#if he was the main character that’s how it would go but they’re all the main characters and I feel like these storylines more closely

[yuurei20]

Summarized transcript of the Twisted Radio episode with Diasomnia! 🐉🦇⚔️⚡️

Highlights: A very good episode, all the Diasomnia VAs love their characters and each other’s characters and each other and it is very obvious when they interact.

Disclaimer: These are not direct quotes, this is all general summarizations and paraphrasing~

Begins with how they are happy to be all together in one place, for the first time in two years.

The opening talk set by last week: what do you find yourself buying when you travel?

⚡️It seems 🦦-kun wanted to buy a dragon sword… 🐉 I’ve bought one before. 🦇 Why wwww 🐉 In elementary school

On topic: 🐉 I love milk. Every time I go some place I buy milk to drink. A recent musical I was in traveled nationwide and the milk in Hokkaido is different depending upon the area. I was so happy.

🦇I like to get things to remind me of the trip. It doesn’t matter what they are. It doesn’t even have to be related to the area. Just a prize from a Game Center or a gacha toy or anything is fine.

⚔️ Dragons. Apparently they’re growing in popularity. 

He talks about how around high school everyone loses interest, but then you become an adult and are like “actually yeah dragons are great” ww

🦇 We should get on that bandwagon. Officially recognized by Diasomnia ww ⚔️ We have the most noble and beautiful dragon of them all 🦇 Out of all the dragons that there are, he certainly stands out

(Everyone is laughing so much they are having so much fun)

⚡️I like getting fruit or something that was made from things grown in the area, even if it’s temporary, to remember the taste

(⚡️ is the host so it is his job to keep them on subject ww there are a lot of cuts in this episode, they must have talked for so long and needed to cut it down)

Fan letter: I had a dream where I talked about how wonderful Malleus-sama is for ten hours. What strange dreams have you had before?

⚡️I have been seeing the same dream since I was a kid. A kind of horror dream. The same dream where I am being chased by something. 

⚔️ There are dreams I had as a kid that really left an impression on me. I remember them pretty well. Like one where I became a character from a cartoon that could fly. I became one of the main characters. An enemy would appear, someone would say “Let’s go!” and they’d all naturally start to fly. And even though I was a main character, I’d say “Let’s go!” and I was the only one who wouldn’t be able to fly. Everyone else flew off and I couldn’t. I was the main character and they all left me behind. I started crying that I couldn’t fly and then I woke up.

🦇 I’ve had a dream about situation where I could fly, too. Even though I could fly, when I jumped from somewhere high up instead of going straight I would go fly upwards, then think, “Yeah, I can fly,” and that is when I could go forward. I perform safety checks within my dream.

🐉 In a dream I had in university I could fly, but just some light floating. Everyone else travels very quickly, and at first I can as well, but then I get lower and lower, and soon I am floating about 5cm. I’m technically flying, but…I saw that dream a lot.

(This entire story ⚔️ is in the background dying of laughter)

About Malleus

He was very mysterious when he first appeared. ⚡️ says he had the feeling from the start that he was a very good character. 

🦇 He had an atmosphere of someone who is difficult to go near.

⚔️ I like Malleus-sama even more now than I did before. Not just what about him that is firm but his soft side, his warm side, his cold side—we can see so many aspects of his character now, which has made him even more captivating. Because he is so mysterious something even more wonderful than what I had imagined has emerged—that is the impression I have of him now.

🦇 They did a great job with his casting. I didn’t really know anything at first, but doing this for so long, you can tell how perfect 🐉-kun is for this part. 

🐉 I’m so happy :D

🦇 Of course everyone wants to know more in the beginning because of his cool voice, but 🐉-kun has a kindness to him. And that is what I came to understand. They took that into account when they chose him. When I figured that out, I was extremely impressed. This isn’t something that just anyone can do. It’s not enough to just provide a cool character voice. It’s a distinct charm that he has.

⚔️ The character is really packed with substance, but there’s still space left, and you can sense that mysteriousness. Because there is so much going on inside of him there are things for you to grasp at while simultaneously stirring your imagination. I really sense that.

🦇 When you try to think of other seiyuu like that, no one really comes to mind. It has to be 🐉-kun.

🐉 Is it okay if I start to cry?

⚔️ And when he sings…

⚡️ That humming…

⚔️ That was amazing.

🐉 That was so hard to do. They told me, “please hum like you mean it,” and I thought, “what is humming that you mean?” Humming that follows a melody, that becomes a sound. I had never done that before. It was really hard. We tried several different patterns.

⚔️ It was scary. Both an ending and a beginning.

�� But as the story continues I find him cute, too. And 🐉-kun is cute, too.

(Everyone is laughing, I think ⚔️ is going to die here)

🦇 No I’m serious, really, really. 

🐉 While portraying Malleus the difficult thing is always not showing too much emotion,.The direction I am always receiving is “you can’t become human.” They’ll say, “that take sounded just like a regular guy.” The balance of how his normal is not normal for a human is always hard to do. And post-overblot Malleus—they’ll tell me, “Sorry, but Malleus sounds kind of scary.” I often get told “can you control the darkness a bit.” But through all that how do I still portray Malleus-ness…

🦇 The more you read for a character the more you come to understand them, but Malleus was last.

🐉 There was a lot of uncertainty in the beginning. I have concluded that he is cute. He’s a child. He’s been alive longer than the others, but his emotional state hasn’t caught up to that. He has so much power, but he lacks the normal concept of common sense. Things that are common sense to him are not so to others. I am always trying to portray that unusual dichotomy.

⚔️ talks about being able to see Malleus grow up in Book 7 through the different milestones were see in the flashbacks. There are places where he has always been the same but parts about him that have evolved. ⚔️ tells 🐉 that it seems like that must have been hard.

🐉 It was so hard.  I think there’s probably a way of interacting with Malleus that's in line with how he understands things, even though I don't fully understand it. When encountering him for the first time, people around him might think, 'Wow, he doesn’t react at all!' But Malleus does react in his own way. I would receive many detailed directions like 'Please be surprised!' or 'Please react!' I didn’t create this performance all by myself, it has come together from the efforts of the staff, and I’m really grateful for that. I tend to lose track of what was the right way to approach things as Malleus. You can get confused between doing events and the main story, so getting back into the right mindset every time is pretty tough.

About Silver

🐉 I thought he was really cool when I saw him the first time.

⚡️ I think it’s cute how he falls asleep—he’ll wake up, apologize, and then immediately sleep again.

🦇 He’s really pretty.

🐉 I thought he had a beautiful face the first time I saw him.

⚔️ My portrayal of him hasn’t really changed since the beginning. We’ve gotten more information and there is more of a backbone now, and of course things change when new things are revealed. Even from the beginning he wasn’t just a cool character, he had a naturalness to him, and not just that he spaces out, but he tries to solve his problems with physical strength. Like in Book 7 with “if I hit it that will fix it.” I think his humanity is being expressed more these days.

🦇 It took a while, yeah?

⚔️ It took so long.

🦇 It took us a while to get to Malleus, too, but he had the impact of his first appearance. Silver didn’t have anything.

Now they’re talking about Lilia’s farewell party and Malleus and Silver crying together and not knowing how to express their emotions. Trying to be mature. 

⚔️ He’s being a big brother to Silver!!

🦇 I figured something was coming soon, after that. And it went in an intense direction.

⚔️ There is so much about them that is a family. Father is Lilia, and Malleus-sama has a big-brother nature to him.

🐉 You really feel their familial relationship.

⚔️ He felt some responsibility. If the little brother starts to cry, the older brother—

🐉 He can’t cry.

⚔️ He’ll get desperate to try and be strong and try to solve the problem.

🐉 Like he has to step up.

🦇 So it was Silver’s fault.

⚡️⚔️🐉wwwwww

⚔️Not all of it. Silver would never say this, but the reason things became so difficult for the two of them is…their love for their father.

🦇 Sebek and Silver are a good combination, too.

⚔️ Such a good combination~~~

🦇 They’re complete opposites but they’re also surprisingly similar.

⚡️They’re both so honest.

🐉 They’re honest and serious and good kids, both of them.

⚡️ They never had the opportunity to show emotion like that until 7. They are both very quick to cry.

🐉 They’re so much alike.

⚡️I guess this is what happens when you’re raised together with someone. I think Silver is the older brother, looking from Sebek’s perspective. There is a moment where Sebek is scolded for the first time. In the moment, when I was reading, ⚔️’s portrayal really is angry. I even said it, “He finally scolded him for the first time.”

About Sebek

⚡️I think he empowers himself by speaking so loudly. Once he decides on doing something, he goes straight for it, true to his unique magic. With how strongly he sticks to his principles it’s like he could overcome any obstacle, like in that scene he had with Silver, but it was very cute that he actually loses there.

⚔️THAT WAS SO CUTE. That was a great part. 

(⚔️ is literally yelling into his mic about how cute Sebek is)

⚡️The fact that he was able to get out the words he really wanted to say after he lost the fight shows that he does want to say what is on his mind but there is a wall that he has to break down, and then he can move forward. That is a moment where you can really understand Sebek-kun’s feelings. And once he lets his emotions out, they’re out w

🐉 He can’t put the lid back on. Everything spills out.

⚔️ (dying in the background)

⚡️talks about how much effort Sebek puts into everything and he reads so much and there is so much he wants people to know, which is why he is so loud.

🦇Sebek and Silver have both had a lot more lines recently. Doesn’t your voice get worn out during recordings?

⚡️It doesn’t! I do stretches and things before recordings. I figured out that I need that kind of physical exercise to prepare.

About Lilia

⚡️ Mom.

🐉 A cute mom.

⚡️There was a lot of gaps* in 7.

*I can’t figure out a good way to say this in English. It is the difference between what you expect and what something really is.

🐉 Too many gaps, it was so surprising.

🦇 I had heard nothing about any of that.

⚡️ I had an image of him as someone who is gentle and cute and a senpai who enjoys pranks and looks out for others…

🦇 He used to be completely different.

⚡️And there was egg-sama.

🐉 Egg-sama w

⚡️⚔️It’s not inaccurate.

🦇 I have done a lot of crying scenes before. When you first look at the script it hits you, and when you think about how you have to portray what you just read so that the people listening to your performance feel the same emotion—there is a pressure to that. I can’t be the only one crying. I have to make others cry.

⚔️ Something that 🦇-san said (during the special talk show that 🦇 and 🐉 did together last year talking about Book 7 just the two of them) that I really liked and wanted to ask about: You and Baul’s VA Koyasu-san (🐊) have been performing together a lot over the years. And you came back together for the first time in a while for this. You said that you didn’t want to give him the impression of “So this is what 🦇 is like these days.” So there was that pressure, you didn’t want to give an embarrassing performance in front of him, and I realized that you have a passionate spirit that you don’t really show, in my opinion—but it’s there! I got really excited about that.

🐉 I was surprised, too, that even 🦇-san has those same thoughts.

⚡️Same!

🦇 Of course I do. The pressure was intense. I am glad that we were able to record together, but…

And with the Chapter 13 release announcement they say they have permission to share this information:

🦇 and 🐉 were able to record together!

🐉 It was amazing. It was truly an amazing time for me.

🦇 It was our first time performing together.

Upcoming calendar review~ and done!

[grandline-fics]

Love Potion

DESCRIPTION: Love Potion- You were both only pretending to date. The feelings aren't real...right?

WARNINGS: none

CHARACTERS: Smoker

WORDS: 1,663

A/N: Thank you @missrandomdreamer for requesting this one for the Valentine's Event. Hope you like what I came up with for this one, Smoker deserves the love so hopefully I did him justice on this. As always thank you everyone for your support. Enjoy ♥️

*REQUESTS ARE OPEN*

DIRECTORY | PROMPT LIST | KO-FI | VALENTINES EVENT MASTERLIST

———————

“Is this really necessary?” Smoker grumbled around the cigars in his mouth as he shut the door to your room closed firmly. “I’m in perfect shape.”

“Every active member on this base has to undergo routine physicals, Vice-Admiral.” You spoke up from your desk as you grabbed his file and a pen. Even when he was wounded he protested the need to be tended to and while you were already expecting him to clear all your checks with no issues, you still had your job to do. Apologetically you looked at him as you rose. “No exceptions.”

Smoker made a disgruntled noise and glared at the examination bed he’d yet to approach. He swiftly turned his glare your way when you snatched the cigars from his mouth with ease and stubbed them out on the ashtray you always made sure to have in the room in the event Smoker would be coming by. You accepted his ire with an effortless smile, used to his perpetual grumpy and serious expression at this point. Lightly you nudged him along towards the bed. With all his strength and training he could have remained rooted in the spot had he wished but at your touch he relented and moved, eager to just get this over with.

As he sat down and zoned out, letting you do whatever checks and assessments necessary he began to think about how being here was actually a nice break. You weren’t going to pester him about changing the training schedule or beg to swap missions with another member of the base, you weren’t going to chase him about reports he forgot-or just didn’t care about- handing in for the higher ups at Marine’s main Headquarters. Best of all, any conversation you shared with him was appropriate and never prying beyond clear boundaries, unlike those under his command who thought any facet and avenue in his life was theirs to know and analyse obsessively over. Suddenly you made a surprised hum and he pulled himself out of his thoughts to see you studying his face carefully. “What were you thinking about?”

“Why?” Smoker couldn’t help but become defensive, ready to argue that whatever you spotted or noticed in your tests was false. 

“It caused a spike in your otherwise steady blood pressure.” You explained, lips curving in slight amusement. Lightly you tapped your medical notes. “Can’t clear you if there’s a possibility of an underlying condition affecting your blood pressure or an area of stress that could hinder your work.”

“It’s nothing.” Smoker explained firmly. “Nothing for you to worry over. I’m not going to complain over something insignificant and stupid.”

“Wouldn’t call this spike insignificant. Come on tell me and I can help. It’s what doctors are for right?”

“I was getting annoyed about the subordinates prying into my personal life. They’re like gossiping teenagers sometimes.”

“Is that all?” You asked with a laugh, stepping away from him and unhooking the blood pressure monitor. “What do you expect? They’re bored in between missions and you’re the best source of entertainment on the base.

“I shouldn’t be entertainment, I’m their boss to be respected.” At that you snorted with an undignified burst of laughter causing him to frown. “What?”

“Oh come on! I’ve heard you swear out the higher ups countless times when they annoy you. You call that respect?” You teased, laughing again when he looked away from you and muttered about how even you were disrespectful to him. “So what did the bad subordinates pry into most recently.”

“Recently and consistently they bring up my love life or in their words ‘a tragic lack of’ one.” He scoffed. “Every mission it’s putting up with their incessant questions and on the way back it’s stupid schemes to set me up with someone.”

“It’s sweet that they care.” You reasoned only to hear him being to mutter again. With a soft sigh you grabbed his notes to update them. He was the picture of health as you both knew would be the end result. “But if it bothers you that much, take the mystery away from them and they’ll move on. Tell them you’re seeing someone.”

“Magic someone out of thin air?” Smoker shook his head. He shouldn’t have even entertained the notion. His life was his own, he didn’t need to lie or divulge information if he didn’t wish to. “They might act like fools but creating a pretend lover is something even they’d notice a mile off.”

“Sooo don’t make up someone. Use someone they know?” You advised, moving to your desk to officially give Smoker’s physical the stamp of approval needed. Seeing you move, Smoker fixed his jacket and pulled out two fresh cigars to light but for once he didn’t make his way to the door with a gruff ‘thanks Doc’ like he normally did, he was too caught up in your words as you continued. “Then after a couple weeks, stage a break up and they’ll leave you and your personal life alone while you deal with it in your own way.” 

“Who am I going to rope into this scheme that I know won’t blab what’s really going on?” Smoker asked while stepping closer to the desk. His interest was piqued and it seemed like a solid enough plan but he knew that gossip spread fast in the G5 base. The last thing he needed was to risk extra insult to his pride if his subordinates knew he was lying. Smoker was surprised when you lifted your head and smiled at him expectantly. “Wait. You’d go along with this?”

“Why not? Helps you out from getting your blood pressure dangerously high again.” You shrugged simply. “Besides, doctor-patient confidentiality means I can’t tell anyone. What do you say?”

A few minutes later one of the G5 Marines rounded the corner, preparing for his routine physical only to slide to a complete stop in shock. The sight of Vice-Admiral Smoker, his leader straightening from what was most certainly a kiss with the base’s top doctor. The Marine froze when Smoker turned sharply to glare at him while you bit your lower lip shyly and looked away from the wide-eyed gaze of the Marine who interrupted such a sweet and tender moment. Smoker dropped his hand from your lower back and walked towards the Marine. “Whatever you think you saw. You didn’t.” 

Smoker continued on his way, the Marine unable to see his smirk as everything was already set in motion. By the end of the afternoon it was all through the base, some iterations of the events witnessed exaggerated or completely different but it all got Smoker what he wanted; for his subordinates to have something to distract them from him. Technically they were still fixated on him, but now that they believed he was seeing you, they were now talking amongst themselves about the matter and leaving him alone. 

Throughout the day he’d overheard the conversations both mixed and speculative. Some tried to work out when the romance had started and even that split theories and opinions. It had to have been recent because there was no way you both had hidden it for so long. It had to have been going on for a long time because it would explain why Smoker never looked at anyone else both off and on base. Some even declared they’d always known something was going on between Smoker and you and either way it was about damn time. 

For the next few weeks you and Smoker continued your subtle theatrics of being a couple and as you’d predicted the base that now there was no mystery to work out with Smoker’s love life, the base asked less questions. However when you appeared, even if it was passing by in the corridor the Marines looked your way in curiosity. Sometimes you did steal him away to say something useless or unimportant, just so you both appeared to be sharing a quick moment together when really it was just to keep your audience’s interest sated. One evening you found yourself in Smoker’s office, a new development that had occurred from your joint deception. While he finished reports at his desk, you reviewed your own medical reports from the comfort of the sofa he rarely seemed to use. While you both worked you engaged in idle but content conversation. 

“A friend of mine from one of the G7 base was in touch today.” You spoke up with an amused smile, not taking your eyes from your notes as you worked. “We’re one of the topics of conversation there too.” Smoker chuckled slightly at your report of how far the gossip had spread. 

“The interest in our relationship hasn’t died down at all.” He said with a small shake of his head.

“They’re so invested. They’ll be heartbroken when we end things.” You mused, too busy reading to notice Smoker's hand still in the writing of his own reports. He only now realised that that was the next stage in the plan; breaking up to gain full privacy again. Smoker hesitated to even admit it but he truly did enjoy your company. You were easy to be around, brought him a certain calm that he enjoyed. He tensed slightly when you asked him. “Have you considered when it’ll happen?”

“Uh…no. Not yet.” He admitted, that much he could confess. “They gossip but they're behaving for the most part, might just wait until they start to get bored. If that’s okay?”

“Of course, just let me know whenever you’re ready.” Smoker glanced at you in time to see you finally glance his way and offer him a relaxed but warm smile. The same smile he found himself looking for a little more each day. Whenever he was ready? Something gnawed at him in the uncomfortable realisation that perhaps the only thing he wanted to end with you was the pretending. 

——————————————-

TAG LIST (If I’ve missed anyone or if you want to be added just let me know) @3v37773, @tsaaps , @i-am-all-love-puns-and-lazy , @sanemisnonexistenteyebrow , @fiery-captain-spider-santa, @kabloswrld , @atanukileaf , @ane5e , @stuckinthewrongworld , @deathsmajestysworld , @cloudysunset04 , @chillerkiller , @extremely-ashtridic , @decayingpizza , @liesatemyocean , @ace-for-ace , @nerium-lil , @destynelseclipsa , @dreamcastgirl99 , @my-name-is-heartache , @iamn1ya ,  @yunho-leeknow , @hinata7346 , @h0oouwlss , @missrandomdreamer , @sleepykittycx , @ddawn111 , @jaygrl22 , @sylum , @acehyacinth , @resident-cryptid , @treelogirl , @maellem , @its-a-dam-blue-brick , @thulhu , @appalost , @dindjarins1ut , @irumawife , @laidenbreecatchall , @redwolfxx , @jevoislesbrasdemer , @schanwow , @pao198391 , @glitchtricks94 , @nina-ya , @48daisies , @sagyunaro , @artemis162534 , @rosemary-lungs , @thecraftywriter , @rorozorolover , @yagirlsmuchelle , @engenemoazen , @sukunasstomachtongue , @nico-ith

[akhillaous]

I feel like the need to make Patroclus a demigod stems from a lot of tsoa fans ( & haters ) needing a reason to make Patroclus and Achilles equal and they think making Patroclus a demigod will accomplish that.

But Patroclus and Achilles already are equals. They have strengths where the other has weaknesses. They may not be physically on the same level but that’s kind of the whole point. Achilles was always going to be stronger and a better fighter than everyone else. That was always going to happen. But when we look at the way Patroclus and Achilles interact in the Iliad it is clear that Achilles holds Patroclus to a high regard, continually mentioning how much Patroclus not only means to him but just how much respect Patroclus receives from everyone in general. They’re literally the Greatest of the Greeks and the Best of the Myrmidons because of how good they are. Theres no need to make Patroclus a demigod. It changes too much of his character and kind of mutes what made him so good. He spoke to Achilles as an equal when they argued. He wasn’t as strong as Achilles but he still went out with achilles armor. He wasn’t untouchable and god like but he was kind and genuine. He was an exile, with no birthright, no claim to anything, and yet the entire army mourned hen he died. Patroclus was so very utterly humane in both good and bad ways throughout the war. He was stubborn and bloodthirsty when he fought, riding some high from the war that many other soldiers probably got. He got cocky, and paid for it. But he was also a voice of reason. He didn’t want to see his men dying, not when they did not have to. He was a mortal man through and through, the good and the bad, until the end. I don’t see why you would want to take that away from him to add some meaningless power up.

And on the flip side, Achilles being a demigod is also integral to his story because he’s supposed to represent the divide between human and god. It’s such an important moment when Patroclus is killed because it’s as if Achilles’ mortal side had been killed with him, leaving only rage typically reserved for gods. Achilles during he beginning of the war is untouchable, but he is also respectful. He sacks the cities but he honors the fallen. He takes the war prizes but he calls out Agamemnon for not giving back chryseis even though men ( HIS men too ) are dying. When Achilles refuses the embassy he also essentially rejecting his mortality. He doesn’t WANT to fight in this war in which he will die for a man that dishonored him. And he’s technically not wrong to do so. But when he starts wishing for his comrades to die so that they will beg him to come back, appeasing his lost pride, he has begun to slip over into his divinity, embracing it shamelessly and disregarding the lives of others as long as he gets what he wants. As gods tend to do. And even if he doesn’t get that, he didn’t care about his comrades dying as long as he and his men could sail home. Achilles’ mortality slowly trickles out of him until it is violently lurched out and killed when Patroclus died. Patroclus who so badly wanted to keep their men from dying and needed Achilles to understand that by selfishly holding his pride to higher standard than the lives of others he was dooming them all. Their stories are such integral parts to each other and the main narrative I don’t see how you could change such a detail and still make their dynamic as interesting as it is.

Patroclus and Achilles both were good men. Patroclus and Achilles both were fighters that slaughtered others. Patroclus and Achilles both fall because of mortal flaws. Achilles bridges an impossible gap between man and god and Patroclus prevails when no one else will despite his mortality. That’s what makes them so interesting. That’s why their dynamic works the way that it does. Making Patroclus a demigod adds nothing of substance to his story it only takes away from it.

Anyways. This was not supposed to be that long. Apologies if I made any mistakes regarding the original text and pls correct me if I did!! But yeah anyways that’s my long explanation on why I hate the demigod Patroclus trope. It rly just. Doesn’t work.

[catenary-chad]

Why Greaseball is a Really Great train villain: a looong post (4.8k words) on all the historical train context behind replica Greaseball 

For all my issues with the other main engines, I think (replica) Greaseball is FANTASTIC. He just works on so many fundamental levels and gets so much better/worse with historical context.  If we make him an EMD E9 locomotive (a common headcanon) things get even more interesting, and there’s even a convenient irl engine to base him on! 

Note: if you’re into real US trains this info probably won’t be as new to you as my Nez Cassé post, since E and F units are so well preserved and documented in English.      A lot of the topics I go on are pretty widely discussed in US railfan circles and not terribly obscure.  Also this is just about replica, Elvis-style Greaseball vs Wembleyball… her being more modern and European changes a lot and I would take a very different approach.

Also CW for non-graphic discussion of abuse in the very last section. I have a separate warning before it comes up so you can leave before then.  

DIESEL TRACTION IN THE US

First of all, to clear up a common misconception: 99% of all diesel locomotives are diesel-electric.  The diesel engine is used to generate electricity to power electric motors to turn the wheels.  This is why dual-mode engines that can switch between drawing third rail/overhead wire electricity and making their own with a diesel engine are so common.  Besides the power source, they work similarly, so it’s not hard to incorporate.  This is NOT how hybrid cars work, though diesel-electric setups have been used on very heavy trucks for purposes like mining.  Diesel-mechanical is more in line with how automobiles work but is basically unheard of outside of very small switchers in the US (mostly in museums now) and 50s-era shunters and that one weird Fell diesel in the UK. The technical reasons of why isn’t really important here, but has to do with the difficult of making an appropriate gearbox for road locomotives and appealing qualities of electric motors for train use (high starting torque). 

Internal combustion-based locomotives are actually much more recent than pure electric ones.  Electric engines achieved practical use around the 1890s and were well-established in urban and mountainous areas by the 20s-30s…. which is when diesel boxcab switchers first started production in substantial numbers and lightweight diesel trainsets like the Zephyrs, M10000, and Flying Hamburger started to pop up.  The earliest diesels were either slow (switchers) or fast but very weak (lightweight trainsets and railbusses). There were major tech limits to maximum horsepower in diesel locomotives until the second half of the 20th century, which is why several of them were often needed to replace one steam or electric engine, and why you had some weird turbine designs in the 50s-70s as an alternative. 

Early diesel locomotives in the US actually had a lot in common with their early implementation in the UK.  They’re often perceived differently because Thomas the Tank Engine had so many characters based on unsuccessful early British diesel models, while most of the failed earlier US diesels are obscure compared to the successful and widespread ones (that often have the strongest museum presence). There were some notably good early switcher models (some still being used today) that were among the first to replace steam engines because it was one of the tasks that they had the biggest advantage over them in, and limited size wasn’t an issue.  Road diesel implementation was messy and due to the early state of the technology, some railroads like the Pennsylvania Railroad had a strategy more akin to early British Rail in that they planned to just slowly phase out steam as they electrified.  Higher wages and stronger unions were also a factor in both countries dieselizing, due to the vastly lower labor needed for diesel locomotives vs steam and generally safer, more pleasant working conditions on them.  There was also a need to shed a reputation for being outdated to draw in customers again with both.  There was also a desperate early demand for diesel power that led to a lot of questionable builders and designs being picked up early on and later dumped for being nonstandard.  

The main difference is that dieselization’s serious pursuit in the US started around the Great Depression and really picked up in the late 30s, almost two decades before the Modernization Plan of 1955.  So it was a far more mature and well-established technology by the 50s and Greaseball is very much based on this dominant position vs the messy early experiments of the Thomas diesels.  

Greaseball’s helmet heavily resembles the fronts of the E and F unit carbody locomotives made by EMD from the 30s-50s.  I’ll go into those specific models later, but the manufacturer alone is really interesting and has a lot of great symbolism that works with Greaseball. 

Earlier diesel manufacturers included steam builders like Alco and Baldwin, outside companies getting into the diesel locomotive market like Fairbanks-Morse, and EMD, which started as an independent company but quickly became part of General Motors.  One of the major advantages EMD would acquire is mass-production in assembly lines, the way cars were made, as opposed to building one engine at a time like steam shops did.  So Greaseball has some quiet ties to the auto industry (and boy did GM hurt trains in other avenues).  They also used common parts between models, making them relatively easy to repair and rebuild.  You had all kind of mods and changes done to their engines over the decades, which is a fun tie-in to the bodybuilder AND greaser aspect of Greaseball.  I’ll go into how I think he’d specifically be modified/rebuilt later though.  

Another major factor of EMD is… they often weren’t the best in a lot of ways and very much an example of “survival of the good enough”.  Until very recently they all used relatively dirty and inefficient two-stroke engines and other manufacturers often had stronger or technically superior competing models… but it was the ease of working on them and relative reliability vs their competitors that contributed to their success and helped make EMD the dominant manufacturer.  

Bonus fun fact: EMD (and later General Electric) had a lot of success in the export model market due to their early reliability, especially vs British diesel engines.  One of the funnier instances being several colonial African railways holding onto steam into the 70s because they were forced to buy crappy British diesel engines otherwise, and promptly dieselizing as soon as they could buy American ones.  EMD made huge inroads into the British freight market with the Class 59 and 66 (the latter also used in continental Europe).  These came too late to have had any affect on the development of the show early on, but it’s an interesting instance of American encroachment that could be thematically relevant.  The sheer ubiquity of EMD diesels worldwide makes Greaseball weirdly relevant in a lot of countries if you basis swap him a little.  I haven’t figured out quite how I’d approach Girlball but I’d definitely make her one of these export models since it fits.  

Anyways, back to the general history timeline because it’s important for the other reason EMD was so successful.  By the late 30s, diesel switchers were widespread and road models were starting to come out in limited numbers.  Widespread dieselization would have happened nearly a decade earlier if not for World War II.  When the US entered the war, copper, oil, and diesel engines became critical to the war effort.  Coal was not and steam engines don’t use much copper, so the existing steam manufacturers were forced into building them.  EMD’s FT series had proven itself prewar and the company was among the few to be able to develop their locomotive lines during the war.  This gave the company a huge advantage post-war and their E and F units dominated the road locomotive market afterwards (switchers remained more competitive since they had more development before and during the war). 

 If you’re European and know little about American trains, you may wonder when things started getting electrified after that.  They didn’t.  Outside of one stretch of the Northeast Corridor, a recent project by Caltrain, and some isolated freight lines… the US didn’t electrify anything after WWII, and if anything de-electrified much that had existed.  The oil crises of the 70s almost led to something, but the subsequent drop in prices in the 80s made that dry up too.  Leading to the modern day status of having only 1% electrified rail mileage.  The rest is all diesel domain.  They were never a stopgap here.  Due to railroads remaining private businesses post-WWII and facing almost unwinnable economic and political conditions vs roads and air travel, the cost of electrification was out of the question and the much smaller up front cost of diesel engines made them take permanent hold over most of the country post-steam.  To this day, railroads avoid paying up front for things vs just paying more in yearly maintenance for diesel locomotives, and the price of fuel has never gotten high enough to incentivize electrification.  There’s also a whole carrot vs stick situation with state governments raising emissions standards without providing assistance to electrify that leads to a crappy state of limbo that just gives automobiles even more of an unfair advantage, but that’s another tangent that’s not relevant enough to go into.  

This is all a long way to say that Greaseball as the conservative, oppressive establishment is spot-on to the status of diesel traction in the US.  It really can’t be overstated how dominant and inescapable it is.  It’s kind of hilarious hearing people from the UK or Europe talk about how gross and stinky and backwards they are and how much more disliked they are there.  This is why the Greaseball vs Electra feud is so appealing to me- the US is one of the few places where they would be considered remotely competitive and where that matchup is politically relevant.  There’s this compelling thread of Greaseball being a “pragmatic compromise” that’s held on so long it’s become status quo, but would be viewed as a regressive relic elsewhere in the world, akin to how the US’s economic politics are seen in much of the rest of the world.  Greaseball is the majority who very much has capitalism and inertia on his side, Electra is the more qualified but long-sidelined minority who wishes things were even a little more like Europe economically and politically.  They’re so rural vs urban, right vs left wing coded it hurts. Diesel power mainly thrives where frequencies are low and distances are long and rail is a private business that often can’t afford to electrify.  Urban trains are almost exclusively electric due to their inherent frequency and pollution requirements, and are almost synonymous with being state-owned. 

Him being particularly nasty to steam engines also checks out, he’s the era of diesel locomotive that often directly replaced them and I’ve seen claims EMD did deceptive things if not outright cheated on tests vs steam engines.  At the very least they had fairly aggressive marketing.  There’s a reason why I object to the idea that Electra would cheat against a steam engine (even in the early days electric ones trounced them so thoroughly it routinely exceeded railroads’ expectations), but think Greaseball doing it makes sense.  Him playing dirty against Electra also makes sense because they’d have similar top speeds (and that’s being very conservative with Electra’s abilities and keeping them a relatively old model) but Electra benefits far more from a clean setting and would be relatively vulnerable to attack. There’s been decades of cultural downplaying of the advantages of electric vs diesel trains due to the latter’s sheer dominance in the US too. Further tying into the political aspect, electric trains are one of those things whose status only goes up the more you actually learn about them… and it really knocks combustion engines down several pegs, paralleling how right wing politicians in the US tend to be actively anti-education because they quietly rely on voters being low-information and uneducated about how negative the effects of their policies often are.  

Greaseball as a macho jock is also reflective of the perceived strength of diesel vs electric engines.  Because the US is infamous for its large heavy freight trains that are almost entirely diesel-hauled (besides a single power plant out west), electric freight is an almost alien concept and people associate electric traction with high speed trains, subways, maybe lighter, faster European freight trains at most.  People often act like they’re weak because of this.  This is patently untrue, just look at IORE or the Virginian Railway.  Also see my earlier discussion of how weak diesel engines were early on.  Electric locomotives still have vastly higher horsepower per single unit and the only reason there aren’t ones as strong as diesel engines in the US is lack of demand.  It wouldn’t be that hard to build one for that niche.  But diesel has strong associations with being the “strong and manly” blue-collar option because of its use by every large freight railroad and almost every shortline for all the tough, gritty jobs, unlike those darn city slicker commuter trains. Let’s just conveniently forget that the Milwaukee Road existed and that mines are full of weird little battery-powered “lokies”.  People will even crow about the Big Boy all day and rarely acknowledge the multiple electric engine models of that era with comparable abilities.  

EMD E and F UNITS

Finally, we can discuss Greaseball’s more specific basis.  Greaseball’s helmet doesn’t have a single explicit one like Electra’s, but its styling is very typical of 30s-50s era carbody diesel locomotives, specifically the “bulldog nose” E and F-Units.  These models were and still remain some of the most popular toy and model diesel engines, and are some of the most recognizable American trains in general.  Which they totally deserve, they came in a lot of fun colors and were VERY widely used from the 30s to early 80s irl and were still used in limited numbers for decades after that and are extremely common in museums today.  It’s probably harder to find a railroad museum in the US that doesn’t have one.  They are probably THE symbol of diesel trains in the US, especially circa the 50s.  Even highway signs for train stations resemble them.  

Carbody locomotives like these made the streamlined body a structural element of the engine to save weight and required indoor walkways for maintenance access vs being able to open external panels.  Alco and Baldwin also made far less successful carbody locomotives as competitors but they looked very different. Funny enough, a number of electric locomotives of the era also were built this way, but with cabs at both ends, some of them looking a LOT like Greaseball’s helmet.  

The E-units were EMD’s first line of road diesel locomotives, mainly designed for passenger service.  Since the 30s there were several different models of the line, the first few being built in smaller numbers, and the later ones being much more widely produced post-WWII.   They were relatively long and large for a diesel engine of the time, with atypical A1A -A1A (powered/unpowered/powered x2) wheel arrangements and two seperate prime movers (the actual diesel engine) to produce more horsepower due to the limited abilities of individual engines.  While successful compared to their competitors (which were… generally a mess) there’s a sense that they were designed for a time that would never come.  

They were very much optimized for being smooth at speed for passenger use and while not useless for freight service, weren’t ideal for it due to their limited strength and not having all powered wheels for traction.  Which was a terrible market to be in with the massive decline in passenger rail post-WWII.  The E-units still generally had long and successful lives, but were never as successful as their younger, smaller sibling, the F-unit.

F-units visually resemble shorter E-units, but with single prime movers and Bo-Bo wheel arrangements (four powered axles).  By modern standards they’re small and not terribly powerful, but for their time they were solid and VERY successful in freight service, and often took the place of E-units in passenger service since they worked for that too, and were more versatile overall.  There are a bunch of F-units running in museums because they look good and are easy to find parts for due to the sheer quantity produced (also some, but far fewer E-units). You could totally make Greaseball an F-unit and it would fit with how there’s been some infamously short Greaseball actors.  

There’s a lot of fun commonalities between both models that are relevant to Greaseball.  Both were explicitly designed to be used in multi-engine sets due to their limited individual strength, which perfectly fits Greaseball having his Gang follow him around.  Working in packs that large is a VERY midcentury diesel thing.  Both had the massive drawback of having no rear visibility and basically no ability to go backwards for switching.  That was one of the main traits that led to this style of engine falling out of favor, roadswitchers that actually had rear visibility were more versatile than having separate road and switch engines.  In a race going backwards, Rusty would clean his clock even if he was SUPER crappy and could only go walking pace, because Greaseball would be flying totally blind and crash.  It’s also a hassle to perform maintenance and get inside that body style and the noses were reportedly harder to manufacture.  

As a cursed side note, ATSF solved these problems with their old F-units by roadswitcherfying them into CF-7s.  Hey, they were old and past their prime but still useful and worked GREAT as ugly utilitarian roadswitchers and ran for decades afterwards.  There’s several of these things running in museums.  I’ve actually worked on one and I approve of roadswitcherfication because they really are way less of a pain to maintain this way.  

Speaking of rebuilds, the highest horsepower Greaseball would have as an E-unit would as-built is only 2,400 if he was an E9, but because early EMDs got modified so much and routinely re-engined, we can play around with this.  It fits the character and the Railways Series routinely did this kind of thing.  We’ll suppose Greaseball was re-engined or otherwise modified to get up to 2,700 horsepower… but then there’s the reported issue that the unpowered axles might make him too slippery to actually apply full force, so we’ll get a bit more out there and say he got more substantially rebuilt into a Co-Co (six powered axle) arrangement.  Now you have something that would be vaguely comparable with one of Amtrak’s dysfunctional SDP40F diesels of the late 70s-early 80s, if still a bit weaker but probably more physically stable.  It’s hard to avoid that Greaseball is kind of statistically wimpy no matter how you slice it.  They’d need to tweak the numbers in the song a little, but again, swapping out engines in early EMDs was super common and suits him so it’s not too much of a stretch to bump him to 3700 or something.  You still have issue that he’s not large by UP standards specifically (they are INFAMOUS for large single-unit engines) but he’d still be fairly large vs more typical passenger diesels of the time.  

Anyways, another VERY fun fact about E and F units is that they were regularly used on corporate trains after most of them were withdrawn from regular mainline service in the 70s-80s.  People often complain that Greaseball is barely relevant circa the 80s, which isn’t really true since a lot of E and F units were used on commuter lines for years afterward (if often in cab car form, which are terrifying in any talking train verse).  But there’s another huge loophole that gives a perfect excuse for his existence well into the modern day.  Union Pacific itself used a set of three E9s on their corporate specials until 2019!  They only got pulled due to wheel issues… got no lovers if you got no wheels I guess.  But now you have a perfect excuse for why Greaseball is a 50s-era engine with UP colors pulling passenger trains well after the railroad axed those services in the early 70s.  He’s a corporate pawn!  He’s one of the faces of their company, chauffeuring executives around. Which leads into another fascinating topic with him.

UNION PACIFIC, FREIGHT RAILROADS, AND PASSENGER RAIL

All of the modern big Class I railroads in the US suck in similar ways, but Union Pacific has a stronger identity and seems to have the largest cultural presence abroad, making it the most visible and appealing of them to the public.  It tends to be THE American railroad to many, which goes well with Greaseball’s basis being THE American diesel engine.  Yes, they do have some cool heritage fleet stuff and really cool heritage unit paint jobs, but you’ll never see me depict them in a terribly positive way (if at all) because they’re a PR campaign like the Budweiser Clydesdales for an infamously awful company.  Make no mistake, this is a company that’s been voted “worst place to work” on multiple occasions (and its cohorts aren’t much better).  That’s the ironic thing about Electra being made a crappy boss, Amtrak is notably much better to its workers (and steam engines are the most competitive where labor is cheapest and least organized).  The main thing is unreasonable on-call hours, lack of sick leave, vacation, and break days in general, and working conditions.  Look into the blocked 2022 railroad strike for more on this.  Greaseball could be SO nasty to the freight to reflect this if you made him a symbol of railroad leadership.  You’d have any railroaders in the audience booing him if they did this in the US, it’s a very relevant political issue.  Ironically, things weren’t nearly as bad labor-wise in the 80s, ALW just really bet on the right horse in terms of railroads to align a train villain with.  But there’s a more prominant and existing aspect of canon that also fits the crappy things UP and other class Is do.

Passenger rail has never been as profitable as freight in the US. To give a modern ballpark estimate, I’ve heard $30,000 revenue on a fully loaded longer passenger train vs $500,000 revenue on a train of oil tankers.  And that’s not even including the higher maintenance standards that passenger rail requires, which adds millions to its cost and makes it almost impossible for it to turn a profit.  There is a reason why almost all countries with widespread passenger rail today have nationalized rail systems and even US passenger service is all government-run outside Brightline and museums.  

This situation was particularly bad in the 50s-60s before Amtrak took over passenger service.  Passenger trains absolutely bled money overall, and many of them were required to keep running even at massive losses per government regulation because they were an essential service.  This contributed to the financial ruin of many railroads, and most of them dropped passenger service or sold it to the government as soon as it was offered.  UP in particular was more financially stable, but also happily got rid of their passenger trains when offered.

Since then, the giant merged Class I railroads have become almost exclusively freight-oriented and hostile towards Amtrak-run passenger services.  They’re almost all terrible, but UP is one of the more visible offenders, holding up commuter services in Chicago, and contributing to the massive delays in long-distance western trains.  “Coach sexism” in the form of widespread hostility towards passenger rail by the likes of UP is one of the few canon social metaphors that WORKS.  The other engines would not be that way considering the systems they’re aligned with, but Greaseball could be made so, so much worse.    

There is a weird element of “I hate my wife” boomer humor when people describe passenger trains.  There’s “keeping freight trains in line” schedule-wise due to their time sensitivity.  There’s being seen as needlessly spendy for PR reasons (often true in the older days) paralleling “my wife wastes money on stupid things”.  There’s being seen as more delicate and refined due to needing better track conditions and gentler handling because you know, humans have standards that grain hoppers and sand don’t.  There’s the way that passenger rail isn’t as profitable as freight and basically requires government subsidies… not unakin to caring jobs and “women’s work” in general vs blue collar industrial jobs (Caveat: passenger rail employees were almost all male until Amtrak).  In short, yeah the freight railroads’ treatment of passenger trains in the US does have parallels to sexism, if slightly different from how canon does it. Abruptly dumping them in the 70s also fits Greaseball ditching Dinah mid-show. 

Even if you go the comparatively mild route of mirroring modern railroads, you still have him treating the coaches as second class vs freight (despite them being legally prioritized).  This is a major issue and why Amtrak has so many delays on long distance trains.  To summarize a complicated issue: due to the relatively unique economics of railroads, they are incentivized to run fewer, longer, irregular freight trains that have become so large they don’t fit in sidings and can’t physically let prioritized passenger trains through.  They then get delayed for hours, especially if the freight train breaks down (bonus: freight trains have a staff of two, engineer and conductor.  The conductor may have to walk up to THREE MILES to check out a possible defect on a car, delaying even more).  The Class Is have a broadly hostile relationship with Amtrak in general for various reasons related to insurance and minimal investment in track maintenance, and it even affects non-Amtrak passenger services like steam excursions.  UP has its personal steam fleet for publicity reasons,  but all of the Class Is are various shades of hostile to running steam excursions with passengers now due to those same reasons.  Even UP barely sells public tickets for theirs.  

Bonus: the reason Mexico has basically no passenger rail now is due to the nationalized railroads being taken over by companies heavily aligned with US freight railroads and with many similar attitudes towards passenger service.  They ditched virtually all of it en masse when they took over. Turbo works perfectly as just Greaseball but in Mexico because the same thing happened there… only a few years before the Mexican Stex production happened.  Electra might be an even more pathetic and unthreatening character there though, because the single, long-delayed electrified mainline built by NdeM was ripped out after only a few years of service by the  private freight railroads.  

WARNING: Leave now if you do not want to read about how abusive Greaseball could be made based to US railroads’ treatment of passenger trains pre-70s.  It’s not graphic, but it is blunt and dark.  I put this at the end for a reason, there is nothing beyond this last section.  

Basically, canon even at its worst arguably undersells how awful Greaseball could be to Dinah and the coaches if you make them symbols of UP and other major railroads vs passenger service pre-Amtrak.  They could be even MORE toxic.  You have a situation now where he outright hates her and wants her gone for above reasons, but is forced to stay in the relationship due to outside requirements and is fundamentally built for that kind of setup as an E-unit.  Railroads forced to keep passenger services usually didn’t have mandated quality standards for them.  They just had to have something.  This led to pathetically short trains (one or two cars), understaffing, and poor maintenance because they just had to have SOME passenger train on that line.  Track conditions reached terrible standards in the 70s on railroads that were near bankruptcy and delaying maintenance.  I absolute do not blame canon for not going this dark in a kids show, but basically there is no limit to how miserable Greaseball could make her life, short of actually killing her. I can’t understate how much she symbolizes something he’d want to rid himself of at any cost but can’t and will take that out on.  It’s BLEAK.  I don’t think I’d even write them this dark myself.

Well… now you see why I do not redeem and revise Greaseball the way I do Electra.  While the latter is wrongly demonized in an impressive number of ways, Greaseball is awful for all the right ones, to extents deeper than the creators probably ever imagined.  He is so versatile and nearly timeless in his awfulness.  If Greaseball were portrayed as remotely good I’d be ripping him to greater shreds than I do Rusty, but he’s great as a hateable bad guy who’s entertaining and globally recognizable even by much of the general public.  Despite all this, I’m fine with him just being a cartoon bully because it’s more palatable and not wrong.  But you could also make him so much nastier than even the workshop if you wanted to go darker.  

[sesamestreep]

it really is SUCH a shame that there’s no episode of TOS where the enterprise crew time jumps to Regency-era England or goes to a planet that modeled its culture on that era or something, because it would truly slap for every single main character. Like I don’t even have to explain why this would be awesome for Spock— Mr. I’ll-smash-a-computer-with-my-bare-hands-before-I’ll-admit-I’m-horny himself, king of repression, who basically recreated the famous Pride and Prejudice Hand Flex Scene™️ with his beloved Captain that one time, who meets a blind woman with a high tech gown that helps her “see” and LITERALLY tells her to give his compliments to her dressmaker, who mislead a woman once about his affections and tenderly promised to safeguard her reputation forever about it, who has the perfect angular features to be set off by a cravat—I mean, you get it, but then you’ve also got Kirk—handsome, affable, brave Naval captain who loves his crew more than himself, who falls in like deep profound love with every woman the plot throws at him—and then McCoy—cantankerous, sure, (ever heard of a grumpy/sunshine trope??) but with impeccable, downright old school manners towards women and, yeah, a doctor’s not that prestigious in Regency times, but for like a young lady in trouble who needs the protection of a man’s name or who just wants to piss off her stuffy aristocrat family by marrying “beneath” them, who could be better? If you throw Scotty in the mix, well, he’s Scottish, which [points at a whole subgenre of regency romance novels] is all he’d really need. I’m just saying they would have CLEANED UP, okay??

[storylessposts]

I think it could be possibly doable to salvage Videl with a post-Buu-only rewrite, since the biggest slight the Buu arc does to her is randomly awkwardly shuffle her and her arc off the field halfway through the story so it can focus on Goku Hour again. I understand if it struggles a little, since post-Buu shuffles Gohan out of the major character deck (with him finally retiring his own Goku Successor ribbon and moving into academia as he wants), and since randomly ejecting her halfway through the story does damage her narrative character, but I think it would be doable to take what had been set up + awkwardly unresolved and build on that for her, and I think promoting her would also lessen the loss of Gohan for her arc.

But I do agree rewriting Buu is probably gonna be better for Videl than trying to clean up the mess the story leaves her arc in. Honestly, I’d argue we might need to go one further — instead of just giving her a Spopovich resolution and retaining her in the main combat team for the rest of the arc, I think we should go back and mess with her introduction as well.

See, from the start, Videl is a narrative foil for Gohan. Plus, She was a Girl, He was a Boy, could Toriyama make it any more obvious? That’s where she enters the canon Buu arc — someone for Gohan to play off of, someone for Gohan to be compared to, someone who takes an interest in Gohan. She’s smart and strong, but since this arc starts out as Gohan’s go at being our protagonist, Videl quickly falls into step as a supporting character in his bid for protagonist-land. While culling Spopovich is the actual bullet that does in Videl as a major player for the arc (and, by effect, for the series), her shot at being a main character is hampered somewhat by how much her role in the Majin Buu arc revolves around where Gohan is in regards to his own character arc.

So if we’re making a rewrite starting with the Buu arc and aiming to introduce Videl as our successor to Goku’s narrative role (and, possibly, his Art), I think we ought to go back to her introduction and entry to the story, not just her half-baked canonical arc. Instead of casting her as a member of Gohan’s supporting cast, we should establish her with her own supporting cast, potientially even slotting Gohan in to them instead.

Don’t get me wrong, I think she works great as a foil to Gohan and I don’t want to lose that. At the end of the Cell arc, Gohan inherited all the power of Goku, and simply never truly had the drive to use it, and that’s interesting! Videl plays off that well, since where she starts is all drive and no inheritance. They’re narrative foils, and we want to retain that. Plus, because they’re narrative foils, they do make a decent enough shoo-in for a romance pairing, inasmuch as Toriyama is willing to do one of those. They’re friends with fathers who have a huge reputation weighing on their respective backs in different ways, and honestly I bet they wouldn’t mind being born into each other’s families instead. (That’s be a pretty fun one-off/filler-type storyline, actually…)

But getting back on track, while we should keep Videl’s relationship to Gohan as characters, narratively I think Videl would benefit from being introduced in a way disconnected from Gohan. It’s a bit of a balancing act to do, I guess, because the telling of the story would probably want to shift from Goku to Gohan to her, but I think it would help if from the word to you could tell that she’s got her own story to tell. She walks in and the narrative stops watching Gohan to see what Videl is up to, that kind of idea.

From there, absolutely develop her interest in going beyond, give her what she needs to show her drive. She wants to become stronger than her dad, partly because he’s become a terrible father in the wake of her mother’s passing, but partly because she thinks it would help him to get taken down a peg — she’s angry but she’s not apathetic to him. A lot of her early beats work both for developing her and for developing the Buu plot line, but all that in canon is somewhat incidental — so make it intentional, make it about her and not just about Gohan or about the both of them.

And then, I think, the most interesting thing might actually be — what if after she sets out to face Gohan at the Tenkaichi Budokai finals, after she’s learned Ki manipulation basics in impressively quick time and laid out why he’s the one she needs to beat before taking on her own dad, after the two are lined up to face each other in the finals for that good old Tournament Resolution — have Spopovich show up… and throw down with Gohan.

As much as taking the Videl vs. Spopovich rematch out of the original Buu arc hurts Videl as a character with a narrative arc, Spopovich 1 isn’t really a main character fight. He’s there to set the fear of Babidi into everyone, and to show off strange techniques that make him not especially fair to fight. He’s there for someone to lose to, so he can show off. And even though Goku is not above getting seven shades of tar beat out of him in pursuit of a fight, protagonists are just never good fodder for that kind of fight, narratively, so setting him against Videl would hurt the narrative role we’re trying to sell her as. Instead, letting Gohan job it against Spopovich would do a good job showing that 1) as strong as Gohan is, he’s not invested in the Art like his dad was and like Videl will be, and 2) whatever the deal is with Spopovich, it makes him on a half-Saiyan’s level, and it is more important than the Tenkaichi.

Gohan, I think, will handle Spopovich poorly. Gohan has a good foundation, but he’s already largely coasting on that foundation, rather than cultivating his Art. Spopovich would present Gohan a challenge that he hasn’t really sought out since the Cell arc — namely, a fight he has to actually try to think about. And while Spopovich would need to come packaged with a weakness so he can actually lose a rematch, Gohan will just struggle through throwing more and more power on the guy until he wears himself out.

(For bonus points, I think Gohan should also feel the need to hit Spopovich so hard that the dude’s neck breaks — canon Videl is at this point used to brawls that can go very badly very quickly, but canon Gohan was so over leveled for the Saiyaman fights he had that the presence of things like bullets and bombs just kinda went in one ear and out the other with him. This would be the first time he’s killed someone since he fought Cell, and I think however poorly Videl would react to Spopovich’s neck going snap, I think Gohan can react worse.)

Videl can also help cement her role as Goku’s successor by not having the Spopovich 1 fight, too — Goku’s counter-fighter antics can make a return in Videl, as she watches Spopovich eat everything Gohan can throw and find some weakness to exploit. It would be a nice little call-back of sorts to Tenkaichi fights like Goku v. Tenshinhan, and help sell the idea that Goku’s legacy will be ultimately inherited not by any of his kids, but by the random human girl.

(Though, Spopovich’s weakness would probably have to be added in by the rewrite of his first fight, since the Spopovich rematch being unceremoniously cut also deprived him of an exploitable weakness in the first place. He takes punishment like an Android or like Nappa (you basically have to land a kill shot because he’ll keep fighting through anything less), and he doesn’t die when he’s killed, so I almost wonder if Babidi randomly discarding him with only a fraction of his value claimed is because Toriyama had no idea how anyone could actually beat him when he still had the M?)

From there, Gohan and Videl would have an interwoven arc into the Babidi/Buu stuff, where it becomes clear that while Videl never got the power necessary to handle the kind of fights Gohan can, she still has the mind for it, backed by an unyielding drive to prove herself any way she can. Even though Videl only knows baby’s fist Bukūjutsu and not even a basic Kamehameha, Videl should prove instrumental to defeating (or more likely, solving) antagonists in the Buu arc. the ‘old guard’ would probably have to provide the power, and there’s a decent chance that keeping this arc’s sends offs for Goku and Vegeta mean they have to lead the ultimate resolution fight, but to let this arc set Videl as the narrative successor, she needs to not only stick around and talk to the rest of the cast, but play important roles with the tools she has (and prepare to pursue all the tools she doesn’t have).

hello. odd question: if you were given the choice, what sort of post buu sequel would you personally want to see? you don't have to write a whole story or anything, just, what kind of story would you want to see told if it were up to you? in terms of basic premise, tone, or "gimmick" if you'd like to see one.

Probably unpopular opinion but my ideal vision of a post-Buu Dragon Ball sequel would be to retire Goku and Vegeta after the Buu arc for good. Goku's story ended very satisfyingly with the Cell arc and I don't think Vegeta could ever go out on a higher note than what Buu gave him. I think Dragon Ball has a lot of potential for future storytelling beyond Buu but if we're working from scratch then these two characters, specifically, I'm ready to be done with.

What Dragon Ball needs to give it that shot in the arm is to have the courage to do what it wanted to do post-Cell: to start over and reinvent itself.

I do understand why that fell apart with Gohan. Gohan doesn't like martial arts. He never has. He enjoys it as an activity he can do with the people he loves, but he isn't a martial artist at heart. He has no drive for it as a hobby; His only relationship with it is as a necessary evil he sometimes has to engage in to protect his loved ones.

That's not a spark that can drive a Dragon Ball protagonist down a road of self-discovery and personal improvement through a deep, personal relationship with the art. And all the attempts to make Gohan relevant again just amount to giving him free power-ups and browbeating him into doing things that, on a fundamental level, he just hates doing.

Gohan doesn't want to be a Dragon Ball main character. He has never wanted that, and we shouldn't force him to. It's better for him and better for the story to just move along.

So where does that leave us?

I think the Buu arc gave us all the tools we need to reinvent Dragon Ball already. I think the characters who have the most potential in telling new Dragon Ball stories are the ones the franchise kinda just... wants to sweep aside. It's Goten, Trunks, and Marron. Pan and Bra. And our new green god Dende. The next generation of Dragon Ball heroes.

It's Goten and Trunks looking at their fathers' backs and knowing that these are the mountains that they are meant to climb. To become more than Goku and Vegeta ever were. And questioning if that's even what they want for themselves. What is their relationship to the art, independent of their fathers? Independent of each other?

Who even are they to each other? Are they to be a reflection of their fathers? Are they to be their fathers' mirror opposites? Or are they to be something else, something independent of their fathers, something only they can identify?

And what does the art mean to them personally? When it stops being "I'm doing this because my family does it," what is it to them? Is it even what they want or, like Gohan, do their destinies lie down another road?

Who is Marron? Who will she grow up to be? What does the art mean to her? In this world of Saiyans and Namekians, what are the limitations that her humanity imposes on her? And how can she break those limits and become something super?

These are the questions that I think could fuel a really interesting sequel series. I think the key to Dragon Ball's artistic future is in allowing someone else to go on a martial arts journey of their own, so we can watch them grow from a wide-eyed child to a wizened master as we once watched Goku.

[apotelesmaa]

> looking for a tenma siblings relationship study

> ask the op if the study is actually about the tenmas or just treating saki like an accessory to tsukasa

> they don’t understand

> pull out an illustrated diagram explaining the difference

> they laugh and say “it’s a good relationship study sir”

> click the post

> it’s treating saki like an accessory to tsukasa

[embraceyourdestiny]

It’s soooo crazy that people truly believe nick’s real feelings are he wants to eat abi 😭 crazy as fuck you hear a guy say “you don’t care about me” and “easy pickings, right off the bone” in the same scene and yet focus on the second half while also conveniently forget he’s turning in to a RAVENOUS WEREWOLF. He’s being taken over by the wolf, who has an insatiable hunger because of the curse bestowed upon humanity after the actions of foolish, greedy humans. He’s the only one to transform in front of their (canon) crush, so it would make sense that the territorial, animal side would highten his uncertain, romantic feelings for abi even more and then become possessive because it doesn’t care about her feelings but nick’s feelings which the curse is amplifying and distorting through its hunger. take two seconds to think about it please. Nick is extremely insecure and was hiding his true feelings (the insecurity). That’s what we are supposed to gather from that scene. He was putting on an act of confidence but he truly believes abi, and based off what he says no one, doesn’t nor has ever cared about him. He thinks he doesn’t measure up. He thinks he has no worth because he doesn’t know his own worth. Nick is a very complicated guy and it’s so disappointing how people give the most surface analysis of him to this day, it’s a huge disservice. Remind me to never be cursed in front of any of y’all lest you think the monster inside me is speaking objective truth and y’all turn on me for it lol 😭

[ilovebeingaturtle]

i wanna rant about '87 krang so. here we gooooo i guess. i think '87 krang's backstory is actually incredibly interesting like??? how did he lose his previous body? (personally, i like to think that he did something wrong one day and was forcibly turned into the brain creature he is now and banished by his own kind. but hey that's just me) does his miss his old body?? can he devise a way to return to his old body or is it impossible? does his miss home? how complicated are his feelings towards his own species? yeah i know it was an 80s cartoon for kids and they didn't really have time to get into some characters backstories but it's still really interesting!!! YOU COULD DO SOME COOL CHARACTER STUFF WITH THIS!!!!!!! anyway. sorry for going off about krang in your inbox. i'm insane about shredder & krang

Never apology for going off about Krang I LOVE hearing your thoughts

[iridescent-serpent]

Ngl I’ve been rotating this idea in my head for like, a solid day, before I got around to doing some art for it. So here’s a sketch page for u :)!

funny idea where Shen Yuan transmigrates into a cute colorful lil world and his system tells him to collect data on bunnies, and not just any bunnies- beast bunnies

He thinks its cool, like omg theres this one bunny w dark fur and lil horns!! Omg its so cute, and this one has wings..!! And this one- its glowing! Its literally so cute!!

So he's in beast heaven where his goal is literally just Gotta Find Them All and optionally record their behavior for extra d-points! (D standing for data <3)

Eh, downside is he cant really use his left arm cuz he hasn't unlocked dual maining yet... but he'll get to it soon! For his bunnies!!

but! Theres evil creatures trying to eat his precious bunnies while he's researching them...!! His system tasks him with getting rid of these corrupted devourers to protect his defenseless bunnies-

well they're not all defenseless but the ones who CAN protect themselves are rare and most of what he has are just precious babies hiding behind him!! So, he takes up the missions and fight the evildoers!

Hey, but wait a minute- system, why are the devourers just.. pirate carrots?!

Oh, hey atleast he got a weapon!

Crack crack, boom!! He defeats the corrupted devourers- er, carrots- but wait, something sparkles in the corner of his eyes... he trims through the bushes and finds- another bunny?

[You have discovered Haze-Coated Dreams!]

His eyes were wide and shining because WOAH omg this bunny was majestic! It had a light shade of green and like, cute wind patterns! Theres even a little star pattern on its head!

But... aww, poor thing is trembling, it was so small too, probably just a baby. His heart clenched at the thought that those devourers were gonna eat something so cute... he looked around, though he cant seem to find its mother. They were probably eaten by the devourers...

He sighed and decided to just take the bunny in! More d-points for him!

He gently picks it up and cradles it in his arms.

[You have acquired Haze-Coated Dream!]

[Adding to database....]

_____________________________

Xiao Jiu ran as fast as he could, trying to get away from monsters that sought for his flesh and blood.

But it was futile, wasn't it? They were faster, stronger, and he was just prey.

It wasn't any better that his clumsy self tripped and sprained his ankles. Fuck.

His heart thumped wildly in his chest, he didn't want to die yet. Please.

If he could not run, he crawled. He crawled and hid in a large bush, hoping those demons had not seen him. Hoping that whatever god was up there was merciful and let him live. But then what?

He trembled in the cold, his body aching and hurting all over.

Why did it have to be him?

His breath hitched as he held the sounds of cracking bones and tearing flesh. He trembled and hugged himself tighter, trying to get himself together.

Crawl, crawl damnit. Move. Anything.

Why did it have to be him?

He couldn't hide his fear when he so clearly felt a shadow loom over him. His instincts burned and screamed and made him look up, to see if the monsters had spotted him.

The bush was cut, and he was exposed.

No. No.. nonononono NO NO-

Please.

Xiao Jiu froze as he saw a bloodied man, arm ripped off and dry blood staining the ripped clothing.

The man- more demon-like than the actual demons he saw - approached him- no get away from me- and picked him up. And cradled him.

He couldn't do anything. He was scared, confused, angry- and.. helpless, in a lot of senses.

He wasn't willing to backdown without a fight however.

(It took sy 3 hours to put his disoriented bunny that was trying to fight him thinking he was probably one of the carrots to sleep. Poor baby.)

__________________

Anyways so yeah shen yuan thinks he got transported into a beast bunny heaven

Literally everyone around him says otherwise, but oh no shen yuan doesnt speak bunny and carrot language unfortunately :(

Sy thinks he's a beast tamer and also he chops up all the carrots to feed to his bunnies (remember what carrots are?... yeah... his house is a bit... messy...)

Sy: omg new rare bunny type?!?!?!!! This is the best day ever.

Sj, traumatized asf: who are you..?!. (sy baba-beams him and he immediately (4 weeks) becomes his boy)

Sy serving his bunnies the chopped up carrots: eat up and grow big and strong!

Sj: (avoiding the "carrots" bc he is NOT eating raw flesh)

Sy, noticing sj avoiding the carrots: oh no, my baby still has trauma from that experience :( its ok, SYSTEM!!!! gimme recipes. Now.

Sy looking at the (dead) carrots: i wonder if i can eat this...

System: no!!! It is heavily advised against!!

Sy: huh? Why?

System, sweating and trying to find an explanation that doesnt reveal the carrots are literally just demon abomanations: .....theyre digestible only to the rabbits! Theyre toxic to humans like how chocolate is toxic to dogs!

Sy: (believing it) huh... that makes total sense.

if you're wondering what sy looks like in this au, in literally everyone else's POV he:

Has one arm, the other looks like it was ripped off

Has clothes that are bloody and dirty asf like he just got out of a bloodbath

Has dead eyes and a clawed out eye (referencing to the fact he sees the world like a cutesy place even tho it isnt LMAO system pulling so many strings)

Has a butcher knife

His okay-arm has spikes coming out of his flesh

So basically he looks like he got out of a slaughter/cruel lab but he loves his bunnies (monstrous pets with 1 lil very hateful kid) very dearly and no when he sees himself in reflection he just looks like a Normal Guy

This is just my excuse to make monsteryuan but slightly more insane

[paracosmicka]

sonic tma au? 👀👀👀👀👀

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S BEEN SO LONG SINCE I’VE POSTED IT ABOUT IT EVEN THO I HAVE SO MUCH STUFF ABOUT MY SONIC/TMA AU

Okay to start out with, I’ve been calling the “Primal Fears au” and it started out as a working title but I don’t really have any better ideas and the tag I have on all of my posts about this tma au is #primal fears au (idk how to imbed a hyperlink into text but like if you go into the search thingy over my blog and just type that tag in you’ll see all my previous posts about it that are from OVER A YEAR AGO IT’S BEEN SO LONG 😭)

Okay uhhhhh idk how to organize this so just get ready for a shit ton of sketches and art lol

here are some more fleshed out character sheets (than my very post about them) for Sonic and Shadow, they’re not final yet tho obviously

was fighting demons drawing Shadow’s main design for some reason

general sketch ideas for Sonic and Shadow

And my favorite part of this au is that I just get to categorize all the Sonic characters into which fear entity would they serve so here are some character sheet ideas:

Okay this last one is Infinite and I know he’s not everyone’s favorite bc he’s just so…..mid ig in the games but redesigning him as an avatar of the Spiral has been so fun. Also bonus points if you know what Doctor Who episode I stole this dialogue from lol:

and finally I thought I’d just share an idea I had of a “cover” for my Primal Fears au

Okay I think those are all the presentable sketches I have but there are so so so many more ideas I have and it’s not going to help bc I’m feeling the annual urge to relisten to The Magnus Archives again especially bc the new season of The Magnus Protocol comes out soon.

But yeah anyway feel free to ask any questions/share ideas if you’d made your own TMA/Sonic au I love yapping about horror and this au is like my child. Actually that’s not a very good analogy bc all of my sonadow aus are my babies. I just love sonadow sorry I will continue to be insane

[slttygeto]

SO, YOU GOT A BOYFRIEND? | GETO S.

synopsis: when watching a certain scary movie gives your husband, suguru, the perfect idea on how to ruin you.

c.w: p0rn with plot, fem!reader, reader is referred to as “good girl” “pretty girl”, mask kink (hehe<3), slight fear play, fingering, cunnilingus, dirty talk, suguru talks you through it, praise kink, strength kink if you squint, im obsessed with suguru's arms, clit smack, multiple orgasms.

word count: 2,1k

note: i am BRICKED after writing this. happy halloween hehe.

ghostface suguru! ( @aurelianamu )

In a dimly lit room, at around 10PM—it was a bit cold outside, the perfect weather to snuggle up and watch some movies. Romance movies? No, you did that last week. Action movie? Eh, you were not in the mood for that—oh, Scream. Your thumb presses on the movie before you put the remote control down and walk towards the kitchen to grab some snacks.

“Sugu, I picked a movie!” you announce as you make your way out of the kitchen with a bowl of popcorn and two drinks. Your husband marches down the stairs in a lazy manner, his long strands messily sticking out of his ponytail that he has to stop and tie it up again. He sees what movie you picked and he stands behind you on the couch.

“Scream?” he questions, hands resting on your shoulders.

“First movie, pretty iconic.”

“I don’t think it’s that scary though,” he doesn’t really say that he would rather watch something else, simply joins you on the couch and pulls you towards him with the bowl of popcorn resting on your lap.

The movie is indeed not that scary, you kept quoting some of the lines here and there, which earned you a chuckle from Suguru every time.

“No, please don’t kill me Mr. Ghostface I wanna be in the sequel,” you say in the same voice and attitude and your husband runs a hand through your hair.

“I think you’d easily outsmart him,” your husband is very supportive of you, but instead of making fun of his statement, your heart thrums in your chest when you picture Suguru in the ghostface mask.

“Really?” you look up at him through your eyelashes but Suguru is staring ahead and doesn’t notice the eyes you���re giving him.

“Yeah, they’re all pretty stupid—minus Sidney, I mean the fact that—“ your husband goes on a three minute ramble about the plot, how he appreciates the intelligence of the main character all while saying that the choice of the ghostface killers was nice. Unbeknownst to him, you were thinking of something else. Something far dirtier than intended.

“Baby,” you cut him off from his ramble and he hums in response.

“You’d be pretty hot as ghostface.” Suguru looks down on you when you say that and raises both eyebrows knowingly.

“Are you insinuating something?” To which you shrug your shoulders before staring back at the big screen in your living room, playing innocent.

“Just saying.”

You weren’t just saying, you knew exactly what you were doing. The next day, you’re sat on your bed folding laundry while watching the newest episode to your favorite podcast. You liked keeping your brain stimulated, and it distracted you from the fact that your husband was always gone for long hours during the day. But when you hear the keys rustling and the front door opening, you raise an eyebrow but don’t question it. Today’s mission must’ve been quick, you think to yourself.

“Welcome home!” you call out from your bedroom but don’t bother to get up, you knew he would come to your bedroom immediately so you keep your eyes on your computer and go back to folding the laundry.

A couple of minutes pass and Suguru doesn’t walk inside the bedroom, so you start getting a little suspicious and decide to go check on him.

“Sugu?” you walk out of the bedroom and notice how the lights downstairs are turned off. You remember leaving them on for him, so he must’ve turned them off on his way upstairs—but where was he?

“Baby, are you in the shower?” the lights in the bathroom were on but the door was closed. Suguru never walked to the bathroom first without greeting you—unless something was wrong. You put your hand on the door handle, but before you could twist the knob, a warm and rough hand covers your mouth and your blood runs cold when you’re being pulled into a different room.

You don’t have time to scream or panic, because when you’re being pinned to the wall by a rather familiar set of hands, your eyes almost bulge out of your skull when you notice the ghostface mask. You’re breathing heavily, cheeks flushed but there’s no sign of panic because you know who this is—the dragon tattoo peeking out of his shirt and the wedding band on his ring finger are enough evidence.

“Do you like scary movies?” Suguru’s voice sounds silky smooth, but the flirting connotation to it has your heart leaping out of your chest.

“Sugu—“

“Wrong,” he pins both hands above your head and his body is so close to yours that you feel the heat radiating off of it. “Let’s try again, I know my girl is smart.”

Your breath is caught in your throat, but you play along and nod sheepishly.

“Do you like scary movies?”

“Mhm,”

“What’s your favorite scary movie?” He traces a finger over your cheek, and the arousal slowly starts pooling between your legs.

“Hm, I don’t know,” you reply in a similar flirtatious tone, nervousness long gone. The realization that you didn’t have to explicitly tell your husband about the ghostface mask and him buying it for your pleasure made all of this very thrilling.

“You have to have a favorite, what comes to mind?”

“Hm, Halloween,” you stick to the same script of the movie, you buck your hips towards him but he pushes a knee between your legs and pins you again to the wall. “Y’know, the one with the guy with the white mask that walks around and stalks baby sitters?”

“Yeah,” Suguru breathes out and takes in how gorgeous you look like this—how he should’ve thought of doing this a long time ago. Your eyes were blown out with lust, chest heaving in excitement all while allowing him to play with you like this. He could feel his pants tighten and his cock was slowly getting hard from knowing exactly what was coming.

“What’s yours?” you bring him out of his thoughts and although you can’t see his face, you know that he was giving you that signature charming smile that always won over your heart.

“Guess.” He purrs out and you subconsciously start grinding against his knee before giving him a reply.

“Nightmare on Elm Street,”

“Wrong,” Suguru goes off script and your lips part for a moment. You’re about to complain, tell him that this wasn’t in the movie—he lets go of your wrists and throws you over his shoulder, delivering a harsh smack to your ass, his rough hand kneads the skin as he makes his way towards your bedroom.

“Better luck next time,” he throws you on the bed and you let out a gasp when your back hits the mattress. You try to sit up, but your husband grabs your ankles and pulls you down towards the end of the bed. “Now let’s see just how fucking filthy you are,”

He parts your legs with his big hands covering the plush skin of your thighs, and you whine out when he removes your shorts to reveal your panties that had an obvious wet patch on them.

“Fuuuck,” he breathes out and lifts up the mask enough for his mouth and nose to be visible. He presses his nose against your panties and takes a whiff of your arousal, the sight is obscene and your face turns red at how pussy drunk he sounds. “Fuck, fuck—should’ve done this sooner baby, you smell so fucking good,” he gives your pussy a kiss through the fabric of your panties before his fingers remove them so messily that you let out a startled noise.

Suguru dives in between your legs and the wet sounds are dirty and make you feel even more turned on. His tongue laps at your clit, fingers pulling the hood back before spitting on it and your eyes roll to the back of your head when he sucks. Two of his thick fingers prod at your entrance, gathering some of the slick that’s pooled there before pushing a single finger inside.

“Thaaaat’s it, good girl,” he breathes out against your clit before giving it a kiss as he pushes the second finger inside. “Yeah, this pussy loves being stuffed by me—fuck, you’re so wet for me. All because of this mask baby girl?” his tone is playful but you’re far too gone to complain and just mindlessly nod.

“So drunk off of me and I haven’t even given you my cock,” he pumps his fingers in and out of you all while curling them to find that one spot inside you. He licks, sucks and spits on your clit with so much passion and when he finds that one spot, you let him know pretty quickly.

“Oh!” you gasp and your thighs shake. “S-Suguru, oh fuck--!” his wrist is burning as he keeps pumping his fingers in and out of you, and the veins in his forearm are bulging out from the sheer strength he is using to finger fuck you until you see white. His free hand comes down and presses against your stomach to apply pressure and keep you pinned down.

You make the mistake of opening your eyes to stare at him. His hand is covered in your arousal, but what truly pushes you over the edge is the fact that his mask had come down and was covering his face entirely. So when he decides to talk you through it, give you that one final push—the ghostface mask seems to intensify the orgasm tenfold.

“I know you’re a good girl, but I’m gonna need you to get dirty for me baby—there it is, theeere it is,” he sounds proud when you finally cum, and you’re loud. You whine and let out soft cries, your hands weakly push at his arm when he keeps fingering you through your orgasm.

“Suguru—too much!” you cry out and gasp when he pulls his fingers out of your soaking pussy to slap your clit.

“Fuck, you’re gorgeous,” he quickly starts to unbuckle his belt and pushes his pants enough to free his cock. The tip nudges at your folds and your husband hovers over you with his lean stature. Big broad shoulders cover your entire frame and you’re fucked out from your previous orgasm.

“I’m going in baby, let me in,” your legs spread instinctively to welcome him inside of you and you groan when you feel the sheer size of him inside you. Your hands grip at the back of his shirt, but Suguru holds himself up on his forearms so that you look at his mask.

“Yeah, that’s right—look at me baby, filthy fucking girl,” his strokes were slow but hard. His hands grab at the back of your thighs and push them before fucking into you harder. “You like it, huh?” you couldn’t even give a proper response, only mindlessly nodding when you could feel him even deeper inside you.

He pushes your knees to your chest before setting a dizzying pace. You feel so full of him, so full of his thick cock and Suguru’s eyes roll to the back of his head behind his mask every time he felt your pussy squeeze around him. His finger rubs at your clit the same way that you’ve shown him you like it, and the tip of his cock repeatedly nudges against that one spot that has you falling apart underneath him with a loud cry.

Your orgasm hits you hard and Suguru can’t hold it in any longer—he fucks into you for another minute, head buried in your neck as he groans out your name. Your pussy milks him dry, and he fills you up to the brim—to the point where you could feel him leak out of you.

You lay there breathing heavily, and you weakly reach for the ghostface mask and remove it off of your husband to reveal his sweaty forehead and flushed cheeks. He looks gorgeous like that, and you lock eyes for the first time since the entire night and you’re immediately pulled in towards one another.

Suguru kisses you with so much passion, dick still buried deep inside you and your legs stay wrapped around him as you two make out heavily under your sheets that stuck to your sweaty bodies. You pull away for a moment to kiss his forehead and Suguru closes his eyes as he melts at your touch.

“Thank you for that,” you say, so love struck that the man can’t help but chuckle at how breathless you sound.

“Let’s do it again, yeah?”

2023: all works belong to @ slttygeto. do not repost my works on any other platofrm.

—💭 if you like this, leave a tip!

[void-my-warranty]

18+ Gaz/fem reader — past bullying, PIV, friends to lovers

Gaz who used to be such a jerk to you.

You’d almost think he liked you at times, but then a backhanded compliment or a laugh at your expense would sober you right out of that delusion. It was always a stark reminder of the invisible wall between you — his effortless charm, and your nervous quiet.

You accepted it.

Socially, your breeds were just different. He was a dangerous thing you’d better not touch, better not even look at too long, in case it opened you up to his attention.

And if you were a more healed version of yourself, you might have cut ties — found new friends, deleted the group chat, and maybe even switched your classes around to avoid him. But you were seventeen and didn’t think you deserved any of those protections, so you stuck it out.

And then he joined the military, and you moved on with your life. Many years, two and a half boyfriends, and two cats later, you never expect to run into him again. But you do, on some random, gloomy day. That’s definitely him, headed obliviously in your direction while he talks to someone on the phone.

You’ve just finished assuring yourself that there’s no way he'll remember you, when his eyes land on your face and light up in recognition.

Shit.

This is going to hurt.

Instantly your mind erases all the personal growth you’ve accomplished, and puts you right back into the anxious shell you were all those years ago, as if his face were some trigger for memory loss. If only he hadn’t noticed you, and you could turn around and pretend you never saw him. But no, he’s already walking over, stowing his phone in his pocket.

“Kyle,” you respond with a fake smile when he says your name. “You look…” Your eyes rake over his faded, well-worn jacket, so at odds with the flashy clothes he used to wear. “…different.”

It’s true, everything about him seems changed, from the understated surety of his posture, to the random scar on his face now. Even his eyes feel different, when they’re connecting with yours. It’s like his personal aura of disregard has evaporated, and something entirely different has taken its place.

“Speak for yourself,” he says, in a softer, deeper voice than you remember. “I like the new hair.”

You cringe internally, waiting for that mocking smile to make an appearance. But no, he just gazes speculatively across the pavement at you, as if the compliment had no hidden meaning at all.

“Thanks,” you mumble. “It’s… uh… are you visiting?”

“Stationed,” he clarifies, reluctantly dragging his eyes away to scan the damp street. “Just got my things unpacked.”

“Oh, that’s cool.” You’ve just started to slink away as subtly as you can, first one sidestep and then another.

“D’you live here?” he asks point-blank, with a little quirk to his brow.

C’mon, lie. Say you’re on holiday or something.

“…Yeah.” Why does he have to act so different? It’s throwing off your learned defenses. “A couple streets over.”

The spark of interest you glimpse in his eyes is quickly smothered by something unreadable.

“S’ppose I’ll be seeing you, then,” he offers, lingering his eyes once more on your hair, which you previously believed was behaving today.

“Alright, see y—“

It’s Kyle who escapes down the stretch of pavement. Kyle who makes a hasty, awkward retreat before you’ve even finished speaking.

“What the fuck?” you mutter to yourself, continuing down the street.

Sure, you’re confused, but that encounter was oddly… centering.

Maybe, after all this time, you somehow grew up. You’re not even that afraid of his attention any more, as if it just doesn’t even matter that much. Even if he were exactly the same as he was before, he would never again become a main character in your life or in your thoughts. How unexpectedly liberating.

You go home that night, thinking about the person you used to be. The energy you’d waste on proving yourself to people who were never your friends. The awkward moments you’d agonize over in your head, punishing yourself a hundred times for the smallest misstep. How strange that Kyle was the one to prove how much you’ve changed.

You start running into him on a fairly regular basis. At your favorite lunch spot, at the chemist's, and most commonly, on your way home from work, heading to your respective flats in the opposite direction of each other.

Every time, you're struck by how grounded you feel when he looks at you. Your heel suddenly doesn't ache, your skin doesn't feel tight and uncomfortable. He keeps a respectful distance, but his voice is always steady, and his clothes are always functional and boring. You suppose that's what the military does to some people, or maybe it's just time itself that changed him.

It takes a month for him to ask for your number. Another week to text you, and instead of asking you out for drinks, he seems interested in your cats. He can't have any of his own, he says, with the job. He seems to like the photos you send, and the little updates about your day.

It's you who invites him over the first time, for a bottle of wine and a pirated film. He sits on the other side of your couch for most of it, with his hands clasped over his belly like he's been paid not to touch anything while he’s there. He even keeps his jacket on, so when the film is done and it's time to either talk or kiss, he just stands right up and says his goodbyes.

He's almost awkward as an adult, which throws you completely off guard. It takes your cats claiming him to get him to relax a little at your place, but eventually he'll be spread out on your couch on a random Thursday night, with one cat loafing on his lap and the other one waiting on the arm rest for her turn, twitching her tail impatiently.

Your coworker asks if you two are dating, which is so utterly absurd, you don't even know what to say. You and Kyle are friends, and that alone should be enough of a crinkle in the universe. He's just new to the city, and you get along now, so it makes sense to hang out sometimes.

Nevermind that you've been cuddling closer lately, so the spare cat won't be so left out. Nevermind that you're now familiar with the feeling of his warm arm pressed against your shoulder, the backs of his knuckles tucked into the side of your thigh. Nevermind that in your bed after he's gone, you often hallucinate scenes of other things happening between you, things that would surely never exist in a sane world.

If he wanted you, he would make a move, so you're friends.

You're a bad friend, the next time he comes over.

You're wearing one of those satin bras that shows the impression of your nipples through your shirt, and you have your hair done, and you've got on a pair of little shorts, instead of your usual leggings.

Nothing a rock-solid friendship can't handle, of course. Nothing Gaz can't handle, even if he's extra quiet that night. You expect to feel his eyes on your body, but instead you feel the opposite, the inward shift in his concentration.

That rock-solid military control is suddenly a tangible barrier between you, uncomfortable and tight. The outside of your knees touch when he joins you on the sofa, shooting a spark through your lower belly—

Christ, you need to stop it. You're probably just seeking his approval to fill a teenage wound that's not his responsibility to repair. You shouldn't need him to validate you, you're your own person now, and also, fuck him for making you feel like shit in high school. You don't want him, anyway. It would be toxic as hell to pursue someone who's capable of hurting you like that, so stop it.

Overwhelmed, you put your feet up on the couch and rub at your face, trying to simultaneously get a handle on your feelings and shield you from view. This is all so stupid and unnecessary, and you're terrified that you actually like him in a very un-friendlike manner, which will only serve to embarrass you further.

For some reason, Kyle jolts straight up out of his seat, sending the cat leaping away with an affronted growl.

“Have you got any beer?” he asks, already on his way to the fridge.

“Um… I think so. Help yourself.”

Curiously, you watch his back while he putters around in your tiny kitchen. Why the hell is he taking so long?

“Kyle, are you okay?”

He takes a long drink with his back to you, and then finally turns around, bracing his arms on your counter and almost glowering at you.

“What?” you probe, curling your feet under you, and feeling self conscious with your bare legs.

Shit, he has a girlfriend, doesn’t he. Or he’s married. Or this is all an elaborate prank to shred your self esteem.

Kyle’s mouth opens and closes silently, and then he stalls with another drink of beer. You know, to torture you.

“Look, if y—“

“I love y—“

You both snap your mouths shut at the same time, staring wide eyed at each other over the countertop.

“I know I’ve been a right prick,” he says in a rush, “and you’ve got every right to bloody hate me—“

“I don’t hate you.”

Again, you both stop and blink at each other, breathing fast. You can feel your heart pounding against the front wall of your chest.

“I don’t know what to do,” he admits. “I thought I’d gotten over you, and then I meet you again, and it’s like…”

Some kind of weird euphoria is starting to bubble up inside you, making the edges of your consciousness turn into blurry pink irrelevance. Kyle— Kyle likes you.

“Are you married?” you croak, and he just laughs, shaking his head.

“No.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No.”

You chew on your mouth, heart still fluttering. “Mind grabbing me one of those beers?”

You have sex that night, in your bed, with the cats making annoyed noises intermittently on the other side. He accidentally cums in your hand, with his palm wrapped around the swell of your pretty satin bra. He seems rather embarrassed by it, but you tell him it’s fine, of course, and just expect that you’ll have to wait another day to get yours.

You couldn’t be more wrong, because he makes you cum on his fingers twice before he gets hard again.

You walk into work the next day, feeling the most alive you’ve ever felt on a solid two hours of sleep. Your phone chimes, and you look down at first text from your new boyfriend:

Come to mine tonight? I’ve got something planned.

Drabble masterlist

[gh0stsp1d3r]

⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ ࣪ That’s not a thermometer.

cw: fem!reader, they’re also married, anxiety, pregnancy, doubts of being a good father, mentions of daddy issues, but mostly fluff

A/n: the people REALLY wanted more nerd!rafe… and my baby fever is crazy rn so… this is curing it

MASTERLIST

A few weeks ago, you’d been panicking at the thought of it. As you stood there, waiting in the bathroom for the lines to show up, your mind ran wild.

What if you were pregnant? Would Rafe stay? Or would he be scared and leave?

No, you told yourself. Rafe was better than that.

You saw the two lines, and you just about passed out. Oh god, oh god. You took another test, just to be sure. Positive again.

You swallowed the lump that had formed in your throat, Rafe knocking on the bathroom door while clearing his throat.

“Y/n? Are you okay? You’ve been in there a while.” He asked, voice full of concern. The movie buzzed on in the background, but it was long forgotten at this point.

“Uhm- yeah! I’m- I’m fine!” You replied, taking both tests in your hands, looking around the bathroom. You thought of tossing it into the trash, but Rafe was very oddly observant. He’d probably notice it while he was taking out the trash or something.

You shoved it into the pockets of your hoodie, telling yourself that it would be okay, and that Rafe wouldn’t know anything as you opened the door.

He had a small frown on his face, leaning against the doorway.

“What’s wrong?” He asked you, immediately sensing something was off. You wished he couldn’t read you so well, sometimes.

“I’m alright.” You repeated, him quirking an eyebrow, pushing himself off of the doorway.

“Alright.” He replied, although not convinced at all. He decided not to press any further, sitting down on his bed. You sat down next to him, your head still spinning and swirling.

He laid down, waiting for you to do the same. When he looked at you, however, you were completely zoned out, your eyes glossed over and your face unreadable.

“Hey,” he spoke quietly, putting his hand on your thigh. You jerked slightly, turning to him with wide eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay? You’re looking a little pale…” he noted, moving his other hand onto your forehead.

You gave him a tight lipped smile, nodding as you pushed his hand off of your face. “I’m finee, Rafe. Quit worrying about me.” You told him, going to lay down with him in an attempt to act normal.

“I can’t help it.” He replied, kissing the side of your head, pulling you closer to him, his arm now lazily slung over your stomach.

The movie became less and less interesting, Rafe speaking over it at times and saying how the main character was “pissing him off.”

“Oh, are you serious? Whoever wrote this movie sucks. This doesn’t even make sense. The plot is all over the place and they just completely mischaracterized their own character.”

You didn’t reply, already knowing how deep he analyzed these movies and shows. Usually, you’d agree or laugh with him about it, but today you didn’t. You were quiet the entire time, actually.

Rafes worries grew. ‘Did I do something?’ He thought, replaying every moment with you recently. He couldn’t think of anything. So, he remained quiet after a while, deciding to not bother you.

He felt you slowly grow more limp in his hands as the movie played on, slowly dozing off with your head resting against his shoulder.

He had a soft smile on his face, glancing at you. That smile faded when he felt something cold touch his hands, dropping from your pockets. He furrowed his eyebrows, feeling the shape of it. At first, he thought it was some thermometer. He had felt the body of it, nothing more.

Why would there be a thermometer in your pocket?

He glanced at your sleeping figure once more, before moving his hand and pulling the object out from underneath the covers and your body.

That’s not a thermometer.

His eyes widened and his grip loosened on the object, dropping it for a moment. He quickly reached over your form, grabbing it and holding it close to his face as if it was unbelievable.

He examined it closely, looking over the two lines multiple times. He swallowed, looking back down at you. He sighed quietly, putting his hand on his forehead and staring up at the ceiling.

Okay, he wasn’t upset at you. He was more so confused and worried. He thought for a moment, would a child really be that bad? He had taken his father’s business over now, money pouring in like it was nothing. That wasn’t a problem. The main thing he was worried about was how good of a dad he’d really be.

He wouldn’t leave this child, god no. He knew that much. He loved you far too much.

Plus, you’d spoken about this before. Neither of you were against the idea, he just didn’t think it would be this soon.

But, living his whole life without a proper father figure screwed him up more than he’d like to admit. He didn’t know how a father should act, how a father should really treat a child. What if his child ended up like him? What if he needed to go to anger management and fucking therapy all because of Rafe?

His thought were interrupted when you began to squirm around in your sleep, your eyes beginning to flutter open. You saw Rafe staring at you, his eyes glossed over. He gave you a small smile, moving the hair from your face.

You gave him a tired smile back, and for a moment, he made you forget about everything else. When his arms wrapped around you again, there was nothing else in the world.

“I love you, you know that?” He rasped out quietly.

“I love you too.” You replied, although very confused at the random statement.

He pulled away, looking you in your eyes for a moment. He sat up slowly, you furrowing your eyebrows worriedly at him as you did the same.

“What’s wrong?” You asked him, him shaking his head.

“I..uhm..” he pulled out the test, letting it speak for itself. It was like the words had gotten stuck in his throat.

“Oh.” You mumbled, dropping your gaze down.

“I know this probably isn’t how you wanted me to find out.” He spoke, you looking down at your lap still, avoiding his gaze. “And I want you to know-“ he paused, looking at you.

“Y/n.” His hand moved, grabbing your face in his hands, moving closer towards you. You looked up at him finally, tears brimming your eyes.

“I love you.” He repeated. Those words meant more to you than he could imagine at the moment. You started full on sobbing, him wrapping his arms around you, letting you cry into his shoulder.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. We’ll be okay.” He told you in a murmur, your hands bunching up the fabric of his shirt.

“I love you.” You cried out, him letting out a quiet laugh, continuing to let you cry.

“Hey, hey,” he spoke when he heard nothing but little sniffles coming from you. You pulled away, looking at him again. He brought the pad of his thumb, wiping away any remaining tears.

“I meant it. I- I really, really wanna be here for you. For the both of you. Okay? I’m gonna- gonna get my shit together, ‘m gonna… figure it all out.”

“Thank you.” You replied quietly, him giving you a soft smile, pulling you in for another hug.

“You’re gonna be a really good dad.” You murmured against him, him smiling at the thought of it. With those simple words, all his anxiety was eased.

“You’re gonna be the best mom.” He retorted.

You giggled at him, leaning up so you could kiss hm.

When you pulled away, you both got back down into the sheets.

“You know, I think it’s gonna be a girl.” You told him quietly, him tilting his head to the side.

“Well, you’d probably be right. Most people think that the likelihood you’ll have a boy or a girl is inherited through the father… considering that I’m literally the only boy in the family, then, you’d probably be correct.”

“I’m trying to be cute and you’re spewing facts at me.” You teased him, him shrugging.

“Well, you knew about the deal when you decided to marry me.” He pulled his hand out from under the covers, showing the ring on his finger.

“You should have put it in your vows.” You replied.

“How would I word that, exactly?”

“I, Rafe Cameron, promise to never stop giving you extremely random science facts, even when you’re pregnant.” You spoke in a deep, mocking voice. It made him laugh out loudly.

“I do not sound like that.”

“You kinda do.” You laughed.

Rafe shook his head with a soft smile, and he knew, despite everything he’s gone through and everything that’s happened, if it led him to you, he’d do it 10 times over again.

Taglist:

@moonssyrup @koibleufish @anamiad00msday @wearemadeofstardust0 @10ava01 @mileyraes

[bloodibambiidoll]

I lost the ask but someone requested Rafe fucking weird!girl in the ass with a dildo while he fucks her based on this blurb.

Rafe being a possessive drama queen, weird!girl pushing his buttons, Rarry mention !!, talks of spanking/edging, degradation, double penetration(with a toy), unprotected sex, hair pulling, squirting 18+MDNI

“What about Barry?” You and Rafe are having a lazy afternoon, he’s watching the game while you get engrossed in another dark romance novel. This one is about two drug dealers and the scenes with them fucking the female main character have you clenching your thighs. Plus, you love any chance to rile Rafe up and get him a little possessive. He always fucks you until you can hardly see.

“What about Barry?” Rafe turns toward you with a raised brow.

“Ya know, you said you’d never have a threesome with me and another guy. But, what about Barry?” You say it so casually, like you didn’t just bring up fucking Rafe’s pretty much best friend. You visibly see his face turn red and if he was a cartoon steam would probably be coming out of his ears. You have to choke back a laugh because you’re joking. Mostly.

“You’re never fuckin’ seeing him again.” Rafe eyes are practically blue flames as he flares his nostrils and points his finger at the book grasped in your hands. “What’s that book about?”

“Rafe, I’m joking! I’m just fucking with you, calm down.” You can’t help but giggle at how worked up he is. “I just thought maybe you guys could finally fuck it out, is all.”

“WHAT!? I think you’re fuckin’ projecting.” Rafe’s eyes look like they’re going to bulge out of his skull and it just sends you into another fit of laughter. “Stop laughing at me or I’ll make you.”

“Oh yeah? I think you’re just mad because you wanna boy kiss Barry and I’m saying the quiet part loud.” You wiggle your eyebrows at him and he lunges at you, grabbing your book from your hand and tossing it across the couch.

“I think you’re fuckin’ making excuses and you wanna fuck him.” He cages you in with his arms, his face inches from yours.

“Rafe, baby, I don’t wanna fuck Barry, calm down.” You coo at him and grab his face, squishing his cheeks together. Your condescending tone earns you a hand around your throat and it makes you smile wickedly up at your boyfriend. You love pushing his buttons. “But you do though.”

“Oh my fuckin’ god! You’re being so annoying.” Rafe grits and squeezes your throat tighter but it only widens your smile. “You’re the one that’s so obsessed with having two dicks in you at once. Was fucking you with your little dildo once not enough? You just pissin’ me off so I’ll do it again?”

“Mmm, maybe.” You lick your lips and your pussy clenches at the thought. It’s Rafe’s turn to grin down at you wickedly, you wanna play that game? Fine, he’ll bite.

“Yeah, fuckin’ look at you, my greedy little whore.” Rafe pounds into you from behind, his thighs slapping against your own causing your ass to jiggle with each thrust. He’s holding your longest, thickest dildo in one hand, thrusting it in and out of your ass in time with the pumps of his cock. “No one’s ever touching these holes besides me. You’re fuckin’ mine.”

He lands a harsh smack on your already red, aching ass and it causes you to yelp and clench around him and the toy nestled inside you. He spanked you and edged you until you were a sobbing mess, begging him to fuck your holes.

“Say it. Tell me you’re my slut.” Rafe spanks you again and it has your toes curling while your drool drips down onto the Egyptian cotton sheets.

“I’m your slut daddy, only yours.” You whine and push your hips back against his, trying to meet his erratic thrusts. “Every inch of me is yours. Only want you.”

“Yeah, that’s fuckin’ right. You can have your little book fantasies.” Rafe pulls his cock and the dildo almost entirely out of you before slamming them back in at a brutal force. “But next time you bring another man up to me, you won’t be able to walk for a week from how bad I beat your ass. And maybe I’ll have to beat their fuckin’ ass too. Don’t make me hurt Barry, baby.”

“S-sorry daddy, won’t do it again.” You intentionally clench around him and he roughly presses your face into the mattress in response. He pumps the toy in and out of your ass as his cock bullies your g-spot and it causes your entire body to heat with pleasure.

“You gonna cum for me? Give it to me, let daddy feel your whore pussy gush all over his cock.” Rafe gathers your hair into a ponytail so he can pull your head back, using his grip on you for leverage as he fills you entirely over and over again. He flicks the button on the side of the dildo and it starts to vibrate and thrust itself faster into your ass. The added sensation has euphoria taking over your entire being. You gush around Rafe’s cock, your cum dripping from your pussy and down onto both your thighs. “Oh, that’s my good fuckin’ girl, squirt for me.”

“Fuck, daddy, m’so sensitive.” You whine as your legs shake but Rafe just chuckles before shoving your face back down into the mattress. He turns up the intensity on the toy and it makes you cry out as your body subconsciously tries to wiggle away from him.

“Oh, no baby. Where you goin’ huh?” Rafe grips onto your hip so he can roughly pull you back against him and hold you in place as he uses you like a fuck doll. “You can fuckin’ take it. Gimme another one.”

Rafe presses the dildo as deep as it can go into your ass and holds it there. It vibrates and twitches inside you, the auto thrust feature doing his job for him. He fucks into you with a brutal force that practically knocks the wind out of you. His hand snakes between your legs and he leans over you, covering his body with his own. The new angle has your vision practically going white.

“Oh fuck, m’gonna cum, gonna cum.” You babble and whine as your high washes over you, another gush of your creamy liquid dripping down onto the mattress. Rafe’s cock twitches at the sight and a few more pumps of his hips has him spilling inside you.

“Yeah, take my fuckin’ cum.” Rafe doesn’t stop fucking you until his balls are empty and his cock starts to soften inside you. He pulls the dildo from your ass and slumps over on the mattress, pulling you with him.

“God, that was so good.” You sigh as you look up at him dreamily and you aren’t surprised to see him pouting down at you. “What, you still grumpy?”

“I meant that shit, you’re never seeing Barry again.”

“Stop being so dramatic, Barry is my friend.” You roll over so you’re straddling him with a mischievous smile painted on your lips. “And you’re the one who wants to fuck him, not me.”

“Oh my fuckin’ god!” Rafe groans and throws his head back dramatically. “You’ve gotta quit that shit out. You wouldn’t have brought it up if you didn’t at least consider it a bit. What would you have done if I said yes?”

“I would’ve still told you I was joking because I was.” And you were. Mostly. You wouldn’t have turned it down if he agreed. Just as a one time thing. But that’s something for you to know and Rafe to never find out.

“Good. You’re mine and I don’t share shit.”

Tagging mooties & weird!girl lovers: @babygorewhore @eddiesxangel @cxrrodedcoffin @starkeysprincess @cameronsprincess @nemesyaaa @that-sarcastic-writer @rafeyscurtainbangs

Divider by @anitalenia

All things Rafe & his weird!girl here

[aclowndoll]

Imagine female Yuu having to cross dress to avoid unnecessary trouble at NRC and Idia finds out through Ortho. Because I can see Ortho finding out if Yuu ever got a minor injury and he was around to play nurse, knowing him he’d do a quick full body scan and find a very high amount of estrogen in her system.

And he blabs to Idia because he’s a snitch who doesn’t keep anything from his brother; if you tell a secret to him, you’re basically telling it to them.

Once Idia finds out, his mind INSTANTLY goes to those otome games and fanfics and gacha life videos about a girl in all boys school. He always thought those were just fun fantasies, but upon seeing that exact scenario happening in real life he becomes curious.

Prior to this, Idia probably wouldn’t think much about Yuu. To him, she was just the odd magicless guy his brother would occasionally run into; the most interesting thing about her was her cat, in his eyes. But now that he knows about her secret, he becomes heavily invested in her school life, he wants to see how this is going to turn out.

He doesn’t exactly stalk Yuu, it’s not like he’s putting cameras in Ramshackle or listening devices in her bag, it’s more like he just pays extra close attention to her when he has the chance, such as during joint classes and lunch. And since Ortho and her are on amicable terms, he encourages Ortho to spill any gossip he learns when around her.

To Idia’s surprise and delight, things end up matching up almost perfectly with what he’s come to expect from these kinds of plots. The ones close to Yuu, who seem to be privy to her secret from what he’s gathered, are all either falling in love or have already been in love. They’re extra protective of her, they’re affectionate and soft with her, and they get jealous when she gives too much of her attention to any one of them.

Idia knows about the overblot incidents, so of course he’d see the pattern in who starts getting closer. Every time someone overblots, Yuu will be there to help and both the overblotter and some other select people in their dorm will begin to fall. It’s a classic pattern.

At this point, Idia would simply see himself as an observer peeking in on this story and, therefore, he can’t be affected by Yuu. He’s not a love target in her story, he’s a side character.

It doesn’t matter that he’s occasionally run in with Yuu and each time he has she’s been a true friend to an introvert like him by making his anxious ass feel comfortable. It doesn’t matter because he’s aware of what’s happening and thus he can’t be affected.

But then he also overblots, and just like before she was there to help pick up the pieces. After that they ended up talking and Idia gets to know more about Yuu, more than he could learn by just observing.

Before long, he’s actually looking forward to seeing her again, to nerding out about his favorite anime’s with her in person because she’s always such a good listener. He’s looking at his manga and game collections and thinking about what she would like.

Idia doesn’t even realize his hearts been skipping beats when she’s around until one day when he’s in class and she walks in. Like a dog hearing their owner walk through the front door, his gaze shoots up and instantly that class gets fifty times more bearable with her around.

…And then he looks around and every other “main character” has had the same reaction.

Which means that he’s also a captured love target, just like them…

Oh how the turn tables for a dating sim loving nerd like himself