#i just really really really like hajime like an Unreasonable amount.

[spinecurlingmice]

my gorgeous princess he is 2 feet tall

[estherwritess]

Trust Me - Iwaizumi Hajime

↣ Iwaizumi x reader

↣ wc: 1,6k+

↣ genre; maffia, soulmate, some minor fluff if u look

↣ A/N: This is a fic specifically for @seijoh​ / @writeiolite​ ‘s birthday. I want to say a genuine thank you to io for creating a server/space to meet new writers and make new friends; your efforts for the server amaze me every time, the amount of work you put into it is admirable. You’ve been nothing but kind and welcoming to me and so many others since I have joined the server; I hope you have/had an amazing day, you deserve it!

An icy breeze waves past as you lean against the rough brick wall, eyes lazily following your older brother who’d once more gotten himself in trouble with the authorities. Without fail, he’d managed to once again get the family in trouble; a common occurrence which would in turn tick off your other brother, Ushijima. Your ears perk up as you hear blunt footsteps coming your way, a stocky hand finds its way onto your exposed shoulder, making you pull away with a confident swipe. The annoyed expression on your face fades away as quickly as it came when you notice it’s just Ushijima, he crosses his arms across the suit he’s wearing. His expression speaks more than a thousand words ever could. Your arms instinctively reached up to cover your arms, the dress you’d picked for the evening not being nearly enough to warm you up during situations like these.

“You really don’t need to tell me again Ushi,” your eyes make brief contact before flickering back to the car driving off in the distance, “I should stop hoping he stays out of trouble”. A soft, knowing laugh fills the air, “I don’t think this is the same like always Y/N” your head turns to look at him, a curious expression making its way onto your face.

“I think they’ve set him up this time,” playing with the hem of his sleeve he gestures for you to follow him back inside, affected by the winter’s harsh weather this time around. Your feet are glued to the ground, perhaps you’d even gotten frozen to the ground, god knows with these thin soles the shoes you wore were equipped with. As you watch your brother disappear again, there seems to magically be movement in your legs again. However, as you take steps towards the bustling house once more, you feel this inexplicable feeling of someone watching. The feeling never quite leaves you, as curiosity takes the upper hand, you crane your neck turning your torso towards the presumably empty driveway. Your heart drops as you notice a tall, broad figure leaning against the trees opposing the driveway; your eyes can’t make out the details, but they definitely don’t miss the designs wildly sprawled across the man’s arms. Your gut is screaming at you to get out of there as fast as your legs would allow you, so you did. The tapping of your heels against the concrete fills the nearly empty street with echoes.  

The tension that had made you feel as if you were being chased dropped as soon as the door shut behind you. “Took you long enough” your concerned expression flips into an annoyed one, your eyes incredulously staring at your smug-faced brother.

“Don’t look at me like that”

“Like what?”

“You know what I mean,”, your hand makes a waving gesture, “I’m kind of over you and the rest of the family acting as if I’m some kind of glass sculpture,” your tone is bitter as you turn your back to him. Ushijima reaches out, tightly gripping your wrist, accusingly pointing at what seemed to be your cover-up wearing off on the inside of your wrist.

His rather unserious expression quickly turned into a look that would send entire groups running. His grip on your wrist feels as if it’s about to shatter into pieces, he’s aggressively wiping the foundation and concealer you had meticulously applied to reveal what was under there.

00:07:31

He’s seething as you tear your hand away from his grip, clutching it to your chest, trying to rub away the pain. The only time you’d seen him this angry was when one of his trades went haywire; you still remember him tearing down his office out of sheer anger.

“How come we haven’t heard about this?”

“I don’t see why I should involve you in something so personal,”

“I’m your brother!”

You scoff at his words. It wasn’t like being family had ever had anything to do with telling someone something; if those two things were somehow connected, you should’ve been involved in the family business from the moment you turned 18.

And that’s all you could remember from the night before, what happened in between the semi-fight and where you woke up this morning. You hadn’t thought of it as a fight; it had always been like this; you held just the tiniest bit of resentment towards your older brother and that caused those small outbursts; something about never being included in family meetings definitely irritated you more than anything.

You lift your head up, the room you’re in smells old; the dripping of an old pipe in the distance irritates you just enough. Your hands are tied in front of you with a cable tie that was cutting into your wrist, to no avail you try to wiggle yourself out of them. It feels as if the room is spinning; you have no idea why or how you got here; the door occasionally opens, your eyes stinging from the sudden bright lights filling the room.

You’d never gotten the chance to take a look at the person who was coming in and out of the room now and then, until now. He must have noticed you leaning against the wall, hands pressed against your chest as you were falling in and out of a sleepy haze. A calloused finger lifts your chin, tilting your face from side to side, the unexpected touch makes you pull back; your eyes are glaring at the presumably brown haired man in front of you, his eyes don’t seem to have that angry look to them, more-so worried.

“Get your hands off of me,” your voice cracks to which he furrowed his eyebrows in response.

“You shouldn’t have been here in the first place,” he paces around for a while, “you have no information at all.”

You scoff, a little offended even though you knew he was right; he hadn’t ever explicitly told you why you were in this room but you had an idea of what the reason might be, too bad the one who gave his people the job wasn’t aware that you weren’t involved with your brother’s family business.

“How would you know?” you lift your head up to look him in the eye, feigning confidence to mask the fact that you were tired, cold and mostly scared. The feeling was relatively new and the way you were raised had put staying level-headed at the top of one’s priorities, this was a completely different situation, god knows how long you’d been here or what they would still do to you.

“We keep tabs on your family,” he pauses, “we’ve almost never seen or heard about you.” The air feels loaded with tension as you follow his movement around the cramped room; there are several holes in your memory, the first was that you had no way of knowing how many days had passed, seeing as you were cut off from the outside world had no way of telling the time by how the sky looked since there were no windows. Secondly, your timer had stopped, but you couldn’t remember when. The only way you could trace it back was seven minutes after you’d had the argument with Ushijima.  

Would the walk to your car have taken seven minutes? Usually, if a man this tall and worked up was pacing in front of you, you’d have taken the clue and kept your mouth shut, but he didn’t seem scary to you, so you tried your luck.

“How did I get here in the first place?” you hear him sigh, barely audible with his back turned towards you. He takes his time to answer your question. It wasn’t an unreasonable question to ask right?

“Let’s just say I was told to bring you here by a higher-up” You observe his body language, giving him a quick nod, he’s definitely nervous; pacing around, hands toying with the hem of his shirt.

And just like that, he leaves the room, the door closing with a thud. You’re left in the dark room, blankly staring at the counter on your arm that had hit zero. It felt as if reality was trying to shake you, get you to do anything instead of sitting around. With no concept of time, you’re left in the dark room with your thoughts going at an incomprehensible speed; your mind being torn into two sides. You were excited to finally have found your soulmate after nearly 21 years but the guilt was eating you at the same time, having a soulmate who belonged to presumably the opposite of your own family’s clan was unknown territory. You’re left mulling, every now and then there’s a shabby meal thrown inside the room while you scramble over, legs nearly giving out.

After some time you refuse to still lift your head, aimlessly staring at the dark space consuming the opposite side of the room; the minor amount of light filling the room reveals polished shoes calmly walking over to you as your breathing slows. There isn’t an angry voice screaming at you to get up, there isn’t the expected blow to your sides, the footsteps stop right in front of you; a hand reaches out,

“Iwaizumi Hajime,” it’s the same man from before, his voice is rich and feels soothing to you. You use the remaining strength in your hands to lift yourself upright, the former proving to be a real challenge seeing as your wrists were still tied together.

You accept the outstretched hand, less than gracefully grasping the hand with your two hands.

“Y/N L/N, nice to finally meet you.”

He effortlessly pulls you up, a chuckle leaves his lips,

“I wouldn’t say these would be ideal circumstances,” he pauses, a taking a pocket knife out of his back pocket, slicing through the cable tie; relieved, you massage the painful areas around your wrist, muttering a quick thank you.

“i’d love to take you out on a first date after I get you out of here though.”

“I’d like that.”

-

general taglist: @hihiq​ @heccingdead​ @mitzwinchester​ @izzyphantomgamer​ @clauclaustar​ @idiot-juice-enthousiast @yams046​ @kara-grayson04​

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[hcpefulmarshmallow]

Time for another trip to Headcanon Island. Only today, it’s not such a nice one. If you genuinely don’t care why I’m addressing these things and why it took so long, skip down to the line. Under a read more because length and triggers. 

It’s not uncommon for me to address popular fanon on this blog, and either ratify or refute based on my own, humble opinions. And because we’re dealing with Ko, and with DR, we’ve tackled some pretty heavy things. But those heavy things have almost exclusively been restricted to what canon hints at directly. That still leave a LOT open for interpretation, and boy do people interpret. 

 There are a lot of things I’ve seen floating around about things that may or may not be a factor for Komaeda, that I simply haven’t touched. Thus far, it hasn’t been necessary. And these are some heavy, ugly topics; and I’m not certain that I was wholly prepared to address them before. I have a deep disdain for the way some things are represented by people. The need to add more trauma for the Angst Factor, while not treating the source issues with any real care. Rather, they become a sort of accessory to make the character unique and interesting. For the record, I’m not calling anyone out here -- I’ve selected who I follow carefully, so if we interact, I already have great respect for the way you wield your character, and any real-world issues that may or may not be present in their stories. 

 However, I’m very conscious of falling into this trap myself. I don’t want my character to suffer from real-world afflictions that take a toll to read and write, if there’s no ultimate payoff. No development or regression, no resolution, essentially no difference whatsoever. 

 So I took my time with these opinions. They’ve been formed over a lot of thought and listening and comprehending; and waiting until I had the words for them. 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 With that out of the way, I just want to say a few more things:

 One, normally I’m happy for people to reblog my HCs, but I must ask that you refrain from doing so in this instance. You’re welcome to adopt any of the below into your own perception but I want this post staying where it is. I feel like it’d go against what I’m trying to do. 

 Two, I don’t think I need to say this, but strong trigger warnings are in place. I mean the real kind; not that someone might get offended by, but that if you’re sensitive to sensitive material, you might want to go look through our Humour tag instead. 

 Three, the Tragedy is excluded from this. Some things would be slightly different pre- or post-, though I won’t explore that heavily today, but I think taking his Despair state of mind and applying it to his normal self is a little redundant.  

 And finally, this is just my own interpretation of things. I’m not trying to stomp on anyone else’s HCs, and you’re more than welcome to disagree. At the end of the day, Komaeda is tragically fictional. There’s only so much we can call “true”.

Suicide:

 I’ve seen it said a lot that Komaeda suffers from suicidal ideation. And I think this one is pretty much confirmed by canon, to be honest. He expresses his desire to be free of his luck cycle; to die for a good cause rather than alone from some illness. However, I don’t think he’ll necessarily do anything about it directly. It’s important to remember that Nagito truly, in his heart of hearts, feels like a worthless nothing, with only worthless nothing to give. He has but one thing of value, and that is the breath in his lungs - and he knows he won’t have that for long. It would go against all that shining hope he believes in, if he were to take his own life needlessly. However, that doesn’t stop him from being reckless and putting himself in situations where his death becomes an immediate possibility, and would benefit somebody else. 

Self Harm:

 I don’t believe Nagito goes out of his way to hurt himself in the more, for lack of a better word, ‘traditional’ way. When one mentions self harm, most people think of a blade and a lot of blood. Once again, that would feel too much like giving in to despair. However, he does a lot of things, consciously and subconsciously, to punish himself and feed that deep-seated sense of utter self-loathing he has. But isn’t that also like giving into despair? Yes, but less openly, because he’s a hypocrite about this kind of thing. 

 The way he puts himself down is part of it. He’s sabotaging any chance he has of the one thing he wants - a close relationship. He doesn’t take very good care of himself. Sometimes, he legitimately forgets to eat because of his dementia; but other times, he just ‘forgets’. Things like hygiene are second nature due to the time he’s spent in hospital, and the obsessive compulsive tendencies he has that I’ve spoken of before; however, he constantly neglects to do other important things for himself. As stated above, he puts himself in dangerous situations. He doesn’t sleep enough (though part of that is due to nightmares); he doesn’t take painkillers when he’s hurting; he doesn’t complain when people try to hurt him. He truly feels like he deserves it. 

Sexual Assault:

 This one was the hardest for me to address because truthfully; I’m not convinced one way or the other. Canon makes no allusion to it, and Nagito’s attitude towards sex is a little hard to read. Possibly because there’s already so much going on in his mind. The song Zettai Kibou Birthday is set in a sexual situation, but it’s supposed to be a metaphor for a different kind of intimacy. He’s very protective of his female classmates, willing to joke but won’t force himself on anyone, and none of that tells me anything. For anyone else, I might not entertain the possibility. But here’s the thing: it’s Nagito. Anything’s possible. It’s difficult to deduce if part of his issues with touching other people and being touched (and pardon me as some of my personal headcanons get in the way here); and his nervousness about getting sexual with people, his willingness to shut up and take whatever his partner throws at him, his susceptibility to shutting down mid-act if something cuts a little to close to the bone, has anything to do with any kind of negative sexual experience. He’s a complicated boy with a complicated life. A very pretty, vulnerable, unsupervised boy with no support network or protection. You get what I’m getting at here - he would be an easy target; and with his luck, the possibility is strong. So yeah. I’m not saying something happened, I’m not saying it didn’t. But it really could have. And if it did, he’s not likely to talk about it for a very long time.

Physical/Mental/Emotional Abuse:

 For this little bit, I want to just brush over: his parents, because I’ve tackled that one before as I’m sure we all remember; the serial killer incident because that speaks for itself; and anything related to HPA. For this, I want to focus specifically on the time between losing his parents and getting accepted into the school, because that’s the most ambiguous, strange part of his life that never made a lot of sense to me. 

 I do have somewhere, on the old version of this blog, a list of HCs about that time in his life, but it’s a little outdated and needs some revising. What better time, right?

 See, when Nagito was telling Hajime about his trauma, it struck me as odd that he fluctuated between giving unusually intricate detail (“the meteor was the size of a closed fist”), to giving almost no detail at all (”then i was kidnapped then released eventually after an unspecified amount of time”). I could write a whole piece on why that might be. Perhaps some things hurt too much to talk about. Perhaps he had an ulterior motive telling Hajime these things, and cherry picked what suited his narrative best. Perhaps, as fluctuating detail is a symptom of, he’s covering something up. Or perhaps and most likely, it’s because you can only squeeze so much text into a few free time events. 

 Now, look, I’m no expert on the Japanese adoption system, but I do know that adopting kids out is tough. However, with Nagito’s luck, not to mention intelligence, looks, wit and giant inheritance, he wouldn’t have been that difficult in context. But does Nagito ever mention any wonderful adoptive parents, foster parents or even an especially attentive social worker? No. And if one existed, I think he would have. 

 It’s not unreasonable in my mind that Nagito was easy to find placement for, but difficult to keep there. Not just in foster/adoptive homes, but in group homes in general. His luck would cause havoc for everyone else there. He would have been shunted from home to home, possibly even bullied quite nastily for the things that happened when he was around. Again, canon never directly states this, but nothing else makes sense to me. Even if you’re rich, a kid is a kid, and a kid can’t just live on their own, you know? He can’t sign a lease, he can’t connect power. 

 That, in and of itself, would be psychological torture. Imagine losing your parents who you were never close to, and after that, having nobody in the whole wide world who wanted you? Worse, they would turn you away because of things you had no power over. 

 As to what happened in those homes, like I said; it’s likely he was bullied. In the anime, when Miss Y.ukizome, his closest authority figure, slaps him in the face, Nagito doesn’t seem to really react, to the pain or shock. He doesn’t even flinch. He just shuts right down, submitting to her entirely. That’s a boy that’s used to being hit. In DR2, whenever a character tells him directly to shut up, he falls silent with no further argument, until he’s given permission to speak again. That’s a boy who has been met with force when he’s tried to express himself. Even little things like when he wants to try out the swings in strawberry house, but worries the others will tell him off for it. After experiencing the story and it’s characters from Haji’s perspective, do we really think that anyone would give two shits if Nagito sat on a swing? They’d probably be thankful he wasn’t hecking things up. But he assumes he’ll be reprimanded for this innocent, simple act by default. I guess my point is, this is a boy who has not been treated very well by anybody at all. 

-- 

I think that’s it for now, but if I’ve left out anything that you’re curious to know my opinion of, feel free to ask, yeah? 

[canvaswolfdoll]

CanvasWatches: New Game!

Oh no, it’s one of those Moe Blob shows. I’d hoped i was better than that.

Well, to be honest, I was just looking for easy viewing garbage while up late busy with not sleeping.[1] New Game! was on Funimation’s streaming service, and a few youtube reviewers have mentioned it with generic positivity. It’s… okay. Very much fills the ‘Cute girls doing stuff as if they’re real people, but in a softer world’ mold. In this case, Video Game design! Yay. Sarcastic Jazz hands.

A few years ago, I stumbled upon a Manga/4koma series called QuickStart!! which is about girls playing tabletop RPGs. I quite liked it. It’d be nice to see it get an anime of its own someday.

How to even describe New Game!...

Well, it’s about a girl named Aoba Suzukaze who, fresh out of high school, lands her dream job of doing art for the game studio that made her favorite video game, working directly under her personal idol, Ko Yagami.

Which, coming from a western perspective, seems insane. Who lands that sort of job right out of high school, with no college degree or industry experience? I mean, there’s the One Big Lie, then there’s unreasonable expectations. I’m a great writer,[2] and even I can’t find footing to do this for a living.

So Aoba arrives to work and meets the coworkers she shares cubicle space with: Hifumi the shy one; Hajime the energetic one; and Yun… last one. While the OP makes you think that these four will form a K-On! like dynamic, in truth the focus doesn’t drift from Aoba until her friend Nene takes a larger role.

While the trials and tribulations of working for a small Japanese Game studio are interesting, and Aoba’s struggles to get used to the life of a office worker is nice, I’d have liked character development for anyone besides Aoba (whose arc consists of achieving her goals) and Ko (who’s learning to be a mentor. Before leaving the country.)

Later, Aoba’s High School pal Nene gets hired on as a QA Tester for the summer, and the story shifts to Nene wandering around and being distracting. But it’s okay, when she’s actually working, she finds all the bugs!

Nene’s voice is also annoying.

The first season concludes with the cast releasing a game, which is well received. Yay!

The second season is when I suddenly realize that, somewhere along the line, the show became Kaleido Star, but with lower stakes and flatter characters. Which, if you’ve seen Kaleido Star,[3] is saying something.

Upon reaching the level of her blond idol, who is being forced into a new supporting role, our protagonist finds themselves in need of a rival that resents the protagonist’s ascent to glory and their relationship with the blond idol.

However, while Kaleido Star’s May barked her way into my heart by being just so bizarre and ridiculous, New Game! Instead brings in Momiji Mochizuki, who is… there. I guess.

Momiji’s quirk is she eats a bunch and resents Aoba for having success while being a year ahead in her career.

It’s not a well written conflict!

Don’t worry, though. Nene also gets a rival in the form Tsubame Narumi, who is introduced as being Momiji’s calmer and more amicable friend, but turns out be kind of petty and resentful of Nene getting a job through nepotism.

Which… okay, fair, Nene did kind of get hired on due to her connections, but by the same token, it’s made clear that Nene’s in more of a training role while Tsubame is given actual assignments.

Since Nene isn’t my favorite character, the conflict with the programming team is just unnotable.

Momiji’s unlikable from the get go, and Tsubame loses all her endearing traits upon being exposed to Nene. Momiji and Tsubame are so unprofessional, and we see so little of the actual projects being assigned in the second season, that I found myself rooting for them to get fired at the end, as a wake up call to both characters and to have actual consequences.

But it’s a Moe-blob show. Everyone needs to be friends by the end, no lessons get learned, and everyone’s going to be fine because the world of moe has kid gloves.

As I have awkwardly found myself commenting on more and more, New Game! of course had an amount of fan service. It was relatively tame, mostly around Ko’s tendency towards pantslessness and brief fantasy inserts. Nothing to deeply analyze beyond noting the fantasy inserts were mostly egregious and the fanservice wasn’t particularly exciting.

Also, it broke the ‘Establish the limit in the first episode’ rule I mentioned in my Dagashi Kashi review, though the particular break happened midway through the second season, so perhaps I need to consider a ruling for subsequent seasons. What amount of escalation is fair play for viewer retention, and does it break trust?

Food for future thought, if I can’t pull myself away from the topic.[4]

I watched New Game! during a particular period of my life. I had left a retail job, spent a couple months not working, then got a job for a call center contracted to service accounts for a credit card company,[5] and I decided to watch this anime after watching Sakura Quest,[6] so I’d watched two work-based animes while training for a job that, by all signs, would be monotonous, creatively-stifling, and utterly miserable.

And, during the nights while I was dreading going back the next day, I watched an anime based in an office where the cast were doing what they loved, had varied tasks, and a relaxed pace. Quite the escape from my call center job with a maximum 5-minute reprieve from idiots confused by the concept of interest and no paper allowed just in case I wanted to moonlight with a little identity theft.[7]

It’s a bad job. Avoid it.

So, New Game! helped stoked the flames of wanting a better job. One where I don’t have to directly deal with the public, have a consistent schedule, and get some variety. The show also made it clear that I have no viable method into such a job. I’m creatively minded, sure, but I don’t have the actual skills for professional art,[8] I lack the memory to learn programing, and I certainly lack the networking capabilities to find opportunities.

There was an undercurrent of resentment for these stupid girls and their easy lives. I know real life game development is far less cozy than what New Game! displays, but even a taste of that ideal would be better than where I am now.

Anyways, since finishing the series, I discovered it was easier to get a different job than request a day off,[9] so hopefully I can start an upward climb.

Maybe you can help? I do have a patreon, after all.

I also accept questions and comments, and produce other reviews, writings, and a webcomic, so check those out. Any positive reaction to things I feel passionate about would be peachy.

Kinda a downer ending for a review of such an upbeat anime. Oh well.

Kataal kataal.

[1] Really should try and find one of those graveyard shift jobs. I seem naturally predisposed to it… [2] Amazing even. Fight me. [3] Which is glorious garbage that I actually recommend. [4] I’m essentially a grumpy old man waiting to happen. Less Master Roshi and more harsh but fair paternal figure. [5] No, I won’t say which one. [6] Good show, but I didn’t really have anything to talk about in regards to it, hence no review. Still, highly recommend! [7] Had I stayed, I probably would’ve begun strategizing how to get away with such a caper just to fill the tedium. [8] I hate english academia far too much to get a degree, and Theater was a clear path to jobs in the local area. [9] This and other policies made quitting two weeks after finishing training so easy.