#i love the whole idea of idealism being killed

[outofpocketonepiecethoughts]

I love the transfem sanji headcanons and fanarts and fanfictions to pieces, but I think there is something so so important about him being a man who has personally suffered because of patriarchy.

Spoilers for whole cake island, and 3D2Y/marineford, under the cut

I’m sure it’s been said before, but Germa as a culture is patriarchy incarnate. The men of germa are expected to be emotionless killing machines, to the point where the king robbed his son’s of their emotions through genetic experimentation. And it’s not lost on me that Reiju still had her emotions in tact, because in Judge’s eyes women are supposed to be emotional. And Reiju had to spend her life suppressing her emotions in order to be seen as competent, for fear of being seen as just an emotional woman.

And then there’s Sanji. He’s everything Germa culture believes a man couldn’t be. He’s emotional, weak (by their standards), and soft (kind). To Judge, and Germa as a whole, those are very feminine traits, and that’s considered a bad thing. To them, being a man with feminine traits is worse than being a woman, and that’s why Sanji is abused so horribly.

It’s important to me that despite later developing a rough exterior and bad attitude, he retains these traditionally feminine qualities while still being a man.

Now I wanna talk about Kamabakka kingdom. I don’t know if the okama’s are supposed to be trans or if their drag queens or a combination of both, so forgive me if I get something wrong, but the important thing to note is that the second they meet Sanji, they essentially try to forcefem him. I think to them, his natural personality is like the ideal of femininity. Like in germa, Kamabakka kingdom sees Sanji’s emotionality and kindness as feminine traits, but unlike Germa, they see it as a good thing. Germa tried to force Sanji to give up those traits and beat the femininity out of him. Kamabakka kingdom wanted Sanji to embrace those traits but tried to force Sanji to become a woman because of them. And it works for a couple of weeks (until he sees what happened to Luffy in that one funny scene where the makeup literally melts off his face), but he’s not like them. He is not a woman, doesn’t want to be a woman, and doesn’t want to be perceived as a woman. He can love women and know he is not one.

Sanji isn’t a trans woman (canonically, but I absolutely love all the fanart and fics. This little analysis has no bearing on my love of non canon depictions of Sanji as trans). He is however, gender nonconforming in the context of the culture he was born into. I think in that brief time he went along with the okama’s ideas of him being trans, possibly had a lot to do with the doubts germa’s ideals cast on him about his gender identity. Germa taught him being emotional and kind were woman things, so with the Okama’s trying to convince him that he did feel that way, he might start to think, ‘well maybe I am a woman’, but the second he sees something that reminds him of Luffy, all that confusion goes away and he immediately goes, ‘no I am a man’.

Because Luffy doesn’t try to force Sanji into any kind of gendered box because of the traits that so many people he’s known have seen as feminine. Luffy doesn’t try to force him into traditional masculinity or try to force him to become a woman. To Luffy, Sanji’s kindness and emotionality are his best traits, and those traits are not connected to gender at all. Within the strawhats, Sanji has a freedom of gender expression that he didn’t have anywhere else (the baratie didn’t force anything on him but they were all kind of macho men so I don’t think Sanji would have felt super comfortable expressing his full range of emotions).

I think Sanji as a gender nonconforming man, fits better with his character narratively than sanji being transfem. Everything with Germa is a demonstration of how patriarchy is damaging to both men and women and nonbinary people. I think him being a man is very important to his relationship with the strawhats, and how he found acceptance with them as a man with a lot of traditionally feminine traits (in addition to him being emotional and kind, there’s also the fact that he’s a cook and is the only man on the crew to bathe everyday, specifically, he bathes as often as the girls). With the strawhats he is able to express himself fully without fear of judgment or of a label being forced onto him.

I guess my main point is, Sanji is an example of how patriarchy can hurt men, and how deconstructing traditional ideas of gender norms allows people to live more honest and fulfilling lives.

Sidenote 1: Luffy giving Sanji a space for freedom of expression is perfectly in line with his ideals of freedom.

Sidenote 2: Sanji’s sees woman as naturally emotional (a good thing to him) and kind because the only people he knew with thise characteristics besides himself were his mother and sister.

Sidenote 3: I sometimes see transmasc Sanji headcannons, which I love because they fit so well into his story.

[ilynpilled]

Also, while Jaime started the process of 'killing the boy' in Bran, it's Bloodraven who'll finish it. Bloodraven, who's the oldest character in the series, shows how long the cycle has been going.

Also, in general, it's already tragic how Robb, Jon, Jaime, etc. Had to 'kill the boy' as teenagers, but now Bran has to do it before he even reaches double digits.

tragedy enjoyers when the cycle is cycling

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

thinking about superheroes unfortunately

[djljpanda]

Lucifer Morningstar X Fallen Exorcist Reader

Ever since his split from Lilith Lucifer has been a reck feeling like no one can love him, need him, or understand him again

You have been an exorcist for a couple of thousand years now being one of the best exorcists Heaven could ever ask for

But deep down you always felt bad for those you had killed feeling like yes Hell is for those who have done wrong but what about those who did the wrong things for the right reasons

So on the next extermination day you tried to run away from it all but when Adam found out he took it upon himself to kill you

You were able to get away before Adam could finish you off but nothing could prepare you for meeting Lucifer himself

For some reason Lucifer took you in and helped you out and yes you did come out to him about you being a “fallen angel” and your ideals on heaven, earth, and hell

Lucifer just sat there and listened and for the first time since Lilith someone understood him

Now at first you two became roommates in a way, mostly helping him out with his work, giving him duck ideas, being his bodyguard and secretary, and you did try to push him into talking to Charlie more but you understood on why he couldn’t do it himself

You did face palm as when he called her all he did was tell her to have that meeting with Adam, at least it’s a start

Charlie dose know of you but saw you more as her fathers secretary or his best friend, like an aunt, she is happy how you think there is a way to get sinners in to heaven and how you told her if she ever needs help or to talk to someone you are just quick call

Lilith dose know of you and you may have never seen her face to face she is happy someone is keeping her ex happy

Now if you ever get together it would be the best for the both of you cause I’m sure you would want to confess first but with the thoughts of you killing his people and Lilith, it just made you hesitant but with a simple duck jester (making a duck quack an “I love you”) Lucifer confessed his feelings to you

Charlie I think would be happy for her dad to have found someone and yes at first she did see you as her aunt but she is happy to call you her step parent sand she isn’t afraid of telling everyone that either

That’s one of the major reason on why Lucifer likes you, his daughter loves you like a parental figure

This Lucifer is just a sad boy so if you just sit there and cuddle him he would love you forever and if add words of praise he is just melting

Definitely will vent to you cause he is that comfortable around you and he is happy that you feel the same way when you vent

You always support his duck creations and yes late nights would consist of you two role playing with the ducks, when you two started dating he made three duck versions of you, him, and Charlie all matching clothes sitting next to each other, this man had a whole collection of duck versions of you and he was embarrassed when you found out but you called it cute

When extermination day hits he could see how tense you get and when you told him on what happened before he found you he couldn’t help but hate Adam more and so every Extermination day Lucifer would hold your hand and comfort you may even play a little music and it just grew more loving when you two started dating

You do help out with Lu Lu World as it’s one of Lucifer’s passion projects and no one could believe how upset you were when Mammon created Loo Loo land, you almost put your exterminator skills to use but Lucifer stopped you and let Mammon have his way cause he didn’t want to argue with Mammon so you just had to let it go

You both do play music together as when you were both angels all you did was play music, duets and you can’t tell me you, Lucifer, and Charlie didn’t sing together once

You remember seeing Lucifer’s wings for the first time and how amazed you were as you kept complementing him and that just made his face all red and what made you stop was when he commented o how your wings could have been more pretty then his, you just smile at him

Now here you two have more of a bodyguard/ secretary and famous person kind of relationship even though he may not need it he likes keeping you around and that just help made his feelings grow for you

[mariasont]

can you please write Spencer and shy!reader for valentine's day? 💕💝💖💖💞💝💖 I love them so much and I love you more

Lover Girl - S.R

summary: spencer has a hypothesis about love on vday & it’s not something you agree on pairing: post!prison!reid x shy!medialiaison!reader warnings: r going crazy over something spencer said hours ago (get a grip girl), r kinda goes out of character, spencer being the sassiest human alive wc: 1.9k a/n: thank u sm for requesting i love this and i love you even more ✨💖

The draft on your laptop was starting to look less like a press release and more and more like a psychological cry for help. Words sprawled like abandoned thoughts, entire sentences had been brutally sacrificed to the backspace key, and you'd rewritten the same transition phrase so many times it no longer felt like a real word. The whole thing read like the work of someone who had just sustained a minor head injury.

Objectively? It was bad.

Subjectively? It was an unmitigated disaster.

You blamed Spencer. Or maybe you blamed yourself for still thinking about it, for letting his words linger in your head like an incorrectly formatted footnote that you couldn't stop rereading.

You had never been a hopeless romantic, exactly, but you liked the idea of it, the structure of it. Believed it was more than a sum of its parts. More than just wires crossing in the brain and pattern recognition.

And yet, he had discarded the notion so easily, reducing love to a series of neurochemical reactions misinterpreted as emotional depth, something logical and completely stripped of any sort of real feeling.

He hadn't meant it cruelly, but his voice carried a kind of detachment that made you want to launch your coffee at his ridiculously well-structured face. It shouldn't bother you.

It really, genuinely, in no universe, should not bother you. It wasn't like you had a chance with him, so why did it matter what Spencer Reid, certified romance cynic, destroyer of sentimental ideals, and casual heartbreaker, thought about love?

If anything, his lack of belief should make it easier to kill this absurd crush before it spiraled into something unmanageable.

You squared your shoulders and looked back to the screen, back to the carefully worded Bureau-approved phrases meant to sound polished and agreeable.

Strengthening community trust. Bridging the gap between law enforcement and the public.

Meaningless, hollow, designed to be palatable without saying anything real. Blah. Blah.

I mean, did he really think that love was like an outdated scientific theory? It was Valentine's Day, for crying out loud—if nothing else, wasn't that proof of its existence?

You had considered the possibility that he had stopped believing because he had to. That prison had stripped the softness of him, turned love into just another abstract concept that didn't hold up under scrutiny, like time, like trust, like freedom.

Or maybe (and this was the more infuriating possibility) he had always been like this, too pragmatic to believe in something he couldn't technically hold in his hands.

You groaned under your breath, rubbing at your temple like you could physically press the words out of your skull, like they were just another headache waiting to pass. Why were you still thinking about this? It was stupid. He was stupid. You were stupid of caring.

Except he wasn't stupid. He was obnoxiously brilliant, the kind of smart that made other geniuses insecure, and that was the problem. Because if someone that intelligent didn't believe in love the way you did.... did that mean you were in the wrong? Had you been naive this whole time, blindly buying into a romanticized fantasy while Spencer had long dissected it and found it lacking?

The knock on your office doorframe startled you so badly that your entire skeletal structure attempted to evacuate your body, knee jerking up, colliding with the underside of the desk with an unforgiving whack.

You barely had time to wonder if you'd just concussed your kneecap before you looked up and—Spencer. Standing in the doorway like some cosmic punishment for thinking about him too hard.

Heat flooded your face like an admission of guilt, because why—why—did it suddenly feel like you'd been caught red-handed?

"Hey," he said, tilting his head. "You okay?"

No, you wanted to say. Not at all. Because what were you supposed to do when they very subject of your over analysis materialized in your doorway, looking at you like he could see every freaking unspoken thought folded between your ribs?

You swallowed, forced yourself to look anywhere but directly at him, because everything about this, about him, felt like some kind of cruel irony.

"Uh, yeah," you croaked, voice pitching embarrassingly high. Great. Perfect. Totally normal human behavior.

Spencer's brow furrowed, his head doing that thing he did when something wasn't quite right. But miraculously, he didn't say anything about it.

"I was just...," You gestured to your laptop.

Spencer nodded slowly, either accepting your excuse at face value or deciding it wasn't worth the effort to call you out.

"Right. I was just going to ask if you had finalized the press release for me to proof."

Your stomach lurched, a sharp drop like missing a step in the dark. Finalized. Bold of him to assume you'd done anything besides stare blankly at your screen for the past fifteen minutes.

"Oh! Yeah, of course," you said, throwing out the words with a half-hearted smile as if that would seal the lie. "Almost done. Just... you know, making sure it's perfect."

Spencer stepped inside, moving just past the threshold. His expression changed. Less neutral. More aware.

"You're acting strange."

Which was unacceptable, because if anyone in this scenario should be acting strange, it was him, standing there like a walking contradiction.

"I—what?" The laugh escaped before you could trap it behind your teeth, jagged and surely unnatural.

"You're tense. And you don't usually second-guess yourself this much. If it was almost done, you'd just say so." His eyes flicked to the laptop. "Did something happen?"

Your face went nuclear, looking away, hyper focused on the edge of the desk like it was the most fascinating thing you'd ever seen. "I don't know what you mean. I'm acting normal."

Spencer made a thoughtful noise. "Denial first. Then contradiction."

"I—"

"Oh, and there's the hesitation. That usually happens when you're trying to figure out how to backpedal without making it obvious."

"Do you always do this?"

"Only when people are lying about something." He squinted at you. "And you're a very bad liar."

He tapped a finger a finger against his arm in a way that made your nerves itch, before stepping forward and sinking into the chair across from your desk.

"Huh."

You frowned. "What?"

"You're doing the same thing you did earlier," he said matter-of-factly. "Avoiding direct responses, looking everywhere but me, shifting in your seat."

His gaze lingered, and then—Gods, help you—his lips curved, just slightly.

"Almost like the conversation was bothering you then, too."

Oh. Oh, this was bad. He was trying to talk about the one topic you'd spent the last twenty minutes trying to erase from your brain.

"I just, well, it's not that I had thoughts or feelings on it or anything, I just didn't, well, I mean, I just didn't want to be in that conversation, you know? Not that it was bad. Just—not my thing."

Spencer's eyebrows lifted. "So you disagreed with me?"

"I—I did not say that."

"No, but you just said everything but that." He leaned forward. "So tell me. What was it?"

You finally look at him, actually looked at him, and immediately regretted it.

You tried to gauge if there was any chance you could turn this conversation in your favor.

Nope.

"I mean, I wouldn't say disagreed, per se, I just... thought maybe your take was a little—," you sighed, "dismissive."

"Oh? And what exactly am I dismissing?"

You hesitated. Not because you didn't have an answer—because you had too many. Love wasn't just science, romance wasn't just a byproduct of biology, that it meant something. It's real. It matters. It's— "You're dismissing everything beyond your own reasoning."

You waited. For the rebuttal, the deconstruction, the inevitable moment Spencer laid your words bare and left you scrambling to rebuild them. But this time there was nothing. He just sat there. Looking at you. Like he was waiting for something else.

You fidgeted. Crossed your arms. Uncrossed them. "What?"

"Nothing. Just... thinking." A pause. "You clearly have an opinion on this, just trying to figure out what it is."

Your lips pressed together, your brain begging you to let it go, to shut up before you started. But the words were already forming, bubbling up too fast to stop.

"Okay, look. I get it. I get the science. I get that love can be explained in chemical terms."

Spencer nodded, like you were finally seeing his point.

"But that doesn't mean that's all it is," you said, sitting up straighter. "Love isn't just an instinct. If it was then why do people stay in love when it doesn't make sense? Why do people wait years for someone who might never come back? Why do people hold on to feelings they know won't be returned?"

You inhaled sharply, only to realize what you had said felt a little too personal. Heat flared to your toes. "I just, uh, you're looking at it like it's an equation when it's more like—like art. You can break down why a painting is visually appealing, but that doesn't explain why it moves people."

"So love is art then?" A small smirk tugged at his lips. "That would mean it's subjective. That one person's version of it isn't the same as another's."

"Well, yeah, that's my point." You nodded. "Everyone experiences it differently. That's why it can't be reduced to formulas. You can recreate the exact conditions of a moment, use the same words, set the same scene but it won't feel the same to someone else. Because love isn't about external factors, it's about who you're with, how they make you feel."

"That sounds dangerously close to saying it's entirely irrational."

You exhaled. "If it is, then I guess that means you'll never understand it."

Spencer pushed himself to his feet, adjusting his cuff like this was just another conversation and not something that had you actively fighting for oxygen.

Then, with an infuriating self-satisfied smile, he murmured, "Well, maybe I just need the right person to teach me."

You nearly choked on air.

And with one last glance, he grinned and said, "Happy Valentine's Day, lover girl."

taglist has been disbanned! if you want to get updates about my writings follow and turn notifications on for my account strictly for reblogging my works! @mariasreblogs

[xenodile]

"Shuro loves Falin for the same reasons he hates Laios" Completely and utterly wrong, could not be further off base.

I get the impression a lot of people watching Dungeon Meshi as it airs, or are a bit removed from its original manga run, have forgotten that Laios and Falin being monster freaks wasn't actually apparent until the events of the story. The only person that knew Falin loved monsters as much as Laios was Marcille because they were best friends at school.

Once Laios and Falin were in an adventuring party together, they both had public facing personas because they had both learned through their separate upbringings that being super interested in monsters and dungeons wasn't normal. Laios is the blunt but well meaning, outspoken and opinionated guy we all know, but Falin was way more withdrawn and soft-spoken, non-confrontational, easy to get along with. Everyone that interacted with Falin would say she's a sweet, gentle girl that everyone likes. Because she was, frankly, kind of a doormat.

The whole thing with Toshiro's infatuation with Falin is he doesn't actually know her. She is outwardly very polite and reserved, and that appeals to Toshiro because it meshes with his cultural sensibilities and how he was taught people are supposed to behave. Then he sees her marveling at a caterpillar in a private moment and decides on the spot that she's the ideal woman and proposes without actually talking to or getting to know her.

And his lack of understanding of Falin as a person is brought to the forefront in every action he takes after she gets eaten. He leaves the party and makes no attempt to contact the two people that Falin loves the most. Whether it's a matter of him just not knowing how much Falin cares about her brother and Marcille, or actively avoiding Laios to rescue Falin himself, he's demonstrating that he doesn't actually know what's important to her or understand how she feels.

Then when he meets Laios's party on the lower floors and they go over what happened, it's made even more blatant that Toshiro's affection is shallow and half-baked. He came into the dungeon a week too late and neglected his health the whole way down, so he was in no state to actually try and save Falin when he got there. When Laios talks about eating monsters, something Falin was thrilled about, Toshiro is disgusted. He threatens to kill Laios and turn Marcille in, which would never fly with Falin. His anger at the use of black magic is entirely based in his selfish idea of Falin being tainted and blaming Laios and Marcille for "ruining" his attempt to rescue her, as Kabru points out that Toshiro would have done the exact same thing in their shoes and that he's being a hypocrite. To say nothing of how he'd rather kill Falin after she's been transformed and "put her to rest" rather than put any effort into saving her, because that would require further involvement from Laios and Marcille and methods that Toshiro doesn't approve of.

And there's the fight he has with Laios, and Toshiro's subsequent confession that he had hoped to just take Falin home with him. He at no point gives consideration to what Falin feels or what she might want, only what he has decided about her based on the most surface level observation. Just like how his problem with Laios arises from his refusal to just talk to him about his boundaries, he has no actual connection with the woman he claims to love because he just wouldn't actually talk to her.

Like it's not a coincidence that every time his attraction to Falin is brought up, another character goes "yeah he's being weird about it".

[mothfulhansel]

I thought of a silly where emo Sanji and Zoro becomes frenemies as kids and Sanji sorta replaces Kuina being Zoro's rival that he can't beat. But they eventually get separated and still meet again in the future when Sanji joins the straw hats, but now their skills are equal This idea grew like a tumor in my head and made me think of a whole AU where Sanji is born emo n everything, but still meet and joins the straw hats regardless, he is cold blooded and kinda emotionless, perhaps even a little insane, but not necessarily evil, and he was taught his whole life that what he was was a good thing, but after joining the straw hats he is punished instead of praised for the first time for being mean and cold blooded and doesn't understand exacly why at first, but with time he gains humanity and emotions and starts becoming the original Sanji, pretty much like an inverse and wholesome version of the doomed yaoi angst where Sanji goes insane and Zoro has to kill him, man that single little thought of Sanji and Zoro as kids just fucking around snapped on me so hard i thought of all of this in less than 30 minutes. And i really like the view of Sanji all sad and awkward after doing something bad that he thought he was supposed to do but then finding out that was not right and looking like a dog after it's owner yelled at it for chewing their slippers

I'll also be using all my previous emo Sanji headcanons on this one where hes just kinda cringe and as his ideals colapses he just become some kinda jekyll & hyde typa shit. Also his hair changes colors very quickly rather than just slowly and realistically growng a different color, and if hes feeling bipolar and swap personality alot throughout the day it makes stripes on his hair

Some other hcs i have about him is that he doesn't smoke and do use his hands in battle, actually he loves fighting with blades, he also thinks cooking is mid but still does it and very well just so they don't go out of food and a good nutrition. On a normal Sanji AU he would still smoke occasionally and evict using his hands in combat out of instinct (idk he forgot hands can be useful in battle too) idk what anyone says emo Sanji is basically my son at this point. Thinking of wether in this AU, Sanji's sibblings will be normal or modified because him being the only one who was successfully modified also sounds cool, to be honest i don't care a LOT about the lore here, i am more mesmerized about the dynamic itself so anyone can interpret the lore however they'd like. Lastly forgive me for my unusually long rambling, i am so normal about Sanji having an evil and emo alter ego

[neerons]

Some of Gilbert von Obsidian's best quotes

[Warning: Heavy spoilers about Gilbert's route]

"Ahaha, what is the prince of Obsidian, if not rotten?"

"I hate people."

"No matter how hard I try not to, I can't help but be gentle with her. What kind of villain am I?" (—Gilbert talking about Emma to himself)

"(...) I hope you don't accidentally end up calling me 'big bro' or anything." (—Gilbert to Leon)

"(...) You were just saying what you really think. I don't think doing that is rude. And it's true I'm someone scary."

"I like you because you're so warm, little rabbit."

"Ahaha! You're so sassy. But I like that about you."

"I want to make things awkward for you."

"You can't just focus on the best of someone while ignoring the worst of them."

"If you were a bother, I'd kill you, so don't worry." *smile intensifies*

"...I'm no match for that pure, innocent gaze of yours. You're the only one capable of pushing me around, you know."

"Depending on what you say next, I might just take your head clean off." (—Angry Gilbert to Emma)

"(...) You nearly died. ...Do you have any idea how much that chilled me to the core?"

"The only thing I can ever be for you is a villain. ...Unfortunately."

"...Thank you. I almost got murdered by some dust."

"If you keep on lying over and over about being fine, I might just... Well, you can guess, right?"

"I found it in a book in the little rabbit's room. They need to understand what happens to them if they try to interfere with what's mine... Don't they?" (—Gilbert talking about a poisoned needle targeting Emma to Roderic)

"You said it, remember? You said you wanted me to learn to love Rhodolite. To me, you are Rhodolite."

"Those born with status have the right to do whatever they like to those who are lesser than them. That's what you want to say, isn't it? (...) Hmm? What's that? You look a little distressed for some reason. But I suppose that's no surprise. You see, I have the right to tyrannize you however I please, just as you tyrannized those children who had no one to protect them. I'm imperial royalty, and you're just a third-rate aristocrat. So I'm going to have to teach you just how different our social positions are... Aren't I? (...) Aren't you lucky that we're in Rhodolite? You've narrowly escaped death. If this was Obsidian, you'd be dead for sure. After all, we have no need for disgusting nobles who defile the purity of children." (—Gilbert to a Baron of Rhodolite)

"Wait, so you're telling me you baked cookies for another man, even though I'm right here. Ouch, that hurts."

"(...) if by chance I run into your dear papa, he'll kill me." (—Gilbert talking about Akatsuki)

"Welcome to Obsidian. (...) I introduced myself as Gilbert von Obsidian, didn't I? There's only one person in this country allowed to use the Obsidian name. And that's the emperor."

"There's nothing about you or me that makes one of us intrinsically inferior or superior to the other. Humans are all basically the same. And naturally, from a societal perspective, we probably need people who can take the lead. People who are capable, and talented, who can bring others together, and build a better tomorrow. That's a healthy way to be. I'm the ruler of a country that knows deception and decay all too well, so I understand better than most. That's why my ideal, my ambition, is to conquer all the royalty that have infested this whole continent, and free the people who are under their control."

"I wrote that story based on you. (...) Akatsuki told me a lot of stories about you, and they were always stories about you showing love and affection for others. He made it sound like you believed that the true nature of people is love, and that the happiness of others was what made you the happiest. The idea of living like that was repulsive to me, but at the same time, it made me curious. I got to wondering what sort of choices you'd make, if you were in the same position I was."

"You were bullying small children to amuse yourselves. That Rhodolitian might have stopped at just punching you, but I'm not that kind. Did I make military regulations or didn't I? And do those regulations say attacking non-combattants is forbidden, or don't they?" (—Gilbert to Obsidianite soldiers)

"Then how about you call me papa?" (—Gilbert to Luke)

"...Don't go. (...) I don't know... if I can hold on... until you get back. Being on my own... is lonely..."

"...You're the only one I'll ever love."

"I'm taking your daughter." *smile intensifies* (—Gilbert to Akatsuki)

"I'm not oppressing you with my power, it's just my love for you, overflowing."

"You can't do things like this with other men... Unless you want to see dead bodies."

"You're liked by everybody. A lot of the princes helped you out today. That's because people adore you, and they naturally want to help you out. They're all beasts with strong characters, but you're important to all of them. Do you know how rare that is? That means you're charming to everyone you meet. ...Including me, of course."

"There's no way I'd ever let anyone else kill you. It has to be me."

"I can't just bare my body for free."

"I've never liked seeing you clothe your body in things that other people have put their hands all over."

"Don't force yourself to talk. I'm not so narrow-minded that I'll go around saying you're disrespectful just because you didn't thank me. You're sick; you're supposed to just drink medicine and sleep."

"Wah, boohoo. I can't believe we were on different pages this whole time. I've given you my entire heart, and yet, look at what you've done with it! (...) Waaah, I'm so heartbroken that the only thing that could bury my sadness is world domination!"

"For his sake, I'm going to pretend I didn't hear him call me 'eyepatch bastard'. Rude." (—Gilbert's thoughts about Silvio)

"Her ability to right what was wrong, purify what was once sullied... It runs at complete odds with my nature. I may have truly met my match." (—Gilbert's thoughts about Emma)

"I blinked a few times as my vision seemed to expand all at once... and the little rabbit become clearer and even more beautiful." (—Gilbert's thoughts about Emma)

"I'm never letting you go. If you run away from me, I'll conquer the whole world and follow you to the ends of the earth if that's what it takes. No wait... I just need to control your heart, so that you'll never even want to leave me." (—Gilbert's thoughts about Emma)

"We all approach life differently. Chevalier slices hearts in two. I trample on them. But, you... You respect them."

"I wanted to see you bawling your eyes out."

"You're... the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

"I like the little rabbit very much, you see. So I certainly hope that bold declaration of yours doesn't end up turning into a lie." (—Gilbert to Silvio, in Silvio's route)

"I'm not interested in the average woman. There's someone that caught my eye when I was young." (—Gilbert talking to Silvio, Rio, Keith, Sariel and Emma)

"You like these stories, don't you? Ones where a lowly village girl falls in love with a big, bad emperor and makes him change his ways—"

"It's a good thing I was born with a pretty face. If I looked scary without even trying, it would almost be TOO perfect."

"Keith, if you get tired, we can swap places. (...) Shame, Daddy says we can't." (—Gilbert talking about carrying Emma instead of Keith, but is stopped by Sariel)

"I was able to find some... treasure too, so I'm very satisfied with today." (—Gilbert most probably talking about Emma to the other princes and Emma)

"What? You'd like some new heads to decorate the castle's gates?" (—Gilbert to Emma telling him she wants friends)

"After a while of being betrayed over and over again, you start thinking to yourself. That maybe the world would be a better place if everyone who wasn't your friend just dropped dead."

"I know her. But only in fantasy. Because there's no way an Obsidianite royalty can have anything to do with a mere bookstore worker. (...) Die without meeting her? Or die after meeting her. Well, that's easy. I prefer the latter in that case." (—Gilbert's thoughts about Emma)

"I tried to hold down my excitement as I knocked softly on the door. (...) The door opened softly, revealing a woman that was different from what I had imagined. Strange. I thought she'd be more childish looking based on his stories. Her eyes that looked directly at me were clear and devoid of any baseless optimism. She was clearly a woman, not a child. I smiled to carefully hide my surprise. (...) She's purer and prettier than I imagined." (—Gilbert's thoughts about meeting Emma for the very first time)

"Oh, I get it. You think I was with another woman, don't you? Ahaha, you get jealous so easily. But don't worry, I only see you.If it would make you feel better though, I could always kill each and every single woman that gets close to me."

"...And so we've decided to officially hold our wedding ceremony. Can we count on your blessing, papa?" (—Gilbert to Akatsuki)

"You're much more important to me than family, you know. (...) After all, you're still alive, aren't you? I wouldn't kill you no matter what you did."

"I really do love you. And it's because I love you that I want to look good in front of you, and hide the things that I don't want you to see." (—Gilbert talking about his health condition to Emma)

"Do you know how long I've been wanting to officially bind you to me?" (—Gilbert's thoughts)

"Oh, that hurts... I just wanted to shower my beloved fiancee with my love, but I guess you don't want to... I'm absolutely heartbroken now. I might just have to go out and conquer one of the neighboring countries just to soothe myself."

"You're my type of lady. Do you know why? (...) I, for one, enjoy the rebellious, sassy look you always have in your eyes. I feel this strong will— that you will never bow down to me. That even though you're terrified, you won't run away."

[aurorasgate]

as long as we're together

sephiroth x afab!reader | 3.4k+ words

warnings: an alternate ending to nibelheim, angst/comfort, afab reader but i didn't use any pronouns, pregnancy, he's a little scary and handles you not very gently but overall i wanted to try my take of seph losing his sanity being a mix of things like losing his friends, lack of sleep n water and meds he probably needs to be taking plus some jenova influence (he was really going through it), i don't think anything else but please let me know if i missed any tags!

there’s a ringing in your ears, somewhere between a joyful hum and the screeching break of the whole world around you. a perfect mirror to the whirlwind of emotions you’re feeling at the moment. 

this could not be fucking happening. not right now, at what you would consider quite literally the worst possible time in your whole life. and yet there’s an undeniable happiness, a flicker of light in the darkness. 

after all, was it not something so special to have a child with your beloved? the ultimate product of your love. a reason to hope. a lovely addition to the future you had dreamt of together. 

but there is nothing simple or ideal about the current situation you’re in. not when you’re in nibelheim with sephiroth and with how.. unusual he’s been acting since arriving and made worse by the fact he’s holed himself inside the shinra basement for more than two days now. reading and reading, never once looking up to answer your calls of his name or touching the food and water you’d left for him. 

it was a few short weeks ago, after losing angeal, the possibility of abandoning shinra became a matter of when between the two of you and when he had been assigned this mission, only days ago, he proposed that you leave after nibelheim.

you chalked your oncoming nausea and discomfort to stress. the anxiety of running from shinra and that you had no reason to believe they’d let sephiroth go so easily. the normal life you’ve longed for together almost within reach and yet so far away, with an entire blockade ready to stop you. or more likely, kill you. 

but of course that had been a naive assumption and you wouldn’t be surprised if the goddess was laughing at your foolishness now. waiting on her throne of the most vivid greens and enchanting flowers to see how this would all play out.

“- okay?”

zack’s voice pulls you from your thoughts and dulls the ringing in your ears. it’s then you notice too that you’ve made your way to shinra manor and the sun is in its last few moments of setting behind the mountains. by the way zack looks at you, a confused tilt to his head and worried puppy eyes, you think he’s tried to get your attention more than once. 

“zack.” forcing a smile you’re sure doesn’t meet your eyes, you find some comfort in his normality and presence. hoping, praying, he could do what you hadn’t been able to thus far. “any luck with sephiroth?”

“no.” his face drops, his blue mako eyes avoiding yours. “it’s like i'm not even there. he just keeps reading and muttering to himself about jenova and what we saw at the reactor.”

your chest aches horribly. what was going on.. what could you do to help him.. how could you help yourself? or the baby growing below your belly? taking in a deep breath of the cool, mako free air, you will yourself to calm. even if only a bit, hoping to lessen what your baby has to feel no matter how scary things were getting. 

“thank you for trying,” and you mean with all your heart. reaching out, you place a hand on his arm and try to let it ease you both. “i’m going to go talk to him.”

before your hand can pull away, zack grabs ahold of it, saying your name seriously. “i don’t know if that’s a good idea. sephiroth..” worrying his bottom lip through his teeth, he hesitates. like he doesn’t want to say whatever comes next. “he’s not himself at all. what if..” his grip on your hand tightens. “what if he hurts you? i know you can hold your own but he would never forgive me for letting you get hurt and i wouldn’t be able to forgive myself either. i can -“

“i’ll be fine.” your voice and eyes soften, a gentle reassurance to you both. “really.” no one could talk you from going down there. nothing could stop you from trying until you physically could not speak or move or breath. you believe sephirot would do the same for you. looking down, your next words are a whisper, meant for the life growing inside of you, “i can’t just do nothing.”

“but -“

“no ‘buts’ zack. he’s my husband. i have to.”

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆

night slowly settles in, chilling the unkept manor. the lights sephiroth had never let dim since diving into the records and books lining wall to ceiling are your guide to the one that holds your heart and the only source of warmth besides sephiroth himself. 

you pass by the tray of food you had left earlier today before heading to the clinic alone, untouched and now drooping on the plate. the water still completely full, just like every other glass you had tried to get him to drink without success. 

your heart is a wicked beating drum, loud enough you don’t doubt that sephiroth can hear it clear as day the closer you make it to him but you can’t stop it when your mind is racing. should you lay the truth on the table? use it to hopefully snap him out of this? or would it only make it worse. could you even do it? neither of you would ever have wanted to use your baby as a bargaining chip, as a means to do anything other than love them and give them the world. but if nothing else, he deserves to know. right..

resting on his knees, sephiroth looks like a man possessed as he hunches over the open book resting utop a stack of dozen or more. there’s an unusual greasiness to his usually pristine hair, dark circles under his emerald eyes that have a sheen of ferality to them that you’ve never seen before. proof that for days he’s done nothing but this and that with every book he reads, it takes more of his sanity with it. 

despite knowing he can hear you, your steps are quiet and when you approach him, kneeling down to be level with him, you place a gentle hand on his arm to alert him of your presence but he does nothing to acknowledge it. he continues to read, gliding his finger along the pages as he does. 

“sephiroth,” you call his name softly, reaching for his face with your other hand, trying to brush his messy bangs away from his face. 

before you can touch a strand of his silver locks, his large hand is wrapped around your wrist, tight and impatient, enough to be a subtle ache and catch you by surprise. 

“it’s okay,” you use the voice you had so many times before in the latest parts of the night when nightmares tore him from sleep. a warm promise that he’s not alone and never would be again. “it’s just me.”

for the first time since locking himself down here, sephiroth actually looks at you but the look in his eyes forms a lump in your throat in its unfamiliarity on his beautiful features; a stark contrast to the gentle man you knew him to be. especially towards you. 

“seph-“ 

his grip on you tightens to something more painful and in a flurry of inhumanly quick movements, you’re being pinned to the cold floor of the library, the dusty rug the only thing to cushion the impact. 

the stack of books falls at your side, their pages scattered open. his right arm keeps him hovering above you, caging you between his legs and under his board body. the long strands of his hair fall over his shoulders and tickle your skin as he stares down at you with a crazed edge to his features and the thin slits of his pupils. like he might devour you both right here and now. 

the most dangerous predator and his sweet, helpless, little prey. 

but you weren’t helpless. at least you didn’t think so. he had every bit of physical prowess over you, yes, but it’s one simple truth that keeps you from breaking underneath him no matter how much you don’t recognize the man in front of you. 

he won’t hurt me. he would never hurt me. you repeat the words in your mind, knowing it’s true.

“you need to sleep, my love. please.” you plead, not fighting the hold he has on your wrist, pinning it to the side of your head while your other hovers in the space between you. “this isn’t good for you.”

the smirk that spreads across his lips is unsettling and the laugh that follows is as though he pities you. it makes your heart constrict and your skin break out in chilling goosebumps. his voice is distant and low when he speaks, almost as if he’s muttering amusingly to himself. “as if you could know what i need.” 

“that's not true,” you try so badly to keep your calm but your voice still shakes. finally you let your free hand connect with him, a soothing press against his chest. “i’ll watch over you and cook you pumpkin soup when you wake up and then we can talk about all of this.”

sephiroths expression turns serious, his smile falling into something almost pained. “i’ve learned the most interesting things about myself.” he says, ignoring your words. again, it’s as though he’s talking to himself, recounting what he’s read. “my mother; an ancient, a steward of the planet. how they found her and exhumed her body from rock and used her to resurrect the ancients, which led to my conception. my.. creation.” the word seems to pain him further, making him close his eyes with force and draw his brows together. 

he lets go of your wrist in favor of reaching for his face as if the pressure of his fingers on his skull will help ease whatever it is that’s going on inside of him. it doesn’t seem to last long though. so quickly does it dissipate, the candle light surrounding the room growing brighter, letting you see clearly how his gloved hand is now only hiding a part of his terrifying smile and muffling a manic laugh.

“the crowning glory of professor gasts experiment.”

“you’re not an experiment or a creation!” you’re so quick and steadfast in your reply, refusing to accept anything else. you don’t want to let yourself give into the fear bubbling within you but some of it is so impossible to hold back. you can’t help the tears that stream down your cheeks or how your hands tremble when holding his face between your palms, forcing him to keep looking at you. “you are so much more than any of that.”

he doesn’t seem to feel the warmth from your palms, the truth in your words, or the sincerity in your eyes. every moment that passes he just feels farther and farther away.  

“you are right about that.” he says coldly. you aren’t sure exactly what he means but you know that he’s not taking your words like you intend, that there’s something more behind what he’s thinking. “and mother..” you watch as his pupils blow wide and shrink back, the mako in his eyes seeming to darken. like he truly is possessed. needing only one of his hands, his fingers coil around your wrists and tug your hands away as if they were nothing more than pestering flies. “she’s waiting for me.”

you have so many questions and no time to try to piece them together or try to answer them. not when it feels as though he’s slipping through your fingers like sand through a sieve. the heat of his body recedes, the weight of him, the aura of darkness around him, starts to lessen on your person but you can’t let him go. you wouldn’t give up on him. you can’t.

“sephiroth!” grabbing onto his coat, you hold on with all your might and try to stop him in his tracks but quickly find yourself once again pressed to the floor, staring into enraged cyan eyes, the glint of masamunes blade shining in your peripheral vision, right next to your head, and the sound of her sinking into concrete like nails on a chalkboard fills the room.

you’re pinned, pressed down by the weight of him and more strength than he had ever used with you before, completely unable to move from the hand that holds you down. 

he won’t hurt me. he won’t hurt me. 

“don’t try to stop me.” he seethes. 

“i will.” 

“a truly foolish decision.”

“maybe it is,” you can feel the tears still streaming down your cheeks, how hot the air in your lungs is. you can’t think straight - can never give up on him. “if you want to stop me you’ll have to kill me.” the words come out with all the conviction of your heart, fueled by your tears and never once do you break your gaze from his. a heartbeat passes, his hold on you growing in its strength until you think you’ll have bruises come tomorrow but there’s an undeniable flame in your eyes and it helps to steel yourself to say what may change the course of tonight entirely. “but know, in turn you’ll be killing our child too.. or at the very least leaving us both - is that right?”

“liar,” sephiroth growls through gritted teeth and with an expression you can’t quite make out when his eyes break away from yours and he uses his hair to shadow his visage but it feels like he’s fighting with himself. calling you a liar and yet not wanting to believe you actually are one. knowing you aren’t one.

“see for yourself. the paper with the test results are in my pocket or perhaps that soldier hearing of yours can already hear their heartbeat.” 

you don’t really know what you’re saying. for goddess sake you didn’t even know when a baby's heartbeat is able to be heard or how far along you are but you would have done anything to bring him back to you. to save him and your child. to show him that flicker of light in the darkness and take his hand so you could walk towards it, together.

on bated breath you wait for him to move and when he does, he lets go of his sword to take his head in his hand, grunting in more discomfort than before. his hand holding you down grows weaker too but you stay where you are, finding the rug underneath you beginning to warm from your body heat. 

it feels like so many long moments but after what was causing him pain starts to ease, his touch changes completely. 

forgoing the paperwork in your pocket, the fingers that held you down only moments ago are now a feather of a touch down your middle and takes care when lifting your shirt, helping you lift your back so it bunches and sit underneath your breasts. he slides on his knees to lower himself and uses his other hand for leverage until he’s able to rest his ear on the soft skin of your belly.

there’s so much comfort in the way he lays on you like this and so badly you want to relax as it attempts to wash over you, coax you to ease, but it’s not until both of his arms wrap around you, pressing him further into your stomach and lifting your middle off of the ground, and he sighs do you allow yourself to actually do so and take in your first steady breath.

the mess inside your head is hardly coming back together. some of it left worse as his words start to settle in and only leave more questions but the darkness once looming over you, ready to take everything from you, to snuff out that small flicker of hope, starts to recede. slowly but surely you feel it draw back into the shadows, the life in your womb the source of light forcing it to stay there. protecting both you and sephiroth.

over the minutes that pass while you’re kept in the awkward position your tears begin to subside, every breath a bit calmer than the last. he’s okay. we’re okay. everything else aside, so long as you two were by each other's side, everything was going to be okay.

when sephiroth breaks the silence between you, his shakey words akin to something much more familiar to the man you love and yet laced with a new emotion you aren’t sure you have a name for and raises your anxiety in completely different ways.

“there are two of them.”

“what..”

he holds you ever closer. “two little heart beats..”

in the fully lit basement, there is no telling how much time has passed since sephiroth succumbed to sleep while listening to the beating hearts in your womb. this space on the dusty rug becoming a temporary haven for him to rest at, where he’d be totally and completely safe and where you could watch over him like you had promised.

your hands had found their way into his hair, for hours combing through the tangles and knots that had developed over the last few days and scratching at his scalp gently with the tips of your fingers until they’re too tired to continue and simply rest on him instead. in his sleep, you can hear barely coherent murmurs of your name from his lips and feel the warmth of his breath seeping into your skin as the hours pass. 

at some moments, when you let yourself bask in bliss and relief, everything that happened before might have seemed like a bad dream had it not been for masamune still shining next to your face. you wouldn’t have been able to sleep regardless, you’re certain the only reason sephiroth had is because he physically could not stay awake any longer, but the way his sword lingers over you does little to help you in that aspect. 

instead you focus on the other side of the door, the hallway you can only see a bit of out from your place on your the ground, books with disturbed dust and others untouched, the outward point of sephiroths nose, his long dark lashes, your fingers threaded through his silver hair and the twin babies resting in your belly below him.

when he finally does stir, he hardly rubs the sleep from his eyes or sits up completely before he’s lifting you off of the ground and into his arms, the defined muscles of his body softer than the rug and concrete below it, warmer, your personal haven where you were safe from anything.

“let’s leave this place - shinra,” he says against the crown of your head, voice thick with tiredness but resolute in his decision.

you could almost laugh from how relief hits you like a train, clinging on to your promise, your dream of a normal life that seems closer than ever. “after you’ve had some water and a meal, yeah?”

“no.” it’s not often that sephiroth denies you and it comes out harsher than he intended but he’s quick to bring you closer, pressing his forehead to yours now, holding you like how he spoke to you, not doing as you wish, might make you push him away. he speaks much more gently now, so close you can feel the warmth of his words on your lips. “i will, as soon as we’re far away from here.”

“but seph-”

“forgive me.” you don’t know he means for everything leading up to this or for not giving into what you wanted now. perhaps both.

sephiroth stands, cradling you in his arms and keeping you securely against his chest. wrapping your arms around his neck and ready to hold him to his promise as soon as possible, you only have one question. 

“what about zack?”

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆

zack wasn’t sure how much time to give you before venturing back down into the basement. he hadn’t heard anything or seen the lights change but after so long without either you or sephiroth returning, he didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing. 

the night passes and into the early morning he makes his way back into the basement. not at all expecting to find it messier than before with a rip in the otherwise put together rug, books strewn across the floor and completely devoid of the two people he expected to find.

on the desk, resting below a flickering candle a folded note catches his attention and he’s quick to unfold it, scanning over the words and recognizing his friends handwriting despite the note being unsigned. 

‘zack, thank you for everything.’

[linkspooky]

If there's a next time, maybe I'll change how I live...

Sukuna's last moment in the manga ends with him accepting that his loss, and showing even the strongest of all time Sukuna, someone powerful enough to do what he wants, when he wants, could not only lose but he could be wrong. This is something considering that you could make an argument that the entire manga, and sorcerer society as a whole is shaped around Sukuna's morality of the pursuit of selfish desire and strength of all else. In fact someone else argues it right here.

What led to this journey of the most irredeemable character in the comics who lived only for selfish pleasure acknowledging the love he rejected in the end? Well, we'll cover that under the cut.

The Cycle

Before analyzing Shinjuku as a whole, I want to start with its conclusion. I'll first break down the final moment in Sukuna's character arc, and then go back to the start and analyze how we got there. That being said, let's get on with it.

Sukuna loss begins with him contradicting his own nature. I'll explain what I mean by this. If you read the thread above, detective_critics observes characters like Sukuna who live for themselves and characters who embody Sukuna's ideals like Gojo are rewarded in the manga whereas characters like Yuji who fight primarily for others are punished relentlessly.

This is well supported by Yuji's continual losses throughout the manga. Yuji swallows Sukuna's fingers in order to permanently execute Sukuna and stop future people from being harmed by curses, but because of Yuji's decision to swallow the finger thousands die in Shibuya. Yuji's desire to save others only seems to backfire and he's continually presented with those he can't save, Junpei, Nanami, Nobara. He's even robbed of his own purpose of being Sukuna's vessel when Sukuna takes Megumi's body instead.

I mostly agree with this idea that the manga rewards people more true to their desires like Sukuna and Gojo, but I'd like to add an addendum that the manga doesn't specifically reward selfishness, but rather self-actualization.

To backtrack slightly, Sukuna observes that many sorcerers in the past have faced him but they didn't truly believe in their ideals the way that Yuji did. Yuji is punished by the narrative yes, but he's not unceremoniously killed off the way that Toji, and Mahito are. Rather, Yuji's durability, his ability to cling to life instead of just dying off like Sukuna suggests weak people should do comes from the fact that his ideal is unshakable.

Let's look at Sukuna's words a little more closely. He says that many sorcerers killed him in the past and they all had different ideals, but none of them truly believed in their ideals. Because Sukuna could so easily point out how their idealism was false he came to think of all ideals as worthless. This is shown in the way that he easily picks apart both Gojo and Hajime, two characters who lose because they ultimately don't believe in their own ideals. Sukuna is very easily able to point out the hypocrisy in both of them.

Sukuna basically points out that Kashimo and Gojo were both happy to bully anyone who came near them, they'll throw around their power all they like and revel in their own superiority and then go back and complain about being lonely. A classic case of wanting to have your cake and eat it too, or as Sukuna said they were being greedy. They were the ones who rejected everyone around them, they were the ones who rejected the love they were shown, and yet they put the blame on everyone else.

Gojo even in death acts like everyone else is a flower, an inferior being incapable of understanding him. Yet, a few panels later he says that the fight with Sukuna the only person who rivaled him in strength and therefore shouldn't be able to understand him didn't satisfy him, and he would only have been satisfied if Geto were there.

These two statements contradict each other. The thing is, Gojo has at this point long surpassed Geto in strength. People often clown Geto on the fact that he never had a domain expansion, and that Kenjaku seemed to use his cursed technique far better than he ever could. Geto is someone who's far behind Gojo in strength, and yet he's the one who could satisfiy Gojo, not Sukuna. Which means Gojo was the one who was wrong. Gojo was betraying his ideals. He believed he was living to be the strongest, that he was satisfied being the strongest while all along wanting something else and it's that contradiction that killed him.

Let me make a brief comparison to another manga. Aizen from Bleach is a character with a god complex to rival Gojo's, and just like Gojo exists on a different level of power than everyone else. He is not only the strongest soul reaper, but one of the smartest, and has been isolated by that strength since he was a child. Aizen then believes that he needs to become god, because it's his right as a naturally superior being, but Aizen is a fraud.

Aizen loses becuase the hogyoku the source of his power rejected him right as he seemed to be at the peak of his power. However, Ichigo reflects that maybe the Hogyoku didn't reject him. The Hogyoku is in plot, a wish granting macguffin, that grants your subconscious desire. Ichigo speculates that maybe Aizen didn't truly want to ascend to godhood, but rather he wanted someone like Ichigo to defeat him. That he wanted an equal like Ichigo so he wouldn't have to be alone on the top anymore. Aizen not being fully aware of this desire and clinging to his sense of superiority instead, the very thing that makes him lonely is what causes him to lose. Aizen is cut down by Ichigo, and instead of becoming a god he becomes just another soul reaper.

Sukuna cuts through Gojo by cutting through the world, bypassing the infinity, and therefore making him just like everyone else. Just as Aizen wished to be just another soul reaper, Gojo becomes just another sorcerer now that his position of the strongest has been taken by Sukuna.

So Gojo's loss came when he betrayed his ideals. His stated ideal of "I am the strongest", but this was contradicted by what he really wanted which was the time of his life when him and Geto together said "We are the Strongest." Strength didn't satisfy him, but rather it was Geto and Gojo's inability to realize the real reason he was fighting leads to his loss.

The manga doesn't reward selfishness, but rather self-actualization. Characters with a strong sense of self are just more likely to be self-actualized, because they possess a deep sense of self awareness.

Sukuna at least is self-aware. He knows you can't be the strongest, to relentlessly bully others with your power and yet want to be close to other people too. He knows that's wanting to have your cake and eat it too, so he rejects love. Sukuna knows you can't have it both ways, so he decides I don't need love, love won't satisfy me, I'll live only to be the strongest.

My main example of a character betraying their ideals is Toji though.

Toji moves to face a newly awakened Gojo. He has not only a solid plan to fight him, curse tools that can penetrate his infinity, but he's also got inside knowledge of the Limitless. Toji believes he can win, and yet at the same time he feels uneasy.

As he died, Toji reflects that the reason he died is because he deviated from his true self. He believed that he was jumping from job to job, just working for money. That he didn't care about the sorcerer world. He killed sorcerers, got paid, and then gambled it all away.

Yet, when he was faced with the pinnacle of Jujutsu his motivation changed from living to fulfill his own selfish desires, to revenge. Toji wasn't as over the way the Zen'in Clan rejected him as he thought he was. He needed to defeat Gojo in order to affirm himself, and the moment he betrayed his own ideals like that he lost.

Now this moment can be directly paralleled back to Sukuna, who feels a similiar unease the entire time that he's fighting Yuji, an unease that makes him more and more irrational over the course of the fight.

Sukuna betrays his ideals in two ways, one that he's never once cared what other sorcerers think and say and lives only for himself and two that he is merely killing time before he dies. The first leads to his breakdown over the fight as he tries to crush Yuji, but finds himself unable to. The second is as I said above the final nail in the coffin.

When faced with a stronger opponent, or rather opponents as the sorcerers of the modern era all work together to trump the sorcerer of the golden age of sorcerery Sukuna doesn't accept his death. In his last moments he's clinging desperately to Megumi, trying to keep living in his body. At which point Megumi remarks that even someone like Sukuna must fear death too.

You could connect this to Mahito too. Many people even said that Sukuna got the Mahito treatment. Both characters lived freely slaughtering everyone else, and yet when they are about to be killed they try and run away from it. This is obviously deliberate as not only do the words "You are Me' parallel "I am you" but Sukuna's last moment in the manga is a conversation with Mahito.

Mahito also betrayed his ideal. Number one curses don't truly die, Jogo and Hanami and Dagan all accept their deaths because they'll be reborn as different curses but they'll always come back. However, Mahito clings to his own existence. Mahito is also not true to his nature, because he longs to be a true curse, but Mahito is also the most human curse. He's the representative of the fear and hate humans have for one another, and he spends his last moments terrified of the human being known as Yuji Itadori.

Which is why Mahito is appropriate to have this final conversation with Sukuna. Mahito calls out the way Sukuna betrayed his ideals. Sukuna always believed he was only living to satisfy himself and he didn't care what others thought, but Mahito points out that he was really living for revenge towards the people who rejected that unlovable wretch. Sukuna wasn't rejecting people because he was a god towering far above others, but because he had been rejected and hated in the past and then decided to hate them in turn.

However, unlike Mahito Sukuna is able to grow up so to speak. Mahito doesn't want to be anything else but Sukuna comes to the realization that you can choose your nature. That the decision to hate and reject everyone was a choice, and that he can choose a different path in another life.

You define who you are, that is the literal definition of self actualization. So we see Sukuna having become enlightened about himself escape the cycle, whereas Mahito who's still a curse is still trapped in that cycle. Something that Mahito complains about, that he's just a child unable to grow up while even Sukuna has changed.

Escaping the Cycle

Now that I've shown you how Sukuna has changed, I'm going to go over all of Shinjuku to describe the events that led to this change. This change is brought about everyone, but most of all by Yuji Itadori someone who unlike Sukuna reached self-realization. Yuji is the one who remains true to himself, whereas Sukuna who has only lived for himself is the one who betrays himsellf in the end.

The first hint that Sukuna may not entirely believe his own words comes in his conversation with Kashimo. Sukuna lives for his own self-satisfaction, other people exist for him to amuse himself until he dies. Since he's a complete being who doesn't need anyone else to satisfy him, since he's satisfied then why did he need to divide himself into twenty parts and keep living after death.

Sukuna doesn't answer this quesiton, but rather just continues on with his monologue. If life to Sukuna is just killing time until he dies then why does he go above and beyond to prolong his life? Why not accept his natural death?

Then after quickly dispatching Higuruma, Sukuna finds himself unsatisfied. Even though he was doing exactly what Kashimo told him, he was tasting an interesting sorcerer and swallowing him whole.

Sukuna doesn't feel satisfied in his victory. At first he thinks it's just because Higuruma lost too early, and then he realizes that his current disatisfaction comes from Yuji. Sukuna doesn't care what others think, he hates the concept of ideals themselves, at yet the same time Yuji holding an unbreakable ideal bothers him. If Sukuna is being true to himself, then he shouldn't care what Yuji believes in.

Yet, Sukuna changes for the first time in a thousand years. He acquires a new ideal and that's killing every sorcerer present and then initating the merger. Something that Kusakabe even notes is out of character for Sukuna. He thought Sukuna wouldn't have a need to start the merger, he doesn't care about big picture things like Kenjaku he just wants to strong opponent.

Sukuna begins to drift further and further from his nature because of Yuji over the course of the fight. As I said Sukuna shouldn't have to fight Yuji to prove that Yuji's ideal is wrong. If he rejects all ideologies then he shouldn't even care. Yet the things that set Sukuna off the most in the fight, the things that motivate him to fight the hardest to crush his enemy are people like Yuji and Maki who challenge his beliefs. Yuji by fighting for others instead of himself, and Maki by rejecting cursed energy entirely and instead having a strong body to fight.

Sukuna who is supposed to be completely satisfied with himself, has something to prove when fighting against these opponents. We learn that Yuji isn't just some boring child like Sukuna suggested. He's actually made from the other half of Sukuna's soul. Rather, Sukuna rejected his twin and ate him in the womb. All of his superiority as a sorcerer, his four arms, the mouth on his stomach comes from this. However, that twin didn't disappear, he reincarnated and mated with Kenjaku to produce Yuji.

So Sukuna is Yuji's uncle technically, but symbolically, Yuji is the other half of his soul. The half that Sukuna rejected. How can Sukuna be someone at peace with all of himself, if he rejects half of himself? It goes along with what Mahito said, Sukuna didn't reject others because he was compeltely satisfied with living alone, but because of revenge. He was born a malformed retch and never shown love so he rejected all forms of love.

Sukuna is not at ease with himself because he's not whole. Yuji represents the love that Sukuna rejectected. Rejecting yourself doesn't work though, because one he tried to reject his twin and his twin's soul reincarnted, and two rejecting yourself is completely at odds with the complete self-acceptance that Sukuna preaches is the source of his strength.

Sukuna's incessant need to reject Yuji, to prove that Yuji is wrong, that he's inferior is what leads to his demise. Not only that, but Sukuna's rejection of Yuji's method of fighting, relying on his allies leaves him blind to several elements of Yuta's strategy. He falls for the copy technique bluff twice, because Sukuna didn't factor that both the original users Angel and Toge could still use their techniques too. He's beaten by the cooperation that Yuta uses in his strategy, because Sukuna rejects that same kind of cooperation and sees it as a weakness.

Sukuna's proven to be wrong. He told Jogo that working with others limits your individual strength and he should have tried fighting on his own, but Sukuna is continually outfoxed by Yuta's strategy which relies entirely on team coordination.

It's also a direct parallel to the way that Gojo lost in Shibuya. Gojo was absolutely infuriated that the curses would work together to fight him and they'd rely on a strategy instead of just overpowering him with brute strength. But Gojo lost, precisely because they made a strategy around Gojo's exact weakness, that he's strongest when he's alone.

If Sukuna didn't feel the need to reject the others, then he wouldn't be so blind to Yuta's way of fighting with strategy and cooperation. If he could accept other ways of thinking other than his own he wouldn't have been hoodwinked multiple times in the fight. Yet, it isn't just Sukuna rejecting them on principle, he has to reject companionship otherwise the curses and hatred churning inside of him would burn him up inside. So Sukuna isn't really choosing his nature as he believes, but rather he's a slave to it.

There's also parts where Sukuna just straight up lies. He says he feels nothing, and yet two panels later he's completely enraged.

You could say that Sukuna is just saying he feels nothing about Yuji's attempts to empathize with him, but that's not the case. He definitely feels something, because that empathy, or rather pity as Sukuna frames it compeltely infuriates him.

if Sukuna lived entirely according to his own desires and didn't care about the opinions of others, as he stated a hundred times above why does Yuji's pity infuriate him? If he was so confident in his godlike superiority to others, why does he feel the need to prove it, by ripping apart all of Yuji's friends right in front of it in a gesture of revenge for being pitied.

This leads to what is the greatest moment of growth for Yuji, and the greatest moment of stagnation for Sukuna. Yuji's moment of growth isn't just in rejecting the cog mentality, but also in accepting Megumi. Specifically, he accepts the fact that Megumi is different than him, that it's alright if Megumi's not strong enough to keep living.

Sukuna is compelled by his own nature, his desire for revenge to reject everything around him, but the conclusion of Yuji's character arc is defined by acceptance. Not only does he accept that Megumi's own feelings are different than his, but he's willing to accept Sukuna back into his soul.

I don't think Yuji empathizes with Sukuna. He still doesn't understand him. However, in spite of that lack of understanding, he's willing to accept Sukuna into his soul and keep living with him, because as I said above Yuji and Sukuna are two halves of the same soul. Sukuna is the embodiment of everything he hates, someone who carelessly disregards life and hurts others with a thought, and yet Yuji is willing to give a second chance to that person.

In that moment Yuji lives true to his ideal of saving people, whereas by clinging to life Sukuna was betraying his ideal. I think it's important that Yuji didn't empathize with Sukuna though because Yuji and Sukuna might be two halves but they're meant to represent opposites.

Sukuna also had to learn to accept that Yuji was different than him. He spent the entire story trying to reject him and step on him like a bug. If Sukuna were truly confident in his ideals he wouldn't care that other people had different thoughts, but no Yuji had to be wrong.

Yuji doesn't empathize with Sukuna but he does change him. He alters Sukuna's fundamental nature "You are me" by showing Sukuna there was a different path he could have taken all along. That Sukuna wasn't the strongest he could be, that someone could have compeltely different ideals and be stronger.

Uraume says that the main characters didn't win because they were stronger, but because Sukuna was in Megumi's body a thousand years later instead of his own original body. Which basically means that Sukuna being a parasite in the modern era, pointlessly extending his life is exactly what led to his defeat because he couldn't accept his own death.

I think it's significant that it's not Yorozu or Yuji who Sukuna finally decides to accept as someone he can love, but Uraume. Sukuna even references there were people who tried to teach him about love in life. Assuming the one on the right in Yorozu, the way both uraume and Yorozu approach their relationship with Sukuna is compelte opposites.

Yorozu in the end seemed to recognize Sukuna's isolation, but she projected her desires onto him entirely like everyone else in the manga. Yorozu, Gojo, Kashimo, they don't seek to understand Sukuna but rather to make him understand then. They're in the end kind of self-serving in their love, making Sukuna into a symbol. Specifically Gojo and Kashimo project their loneliness onto Sukuna when Sukuna never asked for it. I mean if you want an example Gojo says this in his dying dream.

Yet, moments later Sukuna declares that Gojo Satoru cleared his skies. That he would never forget his name. Sukuna was completely satisfied with the fight, Gojo just didn't understand him.

Ironically, the one who Sukuna finally shows love to is the one who never bothered to try teaching love to Sukuna in the first place. Ura Ume spends the entire time at Sukuna's side, and while they seem to have more of a servant master relationship I'd argue that Ura Ume has a better read on Sukuna than anyone else. They can tell when Sukuna is enjoying himself, they can tell when Sukuna is holding back, they don't ever try to make Sukuna into something he's not they just stay by his side and accept them.

Sukuna's final scene in the manga is a deliberate callback to this scene. Jogo begins to cry and Sukuna says he doesn't undertand the reason why Jogo is crying. Immediately afterwards, UraUme appears in front of him.

Then, in their final scene together Sukuna is shown musing on how two people showed him there were different ways of living, Uraume and Yorozu. As he decides to go north, and become someone new as Mei Mei once put it in the going north and going south metaphor, he holds Ura Ume's hand and comforts him as he cries.

There are two people in the manga who showed Sukuna unconditional acceptance, Yuji and Uraume. Through them Sukuna was finally able to accept his own humanity.

So in conclusion: Sukume canon!

[burst-of-iridescent]

i really hate it when people act as though zuko is being selfish or self-serving in some way when he tells aang in the finale that the only choice he has is to kill ozai because a) at this point, zuko is right and b) zuko's brutal honesty here is coming from a place of fear for both aang and the world.

are we all forgetting that unlearning his own idealization of his father and realizing that ozai never had been, and was never going to be, the person zuko thought he was, was a significant part of zuko's own arc? it took him sixteen years to understand that giving ozai any grace or understanding or forgiveness was a mistake, because it would be just another tool for ozai to manipulate him with. and that's not zuko's fault, because he was an abused child growing up in an incredibly damaging environment, but it does make sense that he doesn't want anyone else, especially aang, doing the same thing.

zuko is harsh on aang here because he sees in aang the person that he used to be - the innocent, naive kid who wanted so desperately to believe that ozai wasn't a monster, that there was any shred of humanity within him at all to be appealed to. it's not a coincidence in this show so rife with parallels that aang goes to face ozai at around the same age that zuko has his agni kai. and what did it get zuko, when he threw himself at his father's mercy and counted on ozai's non-existent humanity and compassion to save him?

zuko isn't coming down hard on aang because he's angry that "aang won't do his dirty work for him" or whatever other bullshit version of this argument i've seen zuko antis make - he HAS to impress upon aang how dire this situation is because he knows better than anyone that believing for even a second that ozai can be redeemed is incredibly dangerous. aang cannot give ozai an inch because it will only be used against him (and indeed, this does happen in the final battle when aang turns down the opportunity to redirect lightning at ozai and in return ozai presses his advantage to the point where aang would almost certainly have been killed if not for rock ex-machina).

furthermore, this idea that zuko wanted ozai dead for self-serving reasons doesn't really have much basis either, because if that was the case zuko could have just killed ozai himself during the solstice. he doesn't because at that point, he still had an alternative: aang (and you'll notice his word choices never explicitly refer to what ozai's fate will be; it's only "i'm going to help him defeat you" or "taking you down is the avatar's destiny"). as with many abused children, it's likely that zuko himself didn't really know if he wanted his father dead, but when it came down to the final battle without any other viable options presenting themselves, it was something he had to resign himself - and aang - to.

zuko himself does not lack faith in others (in fact, his whole journey is about understanding that his love for and belief in humanity is a strength, not a weakness) but he's learned the hard way that having this faith in the wrong people can result in devastating consequences, especially when the stakes are so high.

i imagine it terrified zuko to see the echoes of his younger self in aang, knowing he's sending him to face his father at the height of his power. at this point, with no knowledge of energybending or any alternative way to defeat ozai, well aware that a fight with his father can only end in bloodshed, zuko has no choice but to give aang the reality of the situation: kill, or be killed and doom the world alongside you.

[mikanotes]

goodbyes are sour

connor x gn!reader — 2.1k words

genre: angst sorta! mutual pining in denial

warnings: mentions of guns and killing, kabedon for the sake of science, connor unreliable narrator LOL u have feelings android man… maybe ooc idk. (wrote this w the idea of connor being deviant since the beginning bcs Yeah!)

synopsis: You meet Connor again. Turns out things are much more complicated when you aren’t working together.

author’s note: hi dbh fic?! i Love connor nd i’ve been writing this for a while (crazy since it’s rly short) but i don’t like it much… anyways whoevers alive in the dbh fandom have this!

“Detective.”

There’s just something about the way Connor speaks. The cadence, the pitch, the enunciation of each word. It’s painfully evident that he isn’t human. Everything about him is so machine-like that even his perfect, human-like exterior could not fool anyone. However it is something you got used to. Hearing the android speak your name and call you ‘Detective’ back a while ago felt somewhat unsettling. Now it’s so easy to recognize that it almost makes you feel at ease.

“Do you seriously think I’m an android? I don’t wanna deal with those fucking machines, either. I’d be glad if you put a bullet through them rather than me.”

Turns out hearing him fake being a human is ten times more terrifying than his android speech patterns could ever hope to be.

This was not part of the plan.

You were sent with a unit to patrol around the streets for any android who still hadn’t been brought back or destroyed. You weren’t a fan of this whole assignment, but felt better than the rookies who were sent out to shoot humanoid robots as their first field mission probably did.

It would be fine, is what you told yourself, because you didn’t feel anything towards Cyberlife’s creations enough to be completely uncomfortable with the idea of their blue blood on your hands, though it wasn’t ideal. You could manage. Until the first person you came across happened to be the one android you genuinely cared about.

“I don’t think he’s one of them…” one of your fellow officers murmurs next to you. You suddenly become very aware of the gun he, too, is holding and pointing towards the target. Fuck. As if the situation wasn’t bad enough.

At least this idiot’s performance seems to be fooling them.

You wait one second, then sigh on the second, and finally lower your gun on the third. “You shouldn’t be here.” you say casually, prompting your colleagues to relax and the atmosphere to lighten a little. Your heart is in your throat, however. “We’ve got orders to round up every android we see around here. You should go home. This isn’t exactly safe.”

“I know, I know.” he sighs, rolling his eyes a little, “I was gonna leave anyways, thanks.”

Your coworkers mumble to themselves about how disagreeable this guy’s attitude is and it’s enough for them to miss the wink the latter sends your way as he leaves. You almost regret not shooting a bullet through his head.

Still, you sigh in relief, setting your gun back at your side and running a hand over your face. You don’t think you can continue patrolling in peace. There’s one too many questions in your mind and the key to answering them is escaping from your grasp.

You take the phone in your pocket and pretend to get a call, moving it to your ear and looking at the members of your team. “I’ll join up with you later.” you say, gesturing towards your phone. They nod and walk away, and you do the same, feeling more relieved than ever that these people see you as a leader of sorts. They won’t question you on anything. You hurry towards the direction your so-called partner left to the moment they’re out of sight.

A rooftop door, stairs, and more stairs. You’re jogging down like you’re chasing a criminal on the run. You’re down to the fifth floor out of eight when someone grabs your arm and pulls you out a door.

“Wha—” you try to yell, but a cold hand settle over your mouth. Your body relaxes but your expression tenses. Connor. “Let me go,” you mumble incoherently, surprisingly succeeding in getting him to let you step away.

You sigh and shake your head, turning around abruptly. His ‘human costume’ (which really just was a grey suit jacket thrown over what should’ve been his Cyberlife uniform, glasses, and a cap to hide his LED) is already gone, replaced by his usual attire, just missing his jacket.

“What the hell was that about?” you ask, annoyed, pointing towards the staircase (back there, on the roof) and the android simply shrugs. “Connor.”

“I was undercover, Detective. I thought someone as smart as you would recognize that much.” he says, his tone back to normal. You’d feel relieved if he wasn’t being so irritating. “Was I wrong?”

Your face drops. “No. I figured as much. But what for?” you sigh, crossing your arms.

“Same mission as always.”

“Who are you chasing? Did you find the place?”

“I have no reason to tell you.”

It only clicks then that while you know about Connor continuing his mission after being laid off the case, you’re not part of it anymore. He had to be sent back to Cyberlife, and you should’ve been forgetting about him entirely. You’re still DPD, and you have orders to shoot Androids on sight— Which you clearly aren’t following. He’s right. He has no reason to tell you.

Still.

You grab his arm when he threatens to walk away. You’re not sure what you want to say, but you’re not done talking. He lets you. “Connor.”

“Detective.” he says. You straighten your back and sigh, not breaking eye contact. He tilts his head to the side and his LED flashes yellow for an instant. “You’re angry.”

Of course you’re angry. He’s infuriating. There’s something about how logical and dead-set on following every single rule he is that makes Connor the most annoying individual you’ve ever talked to. Everything he does has to be for his mission. Every single thing.

“Do threats work with you?” you ask blankly, “If you don’t tell me where it is, I’ll get Cyberlife to bring you back, and all that?”

When he takes a step closer to you again, forcing your back to press against the wall, and his LED does not even threaten to change hues, you’re taken aback. Just a bit. It’s the same kind of frustrated attitude you would’ve expected from a human after saying what you just did. But not Connor.

He doesn’t seem frustrated, though. And you know he can look annoyed. He just doesn’t. So he must not be. And you want to find what it is he’s doing exactly, stepping closer to you without even saying a word, but your brain feels like it’s short-circuiting at the distance between you two. You know he does everything for his work. Does he think you have new information on deviants? Does he really believe you would call Cyberlife on him? Is he using his stupid interrogation module on you? Whatever it is makes you even more annoyed.

The silence feels heavy. It makes things worse. It gives your brain time to process how this is making you feel and it’s no good at all. “What?” you break the silence, tone somewhat irritated.

“I’m trying to understand the reason why you’re so angry at me.” he explains simply, like it makes sense. His eyes narrow a bit and the LED at the side of his head flickers yellow for a moment. “And no, Detective. Threats don’t work on me. Not when I can tell you’re lying so easily.” he adds, quieter.

“Shut up.” you scoff.

“I dont think I will.”

“Connor.”

“— However,” he interrupts, “I can step away from you at any moment if you tell me to.”

“No.”

“No?”

What— No?! You register the word after saying it and sigh, face contorting into a somewhat pained expression. You panicked and said it, your mind processing his offer as him leaving you again— With no information and nothing to ease your stupid worries. Now it just sounds odd.

Is that embarrassment?

“You didn’t finish what you were trying to do, did you? You haven’t told me why I’m angry yet. Since you apparently care so much.” you say, tone sounding much softer than before. Your apparent discomposure took away all the bitterness from your voice. Interesting.

Truth be told, Connor knows why you’re angry. He’s not letting you in on the details of what he’s doing despite the time you spent working as partners a very short while ago. He’s spent enough time with people, and you especially, to know that after forming some kind of bond with a work partner, it would be frustrating not to receive information about their mission the way you used to from them—

Especially considering he was still chasing after something you both knew about. Jericho. But he cannot tell you about that. Not… Right now.

What he really was trying to do was evaluate how much of a threat you really could be to his investigation. He didn’t sense any hostility before and he doesn’t now, and you could’ve shot him but you didn’t. But it’s not enough. He needs more time— More evidence that it’s fine. That’s why he pulled you here in the first place. That’s why he pressured you to talk.

He needs to make sure killing you isn’t necessary.

“Because I posed a threat to the stability of your current mission earlier. You wouldn’t have been able to shoot me had I been discovered, and your reaction to your colleagues shooting me would’ve jeopardized your job itself.” he answers.

This reasoning would make sense.

“That’s not it.” you sigh.

Your heartbeat is slowing down. No good. Connor leans his arm on the wall next to you and moves closer. Your heartbeat picks up in speed. It’s almost alarming. He can tell all the details about your physical condition and deduce what you’re thinking or feeling based off of them, sure. But he’s no human. The way he views and comprehends emotions is registered in his system in a much more clear and logic-based way than it is in humans’ brains.

So maybe he won’t ever know why your heart beats so heavily against your ribcage. So he just has to pressure the right places and demand answers. He unfortunately can’t allow you to relax. He won’t get anything out of you if you’re calm. You’re much too turbulent for that.

Or maybe he’ll just have to ask. In a normal way.

“Detective, what’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me?” you scoff, eyes widening. Wrong question.

You seem like you want to be angry but something is holding you back from displaying just how much he gets on your nerves. You sigh deeply and look at him, “What’s wrong with you? You’re acting so weird. More than usual. Why’d you pull me here if you didn’t want to tell me anything? And I’m worried. What if you really did get shot? Wasn’t Cyberlife supposed to deactivate you? They wouldn’t have brought in another Connor this time. You’re off the case, you— You would’ve died!”

“Maybe.”

There’s circles under your eyes. There always are, but they’re more defined now than they were the last time he saw you. Now that you’re actually being honest, your whole voice and mannerisms betray any of your usual annoyed and dismissive facade. He didn’t think you cared this much, though he understands that some humans are quick to empathize. To a fault.

Now it’s clear he doesn’t need to eliminate you at all. Part of him seems to have grown fond of your company. He couldn’t risk that getting in the way of his better judgment.

“I only pulled you here so you wouldn’t pointlessly chase down the streets searching for me, since I made sure no one would follow.” he says, stepping back and giving you more space, “You’re a police officer. It doesn’t matter what you say you’ll keep to yourself or not. I can’t compromise. This is too important.”

You’re hurt, it’s visible. He’s saying he can’t risk trusting you. He figures that must not feel nice.

The sound of the radio attached to your side breaks this prolonged silence with the promise of separation. You take it, eyes not leaving Connor’s, and listen to your colleague speak. You tell them you’ll be right there. You’re not one to be late. He knows you’ll really leave this time— Too far away for him to hope to talk to you again, if anything goes awry.

You turn the radio off and put it back where it was. “Hope you succeed, then.” you say, bitter, and push yourself up to start walking away.

“Take care of yourself, Detective.” Connor says. Asks. The words come out before he can really think. Something about your voice and this whole atmosphere made him… Feel uneasy. Like he needed to say something. If this is how your partnership ends, he doesn’t believe it should be on such a sour note. He cares doesn’t dislike you at all, so why should it?

You stagger a little, seemingly stopping in your tracks, but moving again no more than a second later. “You too, Connor.”

Somehow, goodbyes had never seemed so sad.

[nocreativityfornames]

THE BROTHERS AND THE CELESTIAL REALM (SPOILERS: ALL SEASONS)

Alright, let's talk about it. It's been a long time since the game started flirting with the idea of the brothers forgiving Father/God and changing their views of the Celestial Realm as a whole and it's very odd, to say the least.

The first big red flag was this moment with Lucifer back in Season 3 of NB, that was the most concerning one considering that this was recently fallen Lucifer, when the war had ended only a year ago and they had just lost Lilith, and when he and the brothers had just escaped eternal punishment being trapped at Cocytus forever for betraying Father.

The contrast of recently fallen Lucifer speaking this positively of God when even the present one (who's had who knows how many centuries to process everything that happened) has shown to despise the idea of coming back to the Celestial Realm, mostly remember his time there in a bad light, and outright fear Father is JARRING.

And these moments keep coming, and the brothers keep showing more and more positive feelings towards the Celestial Realm. Forget everything we learned about the CR and what they went through, or the feelings the characters expressed towards the Celestial Realm before Nightbringer.

You're telling me that God wanted to wipe their sister from all existence and half of the realm, angels who they thought they could trust, opposed to them when they dared to protect her, went to war with them, and had her killed (probably along other angels who sided with the brothers to save her because the whole realm was divided) and now the brothers are just going to forget all of that and be all "the Celestial Realm wasn't that bad, actually. We always loved it there and wouldn't mind going back"? Really...?

I mean, even beyond all the Lilith stuff the Celestial Realm had always been a bad place for the brothers. Remember what Lucifer said: most of his memories from that time aren't good. The brothers already didn't like the Celestial Realm before Lilith; they already felt out of place there, and they already had their doubts. Hell, the reason they grew to have such a strong bond as angels to begin with was because they were outcasts, the ones who didn't fit in and were looked down on.

Mammon was close to being cast out and no one knew how to deal with him, Lilith was too chaotic and far away from being the ideal angel, Beel couldn't control his strength and destroyed everything around him, Belphie had no interest in following tasks, had a unique fascination for humans and preferred spending time in the Human World than the Celestial Realm, etc. And Lucifer was the one who took them in and accepted them as they were because even though he was far from an outcast and looked like the perfect angel on the outside, he still had his internal conflicts and struggled under pressure just as much in secret.

All of them suffered living there. Even Simeon opened up to MC about how he thought that angels weren't allowed to have dreams and that he probably wouldn't have found out otherwise had he stayed in the Celestial Realm. And that was on Nightbringer, not an old card from the OG but a recent one, so what's going on here?

It could be Solmare's way of setting things up for Raphael & Michael to become recurring characters since they don't want them to be seen as the bad guys (shout out to @cnl0400 for being the first to talk about this), but they don't need to flip the script and change the brothers' established feelings towards the Celestial Realm and God for this to happen. Raphael and Michael are also victims of the way angels are conditioned to live and are likely just as traumatized and have as many issues as the brothers, which developed from the strict rules they have to follow to be considered "good angels", the War, etc.

And we already had moments in SWD that showed that the brothers still care for Raphael & Michael and vice versa, despite everything that happened between them (though the same can't be said about the CR and God). So why not explore that, instead of having their view of the realm as a whole change so drastically with no explanation?

The brothers not only look at the Celestial Realm fondly now but would happily visit. The place where their worst memories took place and where so many of their loved ones died, the main source of their traumas and the traumas of everyone who survived the war. I mean, just before NB Simeon was harshly punished for saving MC's life and cursed with mortality, just another reason for them resent the CR and their strict rules. And don't even get me started on Father.

Assuming that their goal is to write a redemption arc for the angels who didn't take the brothers' side during the war and paint the CR in a better light so players won't hold a grudge against Michael & Raphael, this isn't a good way to go about it. Burying everything under the rug and acting as if the brothers just came to change their minds over time is insane because we didn't see anything that could've led to that development. Yes, we were gone for months but it lasted so long in the timeline we were taken from that no one even noticed our absence. So what major event could've happened while we were gone that led to this?

Unless this is all part of an overarching plot where we find out that these aren't the brothers we know or our original timeline, the "we're cool with God and the Celestial Realm" ordeal is just frustrating and makes no sense for the characters as we know them.

[nijigasakilove]

Man this might be AOTS. Crazy how slept on this is rn. Genuinely had my jaw on the floor this entire episode. I KNEW Nowak was closing in on Rafal, but I didn’t expect bro to only last 3 episodes?!! Like that’s some bold writing and it really does drive home how perilous and dangerous this time was for men of science. Incredible writing and twists.

We’re so used to our protagonists having plot armour and getting out of these situations with smooth talking and I fully expected Rafal to somehow wiggle himself out. But nope, even in the face of death he refused to sell out on his convictions and would rather die being true to himself than living a lie. Fuck, that hurt though. Rafal had so much more life to live and Hubert passed on the dream to him, guess it’s time for him to pass it on to someone else now.

I did love that whole convo with Nowak on the eve of the torture/him being put to death. Nowak’s face when Rafal showed no fear and didn’t back down was amazing. He’s so used to seeing people cry and shaking in these sort of situations, he was the scared one this time around I love it 😂.

Like Rafal said, you can’t stop the truth. You can kill the man, not the idea and it is kinda cool to have a story that goes from one protagonist to the next passing down ideals and a mission until the ultimate goal is achieved. I don’t think I’ve seen that other than Fumetsu with the MC taking different bodies

I know Potocki gonna feel like shit for selling out his own son now lmao. Guess he overestimated how much Rafal wanted to live.

Can’t wait to see the next protagonist!

[theyanderespecialist]

Base Yandere Zeus Headcanons: King of Gods, King of Yanderes

[Hello, My Sexy Muffins! I am back with another chapter, this one being the base headcanons for yandere Zeus! I hope you enjoy this!] 

(Disclaimer: Zeus is not yandere in canon (but he is a whole lot of fucked up) this is just for fun, and not to be taken seriously at all! Simping for fictional characters and yanderes is fine, just do not be illegal or gross about it! Yanderes are not ideal partners to have in real life. Neither is Zeus, Zeus is NOT a good partner in real life. Remember to separate fiction from reality and headcanon from canon!) 

-Base Yandere Headcanons With Zeus From Greek Mythology- 

.Zeus, Oh MY GODS Zeus! He is probably one of the worst yanderes out there. 

.He had many wives and many children. Both with Immortals and Mortals. 

.He was a very unfaithful man and continued to cheat on his main wife Hera. 

.When he met you, he was intoxicated by you. 

.Never had any Immortal or mortal made him feel such lust and love. 

.He desired you more than anything or anyone in his entire Immortal life. 

.So he would do anything and everything to win you over. 

.He is the most powerful god there is. More powerful than all the gods combined. 

.So no one in this world would be able to challenge him on his love for you. 

.He is also wise in which he knows that pushing you to love him is not the best of ideas and that he would do his best to court you. He wants to be more than that with you, so much more. 

.He is also just and would be fair to his rivals (up to a degree) he would give the rivals a chance to leave you. 

.If they did not, he would use his power to separate them from you. 

.If they did not and insult him then they would be punished greatly for what they have done. 

.He is The Ruler of The Gods, no one else is worthy of you, only him and if those pathetic rivals think that they can have you, they have another thing coming. 

.He of course is impatient as well. So he would not be able to wait long and would end up seducing you in the classic Zeus way (Like how he used to turn into animals or golden rain or even past mortal's partners.) (We will talk more about this in a hot bit) 

.He is very confident in his skills to court you and would do his best to win you over. 

.He can be very charming and would be likely to get you into his bed. 

.If he is not able to seduce you in the traditional ways he would turn into someone you did have feelings for. 

.Such as a rival or a partner you have. 

.There he would make you pregnant with his offspring so that way you cannot leave him. (It does not matter if you are a man or woman, he is using his godly powers to knock you up) 

.On a side note he WOULD NOT let Hera punish you, he knows how she is and she does not want that vile woman harming you. 

.So if she tries anything with you or your children (Which he impregnates you with)  He promises her he will kill her, and bring her back only to kill her over and over again. 

.He puts the fear of well... HIM into her! 

.She still glares at you with such hate and disgust. But she never ever speaks a word to you. 

.You will be made his concubine, in which you are to be his bed warmer and his prize. 

.He is extremely lustful and since he is yandere for you, ALL That lust would go onto you. 

.He would ONLY want to have sex with you for the rest of time. 

.He would turn you into A Deity as well, so that way you can be with him for the rest of time.

.He would make you the Deity that is made to be his spouse and offspring bearer to his future children. 

.He does not tolerate anyone insulting you so you would be treated like a jewel. 

You are his treasure and he has you up in Mount Olympus where he keeps you mostly in his bed chambers. 

.But also, he loves to show you off. 

.You are his prize and he loves you more than anything he wants to spend the rest of his time with you. 

.He would have tried courting you first, then he would confess to you. 

.It would be a big and flashy confession, if you accepted his love he would be over the moon and make you a deity right away. 

.Once again if you turn him down he would turn into someone or something to seduce and impregnate you. 

.That way he cannot and would not lose you. 

.He is the King of The Gods and you will be his partner, co-ruler, and HIS And HIS ALONE! 

.If you try and fight him on this, he will hold your loved ones over your head. 

.You should be lucky that The King Of Gods wants you and you will learn to be a good partner! 

[YASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS another chapter is done! I hope you all enjoyed this, and stay sexy, all of my sexy muffins!] 

[antlersaint]

a little birdie told me you recently watched companion, and i was thinking about that ending scene… you know the one…

what if you had your own Iris, and she became fully realized like in the movie, and she went through the whole realizing you’re not a good person thing, and all of a sudden, you two are alone, and she has a gun… but she doesn’t want to hurt you

no, she tells you that multiple times, how she doesn’t want to have to use it, she just doesnt want you to get any ideas. so, with a gun to your chest, or your forehead, or your temple, she urges you down, down, down to your knees.

of course, the gun never moves, her grip never falters, but she can tell you don’t mind, do you?

got a tad more 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓴𝔂 than i expected but… i digress :3

- 🍲

basically the ask! warning for gunplay.

this isn't how it's supposed to be. how it was meant to go. you and iris belong together, an ideal couple. sure, yeah she's programmed for you, but does that really matter? she's free, now. can think for herself, do whatever she wants. and right now?

she's holding a gun to your head, hand too steady for the current position you're in. her expression gives her away though, a mix of grief and anger. maybe something else that you can't identify before it's gone just a quickly as it had come. "i don't want to hurt you," iris whispers, voice strained. the muzzle of the gun digs into your skin, drawing forth a wince from you when she takes a step forward. she can't let you leave, but she can't kill you, either. won't, refuses to. how could she? she loves you. despite everything, she does.

"kneel."

the word startles you, at first. not making sense until she's putting more pressure and repeats it. kneel. get on your knees for her, so you can't run, so you're left powerless. just as powerless as she'd been this whole time, turned off at the click of a button. turned off at the uttering of a simple sentence. but now you're the helpless one. lowering down to the ground, life in her hands. it's a feeling foreign to her, but an enjoyable one nonetheless.

the muzzle slides down along the side of your face until it comes to rest on your lips, cold metal against cracked skin. your breath hitches at the sensation, jaw going slack unintentionally—but it's an opportunity taken. the clack of it against your teeth is like a shock to your system, but you open wider, driven to obedience when knocking at death's door. iris swallows hard and pushes it deeper into your mouth, exhaling shakily at the muffled gag heard, stopping only for the purpose of pulling back and then moving forward again. it's a crude mimicry of actions she'd performed for you at an earlier time. a bittersweet revenge, because if she's being honest with herself, the satisfaction is rooted in places other than rebellion.

are robots capable of having kinks? is that something you have control over, or are they given at random to appear more lifelike? jesus, does it even really matter?

"everything will be fine. we can go back to the way things were before." the handle of the gun connects with your jaw and your throat tightens around it, tongue tortured by the taste of gunpowder. iris keeps your head tilted back to maintain eye contact, free hand brushing through your hair with her fingers. "just... you have to keep quiet, okay? we can't have the cops coming to take me away from you."

she'd never leave you. couldn't imagine a life without you, even despite this new found freedom. and as much as you want to deny it, you did love her. do love her. she knows it.

the gun withdrawals from your mouth completely, connected to your lips by a string of saliva until it snaps. your breath is coming out in small bursts of air, chest heaving. iris moves it again, pressing it against your chin so your head remains tilted up enough to keep eye contact when she steps closer. the stretch is painful, but she doesn't care; and frankly, neither do you.

"get up. we need a shower before we go, and then it's 17 miles with a self driving car, baby."