#fr this is so fucking good dude

[saragrosie]

As promised, incredibly stupid s4-5 drawings

[just-null]

are you oka- oh.

[chirpsythismorning]

S5 opener REAL

[skrunksthatwunk]

kinda thinking about how the women who serve as maternal figures/raise kids in yyh are never quite ready for it. genkai's an arguable exception, but like.. atsuko had yusuke at 15, shizuru's basically in charge of kazuma full time in her early 20s/late teens (depending on version) with very very absent parents, and even shiori is given a kid she wasn't expecting, in the form of an old, old demon rather than like. a regular, blank slate ass human baby. and although shiori seems to do quite well with kurama, kurama can never be honest with shiori about who he is, or much of what he's seen. if he was, it'd probably make things far more complicated and overwhelming. atsuko, no matter how much she cares for yusuke, Could Not Have Been and thus wasn't ready to have him at 15. her attempts to make the most of that situation have had middling success at best. shizuru has also been placed into a parental role. we don't really know how long she's been raising kuwabara, but that's.. probably still parentification anyway. she shouldn't have to do that, and she shouldn't have to do that so young. and i think some of her coarseness with kuwa is out of frustration with her own inexperience + inadequacy + uncertainty, his not cooperating, and their parents for putting this on her in the first place. the ones who know the full extent of their situation grow desperate and it squeaks out in unpleasant ways, and the one who seems unbothered by it is the only one who has no idea that she's in way over her head. and i mean. ok. gonna preface this by saying keiko is NOT yusuke's mom in any sense of the word. but she does take care of him in a way atsuko couldn't manage to. she's often looking after him and cleaning up after his messes and stuff. she takes him on as a responsibility, and that is, in a way, a caretaker role. not to say that it SHOULD be her responsibility, but it's how she ends up being.

and when the stress of trying to make someone take care of themselves or be kind or good or Whatever goes awry, again, the violence and arguing and distance and ugliness of caring for someone reveals itself.

and i wonder about that. for a series dedicated to physical fighting as a form of communication, what does it say that this extends to the complicated, quietly desperate situations of so many of the women/girls it depicts, whom our more central characters were shaped and raised by?

hell, even hiei touches on this, because hina loved hiei, but there was no way she was prepared for him, obviously, nor for the pain of losing him. rui (whom i also see as a sort of caretaker figure to hiei, inasmuch as either of them were caretakers) literally throws him off a cliff because she couldn't face down the village elders, and out of some mixture of care for hina and, likely, fear for her own survival. and the guilt and pain of that killed hina and deeply wounded rui.

it's like motherhood, this thing that's so often treated as sacred and beautiful, is a kind of stitched up, painful, eggshell-walking thing that hurts parent and child and it's just. oughh

[tradingjack]

These were the concept pages I drew for my original writer in the @vashwoodbigbang event! Unfortunately they have disappeared on me 😅 and also bc god hates me I guess, the day I was supposed to post these, yesterday, saw me dealing with first a wifi outage and then a whole electricity outage so. That was fun lmao

Details about the drawings below since. I don't know if my writer will ever post the story, unfortunately 😔

So this was originally coined as a stardust au! I believe it was primarily based on the movie that came out in the 2000s (?), though I believe my writer was familiar with both the movie and the book it was based on. Honestly, it doesn't pull much at all from the story itself, just the general concepts of stars.

In this version, Vash is a star, and he decides to try and find his long-lost siblings (Knives and Tessla). In his search, he comes across a planet he hasn't visited before, and while he's descending to it, he's shot down by something mysterious that causes him rather permanent injury (not new; I believe he'd already lost his arm previously and he has all his scarring from travels to previous planets, this specific technology is just new to him).

He manages to crawl some distance from the resulting crater and is rescued by the odd pair of anthropologist Milly and journalist Meryl, who are tracking fallen stars on their planet in order to research them. Vash is horrified to learn that stars on this planet are rather brutally searched for and used for their power, so he tries his best to keep his real identity as a star secret.

In the next town, he learns about Star Cultists, who are the leading experts on stars. Our dear Wolfwood is one of them, and though he's a priest under the head of Chapel, he seems pretty jaded about the whole thing. He also spends some time poking fun at their visitor Vash when he stumbles on the doorstep of the church.

Unbeknownst to all, Chapel is the one who shot Vash down, and he suspects Vash is his target. When Vash, Milly, and Meryl skip town, Wolfwood is ordered to tag along with them against his will, and he begrudgingly forces himself into the group with his usual grace lol.

Through some shenanigans, including an interesting fight with Livio/Razlo who is a martyr (a human who ate at least part of a star and became consumed by it), the group all grows closer to each other. Naturally, Wolfwood and Vash hit it off with their usual ideology clashing and homoerotic team fighting. The tension comes to a head when both of the boys are drunk and attempting to stumble somewhere after getting kicked out of the bar, and with the help of liquid courage, Wolfwood admits to Vash that he's what's known as a "Star Eater:" a human that has consumed part of a star, and by some genetic luck, isn't consumed by it and instead gains some superhuman abilities so long as the magical tattoo (i forget what it's called off the top of my head fuck) that forms around the presenting star isn't broken.

Vash is understandably horrified. Wolfwood is confused by Vash's rejection bc he isn't aware Vash is a star; he's under the impression Vash is just some very talented guy Chapel really wants to feed a star shard in the hopes he becomes part of their superhuman cult.

Vash sobers up and manages to drag a very drunk and eepy Wolfwood to their hotel.

The next day is the turning point; the star cultists, including Chapel, catch up to them and confront Vash. Wolfwood has to learn very quickly that he'd been Wrong and Vash, in his panic, flies to where it feels most safe; the city's Star (storage area?? Idk). He ends up cornered there and, in his panic, accidentally goes nuclear trying to escape and blows up half the city in a column of flame. While he's barreling across the desert in an attempt to get away, he's trapped by a net the star cultists set up, made of the same shit used to shoot him down at the start, and he can't escape it on his own.

Luckily he's found by Wolfwood first, who's decided he owes it to Vash to try and fix his fuck up, and using his superhuman healing, he manages to free Vash. Both are exhausted and ultimately rescued by LR, who's been tailing them.

Tbh my memory's kinda foggy... my writer only managed to share up to that first LR fight, so I don't remember exactly what's supposed to happen between here and the fight at the orphanage?? I remember Vash somehow finds out what happened to his siblings (a hella long time ago, Tessla was consumed by the people of the planet and Knives, in his rage, fuckin just annihilated everything, turning it into a desert planet, and has been laying dormant for the most part since then) and also we learn that martyrs gain better control of themselves, and the crystal growth consuming them stops, when in proximity to enough additional star power. Vash, as a star himself, allows LR to easily think as they did before they ate a star shard when in close enough proximity.

Anyway, fight for the orphanage, Vash shows up in time to see Wolfwood getting his shit rocked and his magical tattoo (I'm so annoyed I can't remember what it's called. My mind is supplying sharingan and i know that aint it) shattered by Chapel, who accomplishes this by running Wolfwood through with his cane. Vash, believing Wolfwood's dead (bc like. Lmao it's pretty hard to live getting impaled, like, fully), loses his temper and basically obliterates Chapel. He moves on from Wolfwood's body to try and dismantle the entire Star church so Wolfwood's orphanage can stay safe. In this process, he confronts a Doctor Conrad, who was behind the whole thing, the remains of Tessla, and somehow Knives?? I think Knives, sensing Vash's anguish, just tried to fuckin nuke everyone, and Vash stops that. I feel like Knives dies in this process somehow... I think it was by saving Vash from something Conrad made??

By the end of it, Vash is wounded and exhausted, and ends up being saved by Milly and Meryl, I think.

When he recovers, it's to find he's lost his ability to leave the planet; while still functionally a star, his power has greatly diminished, his hair is black, and he can't even hide his wings anymore. Last I knew, my writer was actually merciful and let Wolfwood live! Albeit as a martyr (thus the wolf form with the uncontrolled star shard bursting out of the hole in his chest you can see on Wolfwood's page lol). Luckily he's got Vash around, so he gets to keep his mind, if not his human form.

With Knives dead and the star cultists mostly dispersed and no longer able to fuck with the planet, the story ends with our characters getting to experience rainfall on the planet for the first time in centuries.

.......

I like the story :P I imagine it'd be a lot better written out in actual novel form by the person who'd actually thought it up than my shitass, too-long summary lol.

Honestly my writer was communicating up until like, a month ago?? And then they just.... disappeared :/ which is weird bc I checked with my mod for this event (shout out to mod sana, @pushclouds, you're an amazing mod and I appreciate the heck out of you) and they submitted literally every check-in. Honestly I'm more worried for them than anything, if anyone knows what happened to @lohikaar I'd appreciate anything you can tell me. I hope they'll publish this story whenever they can, I'd still love to read it in its entirety.

Additional shout-out to @priellan for beta-ing the story they shared with us, and for overall being a super supportive team member :D

Also they did assign me a pinch hitter writer since we have no idea wtf happened to my original writer, so I'll be doing more drawings :D priellan agreed to beta for them too, which I'm super happy about! And thanks again to mod sana for your hard work and arranging that so quickly!

An admittedly strange first big bang experience, but I don't think it was overall bad, and I'm excited to work on more stuff with my new writer :D if you read this far goddamn. Thanks lol. See you again for sure on January 1st! (I'll try to post other shit between then and now hopefully)

[essektheylyss]

I am feeling great hearing that Keyleth's intel is reporting that Rexxentrum sounds like it's about to devolve into chaos with Dwendal evidently on death's door and the Assembly is about to eat itself from the inside following the Vanguard's movement, considering I was presuming that was going to be some significant fallout, but also, rip Caleb and his virtuous idealism for the Empire lmao.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

assorted thoughts 1/when sklonda mentioned getting drinks with sandra lynn now and then I straight up cheered I was so scared for her social life being so overworked 2/straight up have no judgement on the whole ratgrinder situation on account of being a whole grown man. Im not getting into beef with fictional teenagers let them sort that out among themselves 3/sprak levefre

[currymanganese]

I am blessed to be sheltered enough that Mikey and Richie talking Claire up to Carmy is easily one of the more oafish conversations I've heard in my short life, not the most oafish mind you, that distinction belongs to some real men I've heard, but damn! It's certainly up there...I'm captioning that scene for one of my Sydcarmy edits that's up on YouTube right now and the secondhand embarrassment crazy. 🥴

[ohitslen]

Eh idk man just mulling over the thought that it’s super awesome to think of Vash as this little silly guy who is always so fucking pissed at Wolfwood ;or just people generally but I’m using Wolfwood for this one because it’s funny to me personally.

Wolfwood is the most vocal of the two in that regard, about being pissed off at Vash a lot of the time, nobody wonders about it. But think about this, one day Wolfwood says something or does something (not about killing) that Vash so heavily disagrees with and he looks so done.

Not done as in augh this conversation again, but pissed as in repressed anger, as in you should be thankful I don’t vouch for violence as my first option.

And it feels so oppressing, Wolfwood genuinely wonders if someone is out there wanting to kill them, but it’s just Vash doing a poor attempt of regulating his emotions while looking at WWs back with immense murderous intent

[johnslittlespoon]

making a bucky edit to 'hot to go!' by chappell roan i feel sooo normal about how much modern au john would ADORE her he would be such a girlypop enjoyer lmfaooooo

[s1ithers]

wish i knew the forgotten realms lore better...how am i meant to make my little ocs in this state of ignorance

[just-null]

noritoshi stansism so true

i love every character in jjk equally, Noritoshi (JR) and not Noritoshis! idk what youre goin on abt

[cashweasel]

They make running away from the paparazzi look so sexy 🥴

( @sysba 🥰)

[lilbittymonster]

So what’s Kitali’s plan to force Aymeric on this vacation? I know she does succeed but I’m SUPER curious to know how she’ll convince him to go.

It's not so much force as much reminding him that he took a raincheck on adventuring with her that he's never cashed in on lmao. A whole lot of "come see the world outside of Alliance meetings and battlefields with me".

I'm still working on hammering the caster role quests into a narratively cohesive story but without giving too much away I have it leave off with Kitali asking him the same question he asked her at that dinner date so many years ago: now that this is all over, what do you want for yourself?

Aymeric has had the problem of having spent so many years tied to his office and working towards a goal of a Better Ishgard For The Future that he has largely forgotten how to separate himself from his work. And Kitali has definitely helped with that, though it's like putting bandaids on arterial wound. She takes him to Sohr Khai with her and encourages him to take painting back up and they have a very firm rule of no titles in the house. But it often isn't enough since she still has Scion business to take care of and he is still both Lord Commander and Lord Speaker and it's very easy for them both to slip back into old habits when they aren't around each other.

And now that the world isn't ending and Ishgard isn't under threat of blasphemies anymore and there is effort on both sides of the aisle to mend relations with the Halonic Church, Kitali is getting more and more pushy about him taking his many many many many accrued vacation days that he has not used and she will get Lucia and Handeloup to count them to the number if she has to. There are enough people that he can divide his responsibilities to that a vacation isn't going to leave Ishgard helpless.

And it will do him good to be a wide eyed bushy tailed greenhorn to adventuring with Kitali leading him by the hand and Estinien having a headstart on life outside Ishgard to guide him. He deserves to have fruity drinks on a beach and sunburn so fucking bad because gods know when the last time he saw this much sun was. There's so many freckles and highlights he never knew he had and Kitali will count every one of them.

I'm so extremely hype to release him into a dungeon to do some Big Paladin Damage. A party can be a blue DPS and two red tanks and the two teenagers they are collectively chaperoning.

[luzisahomosexual]

Am I the only one who thought Saltburn was no where near as bad as ppl say??

Went in expecting to get traumatised cos everyone was saying it was really disturbing but the most disturbing part was the surprise dick at the end😭 and when he fucked the grave ig…

But stillll I’m kinda disappointed😭 like it was a good movie I just wanted to be more traumatised by it :(

[sucresanguine]

maybe one day we'll have trans spaces that don't repackage and heavily reinforce the same body standards that make cis people feel like shit about themselves