#especially since the concept is a bit hard for me to understand

[gifti3]

okay so im back to reading how to survive as a maid in a horror game (i was literally in the middle of the last book and got distracted with other shit ahah)

and i wanna talk about this part in book five:

--

"Adrian sat back in his chair, lifted his glass, and swirled it around as if it were real wine.

It gave me chills to think that a part of me would soon become a part of her. When this blood flows through your body, seeps into your heart, beats in your veins, becomes your breath.

Maybe someday I'll see the world through your eyes, and the world you see will be so much more beautiful and alive, and there will be no greater joy than to be completely you.

Adrian's fantasies kept him awake at night."

---

so quick explanation, hilda catches a cold and adrian of course thinks about the possibility of hilda dying due to this so now hes made a plan to secretly start feeding hilda his blood to prolong her life and stuff since hes a demon

anyways this part had me wondering how it feels to love someone this hard. is this even feesible in real life?? are there ppl out there who love someone this hard? ive never liked anyone like this and i doubt i ever will but im still curious about it

but outside of that i was also feeling kind of bad for adrian because of how anxious he gets about hilda, like the vibe changes so much when we read stuff from his POV, i feel like im watching someone losing their mind

[taiyaakii]

⋆. 𐙚 ˚ Busy schedule ! . . . ( 西村力 )

— pairing: 西村力 x reader — contains: angst, readers a lonely clingy loser, mean ki, fluff — now playing: 一子青葉

"She became a victim of my busy schedule though, and I know that it's not fair that don't mean that I don't care."

Riki was always busy. He had a bunch of extracurriculars he did for school on top of dance, so you never really got the chance to see him anymore.

He'd always apologize, saying he knew it sucked never getting any of his attention but in the end, nothing ever changed. He was still busy and you still rode the train home alone every day.

Riding the train by yourself wasn't a new concept, lonely yeah but you got used to it eventually.

People on the train were usually either elders coming home from work or students huddling in groups of themselves, and it sounds depressing but beyond Riki, you didn't really have friends, which was okay. Until Riki joined a bunch of extracurriculars beyond his daily dance practice, which left him no time for you.

And it's bad to think about but the thought eventually got a hold of you and you started wondering if Riki enjoyed not being around you as often. You were clingy so it was understandable wanting some space from you, it still made you upset to think about though.

This thought alone has caused you to distance yourself from Riki subconsciously, which despite how busy he is he noticed because you're still his girlfriend after all.

-

The train was often packed with teenagers on the way home, you'd think you'd bump into someone and make friends for once but not once has it happened. You've begun to lose hope in talking to people.

Sure you could strike up a conversation but that's terrifying so you choose not to, which is probably one of the reasons you don't have any friends. How you started knowing Riki on the other hand was a grace from god.

In middle school, Riki came up to you rather then the other way around and asked to be friend's.

Spacing out on the train, thinking to yourself made you realize just how lonely you were when he was he wasn't around. Considering he's been your only friend since you guys were 12, being 18 in high school now. You've become slightly dependent on him, and it's another thing you've added to the long list of your lonely life.

Long lost in thought you feel a head hit your shoulder, you jump slightly cause it startled you but when you look to your right its a boy. Probably fell asleep, why else would he put his head on a stranger's shoulder.

Your body tensed up a bit, it was kinda hard to not be tense with someone resting on you.

You wanted to wake him and ask him to move but disrupting him wasn't in your best interest so you left him alone. On the plus side his hair smelled really nice.

-

The train came to an abrupt stop which shook the boy awake

Realizing he had fallen asleep on a stranger, he stood up and started apologizing profusely like a scolded child.

You followed in his steps and stood up, letting out shaky reassurance and telling him not to worry about it. It was overwhelming with people around looking at the two of you but eventually, he calmed down and explained himself "I really didn't mean to fall asleep on you like that, let me make it up to you!"

He was enthusiastic and energetic, especially for someone who was just freaking out.

"Oh oh no need! Really it's not a big deal." Still shaky you tried to convince him he was blowing it out of proportion. He wasn't taking no for an answer and he even managed to get your number so he could apologize more properly later.

After that he said goodbye and ran off the train, leaving you dumbfounded. You kind of just spaced out the rest of the way home, the whole situation was so dumb it was kind of funny.

So funny you wanted to tell Riki which you planned to do when you guys called tonight, you guys always called sometime before bed.

It was a point he made. No matter how busy he was and how little time he had for you, he'd always call.

You laid in bed waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

12am and no call. You weren't mad at him, you understood he couldn't always be there but you thought some notice would've been nice, instead of just laying there for hours on your phone.

Time passed and you gave up on waiting for a call. You placed your phone on your nightstand and got in bed.

Your mind started to wander, what was he doing that was so important? All of his activities end before 5 so why couldn't he call you? Was he okay? Was it a family thing? Did you do something?

In the midst of thinking you fell asleep.

-

In English the next day, during break time. It was your 4th period and Riki had yet to even mutter a word to you. As time passed, it was getting more upsetting and even more nerve-wracking.

You scanned over everything that's happened the past few days and you couldn't think of anything you've done.

You looked back at Riki to see him sitting at his desk analyzing his work, but you turned back around when you got a text.

Some random number that you didn't have saved.

"You're in English rn right?" The text creeped you out a bit, so you pressed to know who it was "Oh shit sorry! Just realizing I never gave you my name yesterday! It's Akio from the train. I wanted to come say hi if you were in English :)" Knowing it was him made it sorta less creepy feeling, he was still technically a stranger though.

You hesitated on replying but gave in "Ohh right haha, yeah I'm in English"

He liked the message but didn't actually say anything back.

Eventually, he came swinging in loudly with a booming "HI" as soon as he opened the door. It shocked not only you but everyone.

Riki who was staring at the boy in confusion.

Riki's eyebrows furrowed even more as he saw the boy walk up to you and hug you like you'd known him forever, slightly glaring at the boy. He sit's down in the chair next to you "What class do you have next?" His voice still much too loud for the atmosphere, the girl next to us shushed him, in which he apologized quietly and turned back to you.

"Uh math." You said quietly, shaken up by the boys incredibly friendly demeanor.

The boy started rambling on about how that was his next class too and how it's surprising you guys hadn't become friends sooner, all while you look back at Riki to see him still eyeing the boy down.

Riki got easily jealous, and he was possessive, but this looked more like confusion and annoyance then anything.

While on the other hand luckily for you the boy tended to talk more then he listened which was good as you were still too nervous to talk to him like a normal person.

Once Riki realized you weren't all that invested in what the boy had to say he finally took his eyes off of the boy and returned to his work.

After what felt like forever of Akio rambling and you silently smiling and nodding, it was time for Math.

Besides Math and English, you and the boy didn't have any other classes together, so the rest of the day went as normal, besides the fact that Riki seemed busier than usual and wasn't talking to you.

But the way home from school was different.

On the train ride home, you were walking to sit where you usually do when a familiar voice started to yell for you, you turned around, and it was Akio.

He grabbed your wrist and pulled you to a seat, exclaiming that now you had someone to ride the train with. Before you could get a word in, he continued, once again going on about anything and everything.

He was a bit over the top for you, but you had to admit, he was nice, and the company was nice too.

-

The train came to a stop, and you said your goodbyes, he offered to walk you home, but you declined. You told him you lived a bit from the station, and he left it at that. Getting home you got into some comfy clothes and passed out.

Asleep for about an hour and a half, you were awoken by a text from Riki

All it read was "I'm coming over" Don't get me wrong you were excited he was coming over; this was the first time in a while, but you were still upset with him for not only not calling you but also ignoring you all day. So you just texted back a simple "ok" and started your homework while waiting for him to arrive.

He didn't live very far so it didn't take long, as soon as he got there, he plopped on your bed and gave you a look.

You asked him what it was for, and he stayed silent for a few seconds followed by a contemplating hum, "Who was he? The guy in English that was acting all buddy-buddy with you?" He said it so calmly as if he didn't care if he got an answer.

"Ohh I met him on the train" You turned back to the homework on your desk "He fell asleep on me and asked for my number so he could apologize later!" his brows furrowed and his eyes creased a bit, "Seriously?"

You nodded and he continued "He gave you his number so he could 'apologize later'?" You again nodded at his very sarcastic question.

His tongue played with the inside of his cheek "Has he apologized yet?" He sounded almost annoyed

You chuckled nervously, his gaze was strong and intimidating.

"No, not yet.." He let out a 'psh' sound, he was clearly annoyed but not with you. More so with the situation. "He gave you his number cause he thought you were cute. Not cause he wanted to apologize." His voice was deeper

You didn't believe it so you rebutted "That's not true ki, I'm sure he'll apologize soon!" He continued to look at you, almost like he was trying to analyze what you were thinking. "Block him" He sits up on your bed

"What??"

He repeats himself "Block him"

"Why Riki."

"Are you dumb? He clearly doesn't want to just apologize. Does he know you have a boyfriend?" He started to sound angry, almost a little sad sounding. "How do you know that? You've never met him."

"I've met guys like him and you didn't answer my question, does he know you have a boyfriend? Me? Does he know you have me?"

You opened your mouth but nothing came out for a second, "I don't know? I mean I didn't mention it" Before you can finish, he tsk's and looks away "But the only reason I didn't mention it was cause he didn't ask Riki. I really don't think he's trying to get with me."

He ignored you "What's so good about him anyway?" He was starting to get fed up "He's nice Riki. I mean he made time to see me in English today despite being busy himself." You emphasized the 'made time to see me' part which Riki took as a jab.

You didn't necessarily mean it as one but you were tired of never seeing your boyfriend and so it just kinda came out. "You know I try to make time for you." Instead of sounding annoyed, he sounded genuinely hurt and tired, he looked down a bit as he continued "And I know that you don't really have friends besides me but you shouldn't befriend the first person that talks to you." He gets off your bed and heads to the door, "It's stupid and pathetic." He finishes before he shuts the door, harder than he should have.

His voice was laced with venom, almost like the sadness from before completely desecrated. And it left you dumbfounded too.

You weren't one to cry, you didn't cry about anything.

Not that you couldn't, but you made a point not to. It's pathetic and embarrassing, but despite that, you felt your eyes well up. You wiped them before anything could come out and decided to head to bed early. Couldn't cry if you weren't awake!

Granted it took forever to get to sleep, but you kept replaying what Riki said non-stop. 'Stupid and pathetic' weren't new words to you, but when they came out of Riki's mouth they felt a million times worse.

-

Going to School was dreadful, more than before.

Riki was avoiding you and so you were avoiding him back. You continued to hang out with Akio, it probably wasn't the best idea but you rather hang out with someone Riki doesn't like than be lonely again.

A whole week of this pettiness has gone by, nightly phone calls have stopped, goodnight and good morning texts, walking you to and from school whenever he had the chance, all of it stopped.

You know you shouldn't totally blame Ki, it wasn't completely his fault. You said some mean stuff too, but you couldn't help but be so angry at him despite it all.

Of course, you guys have gotten into arguments, and of course, with those arguments came insults but he'd never said something so cruel to you, something you confided in him he used against you, which hurt the most.

Everything was too much to think about so you dove into your studies, more than you already were. Not only studies but other things too, anything to get your mind off of it. Throwing yourself into things isn't a new concept for you, you did it whenever you got overly anxious. It would cause you to eat less, go outside less, and socialize even less than you usually do. Now the difference between then and now is you'd usually have Riki to make you feel better, but you don't so sitting in your dark room all day will continue.

Riki on the other hand, doesn't know what he's feeling. Though he's noticed you not taking care of yourself properly which is making him feel crazy guilty, he knows it's because of him.

Riki's so mad at you for choosing some other guy but he feels so bad for the things he said.

He didn't mean it, he knew you knew that, at least he hoped.

He just wanted to apologize and make it all better but he couldn't. His pride mixed with not having a lot of time made it hard to talk to you so he just didn't bother. Plus he wanted to truly work out what he was going to say before he attempted to talk to you.

He'd catch your eyes in every class, in the lunchroom, in the auditorium, everywhere. He wanted to see your face, he wanted to see you and hold you but he just couldn't let himself be vulnerable and admit he misses you. He's hoping you'd do that but you were just as 'non-vulnerable' as he was, maybe even more.

Which meant he'd either have to make it up to you or lose you over some random boy you met a few weeks ago. Luckily for you, he's sickly in love with you whether he'd admit it or not so he chose the former.

-

It wasn't spontaneous, Riki thought it over.

He planned when it would happen, how it would happen, where it would happen, and what he thought the outcome would be. He wanted to start it all off by making sure to spend the whole day with you.

So he went to your house before school, he loved walking you to school but he rarely got to do it since he had to be at school so early. But the way you get all giddy when you see him at the door makes him happy so he canceled morning activities to walk you.

Seeing him at the door was a little surprising, especially cause he didn't knock, you opened it before he could and the walk to school was uneventful. Silent, but not awkward.

Riki didn't try to hold your hand. He didn't want to make you upset by acting like nothing was wrong, but when passing by a little shop he grabbed your wrist and pulled you inside.

At the rate you two were going you would've been early to school, and he saw something in the window he knows you've been eyeing so why not.

He didn't say anything as he pulled you through the shop up to where the display was.

A large stand with matching phone charms.

It was a niche interest you had, and you had tons of them at home but the thing about these ones is that they're matching.

Two long chains, decorated with beads that had small charms on the end. One with black beads and a white star on the end, the other with white beads and a black star on the end.

Riki knew you had been looking at them for a while, thinking it was cute considering his favorite color is black and yours is white.

He found matching things cute, he found it even cuter when you'd get a tint of rose on your cheeks and try to hide your smile as you showed him a new piece of matching items you bought for the two of you.

He thought about this as he walked to the register, making his own cheeks turn a slight shade of pink as he looked at you. You weren't looking at him but it didn't go unnoticed.

Walking out of the store, chains in hand, without letting go of your wrist Riki asks for your phone and puts the charm on.

He does the same for his phone and then holds them up together in his hand to show them off.

You tried to act non-cholent but your dumb little smile made its way onto your face and made Riki smile even harder as he handed you your phone back, and you guys continued walking.

You hated your smile. You felt it was too... cheeky. Too wide, and it made your cheeks all big.

But Riki adored it. The way your eyes would light up and close a little every time something made you happy, or how you'd cover your mouth if you felt you were smiling too much, just for him to pull your hand down and hold it in his. He loved your smile, he always looked for it everywhere he was, he especially loved it when it was he who was the one causing it.

He knew he couldn't always be the reason you were smiling but as long as you were happy it didn't matter to him.

He kept on glancing at you just to see you smiling and looking at the phone charm, you saw him doing it but didn't say anything. You thought it was cute how cheesy he acted when he thought no one was looking.

-

The rest of the school day was normal for the most part; the assigned seats of each class were fumbling with Riki's plans to be by your side all day, which he knew would happen.

Tables in your class were set in pairs of two, you were at the front of the class seated with a girl you barely knew and Riki was a few seats behind.

As break time started, Riki used his height to his advantage and threw a piece of paper above the guy in front of him and it landed perfectly on your desk. You looked back to see who it was, despite already knowing. You gave him a small smile which made him melt, and as you opened it you saw two stick figures holding hands in a flower field.

It was cheesy, yeah but it was cute. Cuter coming from Riki as he wasn't one for cutesy things.

He would write cute little notes and letters to stick in your locker but that was rare, so this act made you blush so bad you had to hide your face slightly.

You went to draw a cute photo back but before you could even get your pen out Akio spotted you and caught your attention.

Riki tried to ignore it, he didn't like the guy yeah but he also knew he was your first friend besides himself so he wanted to attempt to become friends with him for your sake.

Looking at Akio you saw Riki come up behind him. They had never stood side by side so you never realized how much taller Riki was in comparison and it shocked Akio too as he let out a child-like yelp when he turned around and saw Riki behind him.

You could tell Akio put his guard up a little.

-

During Riki and your petty silent treatment towards each other, you talked to Akio about how you were dating Riki and that you still wanted to be his friend but there needed to be a bit of distance.

He took it really well which was lucky for you as you had a hard time confronting people.

-

Akio backed up a little from Riki who was giving him a slightly annoyed-confused look, and bumped into your desk.

He wasn't scared of Riki per se, but Riki was intimidating. Tall, broad, cold stare, etc.

But in the moment of silence, Riki begrudgingly introduced himself.

Akio stood up a bit and introduced himself back, voice kinda shaky which made Riki chuckle. Akio, who has proved himself to make friends easily, quickly got comfortable with Riki and started talking about anything and everything.

As the conversation went on, Riki took the seat next to you as the girl had left a bit ago.

Riki grabbed your hand under the table, another thing he didn't often do as PDA wasn't something he enjoyed.

Eventually, the break was over, and it was time for the next class.

Akio said his goodbyes and ran off, Riki on the other hand wanted to walk you to your next class.

Walking to class, Riki had yet to let go of your hand, rubbing his thumb back and forth here and there.

And luckily the class was on the other side of the building which left you guys some time to talk, or more specifically some time for him to apologize.

He looked over at you almost nervously and squeezed your hand the tiniest bit before starting.

"I didn't mean it." He wasn't the greatest at starting apologies or apologizing in general, and although you were pretty sure you knew what he was talking about, you still asked. "Didn't mean what?"

He took a sharp breath in "When I said you were stupid and pathetic, just overall being a jerk..." he paused and looked at you before continuing.

"But that's not even all, I haven't been making any time for you, I was petty and ignored you, I got overly jealous and possessive, and I have just been a huge asshole." You were so focused on him apologizing that you hadn't even realized you guys weren't in the school building anymore, you were outside behind the school, in the small garden the school had created not too long ago.

"What are we doing out here?" You looked at him with confusion "I wanted to talk with you more privately."

"We're gonna get in trouble for skipping class, Ki."

"Don't worry about it, okay? I'll take all the blame." You looked at him, debating if you should stay out here or convince him to talk later but his eyes were almost pleading for you to stay out there, and so you listened. "Fine," you said with a slight smile.

He took a second to collect his thoughts and how he was going to go about this but eventually, he got it and started.

"I'm sorry I've left you alone so long. And I'm truly so sorry that I never made time for you, a busy schedule isn't an excuse to be distant, and I need to learn that."

"Rik-" You tried to cut him off and say it wasn't his fault but he didn't let you. "Wait just, wait okay." You shut up

"I care about you so much, you're truly the only one for me, and you mean the world to me. What I said during our fight was so fucked up, and I need you to know I didn't mean any of it. I want to be around you all the time, but I know I can't, and I'm glad you found someone you can be with when I'm not around.

I want you to know that I want to make all of this up to you. All the lost time, the phone calls I missed, the dates, just hanging out together, I want to make up for all of it. And I will, I promise.

I love you. A lot, and I'm gonna prove it this time. I'm going to be the best boyfriend you can ask for and I'm going to be your best friend again. Okay? I'm going to spend as much time as I possibly can with you. I love you so much. You don't have to forgive me now but I-"

"Riki." You successfully cut him off this time as he was starting to run out of breath and his cheeks were all pink.

He looks at you like a scolded puppy, catching his breath a little, Pure word vomit he thought.

"I love you too, so much. And I promise I'm not mad. It hurt never seeing you, yeah, and we definitely have distanced, ourselves as both a couple and friend but it's not your fault. You're busy and I understand okay?" He gave you an apologetic small smile before bringing you into a hug

It was warm and loving, just as all of Riki's hugs were.

He put his head into the crook of your neck, "I missed this so much" He mumbled, squeezing his arms around you tighter. "I'll do better. I promise." You smiled and softly caressed his hair. "I love you Ki."

"I love you too baby. So much."

-

Later throughout the day Riki walked you to every class, smiled at you whenever your eyes met, and was friendly with Akio whenever he came around.

After school, he came to your house and you guys just laid with each other. Something you hadn't done in ages, and although you knew he wouldn't be able to do this every day, you were just happy he was trying to make more time for you, and he was just happy to have his girlfriend back.

@ featki

Note: Sorry if the ending is bad or rushed, iv been working on this for like 2-3 weeks now and just wanted it out. But this is definitely my longest fic and I hope u guys like it :)) also I think I made Akio seem like a bigger character than he actually was... srry

[irisintheafterglow]

don't even know, i'm talkin' nonsense

summary: on his way back from a patrol shift, your boss gets hit with a mystery quirk that affects his speech. you're the only one in the office who can help him (pro!bakugo x you).

wc: 2k

cw/tags: swearing cuz bakugo's here and he's angry, miscommunication-based comedy, idiot(s) in love, coworkers to lovers, a little bit of angst/comfort but it's just for the plot yk

note: i'm not sure where the concept of this came from; i was just listening to sabrina carpenter and was like,,,, hey i can use this. so have this! hope you like it :))

likes, reblogs, and replies are appreciated <3

“Okay, go over it one more time for me. I think I’ve got it,” you reassure him, only to be met with a skeptical glare. “I’m serious; I think I understand it, even though it took forever.” You tap the whiteboard of the meeting room with the red marker in your hand, slightly tired from scribbling down as much as you could comprehend from your boss’ vague gestures. He exhales deeply, dragging a hand down his face, and gives you an impatient look. “Ready when you are."

“Fucking hell, I can’t believe this is happening to me.”

“I didn’t understand a word of what you just said,” you remind him and he shoots you a withering glare that doesn’t deter you in the slightest. “And don’t try to write it, since that clearly didn’t work.” You glance at the scribbled mess of letters scratched onto a yellow notepad of paper, Bakugo’s first attempt to communicate that something was off when speech was not working.

“I fucking know that! You don’t think I can’t remember that you have no idea what I’m fucking saying?” You blink at him, desperately biting your tongue to avoid bursting out laughing. Even though Bakugo had been hit with a quirk that was creating some very entertaining moments in an otherwise bland office job, he could still make his palms crackle dangerously in warning. “Remind me to fire you when I get out of this.” You can’t control your laughter that time and you let a snort slip from your throat, wincing when his scathing eyes stare menacingly into you. 

“Sorry, I am so sorry,” you laugh quietly, attempting to subtly wipe a tear from your eye. “It’s just that…that time it was a dolphin.” You scrunch your face to avoid laughing again and try so hard that it makes your stomach hurt. Your boss continues to stand there, absolutely mortified, while you add another animal to the list of sounds that have come out of his mouth. Since he re-entered the office after a seemingly normal patrol shift, the noises of a bear, horse, mouse, tiger, monkey, a bird you couldn’t identify, and now a dolphin had exited his mouth in place of his scratchy voice. You thought it was a sneeze, the first time the bear roar had echoed through the office, but were equally perplexed when you asked him to sign a form and the only answer you received was high-pitched squeaking. 

“There’s no fucking way,” he’d muttered under his breath when you first explained to him what you thought was happening. It became all too real as his face paled when you played what your phone recorded as his “voice,” which only came out as the insistent hoots of a monkey. He was used to receiving weird looks on the street, especially when civilians realized that they were walking next to one of the top Pros in the country, but it dawned on him that they may have not heard his usual voice when he barked at them to move. “And you’re the only one in the office right now?” 

“I have no idea what you’re saying,” you inform him carefully. “But, if you’re wondering if anyone else is here to help you, there’s not.” You can only imagine what kind of colorful expletives he yelled by the unrelenting scream of bird noises that left his mouth. “And I was about to leave, so if you want me to stay and help–” 

“I don’t need your fucking help.”

“Oh, great. You’re a horse now,” you deadpan, understanding from his facial expressions alone what he was trying to communicate. “Well, if you don’t need my help, have fun explaining to the guys why you sound like you swallowed a zoo.” Your boss’ face turns bright red at the idea of showing up to dinner with his old classmates in his current state. He fires off a single, precise shot at the rubber door stop before you can exit the meeting room, effectively locking you in there with him until you sort out how to fix him. “So, you do want my help?” You turn to look at him with a knowingly innocent smirk, delighted to find him seething in place but reluctantly nodding. “What’s the magic word?” A single horse neigh echoes through the meeting room and you head to the whiteboard. “Alright, let’s get to work.”

You spent the next hour and a half playing a ridiculous game of charades with Bakugo after the alarming discovery that anything he tried to write would become illegible scribbles. You figured that it was just an effect of the Quirk itself, which seemed to give the user the ability to communicate with different animals without being understood by humans. If an eavesdropper managed to figure out what they were saying, the words would become unreadable on the page for further secrecy. Despite inconveniencing your boss and preventing you from leaving the office on time, it did serve as an important tool in the Quirk-stealing weapons trade you’d been investigating. The only issue now was to figure out where Bakugo was hit. 

“So, you’re walking down 25th.” A nod. “And make a right on Pine?” His palm hits his forehead in frustration. “No, no, not right. A left, towards 24th.” Another nod. “And that-that alley, by the coffee shop with the good strawberry milk teas?” More aggressive nodding. “That’s where you got hit? With the dart?” He slams his hand on the desk, nodding furiously. You stare at him, slightly in disbelief as you pull out a rolling chair and slump into it. “How the hell did you get pulled into that alley?” 

“Someone was screaming for help and I’m a hero so I go help them, I don’t fucking know.”

“Dolphin again,” you smirk and he rolls his eyes. “But, really. You don’t ever go that route since it’s too out of the way from where your patrol ends. What were you doing on that side of town?” He pauses, his mouth drawn into a tight line and his eyebrows drawn as he searches for an explanation in his brain. Truth be told, he had no idea what possessed him to take that route back to the office. All he could recall were snapshots, little Polaroids of information that, if he pieced them together, made a relatively cohesive explanation. He’d snapped at you unfairly, a common snap of his temper, but the hurt on your face affected him more than he was willing to admit. Something bothered him about your tense expression and it continued to bother him when he was out of the office and kicking villains into the dirt. It seemed like instinct was the only reason why he headed in the direction of the cafe with the strawberry milk he knew you liked. “Well?”  

He blinks at you once, twice, and then stands abruptly and swings open the door. You watch him through the room’s tall windows as he enters his private office briefly and exits with a cardboard drink holder. A minute later, a plastic cup with the taut seal unbroken is unceremoniously set in front of you, along with a large straw to suck up the extra strawberry bits he knew you always ordered. 

“What is this?”

“What does it look like, idiot?”

“I know it looks like a drink, but why did you get it for me?” His eyes widen with the idea that you could understand him again, but you’re quick to shut him down. “And no, I can’t understand you yet. Right now, you’re a tiger.” You half expect him to launch the other drink, something brown sugar looking, at the wall; instead, he pulls out the chair next to you and stabs his straw into the plastic, gesturing for you to do the same. You obey hesitantly, eyeing him curiously as he avoids your questioning expression. “Thank you.” He huffs, something you’ve learned is the only response he gives to gratitude. “You really didn’t need to do this.”

“I hurt your fucking feelings, of course I needed to.” You’re staring at him again, you and your pretty eyes and kind smile and uncanny ability to withstand even his most fiery temper tantrums. He’d discovered his feelings for you months ago and it was like a speed bump was put in front of him every time you were near, always making him trip or say something stupid. Bakugo was never known to be good with his words or his feelings, but you made him feel so warm inside that he’d be a fool to deny what it was. “I guess it’s good that you can’t understand me right now because I can vent about how stupid you make me feel.” You hum, a fond glint catching in your eye. 

“That’s a new one. You’re a chicken right now.” You laugh and he can feel his forehead get airy, like he’d chugged three sojus. What he felt was sweeter, though, without the bitter taste that always followed alcohol. To him, you were pure light. 

“Makes sense, ‘cause I’m too much of a dumbass to tell you how much I care about you. Fuckin’ idiot.” 

“You sure have a lot to say, boss. Go on and let me pretend I’m on a poultry farm.” You take another sip of your drink and close your eyes, appreciating his unexpected gift. “A much needed vacation, in my opinion.”

“There you go again with your stupid sarcasm and your stupid laugh. You’re insufferable, you know that? Always making me run around in circles because I don’t know what I’m fucking doing around you.” You raise your eyebrows melodramatically and nod at him slowly, still having no idea what he’s trying to communicate. “You’re lucky you’re pretty because if you were anyone else, I’d fucking deck them right now.” Your attention shoots to him but gives no indication that you comprehended what he just said, so he goes on. “I wanna take you out to dinner sometime, but I think I’m a little too proud to admit how much I like you. Fucking hell, you don’t know what you do to me.” 

“Hey, boss?”

“The fuck do you want?”

“The Quirk wore off,” you breathe, in complete shock from what he just unknowingly confessed to you. You’d be less surprised if he’d told you that he murdered his way up to the top three. “You started speaking normally when you said,” you pause to try to slow your racing pulse in your ears, “that I was pretty.” You sneak a look at him out of the corner of your eye to find him bright red and mirroring your wide-eyed expression. “I guess the effects wore off pretty fast?” 

“Yep,” he forces out. “Must have.”

“You really think I’m pretty?”

“It’s why I got you the fucking drink, stupid,” he mumbles, still examining the shiny wood of the table. “Didn’t want you to be sad.” An idea pops into your head and you shrug, leaning nonchalantly back into your chair. You can feel his eyes watching you, reading your body language.

“I know something that would make me less sad.” 

“Oh, yeah? What’s that?” You shrug and let the corner of your mouth turn up, brushing a stray blonde hair from his face. You didn’t think it was possible to turn such a deep shade of pink and you’d be lying if you said you weren’t amused by how miserable he looked. 

“Take me out to dinner,” you reply, chuckling at the way his nostrils flare. “Repeat all the stuff you said while you were speaking zookeeper. Beside the love confession, of course. I understood that pretty well.” 

“God, you’re ridiculous,” he mutters, grabbing your hand and dragging you out of the office. “Next time I get you that strawberry milk, you’ll be there with me. Then we’ll both have that stupid quirk.” 

“Mmm, great. We can both tell each other how much we like each other while speaking dolphin.”

if you enjoy my writing and would like to support me, you can buy me a coffee on my ko-fi! you can also check out my full masterlist here :)

[meanbossart]

Now I’m thinking about Astarion sitting on Bhaalist DU Drow’s chest and having to pause before and after every cut because there’s a bit of him that fucking hates what his life has become he’s not free, not really, he’s in a gilded cage with a jewel encrusted collar and it’s all the luxury he’s ever dreamed of but it’s not what he wanted

But also… this is the best he’s going to get, isn’t it? He can just sit back and look pretty, and that’s what he did before but at least with Bhaalist Drow he doesn’t have to worry about saying something wrong and being flayed and fed rotten rats.

Would Bhaalist Drow see it? Would he care? That fractional moment of indecision as Astarion thinks a bit too long and a bit too hard about how to handle the blade. That cut that ends/begins right at the corner of his eye, the same eye that held the tadpole that brought them together in the first place.

A subtle twitch of muscle as Astarion imagines for a moment the blade slipping to the wrong side of the socket…

(This got a bit away from me I think)

Hey glad you're having fun with the concept 👹

DU Drow would definitely see it, and he would definitely care, but ever since his pre-tadpole days he's had a supernatural skill for self-inflicted delusion and justification like none other. Once he makes his mind up about someone, it takes truly drastic measures to make him reevaluate his assumptions - this is especially true about romantic interests. Orin was just stubborn, but she would never dream of hurting him and will come around one day to accept his affections. Astarion isn't always satisfied with the limitations imposed upon him, but that's because he's ornery, and a little spoiled, of course he knows deep inside that this is for his own good, that they're soulmates.

All iterations of DU Drow believe in "tough love" and the idea that sometimes, you must do things that hurt your lover for their ultimate benefit. Campaign/post-tadpole DU Drow practices this a lot more reasonably, but as a Bhaalist and the all powerful slayer of the world the concept would be taken to it's worse extreme. Of course Astarion is often unhappy; that's because he doesn't understand the sacrifices that he must make for them, but he will eventually and then he will fall into place.

What he definitely wouldn't do is betray him in any way, just sulk and whine - anything beyond that is a complete impossibility in Du Drow's mind (and that goes for all versions of him, really).

[johntayjinf]

very serene theme that's been stuck in my mind ever since i first heard it

yk, one thing i've slowly come to internalize is that, once you share your art with the world, it's no longer just yours; it's for everyone.

sounds a bit stupid because realistically speaking i still am responsible for arranging and/or writing the songs that i release... but i think people should be free to interpret art however they like, bad or not. you can obviously tell whether or not people interpret a piece of art in bad faith, but i don't think that stops the fact that people are allowed to think what they do.

there have been times where i've tried to change people's minds on why i make specific stylistic choices, but i really should acknowledge that people will interpret it based on their own knowledge and experiences. i feel like i should bring this up because sometimes people don't necessarily see the true intent i want to convey or deliver in a song or my other artistic works, and that's probably for the best. maybe there simply isn't a definitive answer as to what something would truly mean, especially for something so abstract.

people should be allowed to create their own meaning out of the feelings they get from something, though obviously it would be much more appreciated if subjects were handled with more nuance and maturity. people can find their own happiness in their own ways. it's a hard concept to fully grasp, but when you actually slow down and look around... you'll realize that, that minor form of self-expression is a very beautiful thing.

i wrote all that down because this song really just, reminded me about how a song as beautifully written as this one exists in our reality. i personally have never fully played through any pokemon game, so playing gold/ silver/ crystal is out of the question. gameplay just never clicked with me, sorry.

but the thing about this song... or , well, the heartgold/ soulsilver arrange of this song just reminded me of a lot of the beauty in life, despite my suffering.

it's hard for me to have a long-distance relationship, but i am just about as happy as my boyfriend is for us forming a meaningful bond together. his opinions may come off as wacky and kooky and he may be a bit absent-minded; but deep down, i know he really cares a lot about the things he talks about. i've told him many times how unbearable it was watching him squabble with other people about their own opinions, but i still love him regardless. there are times when we respectfully disagree on things so it isn't so grim as i've written it out to be.

i just wished that people would take video games as an art form much more seriously, and when i came to talk to him about it, he agrees with me but simply says he can't do a lot to help the situation; i very much understand that. sometimes we all just have different opinions on things and while that may warrant unwanted conflicts, that's entirely fine.

i like to imagine national park as like, a place that people regularly go to in this universe (no i do not know what part of the pokemon world this is). i like to believe that we'd see different kinds of people here, thus the arrangement reflecting that fact added up with the commentary. you'd never know what you'd learn from other people. the more i appreciate people's perspectives, maybe the more happier i am. like with my boyfriend.

[is-the-fire-real]

Another bit on the pro-Pal fandom, this one axiomatic

Being a good person is not the same thing as pretending as though you believe you are a good person.

Being a good person takes work. You have to do stuff. Doing stuff is hard. Doing good stuff is harder, because you have to put thought into determining what you think is good beforehand. That requires self-reflection, honesty, a willingness to challenge oneself, and taking in information from other people to verify that your concept of "good" is, well, good.

The nice part is that once you evaluate what is good and start doing good things, it becomes easier. You gain inner calm, peace, and even joy.

("Good" is not always the same as "necessary". Necessary work can be a slog, or it can be horrific. But there can still be a calming satisfaction at the core, the security that this is necessary and therefore worthwhile.)

Pretending to believe you are a good person takes less immediate work. You don't have to do anything that positively impacts the real world, and you don't have to do any of that annoying, time-consuming self examination. But in the long run, it's more exhausting. By far.

You are insecure about whether or not you are a good person. You're pretending to believe you are good. You can't feel secure in something you pretend to believe. That insecurity gnaws at you, especially when you engage in bad behavior--harassment, doxxing, posting gore, swarming tags, encouraging and promoting suicide among your fellow "activists", telling your opponents to kill themselves, stalking, spamming unrelated content with literal Nazi propaganda.

None of those are good things good people do. And you understand that. You would think someone was bad if they did those things to you. The cognitive dissonance between who you want to be and who you really are, as determined by your actions, is scary. It's painful. It rears up every time someone you have labeled a Zio colonizer scumbag asks you to please just stop and you remember a time when you begged someone--an abuser, a troll online, a 4channer, your parents--to just stop please just leave me alone.

That must feel terrifying, and again, it makes you insecure. It makes you question if you're doing the right thing.

So you do the work to pretend to believe you are good. And that's far more work than goes into being good.

You recruit others, and all of you agree that you will pretend together. Tabletop gaming has taught us how powerful this imaginative play can be. You all reassure each other that you are good and you are right. But since you're all lying to each other, that means you must spend more, and more, and more time every day telling each other that you are good, chasing that high, that feeling that you are a good person and your actions are justified.

You tell each other that your "opponents" in this "battle" are not people, so anything you say or do to and about them is okay. You look at lists of "dehumanizing tactics" and instead of internalizing what those lists are teaching you, you go: "Ah, so if I don't use the word 'vermin', anything I say should be fine!" And then you say it.

You do not smile over good news. You only smile when one of your opponents logs off Tumblr because you made the site unusable and unsafe for them. (The expression you make there isn't really a smile, but we'll call it that, since the corners of your mouth do turn upward.) You tell yourself you're just attacking Zionists and pretend you do not see how you're really going after Jews.

No self-examination; that would mean admitting that you're lying to yourself and others. Instead, you traumatize and exhaust yourself until you're psychologically incapable of self-examination. You watch snuff films. You stare at mangled bodies until you're weeping and physically ill (certainly, you're too ill to check whether the video is real, or if it was taken from this conflict).

You force your beliefs into your fandom spaces so that others, the bad people, cannot escape their complicity in genocide.

But more importantly, you do that so you can't escape.

You cannot engage in any fandom but the pro-Pal fandom because that takes imaginative energy away from your biggest pretense--that you're a good person.

You are NOT hurting people because you are striking a blow for Palestinians. You are hurting people, including yourself, because you do not want to do the work of becoming a good person. You are afraid that self examination, at this point, will reveal to you that you are exactly the sort of person you believe you are fighting.

That fear, that insecurity, that dread, that restless sense that if you ever rest or stop or think for just a moment, you'll discover something awful? That's your conscience.

I do not ask you to change your mind about your political opponents. Your defenses are already on your lips and in your mind; a thousand How Dare Yous for me hinting that you look at other people as people. What I will ask you is to consider this.

I came to young adulthood just as Bush was elected, and the Iraq War post-9/11 was the first war I really followed as an adult. I did what you're doing now. I forced myself to look at photographs of destroyed bodies. I looked at photographs of torture perpetrated by US soldiers. I blogged about it obsessively.

I told myself that I was Doing My Part to end the war. But really, it's that the anxiety of being an American during the war made me insecure over whether or not I was responsible for all of this, and therefore, a bad person. If I pretended my looking at snuff photos was activism, and that it was good, then I could pretend to believe I was good and shout "Not in my name" at protests. I could deny my responsibility.

What I really did was traumatize myself. It's been almost twenty years. I can still see some of those torture pictures in my head. In the end, that is the extent of the impact of my online activism. The blogs are all long deleted, and nobody remembers them.

Only my trauma remains.

I do not want this for you. I want you to be wiser. There is still time. You can stop.

Stop hurting yourself and other people. Do the hard work. Examine yourself and your actions. Consider what your own heart is trying to tell you whenever you start to get the shakes and your throat gets tight. Do not take that feeling out on random people online because they have a Magen David in their pfp.

Once you have done the hard work, it gets easier. You will be able to advocate and work for whatever causes you believe in because you know they are good, not because you're joining your friends in cosplaying goodness. You will still be traumatized, and you will still be sad, and you'll definitely still get angry. You will have to face how you've acted exactly like your own past abusers, and that's a real tough row to hoe.

But at the end, you will be able to advocate and work because you want to, instead of feeling as though you must in order to keep up the masquerade.

[pikahlua]

Can you expand a bit on why Hawks would want to keep the hero rankings rather than get rid of them? I'm having a hard time understanding why he would do that whatsoever. What "good points" are there that he would want to keep? It always felt like a major source of corruption imo, especially since one of Nagant's jobs with the HPSC was taking out corrupt heroes who found unsavory means to boost their rankings (convincing normal people to do crimes, then arresting them). Appreciate your insight as always <3

Hawks' major criticism of the hero rankings was not the rankings themselves but the popularity component of the rankings.

Saying the "popular" thing, saying the thing everyone wants to hear, isn't heroic; it's cowardly. It's conforming. Hawks is looking for a dependable hero to be a symbol, and such a symbol has to be strong in the face of criticism. They can't capitulate to what's easy and popular, especially when such sentiment stands in contrast to what's needed and righteous.

Hawks goes out of his way to pick Endeavor to mold into a leader because Endeavor has that leadership quality--he's not trying to look good in the public eye in every moment. He's consistent and dependable. He has the highest rate of incidents resolved--even more than All Might. Hawks thinks Endeavor is reassuring, that people will follow his lead.

Of course, the good part about the "popularity" component of the ranking is that it keeps people in check. To give an example, there's this concept in my old line of work called independence, which is divided into two things: actual independence and the appearance of independence. It's important for someone in my old position to be independent in fact BUT ALSO in appearance. If people can't TELL you're independent, how much does it help even if you actually ARE independent? The same thing can apply to heroes in terms of public approval. Yes, heroes need to take public approval ratings with a grain of salt, because sometimes doing the right thing is not the same thing as doing what's popular. However, consistently going against the grain without a thought for helping the public understand you, without regard for social mores or others' feelings, will eventually turn the public against you. It's the issue Katsuki had to deal with as he went through his character arc. If the public doesn't trust you, why would they take your hand when you reach out to save them?

Hawks never really goes into anything like what Nagant mentions, and I don't know if Nagant's commentary on heroes who colluded with villains for fame and glory even was a) directly referring to the hero ranking system or b) something that can be resolved by eliminating hero rankings in the first place. That issue seems like a product of fame chasing, not merely public approval, and people will continue to crave the limelight whether or not there's a ranking system. But if people aren't dependent on heroes being the only heroic ones, such as in this new list of everyday heroes Hawks is considering, the existence of fame-chasing heroes doesn't hurt society as much. People won't be depending on heroes to all be perfect and good, they'll support each other, and so the whole system won't be shaken up by the public image of heroes wavering.

As an aside, there's one other funny thing to me about this idea Hawks has.

Hawks is a young upstart, and the fact that he landed this influential political position is quite a shake-up of the status quo. Japan notoriously likes to have things happen in a certain social order, and young people jumping up the ladder ahead of their elders always makes for an awkward dynamic. I do kinda think Hawks is being considerate by not "doing things a little too fast" and completely destroying the old system, because something that radical is not always palatable to the majority opinion, especially when the person advocating for it is as young as Hawks. Just changing a system this much is already a pretty radical step based on my (limited) understanding of contemporary Japanese politics. And I direct you back to my commentary on how Hawks is building on what the older generations have given the next ones. He's always been a character that sat between the older and newer generations like a bridge, so this seems like a decent compromise.

[jadeazora]

Kinda disappointed we didn't get a character bio for these guys from the leaks. (Or ANY of the Plasma characters from what I've seen, like I really want to know further into N's, Colress's, and Ghetsis's backgrounds. Ghetsis coming across N and the Shadow Triad when they needed his help just always felt so suspicious to me knowing how manipulative Ghetsis is.)

But I remember being very big into the theory that the Shadow Triad were the Striaton Bros, especially since there's a bit of resemblance in the early concept art with the hairstyles (one having hair over the same eye as Cress, one having swept-back bangs like Cilan, and one having messier hair, like Chili), and in the manga, they were hard-baiting us with the Triad's masks resembling the elemental monkeys and sharing type specialties with the Trio.

Mostly for the potential in the anime. For some reason, Cilan kinda gave me shady vibes and could low-key be a bit of a jerk sometimes (recent example, but bruh, this was unwarranted lmao), but I just find the resulting inner conflict that would occur very fun to play with, between working for someone you KNOW doesn't really give a damn about you beyond how useful you can be to them but still being loyal to them vs. actually finding friends, and feeling like a person for the first time in your life and actually enjoying yourself, despite knowing you'll have to betray them later and beginning to dread that coming moment more and more.

(Obviously, it's been debunked again and again, but I was really hoping for it to be true when BW was still ongoing. I even had a bit of an AU going where Ash had won an early battle with N--who had overheard Ash having a discussion with Iris about having seen Zekrom--, and Ghetsis sent Cilan to keep tabs on Ash after hearing about this and his strong connection with Pokemon, with the other two brothers keeping tabs on the other Unovan Gym Leaders in the meantime. I lost all my art that I drew for it tho 😅 I was so excited for Plasma coming to the anime, but then plans understandably changed with the earthquake and we didn't see Plasma for, like, two years after that. B2W2 had shown a flashback of the Triad and the Triplets together, people were calling bullshit and believing they were lying, but then the manga had the two trios fighting each other, and then they were just never adapted into the anime. Neat fact tho, in the dub B2W2 animated trailer, the Triad member that speaks shares the same VA as Cilan, Jason Griffith.)

[watermelonlovershigh]

"I Just Felt Like Cryin"

AN: this randomly came to me in one of my dreams and i had to write it out. i love this concept even though it breaks my heart a little bit. i hope you enjoy and your feedback is welcome!!!!!

This story contains: just crying and comfort

{ dadrry - husband!harry - softrry - have three kids but they aren't in really in story }

word count- 1,061

Harry comes home from the studio and just feels like crying for whatever reason.

As soon as Harry came home from the studio you could tell something was wrong. He wasn't as cheerful as he usually was and he seemed lost in his train of thought. But knowing Harry, he tried to hide his emotions well and act as if nothing was wrong. Especially in front of your three kids. He didn't want his kids to see him have a breakdown. He only wanted them to see their father in a happy state.

The problem tonight was that even Harry didn't know what was wrong with himself. He wasn't necessarily sad and he wasn't mad. So maybe it's a combination of stress and built up emotions but he just felt on the verge of crying all evening. There was this burning behind his eyes that you get when you're trying not to cry and Harry can't seem to get rid of it.

--------------------------------

After going through the routine of giving your kids their baths and tucking them into bed, it was time to go to bed yourselves. This part in your night routines can vary depending on your moods. If you were feeling needy, then it would consist of making love under the duvet. If you wanted to relax more, it could consist of sharing a bath or shower together. If you were tired, it would consist of just cuddling and going to sleep. Tonight you didn't know what to expect but you knew sex was off the table.

You came into your bedroom to brush your teeth and then begun putting your creams and lotions on your skin as you sat on the edge of the bed. Harry told you he'd be back in a moment, that he was going to get himself a glass of water from the kitchen. You were nervous because you didn't want there to be anything seriously going on with him. You hated to see your husband so down.

The whole journey to the kitchen Harry was fighting tears. Then on the way back up to your shared bedroom he was fighting tears. He didn't want to cry tonight. Not that he was embarrassed to cry in front of you. No, you've been married for so long that he's completely okay with being vulnerable around you. He just didn't want to make you sad because he knows when you see him cry you get sad.

But as soon as Harry stepped foot in the bedroom and shut the door behind himself, he took one glance at you, the person he loves most, and his bottom lip started quivering and his shoulders started shaking as a sob left his body. You stood up quickly and walked across the room, first grabbing the glass of water out of his shaky hands. Then asking, "Baby, what's wrong? Hey, it's okay."

Harry just wraps his arms around you and sobs into your shoulder. You haven't seen him cry this hard since the death of his step father and it's really worrying you. "I....." Harry tries to speak, "I donno."

"Are you sad or feeling sick?" you gently question.

"No, I, I just felt like cryin'. M'sorry. I'm a big baby." he mutters as you lead him over to the bed. Now you understand a bit more. Harry has been stressed lately and you have a feeling his emotions just got backed up so much that now they are all flowing out of him. Typically Harry is the type of person that will ignore his emotions until they come spewing out of him. For some it's with anger that includes yelling and being violent. For Harry, he's not an angry or violent person so his emotions are tears.

You help Harry sit on the edge of the bed while continuing to hug him to your chest. His cries are slowing down but are still somewhat there. "Shhh," you whisper while leaning back to lay down under the covers and stroke the back of his scalp, "It's okay. You can cry if you feel like it. I'll be here the entire time and hold you, okay." Just wanting your husband to know its okay to cry it out.

Harry nods his head where it's placed over your heartbeat, his favorite place to be. He loves laying his head over your heartbeat during sex to feel how fast he's got it beating for him. But he also just loves to feel it to comfort him when he's trying to sleep or is upset about something.

After a few more minutes, Harry coos in a hoarse voice, "Thank you. Thank you for always knowing how to comfort me and thank you for loving me." His words nearly bring you to tears.

"Harry, babe, you're so easy to love. You have the biggest heart and everyone can't help but to show you love. I love you so much." you tell him truthfully. You do love Harry with every fiber in your body. You wouldn't have married him if you didn't. You wouldn't have let him get you pregnant three times and had his beautiful babies if you didn't love this heavy man laying across your chest right now.

Harry lifts his head off your chest and leans forward, going in for a kiss, but you stop him. He gets a sad look of rejection on his face but you reach over to your nightstand and grab a tissue. "You have snot running out your nose, babe. Here, let me help you wipe it up." You gently cradle the side of his face and help him wipe his snotty nose. It doesn't gross you out at all because you do have kids that have desensitizes you to this kind of stuff. "There we go. Now you can kiss me."

With the first smile you've seen on his face all night, Harry leans in again and places the most softest kiss on your lips. It only lasted a second but that second means everything to you. After the kiss, Harry whispers, "I love you." He leans back down to snuggle into your covered chest. You grab the edge of the duvet and help drape it over his back to keep the both of you warm. Then once you reach to turn the lamp off and the bedroom is filled with darkness, you began to fall asleep with Harry in your arms.

(PLEASE REBLOG BECAUSE WRITING IS NOT EASY AND IT'S FREE SO JUST DO IT)

(no more tags are allowed because i've hit my number limit. sorry : ( )

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______________

My Masterlist Masterpost

[hatredmadeofgold]

So, Raiden has DID, right. This is a fact.

What do you think about his system? I know you write fanfic about him, do you think there are any other elaborated parts other than Raiden and The Ripper? (I'm not a fan of "evil murder alter," but I feel like naming would be pretty ambiguous. :)

Hey anon, I am sorry in advance but this answer is 2263 words long lmao Go sit back with a beverage of your choice (I recommend water) and enjoy the ride.

[Not sure if you’ve read my little attempt at an essay from July 2022 about him having DID (it’s here), but I do consider it outdated now and would love to update it (same as the one on him having ASPD) at some point when I got the energy for that.]

This is a fact made me laugh a bit, ngl.

I am not a fan of the “evil murderer alter” thing either (I watched Split once and while I give my kudos to the actor’s portrayal of various alters, the story itself sucks ass and I also found it boring as hell to be honest) — if anything, Raiden’s entire system consists of “evil murderer alters”, or none of such at all. We’re speaking about a character who admits to enjoying murder, and that wasn’t The Ripper speaking back then in MGS2 either — Raiden isn’t left in the dark of his violent nature, but he’s left in the dark about the details.

I don’t want to give too many spoilers for my fanfiction series @mgsr-sing-to-me away, since the story goes in-depth about my concept of his DID system, how it was created and what each alter roughly represents, but I’ll try to give you a quick rundown:

Something I think most MGS fans can all agree on is that Raiden in all three games in which he appears feels somewhat different, to the point of ‘inconsistency’ even, and this has created my interpretation and headcanon for him to have DID in the first place, and Raiden having suffered from amnesia is a well-known canon fact.

To me, however, it’s not MGR Raiden who feels strongly different in terms of personality — it’s MGS4 Raiden who feels like an inconsistency.

I consider the Raiden we see in MGS4 actually a different alter being in control of the body than the one who is in control during MGS2. During MGR, it feels like a mix of both of those alters but let me get to that later.

‘Jack the Ripper’ is an obvious alter, not an ‘alter ego’, and when I played MGR in Japanese, the cutscene after the Monsoon boss battle in which Raiden touches the wound on his abdomen made me realise — hold on, he suffered amnesia right there.

Something that I strongly dislike about the English Dub of MGR is that Quinton Flynn isn’t really good at the portrayal of Jack. Throughout the Japanese dub, however, Ken’yuu Horiuchi uses his voice to show the literal switching between at least three alters present in Raiden throughout the game. Unfortunately, this isn’t evident in the English dub much at all, aside from the Jack the Ripper Awakens cutscene.

For easier understanding’s sake, I will give those alters some nicknames (also to prevent spoilers for my fanfiction):

The Raiden of Denial, as we see him both in the first half of MGR and MGS2

The Raiden of Dissociality, as we see in the later half of MGR and on and off during MGS2 (especially during {optional} Codecs with Rose)

Jack the Ripper

The Raiden of Sorrow, as we see him during MGS4

I took these 4 observed alters from the canon as my pillars to roughly create my concept for his DID system, which boils down to an approximate number of 16 or more alters in total.

I say ’16 or more’ because Raiden has never received adequate therapy for his mental health issues during canon, and it’s hard to determine an exact number of alters in general due to the covert nature of the disorder.

I decided to keep the exact number ambiguous but clear and simple enough to not get overwhelmed because technically someone with such severe trauma as his could result in poly-fragmented DID (aka 100 or more alters), but that’s not even set in stone.

Let me get into the specifics a bit.

—

Raiden of Denial alters are parts of him that are, what the (flawed) model of structural dissociation would probably call “apparently normal parts” (short: ANP). I take this model with a grain of salt because DID isn’t as neatly structured as this model suggests (in my experience), but to keep it simple, these alters are less aware of the full extent of their traumas and are therefore ‘functional’ in everyday life as well as interpersonal relationships, however, they feel less ‘fleshed out’ or ‘mask-like’ in his case sometimes.

All Raiden of Denial alters tend to run away from their past, hence I label them with the word “denial”. All of these alters are adults, and the apparent Host alter {at the time}, present in the first half of MGS2 until the nanomachines suppressing a part of his memory (aka suppressing the majority of the system) are deactivated by Solidus Snake, is one of such.

—

Throughout MGR, we can see two alters intruding on each other’s consciousness with thoughts, feelings and memories. One of them is like the one we see in MGS2 and the prologue of MGR, one in denial. Then there’s one we see sometimes in MGS2 and more and more prominently during MGR, a dissocial one.

We see an indirect switch right at the beginning of Chapter 1, where a dissocial type takes over. This shift is also picked up by Kevin, mentioning Raiden’s callousness that Raiden does not respond to.

These two alters are in so much conflict with each other throughout the game that Jack the Ripper decides that he’s had enough of that shit from the other two because neither of them is capable of handling being consistently confronted with triggers and reminders of “who they all really are on the inside”, and shoves them both out of the frame and takes on full control.

This comes with strong amnesia about what happens during his takeover. It’s not total blackout amnesia, but rather that it feels like watching himself act in the third person perspective, and the memory feels like Raiden is watching a YouTube video on a bad internet connection in 360p resolution.

—

Now Jack the Ripper is a persecutor-type of alter — an alter that has a protective role for the system, however, a persecutor’s methods are causing harm to the system overall.

I don’t want to give too much away from my fic as I said, but I’ll give you the hint that Jack the Ripper that we see during MGR is both an adult and a child at the same time.

A child who is trying to protect himself by lashing out at everyone and everything around him. It is obvious given the context of what we are told from the games that Jack the Ripper was born from the horrible things he was forced to witness and forced to do himself when he was a child soldier in Liberia, hence his age-ambiguity. And even The Ripper is split into several variants, making The Ripper his own category of alters.

The variants of The Ripper handle various parts of the horrible things that he had to endure as a child soldier, and they vary in ‘age’ and what triggers them out but they all behave roughly the same.

Despite being different alters of the same category, unlike the other alters within the same category, Ripper variants all consider themselves to be one and the same, perhaps unable to understand the barriers between them as well as gaps in memory.

Also one part of these alters is a child alter who has none of these violent and hostile traits at all, but is still a part of this category. This alter is protected by the rest of The Ripper, and contains all of these emotions that he was not allowed to openly show to guarantee his survival back in Liberia, like fear, sorrow, and pain but also empathy.

There are multiple of these child alters in the system, but they are hard to distinguish without giving them names, some have memories of their trauma, and some are completely oblivious.

—

The Sorrow type of alters are what we exclusively see in MGS4 and are what I associate with self-hatred, recklessness, suicidal ideation (internal homicide), self-harm and substance abuse.  

Sorrow types are either adults or teenagers. They exclusively have a detailed awareness of Raiden’s addiction issues, which is another headcanon I have and is also listed in the content warnings for Sing to Me (ARC 2: Parasite Eve will handle this topic the most; and it may or may not be rather graphic, it depends on what I decide in the end what I will decide to publish).

—

Now I have listed 4 types of alters but I did not say anywhere that each category of them equates a set amount of alters to get to the number of 16 known alters in the system.

Because there’s another category to throw into the mix: Introjects.

So far, I have 4 introjects in mind that are part of Raiden’s system, but due to Sing to Me spoilers I cannot share them all.

Introjects are alters based on another person, be that a person in the system’s life, a celebrity they look up to, or even a fictional character. They exist in all DID systems in real life (and some sources confirm fiction-based introjects aka fictives since the 1980s) and their existence has a link to the psychology of child development.

One introject Raiden possesses is based on Solidus Snake/George Sears. Said alter is also a persecutor type and could be overlapping somewhat with the Ripper category, but is not a direct part of them. This persecutor introject of Solidus causes the entire system a major hit to their self-esteem, as he enacts the very same punishment onto the system, as the real Solidus Snake did on Raiden when he was a child soldier under his control, and also sabotages a lot of Raiden’s relationships by ‘protecting’ him from perceived threats that he sees in others.

—

Another I have in mind is perhaps based on Solid Snake/David and could have formed way before they’ve actually met. This makes sense because Raiden had gone through 2 years of VR training for the Big Shell mission, which put him into Snake’s role when he was on a solo infiltration mission on Shadow Moses Island in Alaska. This David introject is very loosely based on the actual person and is more of a fragment of what Raiden had been made to believe during those times. After their meeting, this introject might take the role of a ‘caretaker’ type of protector. Caretaker in this context must not be understood as to be something like a mother or father figure! However, this alter is counteracting the Solidus introject as well as the Ripper variants, by trying to get himself back on track.

—

Then there’s a fictive I feel like I can share about, and it’s the only female alter in the system: Ripley. And with that one I mean the actual Ellen Ripley from the first 4 movies of the Alien franchise.

Given that MGS2 mentions Raiden and Rose having met over arguing over King Kong, I came to think of what other types of fiction Raiden would enjoy and wrote myself a (still unfinished) list of movies and books.

The Alien franchise started in 1979 with the first movie, so it even matches timeline-wise that Raiden possibly saw those movies in his late teens, perhaps on TV or borrowed them from a local video rental store. Kaijū movies seem to be his thing, and although the Alien franchise is not considered one, it does overlap in some aspects of the genre.

Ripley as an alter might have formed when Raiden was moved into a foster family’s home, and to cope with his terrible nightmares that felt far too real, his psyche latched onto the fictional character to dissociate himself further from his past.

What I imagine is that he saw his nightmares, the flashbacks, and what he went through as something as undefeatable and unkillable as the xenomorph as described in the first movie, “the perfect survivor, without a conscience, guilt or remorse, nor moral code”.

Now Ripley was able to survive the xenomorph, and also kill it — by shooting it into space. Something that Raiden always wished to do with his past, just to erase it, as we learn in MGS2. At the time this alter takes its shape, he was maybe 15 or 16 years old. Ripley is also a protector, to protect the child in him additionally from pain. This alter then also takes a motherly role for the system inside Raiden’s Inner World, something that cannot be seen by an outsider.

—

The last introject I cannot say anything about it, since that one would give a too-harsh spoiler for my story plans with Sing to Me. I’d LOVE to talk about this alter and the absolute mindfuck he will create once he surfaces and interacts with other characters in the story, but my hands are tied. It sadly takes me so much time to work on the story due to the lack of energy I have overall, but it’s on my mind every single day. Even writing this answer took me two nights T_T

And considering that I’ve written over 2200 words to answer this ask already, I will make a cut here. Because honestly, I could write an entire book about Raiden (and Sam).

Which… I am actually doing, sort of, with my fic, due to its sheer estimated length of around 100 chapters for just the main story.

[artycomicfangirl]

Hey I was tackling a concept which really has not been able to leave my mind. It was about Mr L and Daisy. That side of Luigi which we only truly see in Super Paper Mario. A snarky, confident villain who was quite a match for the heroes but I wonder how he responds to Daisy. An aggresive, passionate person who doesn't take crap from anybody.

It is fire against fire and normally that would clash but would that also count for these two? How would the dynamic change? Is Mr L more flirty and Daisy more taken aback by this? Or will she flirt back even more as a way to defend herself? And how does she feel about this Mr L? Does she completely hate him? Or does she like some parts of his personality?

Let me know what your thoughts are on this!

Hey! This is another fun ask that I’ve been slowly working on, but life and distraction kept pulling me away from. But FINALLY I’m here!

I’ve been feeling in a bit of a fluffy-sappy mood. So I do apologize just in case if I do make characters seem OOC!

Also, this is a bit more Luigi-heavy it seems, since this ask is about potential ideas regarding Mr L. Enjoy!

—————————————————

So. Potential Scenario time to set the scene and some context:

After Mario Fighting Mr L and seemingly banishing this Alter Ego from his younger brother’s body. Mario realizes that the side effects may not be as simple as it is.

Turns out, Although looking to be temporary. Due to the odd nature of magic, Parts of the so called ‘Mr L’ alter ego still lingers within the subconscious of Luigi’s mind. And from time to time, will often pop up in moments of high-tension, stress or anger.

It has been deduced that for the time being, Mr L may be triggered as an extreme way for Luigi to overcome the very things that holds him back.

This ‘Revived’ Version of Mr L, now retains some memories from when he was primarily active and thriving. Now, he is more aware that he is a conscious. He just chooses to see that he and Luigi share one ‘Vessel’

Mr L also has adopted new parts to his behavior, which are triggered from his old memories (In which I will elaborate further below.)

So now as the main gang have to wait this out till it passes over. Let’s see how our Sarasaland Princess deals with this!

—————————————————

💚 Two Sides of the Same Coin 💚

So if i remember correctly, Mr L did kind of express some sort of attraction towards Peach in the game.

But when a new Princess comes into the picture? Oh boy, did he fall HARD.

💚 While it’s obvious from surface level than Daisy and Luigi are more of an opposites attract sort of situation. I’d reckon that both Daisy and Mr L are more or so an equal match. This is what makes a bit more banter between the two. Especially when Mr L is the one talking his worth. Daisy on the other hand, is the type to eye-roll at his antics more.

But strange enough. When it comes to Daisy, Mr L acts differently around her. Because it’s been implied that some of Mr L’s behavior is still affected from Luigi’s memories, His attraction for her hits him full force. He actually wants to “Keep her around”. So he genuinely puts in effort to do so. Ironically, his actions is what keeps her at bay sometimes.

💚 Of Course is seen to act so Cocky towards most of his rivals and enemies, laughing at their faces. But when it comes to Daisy, he clearly tries to find ways to impress her and gain her attention.

While Luigi is all about the sentimental, heartfelt and genuine understanding. Mr L does not seem to get it, and relies on grand and flashy feats. Most of these attempts do not work, and he becomes genuinely shocked.

He doesn’t insult Daisy intentionally. But more has the “Oh, she doesn’t understand…Hey, I’ll try something else! Something even more grand!” Mentality.

💚 Because of Luigi, he has a natural subconscious pull and attraction towards Her. In fact, that’s one of the lucky things that Daisy has to keep from making him as her enemy in the first place.

But of course, he’s more full of himself about it. Leaning against a wall, arms crossed until Daisy notices and calls him out for staring. But he doesn’t give a care in the world.

“ Hey now. I can’t help staring down at such a beautiful force of nature~”

💚 💛 Seeing Daisy in her signature sports or Mario Kart Biker outfit? He will absolutely give a whistle of approval. When Mr L likes what he sees, he makes it VERY clear.

He will find amusement if Daisy reacts in a shocked manner. But it’s when she reacts all flustered, cue the smirk from him. He eats this kind of response right up!

💚 💛 Mr L has a knack for giving demeaning nicknames for his rivals and enemies. But for Daisy? Pet names and complements galore. He has no shame.

“Hey, Ms Pretty Petal! How about I pluck you from the fields of boredom, and take you somewhere fun?

“Well Hey, Ms Sunflower! I was working on my latest invention…but looks like all I need is you to brighten my day!

“Hey Ms Steady Sweetie! How’d you like my Dance Moves? Speechless? Huh, that’s okay. I guess The Green Thunder must be THAT striking to you huh?

💚 Even Mr L’s need to leap in and defend Daisy, is by some instinctual force. At first, he merely just does this because he wants to One-up (Pun intended) Luigi. To prove that he’s the better conscious. The better man.

But over time, Mr L is forced to learn and accept new things. So overtime, much to his chagrin, he unintentionally gains some empathy and development along the way. He always backs this up as simply not letting anyone tell him what to do. But doing this on his own will.

As time goes on though. Mr L kind of does change a bit. Also to show him learning to work together with Luigi’s conscious.

“That Mr Toochickentofightghosts would be sad if anything happened to you…Eh, wouldn’t you know? Something I agree with.”

💚 Regarding Mr L retaining the memories he previously once had. This is tied to my previous point of him now hating being told what to do. He is actually scared of being controlled by another force. Hence why when he gains understanding that he and Luigi share a conscious, he often fights to take over.

When opened up in his most vulnerable state, he kind of actually does express sympathy for what he remembers as Count Bleck’s downfall. In this moment, he subtly implies that he is unsure as to who he can look up to now. Or if he could ever find someone as worthy as Bleck to admire.

💚💛 I’d like to imagine that at some point, Everything would change, when Daisy ends up defending not just Luigi. But Mr L as well. I can imagine this happening at a point much later, When Daisy has learnt so much about Mr L, and has gotten along with him this far.

Seeing this Princess proclaiming that Mr L is not some One-time minion who can just be used and cast away, makes him see that Daisy genuinely finds recognition and respect in his intellect. And Thus, he fully shifts to having his utmost loyalty from Bleck, to ‘His’ Daisy.

Aside from his now changed views on Mario, Luigi and the main Gang. This was the woman he quite literally will think of as top Priority to him. For she genuinely sees him for what he is worth. Much like she does for Luigi

🌼 He…Loves me? 🌼

💛 This whole thing might be something Daisy has never seen before. And knowing that the one person she loves has a double personality understandably would freak her out a little at the beginning. But since Mario would have fought Mr L already, so he could explain to Daisy about everything.

Again, Mr L and Luigi are really all in all the same person. So after Mario had to confirm this a couple of times for her to process, Daisy is quick to be aware of this. She would never fault Luigi for how Mr L would act. But of course, it doesn’t entirely stop her from being appalled at Mr L’s actions.

💛 Daisy does not tolerate Luigi’s legacy to be insulted. It is why whenever Mr L does make some kind of passive aggressive insult towards Luigi, is the thing that gets her so defensive and annoyed the most.

💛 It is Daisy’s strong character, her not falling for Mr L’s antics easily. Is ironically, what draws him to her so much. The running gag is that no matter how much she tries to retort back to him, he actually finds amusement in it. He definitely likes her ‘feisty’ nature.

💛 Daisy’s way of learning how to actually get along and accept Mr L, is by being able to be as quick witted as he is. She begins to quickly learn that a flirtatious comeback or two, is enough to basically shut him up. She actually finds it really funny that all she can do is wink back at him, and he becomes all silent.

Of course much to her dismay, she then suddenly remembers that this was the fuel to fan his flames of desire. Pining for her even more the next day. Task failed…successfully?

💛 Honestly, Daisy would sometimes be frustrated and shocked at Mr L’s excessive dramatic and cheesy nature. But as she learns to help Luigi with this new predicament of now welcoming Mr L into his life. Daisy begins to form more insight as to how Luigi’s mind might work.

💛 Surprisingly enough. Being around Mr L, has taught Daisy what she can do to motivate and support Luigi. It is why she takes raising his confidence seriously, and will further instill into him that being himself, is what made her fall for him. And that as long as he still held onto his pure heart, she will not judge him for having Mr L in his life.

[fangirlblogger]

Fangirl Analysis Four: Bill Skarsgard's forehead wrinkles.

Girlies, the concept of this analysis is something that has been on mind since I've started evolving into a woman. I have developed this attraction of men's forehead wrinkles since last year and it's not because of my daddy issues (that's another conversation for another time), it's because of aging unfortunately. But I'm glad I'm aging because then I would not be here analyzing this beautiful and masterful craft on Daddy Bill Skarsgard's forehead. The man's got a heavenly forehead and girrrl, the things I want to do to that forehead are endless. With that being said, let's get into the analysis.

Listen girlies, if Bill looked at me the way he did in this image, I would instantly melt, evaporate and vanish. Girl, I don't know whether I want him to look at me that way forever or eat me and look at me like that till I pass out. I'm swooning over this look right now and the thing that makes this image more desirable and religiously worthy to be worshiped is his forehead wrinkles.

This image is from the Clark TV mini series and Bill played Clark Olofsson - a Swedish criminal in the 70s that prompted society to coined the term Stockholm Syndrome based on his relationships with his hostages or victims. Spoiler for those who did not watch the mini series yet, that's basically what the series is about. If you're a Bill Skarsgard fangirl like myself who has not watched this mini series yet, GIRL YOU HAVE TO (it's on Netflix if you're wondering). You will enjoy and devour every moment of it. Every sound of his voice, all of his body movements, all his angry, lustful, joyful, sad and confused glances and looks, his thick and rough Swedish accent, his manipulative smiles, his boisterous laughter and most importantly the way he devoured that oyster in Episode one, good Lord I came so hard, I almost thought I was giving birth to Bill's kid.

Now girlies, I am aware that there a numerous images of Bill displaying his godly forehead wrinkles. Some of them are so good, I don't know if it's my pussy that's wetter or it's my mouth.

Case study question: Why did I specifically select this image?

It's a no brainer really, my pussy gets wet instantly and I know this is the real deal, the masterpiece, my Salvatore Mundi.

Let's take a look at his hair. His hair looks so effortlessly perfect. The way the strand of hair draws down his forehead, just above his eye-brow is so immaculate. You can tell that he puts so much effort into taking care of his hair because of how effortlessly perfect it looks.

Now onto his jawline, cheeks and chin. He has the most flawless cheeks ever. When he doesn't smile, they lay back so perfectly and that brings out his perfect jawline, making it sharp enough to crack me open like a coconut. But when he does smile, they rise up so well and display his impeccable double chin. His chin is so well shaped that it smoothly keeps his immaculate facial structures intact and glorious.

His lips, they are a world of its own. I wouldn't mind being his lips, getting moistened and licked by his tongue every day. I will not delve into this anymore further because there will be an analysis on his lips soon. So I'll save all the goodness for later.

Let's look at his eyes. His eyes have the most unerring eye bags under them and in this image you can clearly see how perfect they are. We all know Bill has the world's most soulful eyes, so big and doe, they just make you want to cry in a sexual way. By the look in his eyes, and the lines on his face from his eyes to his forward, it clearly indicate that he is concerned but not in a good way. He is concerned about how he is going to manipulate his girlfriend. Also, you can see a little bit of impatience on his face in this image. If you watch the Clark film, you'll understand what I mean.

Now, finally to his wrinkles. They are so important in this image especially in this episode of the Clark mini series. Significance of it to this image is that it makes Bill look real. I've stated this before and I am saying it again, nothing is more attractive than a man with a natural face. His forehead wrinkles indicates to us that he is aging and that is the most beautiful thing in the world. Girl, his forehead wrinkles can wrinkle me up all the way to heaven.

The significance of this look in the image to the Clark mini series is that he perfectly displayed the look of a manipulative man. As already stated, his facial expressions displayed impatience, concern and irritability. My guy just came to see the girl and manipulate her to still love him. He did not come to see her and listen to what she has to say. And, Bill perfectly executes that in that scene.

Moreover, this image showed him in his natural state, meaning if he was not acting, this is what he would like on a daily basis, and that is super-hot! He looks scruffy, organic and humanly.

To conclude, wrinkles are beautiful and when they're on Bill Skarsgard's forehead, I go feral and insane. Those wrinkles makes him even more attractive. The Starry Night by Van Gogh might have you tripping but Bill's forehead wrinkles will have your pussy singing. So to the men that thinks women are rizzed by their overly masculine features, we're not. We like our men simple and comfortable like Bill Skarsgard.

Also, I would like to clarify that if you read this analysis as a body-shaming post, it is entirely the opposite. I love Bill Skarsgard and I find every bit of his body attractive, alluring and godly. I am aware of the social obsession with ageism but I actually prefer my man a bit older with a bit of grey hair, wrinkles, and 10 times more trauma from life than me.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

In the original format of the Chinese Miraculous Box there was a Yin-Yang and the Ladybug Miraculous was placed in the Yin half while the Black Cat Miraculous was placed in the Yang half. It's just me who finds it very strange? Like, Tikki represents Creation and Plagg represents Destruction so Tikki was supposed to be the Yang half while Plagg was supposed to be the Yin half but at the same that would mean that Tikki was supposed to be the male half while Plagg was supposed to be female half.

Yeah, there are a lot of things that Miraculous seems to get wrong if you start looking into the source cultures on even a surface level. I'm with you on the placing potentially being off. They could be going for the classic look where there's a spot of yin in yang and vise versa, but Tikki and Plagg are pure Creation and Destruction, so I'm not sure how well that works. I've been trying to do some research on this topic for the next time it came up and I am still woefully uneducated, but I can say that yin and yang are complex concepts. Just reading through the Wikipedia page will tell you that much.

The more I learn, the more I applaud the movie for its version of the miracle box which just vaguely evokes the "classic" image of a yin-yang and doesn't try to commit to anything too hard:

They went with colors and matching dragon motifs instead of the traditional white-and-black, making it less clear who is supposed to be yin and who is supposed to be yang if there even is a direct association at all! Which I think works much better for the following ranty reasons:

The kwamis' are "officially" genderless so their gender associations can potentially be ignored and we can just focus on their Force associations when discussing the symbolism. However, that feels like a copout to me because no one watching the show or the movie will know that. The genderless thing is a twitter-only bit of canon and you all know how I feel about that BS. If you want a thing to be canon, then put it in canon. Otherwise it is by definition not canon!

There's also the issue that no one watching the show will inherently know that yin and yang have associations with Creation and Destruction because the both versions never discuss the Chinese influences that the writers love to claim credit for. You have to already know them going in to get what's going on. No five-year-old is going to walk away understanding - or even knowing the words - yin and yang. They will also have no idea that the zodiac kwamis are based on the Chinese zodiac because I don't think that we ever even hear the word "zodiac" in the actual text. Given all that, I think that it's way better to remove yourself from direct association and just go with some vague influence since that is all these things are in the context of canon. They are not meaningful representation by any conceivable metric.

Is even vague influence going to far? I have no idea! That's an incredibly complex topic that I don't have the knowledge or training to meaningfully discuss. That's why I will repeat the thing I always say in posts on this topic: if you want to rep a culture that you're not part of and have no deep understanding of, then do some research and - if you have the funds - pay for a cultural consultant to help guide you. Don't want to do that? That's fine, just don't pick a real culture as a major influence to your magic system. Especially don't pick one that has an unfair stereotype of being "magical and weird" to the cultures that will be consuming your creation.

[kevin-the-bruyne]

I really had to read with my own two eyes multiple times since this post had multiple people add on to it, bringing it back to my dash again and again, that the drama from Tharn and Phaya's past life did not feel dramatic at all. And somehow that detracts from taking the drama of the present as seriously as the show is taking it. This story is based on Thai folklore? The Naga and Garuda are eternal enemies. The love between a Naga and a Garuda is an insult to the literal cosmic order. Chalothon who was only trying to preserve the natural order has been wronged by their love. The natural order is also referenced several times but especially when the priest was like keep Phaya and Chalothon away from each other, they're destined to be enemies. Not meeting the show halfway to accepting this as part of your lens as an audience is frankly...an interesting choice to make. The next bit is pure conjecture on account of me not being Thai but I'm trying to relate to what The Sign is likely trying to do from my own understanding of Asian folklore and the way we use those stories to build new stories. What is there to get out of this show other than the big fuck you to 'natural order' of things that must be because of the way that they are. Why can't a Naga and Garuda be in love? This must be a concept that people explore under the general lens of forbidden love in Thailand (pure conjecture but also like I don't know how it can't be true). We all have our poorly explained versions of Forbidden Love gone bad; Romeo and Juliet, Ram Leela, Devdas would be some heterosexual stories of Forbidden Love that kind of hand waves around the forbidden part a little bit that I'm familiar with. Devdas (the story I'm most familiar with of the one's stated) and its myriad adaptations is a story about the absolute ways we hold on to class even as it brings about our own downfall.

It's a great pick for a queer adaptation because the reasons why the lovers couldn't be together was so made up and really came down to ONE person (Devdas' mother) who just couldn't let go of class even though everyone else was literally begging for the two to just be together because let me tell you none of you have met a poor little meow meow on the scale of Devdas.

The Sign is bringing the forbidden love between a Naga and Garuda as a parallel of the forbidden love between two men. Homosexuality outside of the legal sphere really does come down to an ideological difference as to what is natural vs not. Homosexuality goes against a natural order of reproduction. And this is true. Two men cannot reproduce, two women cannot reproduce with each other.

The challenge isn't to prove that they can, it's to prove that reproduction isn't the centerpoint of human life, that we have transcended the need for our life to be dictated by this 'natural' order because on principal our societies just aren't built along the paradigm of 'survival of the fittest' where the benchmark of species fitness is its ability to reproduce.

Thai shows including things that have come out of Idol Factory (that produces The Sign) are often socially engaged with LGBT rights within Thailand. Now that gay marriage is legal or on its way to be, I assume a move in the direction of bringing same sex relationships up to the same societal respect as straight relationships would be a natural direction that future screenwriters will go.

The Sign is trying very hard to take the question of homosexuality right to the heart of Thai culture and tradition and talk about it from that lens [this is less conjecture and more paraphrasing what Saint has said about the show in interviews] And I know that you all are capable of meeting a story halfway in respecting its desire to set up the stakes through references of allegorical story telling since y'all have been doing it with Last Twilight and Le Petit Prince. So I don't know even know why I had to make this post but: tl;dr: The stakes of the love between Tharn and Phaya and the forbidden nature of it is set before you even see much of the show just from the fact that Tharn is a Naga and Phaya is a Garuda and as a member of the audience you have to accept that the love between Naga and Garuda is a deviant form of love in Thai culture.

[linkspooky]

Hey, since you said it was fine to send asks, and it will take me a while to comment the recent chapters, I'm taking this as my chance to proclaim my love for Li. Like go off lil' one, act as an abused child lashing out instead of the miniature saint your sibling described.

Jokes aside, I guess she's based on the popular fanon interpretation of Azula as a 'psychopath'? After seeing your post about Lio, I'm really curious about what went in her creation, and can't wait to see how she is in present day and how she will interact with Azula and the Gang. If she's still alive. Especially because I don't really take Azula's visions as gospel truth, but neither Lio's tales so I really want to see if the real Li swings more on one side or the other or if both versions are true at the same time.

Kudos for making such interesting OCs and intricate plots!

Thank you so much for the ask! Your comments gives me so much motivation to write.

I'm glad you like Li, here's some concept art from @oakyvii of the siblings Li and Lio. You are one hundred percent correct that Li is just fandom Azula.

Specifically the tendency of people to try to armchair diagnose Azula with some form of aspd or sociopathy in order to invalidate the abuse she faced as a child and how it played a role in shaping who she is. The popular "Azula sets turtleducks on fire" headcanon that's not substantiated in the show whatsoever.

The way that these bad faith interpretations want to use Azula's mental illness as a sign of some sort of internal wrongness in her. Proof she was always bad from the beginning, because as a child she was a little bit off-putting and demonstrated low empathy.

One of my biggest objectives with this blog is deconstructing "Good Victim / Bad Victim." I believe the origin is a lot of those armchair diagnosis of Azula is that people want to downplay Azula's victimhood in comparison to Zuko's. Instead of making Azula and Zuko both victims who react differently to the same abuse because they are different people, and there's no right way to react to the abuse Azula was just a psychopath all along. People want to make Azula into a mini-ozai who was like that from the beginning.

It sort of runs contrary to the whole idea of Zuko's redemption arc, because instead of Zuko having to work hard to be a better person every day of his life. To make this narrative that Zuko was innately good all along, just misguided and Azula was a sociopath who lit turlteducks on fire at the age of eight. Zu

Good and Bad Victim is bad because it assigns moral values for how people react to trauma, and usually the people who are assigning that value are people who've never been under the same trauma. Therefore it creates this expectation that people have to endure pain with saintlike in patience. If you're a victim the moral thing to do is to shut up and take it, and definitely do not make a fuss for any one else. Good victims can only express their victimhood is socially acceptable and easy to understand waysTM otherwise they're not worthy of human empathy.

This rant is pertinent to Zuko and Azula, because while Zuko does sometimes react to his trauma in ugly and violent ways he's still pretty easy for the audience to empathize with. In the first season he's incredibly incompetent at being evil. Even in season one when he's a straight up antagonist he's part of a charming comedy duo with Uncle Iroh. Zuko can be angry and violent and treat his Uncle and crew poorly, but he never like kicks puppies onscreen or anything. He's marked as the brooding, byronic character, but he's no Heathcliff. He's not even really Spike or Sasuke, he doesn't hurt a beloved character. He never does permanent irreversible harm to a named character. Even Catra from SPOP helps kills Glimmer's mom.

Compare to Azula who in her second episode burns the net underneath Ty Lee tight rope for daring to say no. Ty Lee is someone who both the audience considers a friend and the audience likes, so Azula's treatment of her is incredibly hard to swallow.

Even if you look at the way Zuko is when he's young, in Zuko alone he's made out to be a classic underdog, a soft, put-upon young boy who's desperate to impress his father. Whereas in the same episode people diagnose Azula as a born sociopath because she at eight years old, is already acting like daddy's little child soldier. Nevermind that Zuko, Azula and Ursa all laugh at the burning of Ba Sing Se together. It's easy to empathize with Zuko being a sad, underdog who wants his father's love. It's a bit harder to wrap your head around Azula's disturbing unchildlike behavior even if she's a product of her environment too.

That's actually what I liked about Toya's character in MHA. That Toya is the bad victim of the Todoroki family. That he's incredibly unlikable. He's not a big brother who secretly cares about his younger siblings all along. He's a selfish monster that demands his father's love and will do anything to get it. He was considered the problem maker in his house as a kid, he made a fuss and made things worse even though everyone was telling him to shut up. He yelled at his mother and didn't sympathize with her as much as Shoto did. He was in too much pain to notice everyone else in the house was suffering too.

(That's actually what I like about the Zuko and Azula sibling dynamic too, that Zuko isn't a magically forgiving big brother, that he holds a grudge about Ozai and Azula's treatment, that it's messy on his end even post character development).

This is why I introduced Li into the story, to make a character out of "Fandom Azula" or the way people want to characterize Azula as a sociopath so they don't have to acknowledge her victimhood.

There's one more character Li is based off of, or two more characters really. You could say that Li is based off of fandom Katara. That the fandom has a tendency to simplify women into either wholesome or toxic, nurturing figures or poisonous women. Li is partially based off of that heartbreaking line where Sokka says (I'm paraphrasing) "I can't even remember what my mom's face looks like, I just remember Katara."

Or rather, my idea for Li came from the concept of what if someone was forced into the role of playing mother to take care of the emotional needs of someone else and they got sick of it. What if the emotional labor of having to care for your brother, when you're still a child yourself exhausted you, took everything from you until there was nothing left. Like the darkest possible interpretation for Katara having to step up and parent her brother when their mother died and Bato left for the war.

The reason why Lio is so overprotective and emotinoally dependent on Li, is that Li is practically the one who raised Lio in the place of their missing mother. Li is a parentified child, and all of her problems stem from being a first born daughter expected to be a mother to a brother who's only two years younger than her. Li is also much worse off than Lio since she's illegitimate in court, but she's always had to suppress her own feelings and push her feelings aside in order to take care of her brother's feelings first.

Lio and Li's relationship is a direct mirror for Zuko and Azula's. Both Zuko and Lio don't see their sisters as people. Zuko swings wildly between demonizing his sister as the bad one because she's always had Ozai's favor and he sees Azula as an extension of Ozai's abuse and also putting her on a pedestal for her talent and envying her for it. Whereas Lio pedestalizes their sister as well, by making her out to be a perfect saint. Lio seems to love their sister more, but neither of them seem to see their sisters as fully realized human beings separate from themselves. Lio doesn't even mention Li's name when they're ranting at Zuko, they just call Li "my sister" because that's all they see Li as. An extension of themself.

Li is based off of one more character and that's Tsumiki Fushiguro from Jujutsu Kaisen. If you haven't read Tsumiki is the big sister of one of the main characters. Despite protecting her being Megumi Fushiguro's main motivation, she literally never appears onscreen once, she only ever appears in her brother's flashbacks, and then is brutally butchered by the main villain and fridged for Megumi's character development.

I thought Tsumiki was a missed opportunity because we never got to learn who she was. Megumi put her on such a massive pedestal as his ideal of what a good person was, the person he lived to protect, but in the end she was just a sleeping beauty figure. It didn't matter who she was as a person to Megumi, she just needed to lay there in bed and be helpless so Megumi could continue to play fairytale knight.

I thought about what kind of effect would having your own brother put you on such a big pedestal have on you? What would Tsumiki think about her brother objectifying her? About her brother making the entire reason for his existence protecting her, but not really caring about who she is as a person?

So I decided it would be interesting if Tsumiki wasn't actually that good of a person at all. She never was, that was just Megumi's projection of her. What if he jsut wanted to make her into some like Madonna-like figure, or some pure princess in need of protecting? What if Tsumiki strangled cats when no one was looking? How lonely would it be for Tsumiki if she knew her brother loved her very deeply but the person he loved, wasn't her?

That's basically where the original concept of Li came from. That eventually morphed into making Li into Fandom Azula. She sets turtleducks on fire and strangles cats when nobody's looking. Not only is she a joke about fandom Azula, but she also in story foils Azula by being the monster that everyone thinks Azula is.

Azula tries so hard to deny her own humanity, but Li is just that way naturally. Azula can't go all the way into making herself a weapon, because she isn't Li. She's torn up and broken on the inside because she does feel guilt and know on some level she was wrong. She probably wouldn't have had her mental breakdown if she wasn't capable of feeling guilt like she is. Ursa in confronting Azula in the mirror also points out Azula knows that the way she treated Mai and Ty Lee by trying to control them with fear was wrong, Azula just wont' admit it.

Other people see Azula as Li. Azula tries to be cold and unfeeling like Li, but when faced with the real deal she finds Li to be incredibly disturbing. o the point where eight year old Azula, who was a little bully and good at getting her friends and her brother to do anything she wanted doesn't know what to do with Li. Li's just too offputting to her once she reveals her true nature, she's an unfeeling, dead, thing and Azula doesn't want to be like that.

So yes, Li is fandom Azula. She's just genuinely a sociopath. Now the challenge is to make you guys like her even if she's just a flat sociopath, and I hope I succeed!

[linkemon]

Scaramouche (selfship)

Selfship was made for AgusiaSzczygiel on Wattpad in celebration of her birthday ^^ Actually, it's probably worth noting that it's more Wanderer than Scaramouche from the beginning of the game.

You can check my Masterlists both in English and Polish here. Consider supporting me on Ko-fi. You can also check out my commissions if you’re interested. Other selfships can be found here.

↣ He found out about your birthday in advance from Nahida. She mentioned it casually (the truth is that she totally planned it, she's not the goddess of wisdom for nothing). Scaramouche has mixed feelings about the concept of birthdays and doesn't really care about them but you're a completely different option. Especially since he found out that your friends from Sumeru take them very seriously.

↣ He had many ideas in mind. Starting with a birthday cake (he had it in the back of his mind that you don't have a sweet tooth), through other material gifts. Finally, he decided that he would like to prepare something unusual. That's why Scaramouche decided that he wanted to show you the Aranaras. He knew that you had only heard stories about them. You like animals and although it's not quite the same, he found it an interesting substitute. He asked Nahida to help you see them in reality and not in dreams, at least for that one day, which she gladly did.

↣ Scaramouche was quite pleased with the idea. Especially when he saw the childlike joy in your eyes. Seeing you among the small, green creatures with big hearts made him think that in that aspect you were just like them. Too good for this nasty and unfair world. He didn't say it out loud though. Instead, he grabbed your hand, even though he rarely initiated physical contact. Just don't comment on that out loud or you'll embarrass him!

↣ On your way back to Sumeru City, you were met with rain. He took off his wide-brimmed hat and shoved it on your head. You wanted to protest but in the loud pouring rain, he growled that he knew how easily you caught a cold, so you better keep your hat on before it could fly away with the wind.

↣ You met Mini Durin in the city. Nahida promised to look after him but he ran away from her. Apparently he was incredibly interested in your birthday. Despite not really understanding the concept, he sang: Happy Birthday to You! very enthusiastically, which he learned especially for this day. He also let it slip that Scaramouche had been considering all the possibilities for your celebration for a very long time. The interested party denied it on the spot, of course. Under your curious gaze, he softened a bit and said that maybe he had spent a bit more time on it than he should have (but only a bit, don't think he's trying too hard or anything!).

↣ You thought the meeting would be the only gift but when you got back, you found a package under your door. It was wrapped in plain paper and tied with string (unfortunately, Scara doesn't wrap presents as well as you do and he's too proud to ask anyone for help). Inside, you found a beautiful writing set. An ornate notebook and a set of quills with an elegant inkwell. Next to it, a short but meaningful note: "Fit your entire novel here." Scaramouche knows perfectly well that you like to write and he decided that this way he could help you overcome any writer's block. He read in the books belonging to the Akademiya about how the environment affects it and that's why he decided to give you something that would be in it and motivate you.

↣ Scara is better at expressing his feelings through actions than through words. That's why he didn't give you a effusive birthday wish or buy you a giant birthday card like your friends from Sumeru. Instead, he chose to express everything through your trip together. He organized it with you in mind and he hopes you enjoyed it.

↣ Before he left you after a day full of excitement, you managed to spend some time together under the stars. The night sky was shining with a million dots. When you saw a falling star, he really wanted to tell you that it was just a giant rock but in the end he pursed his lips. Make a wish. This one time, he won't ruin your fun.

↣ Scaramouche has only one request. When his birthday comes, despite your big heart, take him somewhere far away from people. Those students he's dealing with are going to get on his nerves. You're the only exception...