#gently featuring

[thebarefootking]

I know I just sent you an ask about despe/hiromu, but if you're still taking requests can I get your thoughts on douki too? I too adore this little gremlin man, and I adore the way you write about wrestling.

I have been beating my head against the wall for DAYS, trying to figure out how to answer this ask. I got so stressed out over my own inequality to the task that I had an unsatisfactory dream about meeting Douki (in full ring gear) on public transportation, where we had a painfully awkward and brief social encounter. None of this is your fault, nonny. I appreciate being made to think. Douki is just fucking confusing, I have lots of feelings about him, he's my Favorite of Favorites, and I genuinely just don't know what to write or where to start. I'm going to give it a solid try, though. Please forgive my tardiness, and enjoy these three songs that inevitably give me Douki feels.

----------------------------------- Sometimes in life, there is no sensible avenue to your destination. Sometimes, the most reasonable route between point A and point B is a freefall. Although I am no longer practicing, I spent my entire childhood and youth in an environment that prioritised, over and above everything else, religious faith and the mystical experience thereof. I am also in possession of a brain with both bipolar and adhd. These facts combine to form a person deeply prone to perceiving meaning, intention, and importance in places where others do not -- and, sometimes, to acting impulsively on these perceptions. Is it any surprise that such a person would find resonance in a character like Douki? Douki, who attests that everything has meaning? Douki, who responded to rejection by hauling ass to a different continent, with no prospects, no money, and no ability to speak the local language. Douki, who returned to Japan with the intention of kicking Jun Kasai's ass -- by showing up to a deathmatch entirely unarmed, even his teeth covered by his mask. Douki, with the anger of a martyr and the patience of a thief. Until suddenly... that's not quite right at all. Douki, whose greatest wrestling strength is -- not his unique and experimental moveset, not his stylised presentation, not even his commitment, but -- his absolute gameness. His readiness to, at the drop of a hat (even, I have my suspicions from watching him closely, when he is working injured -- though I wish he had both the ability and willingness to not fucking do that; this Moose's heart can't take that shit), to 'yes-and' the hell out of whatever he is given.

Oh? You beefed it on your finisher? You're gonna do something batshit off the top rope to distract everyone? Sure, I'll catch you with my smaller, wobbling, clearly injured body which is currently incapable of performing even my most familiar moves with any amount of grace. We'll make it look cool as hell! Nobody will even notice that you botched the most important move of the match -- and if they do, now they can't say a fucking word about it without sounding like an asshole. Oh? My old training buddy from Mexico just returned from his second major injury in three years? He needs to look badass to prove he's recovered and like his old self for now so that people question it less when he gradually changes his style to something that will keep him in the business longer? Bet. We know each other in the ring like butter knows toast. We can both bring it. ... 'Barricade'? What's that? And so on. Every damn time. If you give him something to work with, he will spin it into gold. This has the unfortunate downside of making his matches a little hit-or-miss; if his chemistry with his opponent or partner is bad or if they give him little to work with, he frequently fails to deliver -- creativity and impulsivity are traits of his, but pure initiative in the ring is something he seems to struggle with, at times (though I note he's getting better, and some of this deficit is apparent only, and due to questionable booking). (Jesus, that sentence got away from me.) Of course Douki appeals to me. He has an unassailable faith. Perhaps it's Minoru Suzuki's 'faith in the future' he once ascribed to the man who would become El Desperado -- perhaps something more enigmatic. I have a hard time sussing out exactly what is going on in Douki's head at any given moment, and he often does things that surprise me, in a way that someone like Despe usually does not. (Example: 07/01/2023 in CMLL when Douki let his teammate Zandokan Jr. shake him around by the skull, and his response appeared to be utter delight. What even was that? I think Zando's the best thing since sliced bread, and even I'd probably be pretty damn unsettled if he grabbed me from behind by the cranium and started shaking. And afaik, that was their first time working together. Fucking weird vibes that whole match.) (I need more of that shit, actually.) Douki's a hard read for me in general, so I'm not confident in my assessment, on this one. But it feels like he has faith in the process. Probably not in the future, maybe not in himself, and certainly not in the system. He has faith in the process of life, in the journey, in the getting-there. And that's why there's no one better at throwing himself into a freefall when necessary than Douki. He knows how to build his wings on the way down, and he's done it a thousand times before. (Tbh, I think Hiromu learned more than just the physics of the Douki Bomb from him. I think he might have gleaned enough of the philosophy to greatly ease his path.)

[spaciebabie]

this picture isnt real its all happening in twilights head and she's listening ta this as she's having her bi horse fantasies

un blurred below the cut as well as the lineart with flats cuz i want ta show it off sue me

edit: ignore that the images changed slightly i noticed a shading error i missed and it was bothering me 💀

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

what would megumi’s life have been if he was actually raised by the zenin from day one? like either gojo lost the custody battle or they were able to scoop him up before gojo ever reached them. i doubt they would want to keep tsumiki with them so she’s not there for little baby megs.

i think it would be really cool to see a zenin raised megumi interacting with his fellow classmates when he attends the school, not to mention the contrast between him and gojo. like on paper they both should have gotten the same treatment-being pampered and spoiled rotten but we also know that the zenin think that hurting little kids makes them stronger so it would be super interesting to see megumi realise that the stuff that happened to him wasn’t normal and for gojo to have a guilt trip bc he wasn’t able to help megumi when he needed someone to help him the most.

So I have a fanfic that I’ve half written (no idea if I’ll ever finish it—I’d love to, it’s just hard to find the time) about EXACTLY THAT that I talked about in this post for an ask game.

That being said, that entire thing happens from Tsumiki’s perspective, and I agree with you—I don’t think the Zenin would have ever actually taken her too. They don’t want her. She’s not Zenin. She’s not a sorcerer. They only bought Megumi. For the most part, Megumi is absent from that post, and you asked about Megumi. So this is what I think would happen on Megumi's side of that post I linked.

It comes down to two things:

1. He is never, ever happy with the Zenin.

2. He never lets go of his sister.

Megumi’s old enough to remember Tsumiki when the Zenin take him away. He's old enough to love her. And I think that Megumi loves very quietly, but he also loves very violently. He wouldn't let his sister hold his hand on the walk to school, but he would sacrifice himself for her future.

I think the Zenin took him from his sister, and I think he kicked and screamed and wasn't strong enough. I think they thought he would forget her eventually.

And then I think he bit most of the Zenin Clan.

At the end of the day, what Megumi wanted was the one thing the Zenin were not willing to give him. They were never like the Gojo clan, they were never going to pamper him, but there are a great many things in this world that they would give the Ten Shadows finally returned to them. But they would not give him a non-sorcerer, non-Zenin sister who would only be a weakness to him. They refused to let him have any contact with his sister, and that was the source of a lot of what soured.

Any Megumi that was taken in by the Zenin would have been taken in to Naobito's household directly. He would be announced as the one who finally inherited their most cherished technique, and he would be declared heir, and the Zenin would call him beloved for it.

They would keep him in a room that was large and empty and almost always dark, and he wouldn't be allowed to decide when he slept or woke, and the door would always be locked from the outside. They would give him a wardrobe of expensive clothes that he hated, and he would never get to pick which of them he wore.

Megumi would hate them. He would hate all of them.

He's just not the type to be comfortable with or enjoy the adoration of others--especially when it's not backed up by genuine love. Megumi is someone who very much values sincerity and depth to emotion--it's one of the reasons why he seems to respect Yuuji so much. Yuuji is a good person who follows through with what he says. He's not just going to talk about wanting to save people--he's there making the sacrifices as he does it.

The Zenin do not actually love him. And he knows it. He's experienced love before, and this isn't it.

They love the idea of him. The fantasy of him that lives in their heads. He has no interest in being their little god prince to contend with the Gojo's own. He knows who he is, and it's not this. He wants to go home. He wants to find his sister again. He doesn't want to do this anymore.

And I think that's a feeling Megumi never escape: he just didn't want to do this anymore.

Megumi would feel like a bug pinned beneath glass in the Zenin compound. He would constantly have people managing him--when he ate, what he ate, what he wore, when he slept, when he woke, when he trained, what he did. Having to become a jujutsu sorcerer signified an inherent loss of control, but it's nothing compared to the sheer objectification that he goes through when the Zenin have exclusive control over him.

He has no power of what clothes he wears. How his hair is styled. His schedule, his diet, the people he speaks too--he's suffocating and the Zenin are just increasing pressure on him.

I don't think Gojo ever thought that would be Megumi's life.

We’re gonna just have this imagining exist in the same world as the Tsumiki centric fic described in the linked post, and in that, the reason why Gojo never took him in was because he didn’t know Megumi had a sister. He showed up, saw the divine dogs, realized Megumi had the Ten Shadows, and decided he couldn’t do this. He was a mess. He was grieving Suguru and Haibara. Megumi looked just like the man who killed Riko, and apparently inherited the fucking Ten Shadows of all the goddamn things. The Zenin would lose their shit, and Gojo didn’t have the energy to fight and told himself he didn’t need to, because if Megumi was the Ten Shadows he’d be cared for like a prince with the Zenin. He turned around and left and spent the rest of his life with Megumi in the back of his mind, always nagging him with whether he made the right decision. It wasn’t until Maki got there and made a few worrisome references to Megumi's standard of living that he started to really worry that he had made the wrong one, and it wasn't until he found out about Tsumiki that he knew it was the wrong decision.

It's like this: The Zenin hurt Megumi in every world.

It would be bad no matter what, but it really gets bad because Megumi refuses to stop trying to get back to Tsumiki. She's his sister. They didn't have anyone or anything in this world, but they had each other, and he couldn't let these people just take her away. He’s feral about it. He refuses to fit the mold they keep trying to cram him in. He’s trying to scale the walls to escape. He’s increasingly desperate and angry and the Zenin are getting more and more frustrated the longer he fights them. He’s the heir to the clan, and he can’t stop trying to leave it to get back to some random girl who isn’t his real sister and isn’t someone they’ll ever allow him to have.

It gets bad.

They put him under increasingly strict levels of control. He’s constantly being trained, which means he's constantly being hurt. He’s not allowed to speak to anyone without the clan head’s approval. He is under absolutely constant guard after he manages to get over the wall and halfway to his old neighborhood before they catch him again. Tsumiki’s name is not allowed to be said aloud, or his old name. He forgets his name used to be Fushiguro, but he doesn’t forget Tsumiki. He doesn’t let himself.

I think it escalates until it hits a breaking point. Megumi becomes increasingly self-destructive and non-responsive to everything they try. They push him to extremes that start risking permanent damage.

I think Megumi would try to hurt himself, eventually.

He wouldn't be in his right mind. He's in the most shit situation possible. He's undergoing pretty severe abuse. He'd be at the end of his rope from the lack of control over his own life, and he'd be spiteful as hell towards the Zenin. And the only thing he has to hurt them with is himself.

As a character, Megumi has always considered his own sacrifice as an acceptable means to the end of getting back at someone. Mahoraga, intrinsically, requires him killing himself as a way of killing someone else. He'd hurt himself if it was the only way he had of hurting them.

Naobito would cover it up. He'd never, ever want the rest of the clan to find out that it happened. It was already bad enough that Megumi openly hated them--he couldn't have the Zenin seeing any vulnerability in what was meant to be their most powerful member. He'd put Megumi in total lockdown until he could make it all go away.

Then they'd make a deal.

A binding vow. Megumi could never purposefully hurt himself again. He could never again try to leverage his own safety against the clan.

And in exchange, Tsumiki would be taken care of.

The last time Megumi saw his sister, she was on a sinking ship. They were running out of food, money, options--he doesn't know if she even has food anymore. He doesn't know if she lost the apartment or if there's still running water.

They're not letting him see her. But they are letting him take care of her. He can sacrifice another piece of control over himself, and she'll never have to worry about money again. They'll pay for her housing, her food, her education, for her every desire for as long as she lives. The trust the Zenin set up for her will be a generous one, and it will be managed meticulously by a trustee who can make sure she'll be provided for until she's old and grey. And Naobito will vow to never hurt her or send someone else to hurt her. She'll be safe. She'll be taken care of.

Megumi makes the deal.

In the end, the deal's what sort of breaks him.

Because he doesn't promise to stop looking for her, but the Zenin manage to make it a part of the terms anyway. When they approach Tsumiki's mother with the offer to be her family's beneficiary, they include a requirement that Tsumiki be moved to another city entirely with no forwarding address given. She needs to be somewhere that Megumi can never find her again.

The Zenin keep the old apartment. They pay the rent every month. And the next time Megumi manages to make it off compound, they let him make it all the way there before dragging him home. They let him see the empty apartment with all its empty rooms.

Naobito wants him to know that Tsumiki's gone. He wants him to know that he'll never find her again.

He tries to run a few more times after that, but he never makes it very far. He doesn't have anywhere to go.

In the linked post, Megumi finds Tsumiki, just once. She's on a class trip. He's on one of his very few and far between allowed excursions off the compound grounds, and he sees her in the crowd and recognizes her, and he ducks away from his escort before anyone can stop him.

She remembers him. He didn't think she would do that.

She tries to save him. He didn't think she would do that either.

She still loves him. And he was always too afraid to hope she would do that.

It goes the same way it did the first time. There's a car, and the Zenin shove him in it. She's on the outside, and he's trapped within, and he wishes she didn't scream so loudly when it happens. The sound never seems to leave his dreams.

His sister still loves him. Naoya hits him in the back of the head. He wakes up, and it was like she was never there at all.

But they hit him harder, after. Like they're trying to beat the memory of her out of him. He has even less freedom, when he already had next to none at all.

But he still has a sister. He has a place to go that isn't here. He just has to figure out where that is.

He wouldn't really have anyone in the Zenin clan. Most people are just... weird about him. Naoya's violently abusive. Naobito's weird and violently abusive. Everyone wants him to be someone he's not.

Maki would be his favorite.

He doesn't care about whether she's got cursed energy--his sister didn't have any. And she's obviously strong. She doesn't treat him like a divine blessing or try to force him to act a certain way. I think they would have genuinely liked each other, but kept each other at a distance. They're both trapped in an abusive situation and keep themselves safe by keeping everyone else at arm's length.

He would have been happy to see her get out, though. He would have told her that she could have his spot as heir or head or whatever when she came back if she wanted it. She would have told him that if he ever got out... well, fuck it. They could be something then. Family. Whatever the fuck they weren't allowed to be here.

She would have told him she's sorry, and she would have meant it. The only one she she regretted more than Megumi was Maki. He would have told her not to be, that if she dared to be sorry for getting out that he would never forgive her, and he would have meant that too.

I think his relationship with his own techinque would be very different in a world where the Zenin raised him. In canon, his issue is that he doesn't view himself as someone who could be powerful or win in the long run, but in this world, all he ever hears is how powerful he is. Pride of the fucking Zenin. The most powerful of them in centuries. Meant to rival Gojo fucking Satoru himself.

I think his real issue would be controlling it.

His technique would be a source of negative associations for him. It's the reason why the Zenin took him away. Most of his interactions with it have involved getting beaten and hurt by either his family or a high-level curse they shoved him in front of. I think he'd have a lot more firepower under his belt than at the start of canon, but he'd have less of a fine tuned control over it.

He lost control over his own life because of his shadows. It think that would manifest in struggling to control his own shikigami at times. he's not as in-sync with them as he is in canon.

Eventually, he'd go to Jujutsu High. He would be the only one in the first year class at the beginning, just like in canon. And he'd finally meet Gojo Satoru, the man he's supposed to topple.

He looks at Megumi really goddamn weird.

He's... enthusiastic. About. Teaching. He guesses. And constantly asking prying questions about the Zenin, but not in the sort of way he'd expect from a rival. In the sort of way he'd expect from someone concerned about him. Which is stupid. And annoying. And weird. He keeps a distance from everyone. They've all heard about the Zenin clan heir, and he has no interest in having to fit or break whatever mold they've already cast him in. He's better off on his own.

Maki's there. She's cordial where other people can see it, and in private, she takes care of him in a way that's terrifyingly close to familial. He's not sure if he likes it. He's not Mai, and she's not Tsumiki, and they both want someone they can't have.

She isn't sorry she left. She is sorry she left him. He can hate her for it all he goddamn pleases.

Of course, if this is in the same world as the linked post, Megumi finds Tsumiki again. He finds her in Sendai.

He gets to keep her, this time.

Gojo Satoru, of all the goddamn people, intervenes and becomes his sister's benefactor. It's super fucking weird. He won't stop looking at Megumi strangely. He won't stop insisting that he didn't know he had a sister, like that matters.

That would sort of be the first time in a long time that life actually gets better for Megumi.

I think he would ask to go by Fushiguro again, once he asks Tsumiki what his name used to be. He'd ask her if she minded it, him taking the name again, and he'd ask the rest of the school to call him Fushiguro instead of Zenin.

Predictably enough, Naobito loses his shit when he finds out, but it's not nearly as big of a pain in the ass as he thinks it is? Because Gojo intervenes.

Gojo keeps intervening.

It drives Megumi nuts, because if anyone was supposed to hate him, it was this guy. If anyone was supposed to be against him, it was this guy. This is the guy he was supposed to rival. This is the guy who killed his shitheel bio dad.

Gojo's just... good to him. He keeps him safe. He keeps him safe from his own goddamn family, and that's--no one's ever done that. No one's ever protected him from the Zenin.

The Zenin try to remove him from the Tokyo campus and move him to Kyoto the second they find out Tsumiki's there, and Gojo just... says no. It causes an uproar, and he doesn't fucking budge. It's treading dangerously close to him kidnapping the Zenin clan heir, his refusal to let them remove him from the Tokyo campus, and he doesn't care about whatever problems it causes him.

Megumi's his student. He doesn't want to leave. So Gojo won't let them take him.

He personally goes to Kyoto and collects him, the one time the Zenin force him into a car and move him when Gojo's off on a mission. He tells the higher ups to get fucked. He changes Megumi's student I.D. to read Fushiguro, and he causes problems for Yaga and the assistants until they start calling him Fushiguro as well.

Megumi's different with the other students once his sister is there.

He's more connected with them. He becomes best friends with Kugisaki and Itadori. He gets closer with the second years. He's visibly happier, and it sort of casts in sharp contrast how unhappy he was before this.

And Gojo? Gojo's so goddamn sorry. He didn't know megumi had a sister.

The thing is that now that both Tsumiki and Megumi are on campus, it sort of haunts Gojo with what could have been. They're both fantastic kids--funny, smart, resourceful. And it's painful watching them try to rebuild what was taken from them. And it could have just. never happened. Because he could have saved them both. He could have been their family.

It's sort of painfully obvious the Zenin abused Megumi, and it fucking haunts him. He doesn't even have to read into Megumi's behavior--he sees it happen, right in front of him, with how they try to control him and push him around. He wants to kill them for it. He wants to hate himself for it. He could have saved Megumi and he just. He didn't.

He wishes he did.

[guqin-and-flute]

WIP...Thriday (aka proof I'm not dead and still writing)

An And A-Fu Makes 4 Chpt. 7 exerpt in which A-Fu and Wangji are equally bemused by each other

__

It turned out that his uncle was actually pretty funny. Not totally, like, ‘haha’ funny, but ‘different from what A-Fu was used to’ funny.  A-Fu had always thought that his face was blank most of the time, but he found out that wasn't true--he smiled and frowned and looked worried and annoyed just like everyone else. His expressions were just super tiny compared to other people, so you had to study his face as hard as school, but A-Fu was getting the hang of it. If he didn’t get something, A-Yuan could usually interperate for him pretty good, ‘cause he was an expert Hanguang-jun interperatator. He knew what all the different tones of ‘A-Yuan’ meant when apparently it was supposed to be a whole sentence that meant ‘time for bed' or ‘too loud’ or ‘not that way’ or ‘did you finish your homework?’ or ‘do you want to play guqin with me?’

Uncle Wangji sorta reminded A-Fu of Gray-Father and how sometimes he looked so serious and scary to other people, but you just had to know what they meant to say on the inside. Except unlike Gray-Father, Uncle Wangji had never laughed in front of A-Fu; but when he and A-Yuan did something silly together, he sometimes had a little bit of Laughing Eyes, just like Blue-Father did. Maybe A-Fu was a gray, blue, and yellow father interperatator? Maybe after staying at the Jingshi, he could become an Uncle Wangji one, too! 

Sometimes his uncle was ‘haha’ funny, usually by accident and usually because he didn’t really get A-Fu--a lot of the things he did seemed to confuse him; like how he liked mud and salamanders and toads, and how he hated wearing socks to bed, and how he got an idea to do things but then didn’t really think about how it might end up and then he fell over or broke something, sometimes. Then, Uncle Wangji would get a little wrinkle, right in between his eyebrows, like he was trying to figure out a hard math problem and his mouth would get all small and he would blink reaaaal slow. Sometimes, he even looked over at A-Yuan like he needed his help as an A-Fu Interpretator--which he kinda was, since he was A-Fu’s bestest friend in the whole entire world and knew him better than anyone.  

Uncle Wangji definitely didn’t get Sneaking-and-Snooping, and when A-Fu actually really did surprise him a couple times, his uncle said all serious that he knew A-Fu was there, he just didn’t expect him to jump out and yell at him and A-Fu said uh-huh sure he did, suuure, and Uncle Wangji would just coolly say ‘good’ that A-Fu was sure--but he would say it like he knew that A-Fu was being sarcasms and was agreeing just to make him annoyed, which it did ‘cause that’s not how sarcasms worked, Uncle Wangji! And his uncle would say, without any hint of a smile, that he would try to remember that, which A-Fu figured was sort of like a joke and it made him laugh. 

One day, when A-Fu got in trouble with his teacher because he had colored his whole tongue black with his paintbrush during class just because, he had been really anxious about when his uncle came to pick them up from school. After talking to the teacher for a bit at the desk, he came over and stood all tall in front of A-Fu. When he looked all the way up at him, he  saw that scrunchy-confused wrinkle on his face but all he said was, “...Why?”

“Uh. I dunno.”

“....” Uncle Wangji said things with his silences best of anyone A-Fu knew, and this silence was like a whole bunch of question marks, like A-Fu was some sort of mystery. When he looked over at A-Yuan, who was waiting patiently by the door with his stuff all packed up, A-Yuan just shook his head and shrugged. 

 Uncle Wangji just looked back at him for another second, then just turned and walked right out the door, hand behind his back, not even waiting.

A-Fu assumed that that meant something like ‘let’s go home, you’re not in trouble, but what the heck’, so he just happily trotted out after him into the sunshine with A-Yuan next to him. He must have been getting better at understanding his uncle’s silences, because all that happened when they got back to the Jingshi was that he was handed a cool, damp cloth from the fancy wash basin in the corner and told, “Do not eat paint.”

He tried to explain around sticking out his tongue and scrubbing, “I wa’n’t ea’ing i’, I wath theeing if I coul’ color i’ all in,” but Uncle Wangji didn’t say anything else about it and just sat down at his table play his guqin.

[fisheito]

squints suspiciously at the next event's silhouettes devs, if that really is yakumo... DON't make me tap the sign.....😒..........

[specs-and-capelets]

stopping by before getting his after work crofters

[godnattakatta]

@the-cat-at-the-theatre-door (sorry for the tag) got me into a demelonzo mood alright this evening, so here they are

[cupid-circus]

here u go <3

[nonuggetshere]

Some very quick PKs

[glittter-skeleton]

Y’all want to guess what scene made me do this?

[mihai-florescu]

how long have u been running this blog (i love ur txts RAHHHHH thanks for spilling wtv is on ur brain)

Aw thank you! Ive had the same blog since 2014 when i was in middle school ^_^

[zkyeline]

This year’s art summary and a little HNY card. It’s been a very tiring year folks, those who have made it this far I’m very proud of you. I met so many wonderful people and has grown quite a lot as a person and an artist, thank you everyone that found this blog and stick around. Happy New Year!

[melchinafan]

So, I was gathering ak'ab references in the Monster Gallery for potential eventual anthropomorphizing purposes. (They look like moths, so they're prime Mothman inspirations.) But as I turned them about, I had some...cursed, spicy Realizations. *pats ak'ab* This bad bug can fit so many fetishes. Sure, there's tentacles on a whole bunch of stuff in Secret World, but there is just...so much in the design for the ak'ab that can lend to all sorts of shenanigans.

So buckle the fuck up, sweetlings, we're going on a deep dive analyzation of ak'ab anatomy and observing the wild potential for fetishes along the way.

[Image ID: concept art of an ak'ab, a bizarre monster from the game Secret World Legends. It's quadrupedal, but has extra bug-like digits on the sides of its torso. It also has what appear to be bat-like wings, but the membrane connects in the center to a long digit that's sprouting from the center of its back, which results in a single, triangular wing. Its head is large and bulbous, and transitions directly to its shoulders with no neck. It has two pairs of eyes on the front of its head, with a vertically-slit mouth below them that contains two rows of humanoid teeth, and multiple thin tongues extend from it. Below that are another few pairs of eyes, and a large proboscis hanging downward. It has multiple sets of gills in the space between the lower set of eyes and its shoulders, with another set of humanoid teeth inside the gills closest to the eyes.]

I'll open with the general observation that ak'ab are surprisingly mammalian for something that otherwise looks like a fucked-up eldritch moth. By and large, they have a standard recognizable skeletal structure, even in the forelimb sections of the weird wings. Granted, they do also have bonus finger-like "limbs" coming out of their ribs like short insect legs. Plus another large digit on the center of the back, which connects the membranes of what would normally be a pair of wings into a single, triangular wing. And their head is...its own Thing. But they've got fingers/toes on their feet, with black finger/toenails on the digits that don't have claws, and joints generally in the same number and placement you'd expect from a mammal.

But it's not only the apparent arrangement of their bones that's oddly mammalian—indeed, arguably even strikingly humanoid. When I turned the ak'ab model to see what its underside looked like...I found something I would have never noticed in-game. Did you know they have nipples, sweetling? No? Now we know. Together.

[Image ID: a screenshot of the ak'ab model from the Monster Gallery. The camera is angled from below, which makes it possible to see the fact that the monster has a surprisingly humanoid torso, including two pairs of pecs. And, by extension, four nipples, though the set on the left are hidden by the reflective lighting of the model.]

I mean really, all you need to do to anthropomorphize an ak'ab is make it bipedal, slightly less top heavy, and...well, there you go. It's overall surprisingly in line with the cenobite-style shenanigans I might have pulled in an intellectual exercise to try to make a moth using human bits. Besides the nonsense middle wing digit, that part baffles me.

But, with that revelation, several questions are raised. Do ak'ab only have nipples because their form is based on mammalian bodies, nightmare-warped into an otherwise insectoid format? Or do they actually serve some function? Is it possible for an ak'ab to lactate, and if they do, do they carry their wee young around with their rib-digits so they can feed frequently? How cute would that be? Like a mama opossum. If it's not for lactation, nor a holdover from their nightmarish inspiration...well, we know ak'ab can cocoon prey. Is it possible that what appear to be "nipples" are, in fact, spinnerets? In which case, are the rib-digits what manipulate the silk as they wrap their prey? Whatever the case, the mere presence of (presumed) nipples (and/or spinnerets) has potential for oodles of fetish shenanigans, whether they're functional or not.

But let's move on, because boy howdy is that not nearly the end of it. Another obvious potential fetish-feature is the fact that they have five long, thin tongues in their primary mouth. Sure, that mouth has two sets of humanoid teeth in it, but what's that in the face of pseudo-tentacles? Especially when the vertical mouth slit is, well...I mean, real moths do indeed have rather labial mouthparts. But when it's embiggened and fleshy, it's just a bit more blatant, no?

Curiously, the mouth slit (at least the redder flesh of it) continues downward, past four more pairs of eyes, to the underside of its head where it also has a proboscis. This is, presumably, what the ak'ab use for bloodsucking, as suggested in their Bestiary lore/legends. (Which also mentions that they're a hivemind, so. Pretty sure that's also a Thing, as a quick side note.) One might then assume that their rib-digits can also be used to help hold small prey in place while they use their proboscis to drain its blood, and their lower eyes could be used to spot tiny prey on the ground.

But is blood the only thing they consume? They do have mouths and omnivorous teeth, after all. Did you ever notice the extra sets of teeth they have in their gills, sweetling? I was so excited when I first spotted them, it's my favorite design detail about ak'ab. I've cooed quite a bit over their gill-teeth, they're so fantastically gnarly, what a disturbing design. So many potential implications. A little silly that it's horizontal sets of teeth in vertical gill-slits, but whatever, they're chittering nightmares. Only...now that I'm thinking about their anatomy, and trying to make sense of it...perhaps, if we assume ak'ab ever eat particularly large prey, the three sets of teeth are each part of functional mouths? And maybe they just. Shove their faces right on into the carcass, while they breathe with the further-back gills. Do the mouths then connect to one large stomach, or do they have separate ones for each mouth?

An extra thought, regarding how they eat (or not). What if some, or all, of their toothed mouths are connected to a different type of digestive organ, and that's what they use to make Broodmarks and such? Between the front mouth and the pair of gill-mouths, there's a number of potential combinations for consumption of animal/plant matter, partial digestion, and regurgitation vs. regular digestion. If that is something they can do, that could be how they source the various gooey structures they create.

In any case, given that the Buzzing also suggested that ak'ab might be "ravenous" and tunnelers, with many strange limbs and bulbous eyes, and now I'm reminding myself of taxxon from Animorphs...they do have fairly loose skin at their bellies. So it's certainly possible they might, when food is plentiful, have their bellies become distended with blood (or flesh, or etc.). Which is an entire list of subtly enabled fetish potential on its own, pretty much just from the design of the belly.

But another thing occurred to me, in realizing that the gill-teeth might be fully functional and not just for nightmarish visions. Something rather more specific, that sort of requires context of ak'ab behavior within the game. You see, stranger who may have wandered in here unfamiliar yet remain reading despite the ache developing in your brain—the ak'ab have a telegraphed charge attack that stuns the player. It's possible to dodge and avoid the stun, but they're quick as sin, and prone to swarming. They're a hive, as you'll recall, and they'll call in close-but-out-of-sight friends if you attack one. So it's easy to get overwhelmed by two or three (or more), and become stun-locked by a group of ak'ab if you wander in the wrong part of the forest. You also run across them quite early in the game, so it could be quite a shock as a newBee. (This is significantly less of an issue now, because their propensity to pull in distant friends is much lower than it used to be, and the telegraph is shown for much longer. But the Old Bees know.)

So you see. There is a not-insignificant number of people who came to instinctively resent ak'ab, and tried to avoid encountering them because of that frustration. And that instinct and spite might linger, despite things being much more manageable now. And so...in my brain, some things clicked, and it made a couple curious connections when I realized ak'ab might have three fully functional mouths. If a few frustrated Bees were inclined to "get back" at an ak'ab for the stun-locking they suffered...well, that could be a spicy monsterfucker fic prompt, right there.

And that's the super cursed, spicy thought that I couldn't just leave stuck in my craw. I had to inflict it (or gift it) to other Secret Worlders.

[st4rrych111]

hope all fans that bring their culture into their fanart fanfic and interpretations know that they are the backbone of this society please and thank you i love you dearly

[aria0fgold]

Lil rambling bout how Alec was as a kid. One word, troublemaker. But, in a good way??? Like, he is also very precious, friendly, and kind that it cancels out how much of a troublemaker he can be until he does something to remind that: "Oh yeah this kid can be a headache sometimes."

During class he can be well behaved, can be, which is only sometimes. He's not the, I'm going to disrupt the class misbehaving type but it also lowkey disrupts the class anyway (He loves asking questions, at first his questions will be on topic but if you let him ask questions for too long it'll end up getting derailed.)

He's just a really curious and incredibly talkative kid. The moment Alec talks to you prepare listen for hours on several topics (cuz he jumps from topic to topic he can barely stay on track, he will try if you tell him but... dont count on it). Bubbly and cheerful too like, he's like a golden retriever combined with a samoyed.

At some point, Alec became their school's lil unofficial mascot cuz nearly everyone knows him. And it's a reputation split between "annoying" and "lovable." Also don't mistake his kindness as being really nice, he's kind, but he can be mean too if you're mean to him as well. (Which is not a good thing unless you're prepared to have an earful of angry ranting from a kid that won't shut up. he can practically insult you without using that many harsh words. also it may end up as a semi-rap he'll be talking so fast with barely any breaks in between).

Don't even try to get physical with him as well, he knows martial arts (if Ray's parents enrolled him in acting lessons, Alec's parents got him in martial arts training. In their defense, it can hopefully help spend some of Alec's seemingly unlimited supply of energy. And hey, Alec enjoys it too anyway!)

Basically, Alec is a very sporty kid! He loves doing physical activities a lot more than studying... You can see where that went for him (he only gets barely passing grades up until Ray started helping him out with it which thankfully improved that a bit!)

Ray on the other hand is like the complete opposite of Alec in that he's very shy, not at all good with groups and talking to practically everyone unless he's close to them. These two are a great combo where Alec helps Ray in terms of socializing and physical activities, while Ray helps Alec in terms of studies and keeping him in check (making sure he doesnt get into too much of a trouble).

[mogseltof]

the human back is an actual disaster