fic). Also, this isn’t a vore blog, but I do mention SFW (yes, NONSEXUAL) vore in jokes and characters posts from time to time.

TADC/FNAF AU MASTERPOST:

FUNTIME ANIMATRONIC REFERENCES:

Do not DM me weird stuff or I block u immediately.

Requests and in character asks open! Just click that ask button! (Please)

Totally fine to repost my art or use it as an icon, just credit me!

Likes < reblogs, but do whatever you want any attention or interaction is greatly appreciated.

ok BYEEEEEEE

[deedah]

A love letter to Murder Drones

Btw this is just a rambling about how I got into Murder Drones and how it has changed my view of the world, so if you don’t care then don’t read :3

(Also it’s gonna be lengthy and maybe a bit of trauma dump)

I also don’t expect @liamvickersanimation or @glitchproductions to use tumblr, and if they see this I will jump off a cliff lol

So, it started one day when I got the Murder Drones pilot in my recommended on YouTube. Buut I scrolled right passed it cause I didn’t really care about it then. A few nights later, round midnight, I saw the pilot again and caved. I then went to the playlist and watched the first 6 episodes. (This was a month after ep 6 came out)

I did fall in love w/ the style of the show, but I did not understand the plot.

so I watched the show again and again, and even watched theory vids on it. And when I tell you I bawled by eyes out when I watched the show again, got connected to the characters, I bawled by fuckin eyes out when V sacrificed herself.

While watching theories of MD, something clicked in my head and I decided that I wanted to do my own show as well.

but, I suck at creativity and can’t make up new things, just edit already made things. So I decided, if I can’t make my own stories, I would help other people make their stories.

in other words, I wanted to be an animator

after I got my mind in on the fact I wanted to be an animator, I had downloaded many, and I mean many animation apps on my drawing iPad, and tried to 2D animate.

now, I would call myself a shitty artist. I don’t know anatomy and I barely use references too.

so when 2D animation did not work for me, I almost gave up my dream to become an animator, and plus.. I didn’t even know where I wanted to work.

I didn’t want to work for Disney cause I don’t really like their stuff anymore, and dream works kinda fell off too (no offense to any fans of those people, I will respect your opinions)

So I gave up on my dream, and I checked glitch prod. for any new info for MD ep. 7. But, instead of anything Murder Drones a new show was on called The Amazing Digital Circus.

now, I absolutely did not care about some new show, I only wanted Murder drones. Then I caved again and watched TDAC. and I fell in love w/ it as well.

and TDAC brought by dream back up to become an animator. I decided that I wouldn’t work for DreamWorks or Disney,

I would work for Glitch Productions.

now, I have no idea if I’ll ever be able to work for them, but it would be an honor.

then ep. 7 dropped for MD, and I fell in love again with this episode. Especially Flesha. Her movements, her emotions, her flicker design! It was all just perfect!

So I started to look online for ways to become an animator, but not a 2D one.

My mom helped me find a program called Blender.

and yes, I still use Blender to this day

I then started to take lessons from YouTube vids online and once I got the hang of it, I started to look for models that I could pose.

now, I can’t animate good rn cause I have a very shitty laptop that can barely run one model at a time, but I’m still learning.

and then the finale for Murder drones finally comes out. And omfg I have no words

it’s peak perfection

again the characters felt so ALIVE! And FREE!

and it’s what I wanted to do! It’s still is! I want to animate characters that people love and make art or fanfics about.

so.. that’s the point of this “Love letter”

I just wanted to say.. Thank you Liam and Glitch for this amazing show that I and millions of people could be apart of. And I hope I’m able to meet you in person and maybe even work under you one day.

Again.. thank you @liamvickersanimation and @glitchproductions.

you brought be out of my shell and made me into a better person, I owe you a lot.

and with that.. goodnight

-love @deedah