#if you actually read that op it comes off a lot like someone doing their best 'terf' impression

[klarolinexluv]

Four years ago. I used to hate this one ship. Like I would go out of my way to just speak that opinion and fuck everyone else right? I was 14.

A year or so past and I grew out of that a bit. I realised that I did like one of those characters in the ship but I still preferred the other ship that was much more popular and canonly didn’t end up together. (I mean the guy died so what do you do).

Anyway… so I was 15 and realised that my behaviour wasn’t the best so I changed. I realised that the character I didn’t like was actually a nice character. I grew to appreciate her more and I started editing her and the guy. The ship that I didn’t like. People thought I was crazy… I sort of laughed it off because yeah, I suppose I was a bit crazy for editing them but I quietly enjoyed doing it.

I was 16 and I shifted away from ships. I started posting more about my favourite character who canonically was a massive bitch do said character I thought I hated. I still made my opinion clear but I never judged anyone for liking something that I didn’t.

I was 17 and I stopped posting for that fandom. I got into Harry Potter and Drarry and the fandom I was surrounded by was a lot calmer. I didn’t see much passive aggressive or toxic behaviour between shippers and that made me feel safe. I realised that a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

I was 17 and I joined the Marauders fandom. For a while it was much of the same. I was safe and I felt loved and I enjoyed it so much.

I’m 18. I still love the marauders fandom so fucking much. Everyone is so incredibly talented and so amazing and I cannot see myself ever abandoning this fandom.

I’m 18 and I got my first anonymous hate comment in my inbox. I was angry. I thought that I had moved on from getting hate for my opinion. I thought the marauders fandom was made up of a lot of mature and liked minded people. I was wrong.

I stuck to my guns. I shared my opinion even with the anonymous hate. I have an open mind. I understand where these haters were coming from. Hell, I even enjoyed the ship they were vouching for… it just so happened that I adored another ship more.

I’m a multi shipper. I always have been. I will try anything at least once and if I don’t like it, I’ll click off.

I would never leave a hate comment under someone’s hate and go off at them for shipping something that I don’t like. I’ve never done that. Even when I was 14 and hated this ship very publicly. I would never hate on someone’s art or edit or fic. I would just click away.

I will defend my favourite characters, my favourite ships until I physically cannot. I will not hate you for having a different opinion even if you hate on me first.

I have received death threats. I hope that no one ever experiences that feeling.

In conclusion, if you love something, that’s amazing. If you hate something, that’s cool too. If you hate on someone for loving something you hate, that’s not okay. Everyone deserves respect.

If someone loving something you hate makes you angry. I’m going to be so fucking for real, go outside, touch grass or taking a deep breath and scroll. Block tags. Block blogs/accounts.

Putting someone down is a form of bullying, repetitively or not. It’s bullying. Hating for no reason, I’ll go so far as to say that’s bullying.

You’re allowed to be angry, that’s your right. It’s not your right to hate one someone because of it.

Take it from someone who used to get angry for someone shipping something I hated.

I say from experience that it feels better to just let it go, to move on, to open ao3 and read the things you love, to open the tag you love and scroll through it. You’ll feel better, you’ll feel good.

I promise you. The best thing to do when you are angry is to turn away, focus your energy on something you love rather than something you hate.

I’m sorry to op for highjacking the post haha. My rant was rather inspired.

some of you cannot be the age you say you are because the way you react to fictional characters with such anger is jarring

[harrypotterfuryroad]

you only said "no" to "are you a terf?" because you've bought into the "it's RADFEM" bullshit smh. you're not slick. literally half your posts are filtered for me because their original tags contained "radfems do interact", "radfems please interact", "radfems please touch" etc. Well, here are some excerpts from a former radfem's take on radical feminism in a trans person's inbox:

"Radfems are just TERFs who won’t say tr*nny, but the rhetoric is the same, and the ideology that backs it is the same.) and so women’s oppression is based on [a dyadic view] of biology. [...]

"TERFs also like to say that they don’t want trans people dead, and lots of them probably don’t, actively, want trans people dead. again, this doesn’t matter; they support and hide and protect the ones that do, and their rhetoric and the things they want to achieve do that whether they say they want it to or not, and they know this, but their allegiance to female-ness and sex-based oppression is simply more important. [...]

"I left TERF-ism because I’m black, really. I couldn’t stomach watching black trans women dying, and I didn’t really see how they were hurting feminism or infiltrating womanhood. All I could see was those women’s victimhood and I couldn’t be a part of that anymore–but even after I stopped associating with those people, stopped reblogging and liking their posts and stuff, I agreed with them, deep down.

"And it wasn’t until it was explained that way that I could easily sort through what was 'fascist’ and what was 'non-fascist’. I could use that to measure up my anti-racist activism… not fascist. LGBT/queer rights? Not fascist. Disability activism? Inherently leftist, actually. But TERF-ism? There was no way for men or trans women to ever be entitled to live and thrive in a TERF world, which made me realize that TERFs are inherently fascistic."

idk how aware of it you even are, but you are neck-deep in radfem ideology, and it's really not okay. i hope you eventually have the courage to see that and change.

filtering tags like that is for weenies

anyway yeah i remember that post, it was hot nonsense throughout, but you handpicked the worst parts

massive citation needed for that first point (but that would require you to define what a radfem is beyond "person i've decided i disagree with" which i know you can't so we'll just keep going)

"women's oppression is based on a dyadic view of biology" yes, unequivocally true, observing this doesn't make you any kind of bigot

i could just as easily turn this point around on you, we point out violent misogyny and homophobia constantly but we get #notallmen'd every time

"i left because i'm black" is really where the cracks start to show. "i couldn't stomach watching black trans women dying" at whose hands? and are they dying in such huge numbers that they're overwhelming other women dying? and are they getting harmed by things that maybe feminist activism is trying to address? can you even answer those questions in detail? the constant implication that feminists are responsible for the murder of trans women is a little tiresome, maybe look into what actually happened instead of using murder victims as props

"easily sort through what is fascist and what was nonfascist" when their working definition of fascism seems to be "things i'm told i don't like." crazy enough, men thriving is not a primary goal of feminism! if you can articulate why "all lives matter" is stupid and racist then this should also be easy for you to grasp (and if you can't articulate that, that's on you). why do racial minorities, sexual minorities, and people with disabilities warrant an activist movement but women don't?

but thanks for your concern, i'll change my ways immediately

[gothamhappiness]

Being in a relationship with Bruce Wayne: a journey - Your new family (Part VI)

It's a big series about an afab!reader who doesn't like Bruce Wayne and who still falls in love with him (he fells quicker and harder)

Reader's origin story // Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4 // Part 5

Warnings: no proof reading, mentions of stress, not a lot of plot here but little snippets of moments with all the kids

You were a little bit stressed out to meet all of Bruce’s children but you also felt like it was going to be alright. Jason was there, always by your side. Dick and Tim liked you and they had said only good things about you to the others. Especially Dick, because he was well aware that Jason wouldn’t agree to spend time with him again without you. The fact Bruce was much nicer since you were together was also working in your favour. Alfred was approving of you too and he had personally asked all of the children to treat you well.

The children were also aware that Bruce would be very unhappy and disappointed with them all if things didn’t go well. It was obviously very important for him.

At first, everyone was a little bit silent and awkward. It was the first time a civilian was introduced to the whole family. And technically, they already knew a lot about you without knowing you, so they weren’t too sure how to act around you. They didn’t want to scare you off by showing they made research about you… and stalked you.

After a little while, you gently teased them all, saying that for vigilantes they were quite shy. It quickly put them at ease.

Things went actually a lot better than you thought and you could tell no one really believed you would that easily get along with the family. You felt Bruce relaxing through the dinner, his hand on your thigh under the table. His warmth helped you feel safer around everyone as well.

Soon enough they all were chatting around and asking you questions. It was a true interrogation but you didn’t mind. For once, you were the one answering questions and not the other way around. It was fun.

Damian was the only silent one. He wasn’t too sure how to deal with you. He didn’t need you. He wasn’t used to seeing his father around someone. He wasn’t too certain how to react when his father kissed the back of your hand with such love shining in his eyes. 

You noticed his uncertainty but you weren’t too worried about it. You knew you were fitting just right in there. You had never felt like that before, or just with your grandma. It was a nice change in your life. And you were really eager to start spending some time with all of them, like you were doing with Jason already.

You went to concerts with Dick. He wanted to go to those classic piano concerts but no one was eager to follow him. He had asked you, half certain you would politely decline his offer. But on the contrary, you had been more than happy to agree to come with him. Your eagerness warmed his heart. It had been a long time he hadn’t had a motherly figure in his life, and he knew you were fitting perfectly. Since then, whenever one of you wanted to go to a concert - no matter what kind - you had to go together. It was your thing. None of you went to so many concerts before, but it was a pretext to spend time together. You talked a lot before the concerts too and Dick could only agree with Jason: you were easy to talk to.

You played video games with Tim. You were waiting for Bruce to come back from patrol one night and you were bored out of your mind. You found Tim playing in the living room. At first, you just asked him if you could hang around. He agreed without thinking much of it, before offering you to play with him. He needed another player and no one else was around at that time. It appeared you were a gamer and you enjoyed fighting against one other. But you enjoyed working together on co-op games even more. You spent a lot of evenings with Tim on the couch, screaming together when you were losing or winning. Everyone knew better than to annoy the two of you when you were gaming.

You watched movies with Stephanie. Stephanie was clearly not too certain how to be around you. Things weren’t always easy with Bruce and after the way her parents betrayed her, she felt like she couldn’t trust adults any longer. But Jason loved you so much that she thought she could give you a chance. Watching movies allowed the two of you to bond, without having to interact too much at first. Then you started to talk a lot about what you just saw, and then about everything else. Watching movies snuggled up against you started to become Stephanie’s comfort zone and you were more than happy to give her that. Even though you were a tease, you never said anything when she fell asleep on you.

You took dancing lessons with Cassandra. It was clear the girl was a classic dancer; she was really amazing to watch. You loved to dance too, even though you never really took any kind of lessons, so you thought it would be a nice activity to do together. Cass instantly agreed. It allowed her to observe you and your body language. She had more fun than she thought, and she offered to keep going dancing together. You improved a lot thanks to her help and she liked to discover other kinds of dances thanks to you. You also came to watch her repetitions and her representations. She started to always look for you in the spectators, happy to be taken care of that way. 

You did puzzles with Duke. You started to spend a lot more time at the manor, even when Bruce wasn’t around. You were currently doing a mind game on the living room table as Duke went by. You started to chat around and you saw Duke was quite eager to play with you, so you invited him to settle by your side. Once you were done, he looked for a puzzle he hadn’t finished yet so you could do it together. When the weather was pretty bad in Gotham, you quite liked to get some hot cacao and to do puzzles with Duke. Because you both were pretty good with puzzles, you had to always find more challenging ones. Looking for them was also part of the fun.

For Damian, things were a little bit more difficult, as he made it clear, he had no interest in spending time with you. It hurt you a little more than you wanted to admit but didn’t say anything at first. You eventually went to an animal care centre open to the public with Damian and Bruce. Bruce offered for you to come with the two of them so his son could get used to your presence. He had noticed he was the only one who was avoiding you. Damian stayed cold to you for a long time, eyeing his father holding your hand with a frown until you let go of Bruce’s hand to come closer to the lions. You really loved the animals and Damian thought you couldn’t be that bad then. That evening, Alfred the cat fell asleep on your lap, so Damian started to be more polite to you. It was the first step. You started to bond over taking care of his pets.

You also met Barbara, Kate, Luke and Lucius. 

Kate and you instantly became friends because you were seeing things quite similarly. You also loved to tease everyone together. You had a real complicity between the two of you, and you often hang out together just for the sake of being together. And annoying everyone.

Barbara needed some time to trust you but she could tell you were a good addition to the family. She slowly warmed up to you. You didn’t take it personally and you showed a lot of patience. You were happy to be part of this group of amazing people, and Barbara couldn’t deny how kind you were to all of them.

Luke trusted Duke’s approval of you. You talked a lot around a drink in a bar in Gotham after Dick invited everyone for his birthday. You asked him questions about the army and the way veterans were taken care of. You promised him to do an article about it, which touched Luke a lot.

Lucius and you enjoyed talking together, as ones of the only civilians of the family, with Alfred. For Lucius, it was quite refreshing to be able to discuss with someone who was also shaking their head at the Batfamily’s antics. Lucius quickly saw how much of a good asset you could be for Wayne Enterprises as well and he hoped that at some point you would agree to help Bruce with it.

As months went by, you started to all know each other a lot more. And to start to love one another quite fiercely. You were their Batmon. You got confirmation of it when the children playfully and yet tenderly brought you a bracelet with the bat logo on it. You swore to always wear it.

--

PART 7

--

Taglist for all my work <3

@blublock404

@wind-canoe

@silverklaus

@couldeatthatgirlforlunch

Taglist for Bruce Wayne <3

@alishii

Taglist for this series <3

@Esposadomd

@moraxussy

@resident-cryptid

@legendarypiratecheesecake

@randomnamedmira

@elleclairez

[penny-anna]

you do not have to like fanfiction. if you think fanfiction is cringy & annoying you can just Say That. but any attempt to argue that fanfiction is inherently inferior to other types of writing falls apart under scrutiny.

'most fanfiction is badly written' sturgeon's law is an adage that states '90% of everything is crap'. this was first coined in defence of science fiction, a genre often maligned as inherently inferior to 'real literature' (sound familiar??)

'oh but most fanfiction is worse than published fiction' yes; this is because pro published books go through a heavy selection and editorial process before the public see them. when it comes to quality of writing you are not comparing like to like. the appropriate 1:1 comparison would be fanfiction & amateur original fiction.

i have hung out in multiple online writing spaces & in 'anyone welcome' RL writing groups and can say with reasonable confidence that most original fiction getting produced is just plain mediocre. there's so so much bad original fiction being produced every day. u just never see it.

'you have to wade through so much garbage to find anything worth reading' you ever hear like. a fiction magazine editor describe what their slush pile experience is like??

'ok but fanfiction is bad because it lacks originality, it's better to come up with your own story & ideas' nobody actually thinks this!! people trot this out about fanfiction but like pro published literature is full of retellings of public domain stories and no-one ever argues that they're inherently worse or less creative than works with original plots.

the dividing line between fanfiction & 'original' fiction generally isn't actually originality, it's whether or not it's transformative of a text that's currently under copyright. & i would hope it's self-evident that the copyright status of the text a work is transforming shouldn't have any bearing on its literary merit. why on earth would it??

'but most fanfiction is trope-y and formulaic' yes this is true and yes i do think there's an argument to be made that a work of fiction that's interchangeable with thousands of other works of fiction is lacking in 'literary merit'.

however this is also true of a lot of pro published literature. whole swathes of genres like eg crime & romance exist to give readers the same experience over and over again. are these books bad? maybe! does their existence mean the entire genre they belong to should be written off? obviously no.

'but fanfiction is all about shipping' yeah a lot of fanfiction belongs to the romance & erotica genres. you do not have to like this. but disparagement of romance as a genre has its roots in the fact that it's mainly written & enjoyed by women. its just sexism lads. :(

'fanfiction encourages bad habits in writers' there's some merit to this argument IMO (that's a different rant) but see above re:90% of everything is crap; the presence of bad writing in a genre doesn't mean that the whole genre should be written off.

'what so you think fanfiction is as good as *insert classic novel here*' nobody is saying this; if you see someone arguing that fanfiction is real writing and jump to 'this person thinks MCU coffee shop AUs are culturally significant works of literature', to be blunt, that is a you problem.

'fanfiction just isn't real literature' ok so fiction divides into 'real literature' and 'not real literature'. got it.

[ID: screencap of a tumblr post by user theislandofmisfittoys:

Okay… nice dichotomy, IDIOT ‼ what lies  outside it???]

(OP)

[jeonscatalyst]

https://www.tumblr.com/pjslight/765192589573079040/relationship-status?source=share

Just curious... I want to know your thoughts on this.

Hi anon,

I must say I actually really love reading from Jikookers who have very different opinions on what Jikook’s relationship might actually be like and I don’t know about others but I enjoyed reading OP’s thoughts on the whole thing as this was an angle I had never seen any Jikooker discuss before.

I have always said that, anything is possible because we unfortunately don’t know every side of their story and I have also always said that, there is a good possibility that Jikook didn’t have a conventional relationship, not because they didn’t want to but because their circumstances made it impossible for them to.

This is just my opinion obviously but I don’t quite agree with OP on the point that they might have never realized that they loved each other. 13 years is a very long time for people who have lived that closely and have been that close to each other, spending a lot of down and private time with each other to not realize how they felt for each other.

I think this is an argument we can make about fetus Jikook because I honestly believe that they (especially Jimin) didn’t understand he felt for Jungkook. This might be an unpopular opinion but Jungkook might have figured out first that he liked Jimin in a way he shouldn’t which would explain his hot and cold attitude towards him. You know ignoring him when Jimin payed attention to him and then sought him out when Jimin wasn’t paying attention. Shoving him in walls in front of the camera but going to cuddle him in his sleep and wanting to spend nights with him. Fetus Jk was the epitome of a hormonal teen with a crush on someone they didn’t want to accept that they liked.

Jimin on the other hand let himself feel what he felt for Jungkook but he just didn’t understand why he liked Jungkook the way he did. We heard teenage Jimin ask himself multiple times why he liked Jungkook so much and even mentioned how it drove him crazy how much he liked Jungkook. We had fetus Jimin openly saying that he thought Jungkook was really cute but he knew that if he said that, people would think he was weird. He was clearly questioning himself about his feelings for Jungkook possibly because these feelings for another guy like himself were not feelings he had had before but I think after sometime, he figure it out and knew that he had a crush on Jungkook or was in love with him. I think that even though Jungkook probably figured out that he was attracted to Jimin in a different way before Jimin did, I think Jungkook had a harder time letting Jimin see or know that he liked him.

Jimin in my opinion is someone who gives his all to the people he is in love with. He jumps into it with his entire body and completely lets that person know all his cards while Jungkook is one who feels these things but is more weary of letting the person know all his cards unless push comes to shove (hello rainy day story) Jungkook is a softy who desperately wants to act like a tsundere. He always wants to seem or come off cool so he plays the tough uninterested guy (I mean how do you explain him shoving Jimin away or ignoring Jimin every time Jimin was affectionate but at the same time went to cuddle him in his sleep or kept trying to touch him when Jimin wasn’t paying attention?) while Jimin is/was that person who loves like a fool. Jungkook wants to seem cool and like he is a “je m’en fous” kind of person but he is really a softy. Jk is the kind of person who would verbally deny how he feels just because he doesn’t want to lose points lol while Jimin is that person who doesn’t care if he loses points as he just wants to be able to freely talk about and express his feelings. It is kinda hard to explain but even though I find that Jk tends to act tough, I think he actually even loves harder than Jimin does but just hates to admit that he does while Jimin has no problem admitting that he is a goner.

I also don’t think Jimin and Jungkook haven’t acted on their feelings. Let’s be serious here for a moment we are not 12. Who honestly believes that Jimin and Jungkook spent all those long nights together so often just looking at each other’s faces? Over the years Jimin and Jungkook clearly liked going to spend their nights and downtime with each other alone and while this is partly because they had the same sleeping habits, there were definitely other reasons. We are talking about them constantly choosing to be together ALONE at nights and during other downtimes even though they usually spent almost all day together with the rest of the members. I know we have discussed this at length but who honestly believes that in LA, Jk kept going to spend hours in Jimin’s hotel room because he was too lazy to take 5 extra steps to any other member’s room? We are talking about boys who met and probably fell for each other while they were hormonal teenagers who barely had a chance to date because of their hectic schedules and because they weren’t even really allowed to because of the career path they choose. These two hormonal teens obviously feel attracted to each other and surprise, surprise love to spend a lot of time together alone, mostly at nights…..come on, do we really think their will power was tough enough to resist how attracted to each other they were? I am betting good money on the point that they definitely acted on those feelings.

Now where I do somewhat agree with OP is on the point that their circumstances may have made things difficult for them to have a conventional relationship. Sometimes we don’t get just how difficult things must have been from their pov. Now, this isn’t to say that there aren’t people who have made things work under the most difficult circumstances but I think that them being famous and all, made things a little more difficult for them. I also agree that there may have been points when things felt a little too serious for them and they panicked and took steps back from each other. I don’t necessarily think that they hooked up with other people though because not everybody turns to hooking up with other people just because they can’t be with the ones they love but it isn’t an impossibility.

I think Jimin and Jungkook’s relationship is a lot more complicated that any of us could even begin to understand and I think that within all the years of them being together, they have had a ton of ups and downs.

I think Jimin and Jungkook are together but I don’t know how together they are. I think Jimin and Jungkook love each other and are possibly in love with each other and have always been but I don’t know how seriously they choose to treat what they felt/ feel for each other. I think they both know what they feel for each other and regardless of how they agreed to deal with those feelings, I think they were moments where they wanted to just have a normal relationship and probably just date and let everyone know. I think there were moments where they got frustrated about not being able to love each other freely or be together like they wanted to be which led to them expressing those feelings in unconventional ways. Say whatever you want but JK’s GCFs to me was a way he found to express how he felt for Jimin. I think his GCFs were an outlet to release those feelings he felt like he had to hide from the world and he found a clever way to do it. I think that during Rosebowl, when Jimin and Jungkook kept shouting “I love you” and “Love You” back to back, I think those were not to the fans but to each other. The moment they stopped saying “I love you guys” and switched to “ I love you” while saying it right after each other, that was them shouting to the world that they loved each other but of course doing it in a clever way that didn’t make things obvious. I think those two have craved having a normal relationship where they could openly be together and tell the world about how they felt for each other but couldn’t and this made them sad and also put strains in whatever relationship they have with each other.

Things were never bound to completely make sense for the simple fact that we don’t have all the information. We are not always able to explain their happiness, sadness, coldness, aloofness, anger because we don’t know what happens in their lives everyday. I believe I have said this before but even though I had always been positive that Jungkook loved Jimin a lot, no other period showed me just how much he loved Jimin like the solo era did. I remember watching Jungkook’s actions in the solo era with my jaw touching the floor because he couldn’t be more obvious and watching the Jimin centric Live he did on March 27th 2023 always breaks my heart in so many ways,I mean who watched those lives and doesn’t see how much Jungkook loves Jimin? Who watched those lives and didn’t wonder why Jimin eats hot food on Suchwita and we have Jungkook repeating twice with obvious concern on his face that the food must be hot and going ahead to move his mouth like he is trying to cool down the burning sensation for Jimin? Who watched Jk and didn’t notice how obviously attracted he is to Jimin by how he went so still and almost stopped breathing while he watched SMF pt 2 Jimin? Who watched Jk in the solo era and didn’t question why someone would wake up at 4am to watch his band mate while kicking, smiling and blushing? Nah, Jimin and Jungkook know how they feel about each other, have probably acted on those feelings or done something about it but I just don’t know what they decided to term what it is they have with each other and how seriously they have chosen to treat those feelings.

Life and relationships are extremely complicated so anything at all is possible. Even though most of us wish for or hope that Jikook have this fairytale type of romance, it probably isn’t always like that because unfortunately life knows how to throw the biggest curve balls and that’s why it is important to keep an open mind about how things might really be with these two. I feel like it is obvious to me that they love and are attracted to each other. I also think it is abit unrealistic to think they haven’t acted on their feelings but what we don’t know for sure is how seriously they choose to treat those very obvious feelings they’ve always had for each other, so I do agree with OP to some extent and disagree with some of their points but I think their post was really good and it felt refreshing to get a different pov.

[turndecassette2]

Is it ok if i can ask you how do you go about studying/drawing Heads and faces? i know this is a very broad questions but lets say you were coming up with a character for a new comic, when you go about creating characters what do you pay attention to the most and spend your time thinking about and make soure you got it right?

i love the way you draw faces, it dosnt feel anime and i love the little lines under the eye tear duck :D

Hope this question make sense!

Cilgia

(sorry re-reading your question this answer might be too rambl-y & off the mark. but am leaving this up in case someone finds it helpful)

I have a terrible tendency to just design characters 'on the page' since when I have a perfect sketch I tend to lose that 'look' once I get to the actual comic. idk the 'drawing academy' in viborg had us do a lot of portraits of each-other (you can prob recruit friends/relatives for this if you have any) & when I have time I like to draw ppl at cafés and such, so I have a mental library of face shapes.

in general: like w everything else I think it's good to hoard reference eg models, sports guys etc that have fun faces. put them in a folder on your computer for when you need a nose, good set of eyebrows etc. I've had various folders like this that inevitably get lost when my computer dies ha ha

also just referencing for vibes:

tiger guy from 'world heist' was conceptualised as part corto maltese, part jason momoa as duncan idaho, or my mental image of what the latter would look like, + a vague memory of rob lucci the cat man from one piece (I can't believe I know the names of so many OP characters. or dune characters for that matter)

but then in the end, he's just some guy, & he mostly looks good in profile

drawing the same person several times is hard. I need to standardise his facial markings but no-one seems to care.

'task' meanwhile is kinda a flatmate I had in college but w hair that I wanted to feel a bit 'rey ayanami' but also whatever I imagine a 'hacker' looks like (the cute kind you get in movies, not irl). just messy (ignore my presence in the below photo)

anyways if there's some trick to what I do it's having a wide range of influences

[shiroganeryo]

DGM 252: New perspectives and confirmations it has given us

⚠️First of all, I'll be tagging this under DGM spoilers so if you have somehow stumbled upon this even if you're avoiding spoilers for Chapter 252 (or the most recent DGM talks as a whole), this is your warning to turn back now!

And secondly, I'm under the effect of allergy meds so please pardon me if I'm talking gibberish 😂 But the latest chapter has given us some food for thought and I've been mulling it over.

There are two points I want to cover in this post; the first one being much extensive while the other is rather short.

1. Bookman Jr.

The reveal that the guy we had thought to be Past!A all along was actually the former Bookman Jr. in one of the best twists Hoshino has given us in a while - she sounded very proud of how we were all misled by her narrative and honestly I tip my hat at her for such genius - has also fueled questions about his identity.

I'll start by saying I do not believe he and Cross are the same person. That's not what I'll be talking about so I'm playing this card right off the bat. This theory, although popular, has always had way too many gaps for my liking and after the latest chapter, the chances are practically null that it's true.

If you want a discussion as to why, this post has put it into words better than I could and I agree 100% with OP's point, hence why I don't see the need to say anything on the matter.

But there's one thing that I'm yet to see people discussing and it's about the talk Lucia had with Joe back in The 222nd Night: Searching for A.W. - Hypokrisis.

(I'm showing what I believe to be the official translated English version by Viz and there's a reason why)

For a long time, people have debated about this small exchange between Lucia and Joe. There's no doubt the one they're talking about is old man Bookman, so we can confidently affirm he's the one waiting at the Campbell Mansion.

And what about Lavi? This is where the next dialogue from Lucia comes into play:

Since this is probably the version a lot of people have read, I must make it clear that the like "Junior, his successor, isn't here" was a mistranslation. Here's the original:

Lucia: Koukeisha to naru Jr. wa mou imasen. (The one who'd become his successor, Jr, is no more.)

I've double-checked with the Brazilian Portuguese translation because it tends to be as close to the original as possible, and surely enough, it's translated correctly:

(image courtesy of the volume I own by my so-so phone camera 😋)

"Junior, who was his heir, is no more."

The literal translation for what Lucia is saying is "isn't among us anymore", but that's an expression in Portuguese that means that someone has died/doesn't walk on Earth anymore.

While the mistranslated English version and the original Japanese/Brazilian version have similar meanings, the way it's worded gives the sentence a completely different meaning: in one we're led to believe Jr. isn't physically there at the Mansion, while the other two make it clear that Jr. has died.

And that's exactly why that, after Chapter 252 dropped, this scene is given a new perspective - because Lucia was referring to the former Bookman Jr, and not the current one.

We don't know the whereabouts of current Lavi - cue in the chair jokes, I unfortunately love them all - and while I might be wrong, I have my reasons to believe he's alive.

It just doesn't feel like Hoshino to kill an important character off-screen, plus she has said we'll see him again eventually and that the mystery of what's behind his eyepatch is still to be revealed (and will only happen once Bookman passes away, something that will possibly happen before the story reaches its end).

I have the feeling Lavi still has much to contribute to the story and he's actually one of the characters that, to me, seem to have the highest odds of making it alive until the end. It also isn't mere coincidence that Bookman picked the same alias for both Juniors, since Lavi has mentioned in a discussion room that the aliases refer to their record logs and the Holy War is being recorded under 'Lavi'. There's unfinished business to be taken care of.

Using the mistranslated version to illustrate was important because I've seen people wondering where Lavi is if not in the Mansion, while others were afraid he has died. He's very likely in a predicament, but dead? I don't think so.

So that only leaves us with one viable subject for that dialogue, that being the former Bookman Jr. (now affectionately dubbed Lavi Sr. by the fandom).

"But how come they didn't know Bookman already had a new apprentice back in Chapter 222 if the Zoogles mentioned it in Chapter 251?"

Yes, it's a little odd. What I can infer from this is that they either 1. Didn't know Bookman already had a new Jr. because he had been unconscious and only after they stabilized his situation they could talk, or 2. Did know about the current Lavi but believe him not to be ready to take on the mantle yet while Lavi Sr. was (but unfortunately deserted the clan).

Since only the Bookman and his appointed apprentice, who was born with the seal, can exchange information and records via their blood, it might be not that off the chart that the Zoogles weren't up-to-date on his affairs since they're not Bookmen themselves but rather a bloodline of people scattered across the globe who are supporters of Bookman's mission like Lucia has explained. Yet, even if they aren't all-knowing, it seems odd for them not to know something as vital as that about the person they're supporting.

And of course, there's also the possibility of option 3, something else that I completely failed to consider right now. Time will tell which one.

Note: By the way, the Lucia in 222 and the Lucia in 251/252 are indeed the same person; Hoshino seemed to hint there's a reason behind her sudden aging that we don't know yet. It's important to make this clear since what I've said is related to dialogues delivered by her.

2. Past!A = current Allen

(image courtesy of Kougeki Scans' Chapter 251's translation)

There were theories around and people still considering the possibility of our current Allen being a clone and all sorts of theories because of the unexplainable age gap between him and Past!A, but it seems the deaging theory has been fully confirmed by Chapter 252, as we saw it taking place before our very eyes.

There are still some mysteries surrounding it, but seeing how Apocryphos mentioned the "Helix", we can't help but be taken back to the explanation we've previously seen about the Helix of Life (The 221st Night - The Clown's Joke).

Since that's a topic that feels like there's more to it as of now, I won't be discussing the how and why Allen deaged, especially with the unseen variable in the mix that is Innocence; who knows if that might make the Helix energy behave differently.

I was on the "deaging theory" train because Nea was able to recognize Past!A all right when he looks in the mirror (The 214th Night: Searching for A.W. - Awakening) and also questioned the presence of Innocence on his body as well as how he hadn't aged but instead had gotten younger (The 215th Night: Searching for A.W. - By Your Side).

There are many mistranslations in the official English version of these two chapters (214 and 215) that have fueled countless misconceptions within the fandom but I won't be pointing those out in this post since I'm not here this time specifically to talk about it.

Note: Mangadex seems to have nicely translated versions of these chapters if you want to check them out for a recalling - I can't confirm fully but what I read of them looked consistent and faithful to the original.

Anyways, back on track; now that we've seen what took place 35 years ago in Chapter 252, Nea's bewilderment at the current situation of Allen back in Chapter 214/215 makes a lot more sense.

And even more interesting is that as soon as he noticed the Innocence lodged into Allen's left hand, we see the image of Apocryphos, as if Nea could feel its presence. Turned out that meant more than just Apocryphos being able to resonate with all Innocence, but rather, that the very reason why that Innocence had found home in Allen's body was by its intervention.

Just what the hell, dude. That was, once again, extremely well-played on Hoshino's part. I'm really looking forward to the next chapter!

[hurpdurpburps]

Kozakura and Toriko

SPOILER WARNING: major spoilers up to Vol 8 of the novels, screenshots of the manga-exclusive Kozakura POV Special Chapter 10 and two passing mentions of minor character development in Vol 9 of the novel (currently only in Japanese).

Vol 10 of the English manga was released yesterday, and re-reading the Kozakura POV Special Chapter at the end reminded me why it was actually my favourite of all the ones published so far, and why I am so enamoured with Kozakura as a character.

I know that a lot of the fandom is amused by the idea of Sorawo having a harem (and it's true - Miyazawa straight up confirms Runa's crush in Vol 9 and has regularly insinuated at Kozakura's feelings throughout the volumes), but I think not nearly enough people talk about Kozakura's dynamic with Toriko, or how the story unfolds from her perspective as literally the "only grown-up in the room" before Migiwa's introduction.

So this post is gonna talk about that.

There are multiple times where the story depicts Kozakura favouring Sorawo over Toriko, such as in when she asked Sorawo to accompany her back home because she was scared, or when she decided to call only Sorawo to go over to her house to collect the free hot springs tickets. A lot of people chalk it up to Kozakura liking Sorawo, but if anything I think this behaviour is more of a manifestation of the lack of guilt towards her, compared to the boatload she has towards Toriko.

In the novels, we as readers feel the disgust and dread from Sorawo's POV as someone retroactively discovering that her friend was a victim of grooming.

But what about Kozakura? If you think about the OP character chart from a bird's eye view, she wasn't a victim - nor exactly an innocent bystander. If anything, she'd be an accessory to a predator, being a late-20s/early-30s adult witnessing her similar-aged coworker rope in who was a literal teenager at the time to traversing and exploring a creepy af alternate reality, and doing absolutely fuck all about it.

Miyazawa made a deliberate decision here, to write in no uncertain terms, that Kozakura was conscious of what Satsuki was doing to Toriko, or the impropriety lurking beneath the dynamics of their "tutor-student" relationship. Kozakura saw it coming - his writing leaves no room for other interpretations - and she let it happen.

And how does she cope with this guilt? Kozakura could've avoided Toriko's attempts at reaching out after Satsuki's disappearance. It would've been easy I think, for Kozakura to simply break off all contact. A simple "our mutual friend is gone so bye" would've sufficed to send Toriko packing for good. Toriko is an abysmally shy girl - and unlike Sorawo, Kozakura knew that side of her from the start. Kozakura is clearly not afraid or incapable of conveying her displeasure, but nonetheless makes the conscious, harder decision to make Toriko feel comfortable enough to stick around.

Kozakura unexpectedly grows more accustomed to taking care of Toriko, plus her new sidekick Sorawo, over time. So much so that by the time Vol 6 rolls around, she pretty much gives up her house and lets our dynamic duo do what they want. By extension, I think her guilt over not doing anything to help Toriko in the past was a driving factor behind her decision to take in Kasumi. In a sense, it's a do-over, and now she's right there from the start to make sure the train doesn't derail. I'm happy to reveal that her efforts have paid off - Kasumi's communication abilities have greatly improved in Vol 9. Now the kid says hi, eats ice cream on the couch obediently when ordered to do so, and quotes entire Wikipedia pages psychically or whatever.

The complicated vortex of envy, jealousy and guilt doesn't stop Kozakura from trying to do right by Toriko, but that doesn't mean it's easy to face her either. Coupled with Sorawo's many similarities to her missing crush (emotional erh, robustness, vague physical resemblance, bravery regarding all things Otherside) and the lack of a complicated interpersonal history, it's no wonder why Kozakura intuitively prefers talking to our protagonist than the poor Bird Girl she allowed to be manipulated. And I don't think she's very conscious of this inclination herself.

Personally, I prefer this interpretation of Kozakura's behaviour, rather than the more popular everyone-likes-Sorawo take (not that it's not valid, unsupported, or fun). Also, this is my all-vibes no-evidence theory, but Kozakura totally seems to me like someone who'd only be into older women, not younger...

But that's probably just me projecting. I relate to Kozakura's position quite a bit, as a late-20s woman who leads a team of mostly early-20s younger women fresh out of university, like a naggy mother hen.

Many stories depict difficult situations from the eyes of a victim, survivor, or even perpetrator, but not enough explore the guilt of someone who acknowledges that she could've stopped a bad thing from happening, in my opinion. And she forces herself to atone by proactively keeping an eye for these girls. While maintaining that superior holier-than-thou attitude towards her kids lol. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh I love Miyzawa's takes so much.

This is a 5am, caffeine-fueled ramble. It's not particularly insightful or profound, but I have a lot of energy right now and decided to pen down these surging thoughts.

And yeah - buy the manga! The Kozakura POV shorts add such a rich dimension to these already-deeply introspective novels, and personally I think it really highlights Miyazawa's hyperawareness of complicated, problematic interpersonal dynamics.

PS. I wonder how many volumes we have to reach before finally knowing Kozakura's first name lol.

[twisted-wonderland-shenanigans]

Okay, either the scientist knew she was preggo or they just thought she was going through hormonal changes or whatever, there is NO WAY CROWLEY DOESNT KNOW THE HUMAN IS PREGGO.

Also, how much should I bet that Cater is just going to keep the whole world updated with every single DETAIL.

Oh, Lilia is going to have a FIELD DAY WHEN THE BABY IS BORN, same for Trein, he’s probably going to love it.

Referring to this fic snippet here:

Okay, to be fair, I forgot to mention that the events take place shortly after Yuu's arrival. Probably between chapter 2 and 3 given the timeline we have, which puts it at about...two, three weeks after the prologue and shortly after Riddle and Leona overblot.

As for the scientists/researchers, while logically speaking they would immediately jump at the chance to come to the island to start their studies, they first had to make sure these pictures circulating on Cater’s Magicam posts were legit first. Once it is established through a video or two that was posted, that's when they reach out to Crowley to make the arrangements!

And they actually arrive a week after the pregnancy announcement, so you can bet that they are very eager to get some studying done as quick as possible! 😂

As for the staff not realizing that fem!Yuu is pregnant, they are aware of what a pregnant monster's scent is like for sure. But because there hadn't been a human in centuries, even if Crowley was old enough to have been around humans, it's not like he remembers the scent off the top of his head! The staff would all essentially be like those confused cats and dogs trying to figure out what this strange bump is and why their human smells funny before instinctively feeling protective.

Can you just imagine Crowley building a nest for Yuu without realizing just *why* he was doing it in the first place? Or the blank stare he'd give the moment someone asked him like, "...why am I doing this??" and it only becomes clear shortly after the announcement, in which he tries to pretend he knew all along 😂

I'm also reminded of this one post where OP's cat had had multiple litters in the past and was so excited when OP got pregnant that the kitty kept trying to show her to the nest she made for OP's "kitten", and it was the sweetest thing I'd ever read 🥹

Anyway, you can bet your bottom madol that Cater will absolutely be keeping EVERYONE updated on Magicam throughout the whole process, and he is getting flooded with baby picture requests 🤣 It's also sweet how mothers come across the posts and try to offer advice that they'd learned on raising their kids, which is nice, though not all of the advice would really be practical based on species 😅 But at least they're sweet enough to offer that and words of encouragement! I can even see some inviting Yuu to a mother's support group meeting ;;v;;

You can also bet that Yuu will be receiving a lot of baby shower gifts and such from Cater’s followers. At least they don't have to worry about needing to buy diapers for a while! 🤣

Ooooooh yes, Lilia is going to be ecstatic to be able to hold and care for a baby again! He will offer to help watch over the little one (hadn't decided on a gender or name yet for the new baby) so Yuu can take a break, though don't worry about him trying to feed the baby his cooking. He learned and knows that milk is important for the baby, so he makes sure to have the bottles readily available even at Diasomnia~ (though Silver and the others make sure to keep an eye on him when it comes to feeding time just to be on the safe side)

Trein has already raised two daughters, and while he may not be interested in raising another, that's not to say he won't wind up spoiling the little human baby like any grandparent would! He'll also offer a shoulder for fem!Yuu to lean on and reassure her that she's doing a great job as a mother ;;v;;

[cityzenshark]

I've been thinking about ways how to make the Terrans actually memorable, relatable, and likeable for their target audience. The show overuses the "kids being kids" until the Terrans come off as an obnoxious bunch rather than naive youngsters who real children can relate to..

.

Twitch:

As eldest with Thrash, she steps up to the role as Leader. She tries her best to be a good role model for the triplets, but she has a short temper. She broke the table on her first family game night. She flew right on OP's face after he admits his obliviousness about the Terrans' nature that they themselves don't know about. She and Thrash climbed on Alex's/Dot's car that miraculously didn't break (wth - you grounded them for breaking the kitchen wall but not when they almost crush your car to pose??).

Twitch needs an episode where she learns a hard lesson to control her temper - preferably where she hurt her own family. It's perfect for children who don't behave well when dealing with negative emotions.

Thrash:

He takes the role as the overprotective eldest. It fits his characteristic as the Defender and shield-user. He gatekeeps the triplets for their own safety and out of paranoia after the incident with Swindle. He would also have the "I know better" atittude to reflect those who think they know better than their others around them when--in truth--they don't.

I'd like an episode where he accuses someone is doing something awful to the family only for his accusations to become the very cause of the episode's problem. This can teach children to avoid jumping into conclusions and not let their bad experiences cloud their judgement.

Hashtag:

She represents people who made everything about themselves resolve around their interests and hobbies. She relies on the internet & her hacking skills too much. She also seems to be the type who assumes "lots of reading = expertise" and forgot the importance of direct experiences. Her interaction with Starscream gives off that she has read things about PTSD--most likely to understand Grimlock's situation--while recklessly ignoring the part where he's a millennium-old Decepticon.

I'd like to see moments where the family calls out Hashtag's obsessions, like the time she demands JB to cry on camera when he's obviously uncomfortable with it.

"Stop being a director and be my sister right now."

Nightshade:

They represent children who feels isolated from their own family, and adoptees who doesn't immediately consider their guardians as family. Nothing much to be said here because their alt mode episode originally has a nice buildup for it. Sadly it was scrapped.

Nightshade's different form of enjoyment is also a way to educate children who has yet to understand why they can't find themselves enjoying what most kids do to have fun, that it's okay, and they aren't alone in this.

Jawbreaker:

Big boy represents children who feels left behind either in their own family or in their age group. His journey in choosing an alt mode is perfect, but the show made him appear annoyingly useless to the viewers instead of emphasizing his feelings of uselessness.

This could also be a way to demonstrate WHY the Terrans must have an alt mode -- so they'd have proper exterior protection because the protoform isn't as sturdy as JB's size made him appear to be. Although he has what it takes to do certain tasks, his protoform doesn't allow him to do so. Hence his desperation to find an alt mode.

[swiggity-swexual-i-am-asexual]

I'm not opposed to hear your rambling of DP in dungeon meshi

Ayyy someone asked! 

Oh, you’ve activated my trap card.

So, naturally, I cannot find the post because Tumblr ate it off my blog, BUT what they’re referring to is a post about how the Fenton parents could have TOTALLY ended up overshooting when trying to get to the Ghost Zone and ended up in different worlds instead… and thus decided ‘hey free children!’ And surprise adopted (read: kidnapped) both Jazz and Danny from two different realms. 

I actually had a LOT of ideas on how you could do this. But, I ultimately decided that a post-canon approach was best for this little exercise. Not that you COULDN’T add Jazz and Danny, I suppose, but the timeline and the character movements are, for lack of better terms of it, EXTREMELY tight. You can wiggle an OC in there, sure, but for a fully developed character from ANOTHER media, especially one as OP as Danny, it’s far more difficult. 

That’s my way of saying, this absolutely has Dungeon Meshi spoilers if you’ve never read the manga and don’t know how it ends. That’s my only warning. 

So here’s the ideas and eventual story (there’s elements that are general and some that are specific to whatever storyline I ended up with) that I have doubts I will ever write but someone might as well enjoy them. I technically wrote a few scenes in my notes app, but these aren’t those, this is—kind of the whole roadmap? It’s a little funky still though, haha. 

Here goes!

As with the post, Jazz is Barbara Gordon’s twin, and Danny was actually a half foot. And now he’s a halfa halffoot. Lmao. Lol even. 

Before I chose to do a post-canon approach, I considered having the Fentons as a party. Jazz and Danny are basically playing babysitter to their FAR too enthusiastic parents who keep almost or actually dying because they’re exploring the whole immortal dungeon thing. While that is scrapped, some of the ideas I did have came from this, er, phase of development? So I felt it was worth a shoutout. 

Marcille describes magic (well, mana) as coming from ‘The Infinite’, which is also where demons come from. And these demons can do things like grant wishes, ‘feed’ off of emotion, and change people. They also, once sealed into dungeons, do various things inside these dungeons, including making animals that cannot exist without magic for very long but also seem to still require a sort of internal logic. This sounds a LOT like how ghosts work in Danny Phantom, if you take maybe a hint of liberty and a dose of speculation about how lairs likely work. 

Basically, The Infinite = the Ghost Zone, also known as the Infinite Realms. Demons = Ghosts. Dungeons = Lairs. And, most importantly… Ectoplasm = Magic. 

For my own sanity and also for a successful meshing of these two very different universes, I’ve decided to go with the semi-fanon idea that the influences of the people in the living world can create things in the Infinite Realms. Belief creates reality, basically. For example, perhaps Pandora was never alive in the first place, but because people heard and believed her story so much, she became a ghost (realms being, demon, what have you). So, while those in Amity Park might not have initially believed much in ghosts, they saw them, and because people saw Phantom as powerful and either villain or hero-like, Danny and the rest of the ghosts became more like comic book characters than spooky ghosts (somewhat explains how things are still a LITTLE spooky, but seem a bit more heavy on the probably dead people thing at the beginning of the series). 

Similarly, demons became what they are over time as the people of the world influenced them. You could call what demons started as, as ‘proto ghosts’, and that every world that HAS ghosts has them, and the beliefs change them into whatever form and binds them to whatever rules the dimension now holds. 

There should still be some universal ‘laws’, though. For example, ghosts exist in both stories, and so do magic, as do spaces that operate at least SLIGHTLY outside the usual laws that govern the area outside of it (again, lairs and the Ghost Zone, dungeons in general). 

All this to say—when Danny ends up in the Dungeon Meshi world, he ends up being a very unorthodox and extremely powerful mage, but might lose a good percentage of his usual ghost powers. He is not salty about this, no, really, ITS FINE JAZZ.  

This would be less of a problem if there wasn’t a SLIGHT issue about halffoots being known as not being magically inclined… and those that might have had an interest in the past sorta-kinda got taken by the elves. 

Another note is that this isn’t going to be a particularly Fenton parents friendly sort of story, because the whole thing STARTS with them KIDNAPPING CHILDREN and passing them off as their own. I’m sure there are ways to spin it as a happy tale, but uhhhhhhhhhhh. I’m not. 

An additional point that you do NOT have to take from this if you make your own story is, if you’re a big fan of halffoots having tails (which, to fit with the humans-all-have-the-same-bones thing, are made of cartilage), you can have Danny have been docked as a baby by the Fentons. Adjust angst regarding that to your own tastes, but I imagine its probably something that HAD been done in the past for not-great-reasons, and so the social stigma for the parents doing that to their child is messed up—but due to the dangers of dungeoneering, some halffoots may have lost their tails in accidents or just because they were THAT serious. Point is, it’s at minimum a gossip point. 

Anyways, as halffoots are very short, and Danny is one, by age fourteen his teachers are probably going to go ‘uuuuhhhh, I think there’s a problem here?’ But the Fenton parents are oddly reluctant to arrange a doctor’s visit to check for various possible causes of potential dwarfism. Like, they’re already dodgy about doctor visits, but this seems particularly avoidant. 

Both Jazz and Danny might know that they’re adopted, but even if they don’t, they know where all their papers are. So they snoop through them to see if there’s any leads or anything. 

There’s various ways to for them to figure it out—realizing there’s no paper trail about their adoptions or about how delayed the at-home-birth paperwork was—but one that I did contemplate was that the Fentons KEPT the tail they cut off Danny as a baby, claiming it was a ‘lower spine surgery and don’t worry about it champ!’. 

As you might imagine, he’s worried about it. But also, you can nix that plot point if you’re not a fan. (Well, I mean it technically my own story developing here, but—part of this exercise is to see what other people would take away from what I’ve got too.)

More searching through papers and likely a conversation if not confrontation with the parents later, Jazz and Danny learn about the different realms and such. 

Jazz is still worried about Danny’s health. They SEEMED human, but what if they weren’t and they were just lucky to not have gotten super sick? Or what if they’ll live thousands of years or something?? 

Danny is, understandably, a little upset about everything too. So they both pack what they might need, basing their travel kits on what notes they DID have about the world they were heading to (minimal technology, so laptops were a bad idea, but Jazz did pack a bunch of instructional books on How To Make Things), and got the dimensional coordinates to where they needed to go. Or, if you don’t wanna explain HOW those dimensional coordinates are still accurate or how that system might work now that the Ghost Zone was there, because who knew how to navigate that place on a GOOD day, Danny could just ask Frostbite or Clockwork for a quick favor. On that note, Danny should probably have a way home—personally, I gave him the starting ability to make portals, although they’re not YET powerful to get through, which is why he’s concerned that he might actually be unwell on his human side. 

POINT IS. Jazz and Danny arrive, taking the name Nightingale just in case their parents went around calling themselves as Fenton and pissing people off by, oh say, kidnapping their child. 

A quick survey around tells them a bit about the world, with Danny probably very used to being very adaptable on the fly. And also we’ll let him keep invisibility. As a treat. Though it may now be a bit more difficult to do. Jazz is tasked to either help Danny to let him hide behind her presence when needing to actually be invisible, read through the travel journal from the Fentons to find clues to Danny’s birth family, and her own self imposed mission to reinvent running water and water filtration systems. She is not about this no-indoor-plumbing life. 

As it so happens, with the Golden Kingdom beginning to pop up, there’s plenty of spaces and houses in various states of repair that they’re currently REALLY trying to fill up. Jazz files some paperwork about being refugees, and they take a house that’s pretty far into the woods for most of the people looking for a place. The two need the space, as they are keeping literal dimensional secrets. Other than the lengthy walk to town, it’s fine. Plus, it lets Jazz do her plumbing project. 

Once they both have a pretty good grasp on things, Danny C-student Nightingale realizes OH. WHAT IF I’M A HALFFOOT— wait no I’m not going by that. Call me a hobbit instead. In Jazz’s defense, she spent most of her time grasping everything else about the world, or otherwise spent most of her time they spent either camping in the woods or making their new house LIVEABLE that the whole ‘different races’ thing completely sped by her. Plus, where they live might be more Tallman heavy. 

Good to know he’s healthy though! But they’re already here, and they do actually want to find Danny’s family, and… it’s just… been very nice and not stressful. The ghosts hadn’t been bothering Danny nearly as much back home, to the point where he felt pretty comfortable leaving it in Valerie’s capable hands, but this is the most relaxed he’s been in a while. It’s amazing what not living with people who would skin you semi-alive will do for mental health. 

They also realize they maybe need to like… make money. 

Good news is, when they switched dimensions, they automatically became able to speak Common. And, as a compensation for losing some of his other abilities, Danny can have omnilingualism. He also keeps his ice powers, mostly, and he’s pretty sure he kept his Ghostly Wail. 

There ARE reasons why he keeps the powers he does. In short, he’s still part ghost (or, part demon here, but words are just words and in this case, both just mean ‘realms being’), so turning invisible is fine. So is making things cold—and, as he’s also human and able to use magic, he can create ice like other mages do. He also has limited intangibility, but for reasons involving ‘I don’t recall any mages doing it’, he has more trouble with it than usual. As for the Ghostly Wail, its similar to the mandrake cry, and thus something that likely involves magic to do—as a veritable wellspring of magic, as he’s kinda sorta a dungeon master ruled by HIMSELF now, he has plenty to spare. Plus, banshee legends might still exist in Dungeon Meshi. As for the languages thing… it’s me throwing him a bone for taking away his ability to use lasers. I might let him overshadow people, but seeing as that just kills people in Dungeon Meshi, I might not. 

The two siblings begin taking odd jobs in town. The people think it’s a LITTLE odd that a Tallman (Jazz) and a Halffoot (HOBBIT, Danny) are siblings, but they usually just explain that they were both taken in by the same couple. If anyone even slightly insinuates it’s something else, the two both start gagging before they begin lecturing the gossiper. 

While Danny’s skills as an interpreter ARE extremely valuable, they find that with so many new people in this town that, apparently, JUST rose out of the gotdang sea, that there are many people looking for all sorts of odd things, and THAT is something Jazz is more suited for than translating, seeing as the only language that she knows from THIS world is Common. 

In short, she finds out about potions. You know, that thing mentioned like ONCE at the beginning of the Dungeon Meshi series and NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN (afaik). 

Ingredients are a liiiittle hard to come by in markets, but most of them just need magic to grow, right? And Danny can make magic ice that turns into magic water. 

Jazz starts a farm. When Danny starts taking home books and such to translate on a commission basis, mostly in order to avoid another close call about knowing ancient elvish languages that they may or may not be incredibly suspicious about him being able to know, he takes care of a lot of the gardening. 

It’s at this point that Danny finds out he can just take a mandrake that’s in a pot, dunk it in a barrel of water, and harvest that way. It’s still a bit LOUD, but it won’t harm or kill anyone. And, the water now has magic toxins or whatever, which could have uses of their own that Jazz is now experimenting with. 

So, basically, Jazz is out here doing the Dungeon Meshi Cooking Montages except its potions and it’s mildly terrifying. 

Danny is just glad that he’s ALSO legally a halffoot adult and can just go to town to a tavern whenever she’s being too weird. Good news: he can drink alcohol now! Bad news, sort of: it does nothing for him. I mean, go him for never getting drunk, but like, rude. 

Both Danny and Jazz are learning magic, mostly because Danny needs to offset some magic every now and again so it doesn’t build up (ie, his ice) and should at least look like he knows what he’s doing so he doesn’t get caught, and Jazz is learning so they can occasionally depend on her to claim that Danny’s magical whatever is actually HER doing. Plus, it helps with the potions. Most involve magical ingredients, so the maker doesn’t need to be a mage, but still. 

Danny gets a bit homesick about Sam and Tucker, so he makes a magic mirror in an afternoon and contacts them through one of Sam’s compact cases. It had some unique design she made on the back of it, so he’s able to hone in on it. Sam is EXTREMELY jealous that they’re living some kind of cottage witch fantasy, meanwhile Tucker is like ‘they have wHAT kind of meat? And you left me here?!’. 

Yeah. Tucker and Laois would get along, although Senshi would definitely have some words to say about his nutritional needs. 

SPEAKING OF the Dungeon Meshi characters. What, you think I wasn’t going to add them?

Falin likes to take walks through the area. As it so happens, the Nightingale House is about two hours of very casual strolling from the castle. She discovers them one day when she noticed Danny tending to the mandrake farm (there’s likely other magical plants, but I imagine Danny is wary of the more monster-like ones). 

Danny just can NOT keep her name in his head. He keeps calling her Bird Lady. Falin is not upset by this. She’s actually pretty glad to make somewhat friends with Danny and later Jazz, because they’re both pretty nonchalant about the feathers thing. Most are fine, but some are still… Off about her. Also they didn’t participate in the whole eating her thing, which she didn’t MIND but some people avoid her because they think she WOULD be upset. 

Falin is also glad to find that Danny can see ghosts like she can. She promised to keep his little magic secret, though she likely has no idea how powerful he actually IS, and she visits like twice a week. 

At some point, Itsuzumi claimed their front porch as one of her napping spots. Jazz thought they should maybe not have a cat girl sleeping on the doorstep. Danny agreed… by making a hammock. Jazz just accepted her fate and occasionally feeds her. That said, Itsuzumi doesn’t stay in one place as her ‘home’, so it’s a toss up if she’s there. Still, she somehow convinced the postmasters to only deliver mail to the Nightingales, seeing as they don’t mess with her letters and are out of the way enough that she has privacy when she does read them. If she’s there while it’s raining, she’ll take over the couch. 

Like, Itsuzumi doesn’t have keys to the house or anything, and Danny and Jazz are both a bit secretive, but that translates really well to respecting Itsuzumi’s privacy as long as she isn’t bringing huge problems to their doorstep. Danny did once offer to see about making up a guest room that was more or less hers—the house did need repairs, so some of the rooms weren’t quite habitable even if the house itself was fine to live in. Itsuzumi was not a fan of this, as I imagine her the type to not like feeling so tied down, but she did accept a compromise of having a closet space for her to store things. It’s where Danny and Jazz will put her letters when she DOES get them. 

Danny’s need to help people isn’t an obsession, but he IS quite fond of it, so as he does his work but also studies magic Just In Case, he finds a certain affinity for sensing magic, monsters, and breaking curses. The first one he broke was entirely by accident—the client had no idea that the book passages he gave to Danny were cursed. 

It worked out, it was fiiiine, stop worrying so much Jazz. 

While Danny certainly wasn’t advertising the curse breaking part, his previous client was told about it, and suddenly everyone knew that the Nightingales knew a little about curse breaking. They assume it’s Jazz, and Jazz has to learn on the fly how to break simple curses and protect herself until Danny can come actually work his literal magic. Jazz, oddly enough, is the one to figure out how to make protective charms. 

Also, she’s successfully made the first section of her water filtration system. 

Listen, they are very busy. But they’re hoping if they branch out enough, get a big enough system, they can find Danny’s parents. Because all they REALLY had to go on was One—They were halffoots, Two—Danny’s hair came from his mother, and Three—in both Jazz AND Danny’s cases, the Fentons kidnapped a twin. 

It’s this work as a cursebreaker and Jazz’s work as a near miracle worker at potions—her little mad scientist experiments were bearing fruit after all—that Falin brings Laios over to work with. Long story short, Danny’s general attitude about it is ‘fuck that lion guy’ because he recognizes the work of a ghost—er, demon—when he sees it. Sure, the Toudens don’t TELL Danny it was a winged lion, saying after a really long pause that the cursers name was Leo or whatever. But Danny isn’t completely stupid, especially not about something he can PLAINLY see. 

Also, a good note here is that neither Jazz nor Danny have ANY idea who Laios is. Sure, they’d HEARD of the King, but either Danny gave him a nickname, they think Laios is one of those cases where there’s an uptick of people named after a famous person, or it’s just a super common name. Or, heck, it’s entirely possible that Laios has a king monicker and that’s ALL that Jazz and Danny have heard, and they don’t know that the king’s name is Laios. 

Anyways, Danny is like ‘you have two curses from your frankly very petty curser’. And they’re like ‘yeah we know’. 

For the monster repellent curse, Falin points out (possibly on her own but also possibly remembering something Kabru said once) that it’s a pretty useful curse, but that it upsets Laios to have on him. So, Danny thinks ‘What Would Sam Do’ and makes a creepy doll. The idea is to attach the curse to the doll, but for various reasons involving having the curse NEED an amount of magic to stay going, it needs to be, well… fed. As you MIGHT recall from Dungeon Meshi, blood is pretty potent as a magic tool. 

So, anyways, blood sacrifice for the repellent doll curse, preferably either by Laios or someone of his blood. I’m sure this won’t become a plot point for a b rated adventure story several generations later where they need to find the One True Heir to help save the kingdom or whatever. 

As for the hunger curse, it’s a pretty tricky one. Most curses, Danny can kind of just. Push it out using his own magic, or trick it into thinking its done whatever the curse maker wanted it to do. But this curse is very ingrained, as hunger is something very basic to literally everyone, and it’s goal is basically ‘then SUFFER’ and that’s hard to make it understand when Laios is, technically, already and constantly suffering from it. 

So, it needs to be magically purged. Starve out the magic in Laios’s body, starve out the curse. Issue being that it’s EXCEPTIONALLY hard to do that when magic is LITERALLY in the air. 

With a bit of thinking, Danny comes up with a solution, and tells them to set up their creepy doll shrine and see him in three days. Also maybe haggles the price because while he DOES have a way to do this, it’s a bit risky to not only Laios but to the makers of Danny’s curse-breaking method. 

Danny contacts Sam, who contacts Frostbite, who is VERY against this but ultimately agrees so long as Danny is careful. Danny technically has Jazz do most of the next part, so he’s being cautious. 

The Toudens come back, with Laios happily chattering about a small monster he noticed just before they got to the Nightingales—good to know what the range of that is then, though it may have become smaller with the smaller vessel and the lesser amount of regenerating magic supplying it. I’m not looking up the one panel that sorta shows how big the field is right now. 

Danny is like, bundled up and covering his mouth, while Jazz is very careful with the prepared potions. 

Blood blossoms. Basically anti magic, which do not grow in this world naturally and should never do so, and involved Sam needing to travel back in time to grab a few. They explain their caution as Danny being extremely allergic to one of the ingredients and the effects of the potions being dangerous to mages in general by DESIGN. 

In short, Laios has to take these potions for three days—one bottle for each day—and to light a candle anointed with the potion in the forth bottle in a closed space he needs to stay in for the duration and at least an extra two days. There’s also a fifth bottle that he needs to sprinkle into any food or drink he has for that time until after the fifth day. Remember, magic is everywhere in Dungeon Meshi. This is basically him going into a sterile bubble field for a while, but also needing to include sterilizing the things he eats and drinks as well. 

“Don’t keep even a drop,” Danny warns them both very, very seriously. “This stuff shouldn’t exist here, but that is one NASTY curse you’ve got. Anything you’ve got leftover, including the bottles, bring back here.” 

He also tells them that its possible that Laios might never regain magical ability he had previous, or if he DID he had to relearn it. Laios accepts this risk. He wasn’t much for magic anyways. Danny also tells him to maybe make sure the room(s) he uses isn’t his usual bedroom, and again that he needs to stay in them as MUCH AS POSSIBLE, preferably not leaving at ALL, until after his treatment. 

They take his warnings seriously, at least, and they head off, carefully with the contents they just got. 

They actually do as instructed! Kabru did manage to take a drop, though, just to see what would happen. Holm’s undine DISSOLVED is what happened. Kabru did not take any more risks about that because WHAT the hell, WHAT. Laios and Falin also won’t tell him WHERE THEY GOT THIS FROM. At least, not until after they finish the treatment and see if it works. 

It does work though! He gets his normal hunger cues back after a couple of weeks, and Falin happily tells the Nightingales that it worked. Great! Never tell anyone what they did. Also give back the bottles please and thanks (handed off to Sam very carefully—although blood blossoms ARE a magic-and-ecto disruptor, they can be put through portals, such as the mirror phone things that technically also act as portals). 

A little late for total secrecy, but no one that the Toudens didn’t already trust with the numerous secrets they already had, including but not limited to Marcille’s fun necromancy habit. 

… Listen, I know that the curses Laios gets are like, consequences or something, but I didn’t like the hunger curse because of my own traumas and didn’t like the monster avoidance curse cause that just seemed cruel. Which I get was the point but I have OPINIONS on the whole thing, and it ultimately equals up to “Laios didn’t ask for this, and I’m not sure he’s actually happy in the end”. Anyways. 

Because they literally helped heal the king, Laios does invite them over to dinner in the castle. 

“That guy was a KING?!” Danny shouts. 

Jazz is just like. Yeah that fucking tracks. But hey we can ask his help about the parentage thing! 

So, now they’re going to dinner. That’s fun! Maybe! 

Side note, Jazz has now invented showers and indoor baths. She’s still working on a heating and cooling mechanism but at least all the water is clean. She’s still working on getting faucets for sinks, such as in the kitchen. 

Don’t ask how they have time for this, by the way. The gardening, their actual jobs of potion making and translations, Jazz’s plumbing project, Danny’s (and slightly Jazz’s) magic training, and the biological family search. To be fair, they probably have very few leads on that last one, so extending their social net is kind of their only plan. 

They get dressed up fairly nicely and go to the king’s castle for dinner because apparently Danny just cannot stop impressing royalty both dead AND ALIVE as it turns out. 

There, they meet the whole Touden party. Itsuzumi is there. Both parties are very surprised, but good to know, but also what. W h a t. 

Senshi likes hearing about how similar potion making and cooking is, and he and Jazz seem to be getting along pretty well! Chilchuck, meanwhile, is like. Why does this kid—sorry, young halffoot adult—look so gotdang familiar. Regardless, he offers to help teach him a few things about halffoot culture, seeing as Danny was apparently raised as a Tallman. 

“Yeah, we didn’t even know about other races! We just thought Danny was a little weird,” Jazz said. 

“That must have been really isolated,” Marcille replied. 

Oh, she didn’t even know the half of it. 

Of course, someone questions how Danny was so good with languages if their ‘isolated little village’ never said that any race other than Tallmen existed, to which Danny just kind of says he had a knack for it and was bored, so. Languages. They kind of just start following patterns after a certain point. And he and Jazz HAD been traveling for a while. 

Dinner goes well, with just one odd report about scratching in one of the mirror halls by the guards that Danny juuuust manages to hear before he and Jazz go out the doors. 

That’s probably nothing! 

A bit more time passes, with Senshi visiting Jazz and helping her learn ACTUAL cooking in exchange for those sweet sweet mandrakes and the water harvesting method while Danny gets lessons from Chilchuck and, ironically, another halffoot named Dandan about Halffoot culture. Luckily, Danny just so happened to know the halffoot language equivalent of Common, but they teach him a bit more about the language anyways. 

This is also when he learns that Halffoots tend to have twins, but also that it’s not terribly uncommon for one of the twins to die. Happened to both Dandan’s ex wife and to Chilchuck and also so, so many other halffoots. That just made Danny’s search even harder. Yikes. 

By week two, Danny is very tired of CONSTANTLY hearing the term halffoot, and so has requested Tucker get him a copy of the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy to send through mirror-mail so that Danny can then translate THAT into Common and go publish. Maybe if he has a book or two to sell, he can make a passive income so he can concentrate on things other than translating YET ANOTHER tax form because the local government all wants Common—understandable—but not everyone can READ Common. 

This may be a time to give Danny a misadventure with some orcs that paint him as a fucking weirdo but ultimately friendly. 

Jazz gets the idea that hey, if the whole halffoots have lots of twins thing is true,  meaning that she and Danny are going to have a TIME of it trying to find HIS parents, maybe she and Danny should invent, like genetic testing with magic and or potions or whatever. It’s not like they don’t have an understanding of genetics, if what Kabru’s (adopted) mother teaches him is any indicator, but genetic testing it relatively modern by our own standards. 

So they start developing that. Falin still visits, mentioning how there seems to be a scratching that just won’t stop in the castle, but its always in the same hall of mirrors so at least its localized. Just, really weird. Everyone else thinks its ghosts, but Falin has checked so many times now and there just isn’t one. But Laios is doing fine, he’s very thankful, and Danny is like hahaha don’t mention it! No really, don’t! You already paid me! We had dinner! We’re friends now! Ahaha!

Should it be the case that Halffoots (-HOBBITS!) have tails, Chilchuck still has his, though it’s a liiiittle shorter than it should be, and he’s the sort thats proud about how long his wife and daughters’ tails are. He’s reconnecting with his family! Slowly but surely! In case you CAN’T tell, I actually like happy endings here. Despite the everything else I put in a story, ha. Anyways, as such, he’s a little offput by Danny’s parents since Danny admitted that they’re the ones who cut it off of him, and that even then they never told Danny that he wasn’t a Tallman despite having to have had at LEAST a clue that he wasn’t one. Shouldn’t the orphanage or however they got their kids from know? Don’t tell him that both Jazz AND Danny were just left on their doorsteps. 

“Definitely not that one, aha…” Danny quickly changes the topic. “So I wrote this story—or, well, its like this story that was SUPER popular where we’re from—“

Chilchuck also explains how Danny’s name is just SO weird to most of the other halffoots. Like, it’s not OUT there, per se, but definitely reads as Tallman. Even admitting its fully Daniel does not help. This is also when Chilchuck explains that part of the infant mortality rate, halffoots don’t get their names until their fourth month of life. 

Jazz made some liberties and changes to the Hobbit to fit in a little better with Dungeon Meshi and it’s whole world, but otherwise it’s mostly the same story. Chilchuck and Dandan get free copies as they’re helping Danny so much, especially with getting Danny used to other people like him (mostly). They’re both pretty impressed with it, though Danny insists that it wasn’t exactly his own writing. But, hey, the actual author was dead and he doubts any copies are going to come from his old hometown any time soon so like, might as well! 

Also, copyright law is probably far different in Dungeon Meshi than here, ha. I declare it—legally in the clear! 

Danny has a mission with this and that’s getting people to use the word Hobbit dammit! 

Surprisingly, despite not showing up in it, the gnomish community quite like it. And so do dwarves, and elves, and halffoots, and it becomes pretty popular. 

It’s The Hobbit. This is not an unexpected result. Thank you Chilchuck for helping with the printing rights and contracts for getting the book published. (And we can guess that the printing press DOES exist in Dungeon Meshi, since we can see the books they have—though there may be other obstacles about getting your hands on a book, we can see by the amount they have and how gimmicky Laios’ monster book is that printing a book itself is likely a done and solved issue in some way or another). 

Danny is extremely glad he did not put his own name as the pen name for that mess. 

While all that drama is happening, including the fact that Chilchuck’s wife—I have named her Brightmerry—is now a very avid fan and would love to meet Danny, Danny and Jazz have just about perfected their genetics test. Laios and Falin know about the test, although not WHY they’re doing it. Despite some concerns that the magic and chimeraism that probably STILL affects both, though Laios’s maybe got purged during the magic curse breaking thing, it certainly was unpleasant enough for him that he’d BELIEVE that he got part of him ripped out, they still seem to test just fine as siblings. Still, they need more tests. 

But it’s not like they know an entire family, do they? 

Danny complains about this issue to Dandan, in part to see if Dandan knew anyone that MIGHT be willing to help. 

As it so happens, Dandan volunteers Chilchuck. Chilchuck only agrees to drag his family into it because he generally trusts Danny and Jazz even if they ARE kind of weird and make incidental inventions at their house that they should REALLY sell, because WHAT do you MEAN you have a hot water shower?! He also knows that both Brightmerry and Fullertom would like to meet Danny because of the book he totally did not steal from another dimension to make a profit. Might as well drag the rest. Plus, they assure that the test itself won’t hurt, and will even demonstrate with themselves and with the Toudens what a false and what a positive result will look like. 

So, they arrange a date to do so at the castle. Kabru is pretty interested in the experiment, truthfully, because it seems neat! Not at all because of his own issues with his hometown involving his eye color! Why do you ask! 

Off they go, and the best space to do this in due to some preparation and magic circle nonsense is the same room Laios did his whole magic purge, which was the mirror hall. It’s small but open, with no windows except for a small one in an attached restroom area. Sure, there’s some creepy scratching going on from time to time, but no one has gotten hurt or recorded anything else odd. 

The magic genetics test involves having the participants positioned equally around a magic circle in little circles of their own, having a small cup of a potion that gives off a lot of steam or vapor—entirely harmless-, and pricking a drop of blood into the potion. What happens with a positive is that the vapor takes on a color and follows a trail through the magic circle, and the colors and how strong the connection between the vapor trails between two people tell how related they are. In a negative or, when two parents are in the circle, the vapor trails will not have ‘matching’ or similar colors, and the trails will not actually meet up with each other. 

It’s still a work in progress, but it should tell at least siblings. Luckily, Chilchuck did manage to get all three of his daughters and his wife along, with Dandan being invited as another variable to test with. 

Danny and Jazz go first, showing how their trails don’t meet up. And there’s not a particular meaning to what color a vapor trail is to a person—it can change and vary for each test, it’s only consistent when it’s a ‘positive’. 

Than Laios and Falin. Fittingly enough, their trails are fairly strong, with just a few different trails fraying off, and slightly different shades of green-ish yellow coming from their potion cups. 

The Chilchuck Family then take a turn, and they can observe the trails. Sure enough, Chilchuck and Brightmerry don’t have any connection, but seem to match and meet with each of their daughters’ trails, who also connect to each other in a web of vapor. They decide that maybe more than three is hard to read. 

They agree to do a couple of combinations and tests, which Jazz and Danny are like ‘sorry for all the finger pricks!’ But they DID bring a bunch of sterilized needles at least. And Falin is happy to heal them in the meantime—using the space as an anti magic purge room seems to not have left an affect on the magic now in the space. 

Dandan joins a few times so they can record how he doesn’t match at all. Laios then mentions why Danny isn’t doing that when they explain he’s adopted and therefore for all he knows, he’s distantly related. 

Which prompts them to have him test with Dandan and Chilchuck. 

He doesn’t match Dandan. 

But he does match Chilchuck. 

This does not change when he repeats the experiment. 

They then switch out Chilchuck for Brightmerry. 

… And he matches to Brightmerry. 

SEVERAL different trials later involving all the halffoots there confirms it. 

Somehow. Someway. 

He is Chilchuck and Brightmerry’s child. 

Are you surprised? Probably not that was a twist coming a mile away not going to lie. 

Anyways, the story THEY give is that he’s Puckpatti’s twin. They’d been napping outside while with one of Chilchuck’s brothers, when something or another distracted said brother for, at most, two minutes. But then Puckpatti’s twin was gone. He was stolen, although they hadn’t actually KNOWN what had happened, when he was three months. It’s why Puckpatti’s name was, well. Puckpatti. Puck was supposed to be her twin’s name, and they considering having her be Pattipuck, but Puckpatti worked better. It wasn’t particularly odd for twins where only one survived to carry the other twin’s name as either their first or second name. This is also why her usually nickname is Patti instead of Puck. 

Danny and Jazz explain that… yeah, they were taken in. As in kidnapped. Hadn’t wanted the pity points but saying they were adopted felt kiiiiinda wrong. 

Now, this would be a very touching family reunion scene. 

Except now that mirror scratching has started up. 

And its loud. 

And—Oh would you look at that. 

Mirror portal. 

Can you guess who pop through? 

It’s the Fentons! Say Hello to Jack and Maddie. 

It’s a whole confrontation scene, which BASICALLY goes with Maddie and Jack absolutely NOT realizing anything they did wrong, insisting they SAVED Danny, that there were two and it was fine, and BESIDES, JAZZ wanted a little sibling and when ASKED she asked for a brother, so really, its her fault. 

Jazz gets a guilt complex! Chilchuck tells the Fentons that thats NOT HOW THIS SITUATION WORKED, SHE WAS TWO! 

Jazz also has a horrifying memory of when she was four and Danny was two, and asking if they’d like a younger sibling, and that they’d have to agree, but Jazz said yes and Danny said NO and was this why there were only two of them?!?

Danny disowns them, pointedly saying that cutting off a baby’s tail is kind of MESSED UP DON’T YOU THINK.  And they go, well if you’re going to be ungrateful—and he gets like, hella hurt. 

More arguing and fighting, and Danny just kind of lays there and lets himself heal before propping himself back up like. Did. Did you think that would work. You have a magic science workshop that I regularly cleaned did you NOT THINk. THAT WOULD NOT HAVE AN AFFECT. 

The Fentons go ‘oh, he’s a ghost’ and disown him right back, though not in so many words. Whichever members of the Dungeon Meshi group you imagine are there right now take it as ‘he’s a MAGE?!’ 

Danny tricks the Fentons back through the mirror portal and shatter it. From what he guesses, the magic purging done to Laios let there be a slight thinning in the natural magical-ecto-whatever barrier that protected this world from another one. The Fentons didn’t know where the kids went, but might have figured out they went to another world, but couldn’t locate the notes to locate the Dungeon Meshi world. So, instead, they tracked Danny and Jazz themselves. With all the blood testing Danny did in the same room with a thinning veil, that meant they were finally able to break through by using him as an ‘anchor’ to follow through the mirrors. 

Universal constants, remember? Both magic mirrors AND portals are things in both worlds. 

Danny takes this time to go ‘well, they already know anyways’, and uses the opportunity and also all his blood now on the floor to make some quick magic barrier things with Jazz’s help. She’s better at protection sigils, after all, but he’s the more magically powerful. Together, they sort of ‘lock’ the dungeon meshi world. Or, more accurately, they lock out a certain scientific couple. And, because three is a stronger number for magic, they also block out Vlad. Three birds, one stone. 

THEN Danny passes out, you know, like a champion. 

Once awake and reunited with everyone, things begin to simmer down. Sure, Danny was just exposed as a powerful mage to the King, but the king is just like ‘Eh, won’t mention it, I don’t know anything I’m barely sure how I became king most days and I was THERE’. Marcille probably finds out, either because she was there or she’s just really good at finding out things she absolutely should not, also possible interest from a long time over Jazz and Danny and their whole deal. But she’s also just like NEAT. Translate these texts for me and we’re even. 

Danny is not convinced about her smile but goes with it regardless. 

Chilchuck and family are cautiously open to Danny. Of course they’re glad to have him home, but also—he’s lived his entire life ELSEWHERE, so while Chilchuck knows the most about him, he’s still a stranger. 

A few cute fluffy bits about learning about his siblings and his mother and father. Notably—Chilchuck is APPALLED that any child of his doesn’t know how to properly lock pick. Even Fullertom, the MOST disinterested in his line of work, is well aware of how to do it. Brightmerry is fond of reading, and Danny has lots of stories she’s never heard of going through his head. He insists they’re just local stories he’s heard of here and there, but she’s like. Suspicious of it. Not enough to cause him to stop telling her them, though. He also learns of the interests of his sisters, and is also like WHAT. WHAT DO YOU MEAN I’M STILL THE BABY. 

The three girls are also fond of Jazz, surprisingly enough. Like, I’d hardly call them besties, but they get along pretty well. Especially when teasing Danny. Jazz tells them of the occasions she’d dress Danny up as a princess when they were little, and next thing Chilchuck knows, he’s walking in to see his son—not resisting being dolled up, because he loves his sisters already, but also very clearly hoping for an out. 

“Have fun,” he says and leaves immediately before his daughters can drag him into it too. 

Jazz has completed her indoor plumbing project! They no longer have a latrine and cesspit! They have proper toilets AND a filtration system for both incoming AND outgoing water, and along the way she’s made a waterwheel for electricity to power the filtration system AND the heating and cooling systems. They’re ALMOST modern at the Nightingale house! 

From here, things are a bit more loose. 

Danny makes gifts for his family for some kind of festive holiday. For Chilchuck, he gets a wood carving for the night each of his children were born, as well as his own birthday and Brightmerry’s. Since Meijack and Fullertom are twins, as are Puckpatti and Danny, this means four carvings. Each carving is technically a thin piece of darkly painted wood with holes drilled through, but when a light is shined onto the correct side, such as a candle or Jazz’s next project involving lightbulbs, it projects out the night sky. 

Danny consulted a LOT of astrological charts for this thing, but due to how close their dimensions are, the stars were mostly the same between the two. It’s not a universal constant, but the closer two dimensions are, the more similarities there are. 

After all, the Fentons were trying to slip BETWEEN dimensions, which is kind of like sewing but only going through to BETWEEN two pieces of fabric, even if the fabrics are already rubbing against each other. In other words, precision was needed, and there was no point in aiming for a FAR dimension for this, that was more likely to end in failure. 

An alternate for Chilchuck is that Danny finds alcohol in the Infinite Realms to give him, if you want Danny to have more free access to the Realms. Just warns him to only drink it if he WANTS to be completely sloshed, and to maybe not do that at home, haha. 

Anyways, for Brightmerry, he gives her not the next one, but the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, translated and edited for the Dungeon Meshi world. He assures his father they’ll get a copy for print later, but this was the first edition and it was for Brightmerry. 

Meijack got an armband for easily hold and quick access to her most common picklock tools. Kind of like a bracer or that sliding blade thing from Assassins Creed. 

Fullertom, Danny gave her a bunch of blue ribbons and accessories. Jazz had to point out for him that this meant he was supportive of her desire for marriage—Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. Usually a tradition reserved for the marriage, but anyways. 

As for Puckpatti, he makes her a magic compass. No matter where she is, she can always ask her to point it where she wants to go. North, South, the next town, home, to a specific person, so on. The first thing she has it point to is to Danny. It’s a much more touching moment than I am capable of writing right this second. 

Uhhhh a plot point I hadn’t integrated yet was that Danny absolutely cannot cook with meat. It was started in the ‘they met during canon dungeon adventure times’ but I hadn’t translated it fully yet. Basically, when Danny tries to cook with meat, it comes alive—like the turkey or the hot dogs in canon, and SOMEWHAT like the familiars do. Of course, it’d be really weird to be able to do that without even trying, and possibly mildly illegal, so they just have Danny not cook meat. Then a draft came to be where Danny was like ‘fine I’ll just SHOW YOU’ to Senshi, and if it was in the dungeon, then he’d use them against a monster, and if it was during post canon, it’d be against his parents. Then the point of WHY all or most of them were together during the Fenton’s break in changed from the dinner party to the genetics test, and there was no reason for Danny to have been cooking. 

Danny finds and introduces Fullertom to a dwarf that she starts dating. Chilchuck isn’t sure if he should be concerned or impressed with the portfolio Danny pulls out when Chilchuck asks about the dwarf and what Danny knows about him. 

Another plot point for why Jazz and Danny were staying so long, outside of finding Danny’s birth family since we have now figured out he WAS developing normally and the whole portal thing was just sorta because of how tricky that power is, is that Princess Dora wanted Danny to find a good host for the Necklace of Aragon so that her brother could no longer claim it. It would, predictably, eventually go to Laios. Also, I am starting to realize I am more partial to Laios than the other characters, whoops. Anyways, I hadn’t figured out if I could or even SHOULD integrate that into the plot. 

Payment for the blood blossoms were going to include five of Fallin’s feathers. They’re magically powerful, and three of them were going to be used for each name that was ‘blocked’ from the Dungeon Meshi world. So one feather for Jack, one for Maddie, and one for Vlad. I haven’t decided if I’d keep that or not, but I also wasn’t sure what to do with the other two feathers, and just asking for three and that HAPPENS to work out, the number being considered magic aside, felt a bit off and too convenient. 

Danny would eventually take on a new name in honor of his birth family. Danbright Chils. Dan is him, obviously, and since he’d be taking Chils for Chilchuck, he decided to take Bright for Brightmerry. (I actually debated between Bright or Bridge. So either Brightmerry and Danbright or Bridgemerry and Danbridge. This is directly because of Danny’s ‘be the bridge’ thing.)

Things are just starting to settle… 

Then, Sidney of all people shows up in Danny’s magic communication mirror. And we get information that due to Jazz and Danny’s mild meddling with the magic-ecto-whatever barriers, that Jazz’s twin has become aware of the fact she once had a twin—basically, Inspector Gordon kind of ‘felt reminded of [Jazz]’ and told Barbara about it. And since Barbara is part of the superheroes club, she was able to find out that not only was her twin alive, but in an entirely different dimension entirely. 

Annnnd that’s all I got. 

It’s a lot! Don’t expect me to publish it! Have a nice day! 

[6okuto]

Monster mhin headcannons???? Or just mhin headcannons in general I've been starving with the lack of mhin content lately

MHIN HCS 3

gn!reader | mhin time! :3 i'm going to let the knowledgeable and big brained people mostly take care of monster mhin bc I fear a girl like me is silly and less capable...

as for my limited monster thoughts it'd be nice if their first transformation was done to protect you rather than an involuntary thing and letting it act as a symbol for your growing relationship. but Who Knows at this point

i assume there's some level of lost conscience when they transform So if there's a scene where some part of them refrains from hurting you I Will Start Eating Tree Bark.

Oh...and a scene where they've transformed back and you try to help them...them flinching and confused (though their voice comes out angry? frustrated? at first) about why you haven't run away....letting you cover them and bandage their injuries... 😵‍💫

moving on. they're on the verge of if not threatening people when it comes to co-op games like pico park or heave ho, especially if they're playing with people like vere and ais. no one's ever heard them speak this much someone needs to get them out of there

window seat enjoyer :-)

secretly enjoys when you send posts that remind you of them. the first few times they're like ? what do i do with this. but learn to appreciate it even if they don't actually reply in chat (sometimes if you're like "this is u" and it's Too accurate mhin's like Can you stop no it isn't (yes it is))

"when you're complaining about someone and your best friend is meaner" or however that trend goes. that's them. very direct with saying that person sounds like shit and you should stop talking to them

mhin may not like big, loud festivals, but i think they'd enjoy celebrating things with you alone ^^ maybe eating their favourite dish (tang yuan?)....it'd mean a lot to have someone to share with again

also!! having it for the first time and them mentioning their family and the last time they had it with people... the intimacy of it all...

and !! they reciprocate it!! they do!! they take note of any festivities you say you like, especially one that you wish you could celebrate or haven't in a long time. whether it's cultural, your birthday, your pet's birthday—mhin plans something for you and 'offers' to spend time together that day if you'd like. 'offers' as in shows up and mentions they'll be free some time in the conversation

^ more for the beginning of a relationship (platonic or romantic)... it'll take time, they'd be more direct eventually!

they care for you quietly and by...noticing. folding your laundry and putting it away when they know you're busy. picking up your favourite snacks when they notice you're running out. automatically getting ready to catch you or pull you back when the time calls for it. watching you from across the room at a party and noting where you are and how long you've been gone. that kind of deal

mhin's wary and off-put by being spoiled, but if you're stubborn enough, you'll find them using whatever you got pretty regularly. for example they'll tell you they don't Need a new softer comfier blanket, theirs is Fine, but then the one you buy is the only one they ever want to use. they will pretend like it isn't a big deal if you try to tease them about it

they don't like reading things online and would rather have a physical book. not that i'm projecting or anything of course. they take care of them too and don't lend them to just anybody

i think mhin has actual bookmarks, or would at least like them. they might also use a receipt to mark their page but won't fold the corners...

they always put books back where they found them at the library/book store. if they find one in the wrong section, they'll put it in the right place themself

they can get upset, but don't cry super easily, but that's mostly because they've gotten used to suppressing their emotions. they do their best to channel it into anger instead

mhin isolating themself when they're upset,, conflicted over wanting to be happy and letting themself drown in the sadness. but in the end they hope and survive and will continue to do so

hmm... keeps information of their family and history close to them, but at some point i do think they'd (bittersweetly) share stories with quiet fondness

mhin seems like a silver jewelry kind of person but i just think they'd look really nice with gold earrings while pushing their hair behind their ear...

they see You in formal attire for the first time and keep trying to glance at you the entire night btw. they might not take initiative to compliment you, but if you ask if you look alright, they'll say yes you look nice

...? likes earphones more than headphones. can't tell you why i feel this way

light sleeper. i think. they always know when you can't sleep and they'll stay up with you. if you say you'll go sleep somewhere else so you don't bother them, they're like ..? no.

...affectionate mhin....NOOOOO... it takes so long for them to reach that point it's literally like when a cat finally trusts you and lies next to you/on your lap You Cannot Move Now. You're both obligated to stay here and don't Want to do Anything else.

like imagine cuddling them and they hug you back and their grip tightens in their sleep when you shift around. mhin burying their face into your neck and taking a deep breath. please

if you're an introvert and you both finally get home after a long day out, it's just like. Thank god. and i think they'd understand if you'd rather spend time alone to recover ^^ but depending on the crowd there will be a gossip/complaint session at some point

mhin is one of the top LI's for me when it comes to scenes of like, fixing their collar/clothes. the intimacy of them clasping your necklace, the tension and bated breath because you've never been this close. the surprise on their face when you reach to fix their hood etc.

they enjoy sneaking up on you. they end up in some corner of the room and while you're scanning the crowd to look for them, they suddenly speak from behind you. there's a hint of an amused smile when you jump

@semifilms @mitskiologist @sweet-milky-tea705 hiii

[akookminsupporter]

Hi, Rosieee! I always take posts of Jikook sightings with a grain of salt, but I always notice how consistent their behaviour towards each other is. Like, it's not so farfetched to see how JK acts this way towards Jimin and vice versa. Throughout the years, multiple OPs who encountered them outside have described/shared Jikook's dynamics and are quite interesting to read about. And it's even more interesting when some of those sightings have been proved. I just know they had an amazing time traveling and doing stuff.

I don't want to be greedy, but if we get behind-the-scene eps like what we had with Bon Voyage or ITS, plus that ep 0 where we have their meeting before they started their actual activities, I'll be over the moon. And if Disney+ sprinkes in interviews with these two like what we had with Hobi and Suga from their shows, I'll be even more insufferable 😭

Oh, definitely. What we see in official content is exactly what others report seeing when they see them off the clock or in the wild, as I sometimes say. In fact, many have described their dynamic as even more intense than what we usually see. For example, there was a time when an ARMY said Jimin's expression softened when he looked at Jungkook, or when a person at a restaurant thought Jungkook was the older of the two because of how he cared for Jimin. And if we add to that what the other guys have said and what Jimin and Jungkook themselves have shared over the years, it makes sense. Honestly, we only have to remember how they behave in the airport in Malta.

Sometimes it's hard to believe these supposed sightings of the boys by fans for obvious reasons, but the funny thing is that when it comes to Jimin and Jungkook together, they're not hard to believe, as you say. The posts currently circulating on Twitter about someone in Japan who saw them and described how they behaved together are not hard to believe, even though there is no proof beyond their word.

It’s hard to imagine that they didn’t have the best time while filming the show. If they hadn’t, I don’t think they would have filmed in different locations. Honestly, I don’t think they would have even made the show in the first place.

One undeniable fact, although many definitely try to deny it all the time, is that Jimin and Jungkook enjoy spending time together. They can entertain themselves with small things and be happy with that. It’s no coincidence that in every BTS DVD, there are always a lot of clips of them laughing, playing, or just being together, and that’s because they like being together. We have often read that people who have worked with them have said that Jimin and Jungkook were always together or were always the last to leave, etc. This will be no different. Or perhaps the only difference is that it will be just the two of them.

I don’t have much faith that we’ll see behind-the-scenes footage like we have with other BTS variety shows, but it would be incredible if we did. Did Tae’s show with his friends have behind-the-scenes footage? I don’t remember.

I think BigHit would miss a great financial opportunity if they didn’t release a DVD of this show with a photobook included. The same goes for not releasing behind-the-scenes footage on Weverse, even if you have to pay to watch it.

It would be great and only fair if Disney+ gave this project the same promotional treatment as they did for Hobi and Yoongi’s projects. I think the BTS documentary in December had some of that, didn’t it? Again, I don’t remember. Sorry.

[utilitycaster]

@just-a-moon-phase replied to your post “I have a lot of things in fandom I'd call "Brown...”:

please OP, where is the theory... I am listening...

​re: having a theory about why using non-canon nicknames cor characters specifically tends to be technically harmless and minor but also is really frequently a signal that someone's takes will be bad:

I think it's that it's both a quick shortcut to indicate intimacy, but it's also really generic and often out of character for those doing it.

To use Caleb as an example: not only did various German speakers in the fandom (of which I am not one) say that it's just not really a common thing linguistically/culturally, the nicknames people tended to use (usually at the time for Veth) were intended by the writers to be fond and platonic but were often either the sort of thing you'd only say in a romantic context, or else were nicknames very much intended for one's own children.

However, more importantly, Caleb very, very specifically doesn't really use nicknames in canon. He in fact frequently calls Beau "Beauregard". During a very emotional moment at the time of her transformation, he specifically uses Nott/Veth's full name. He refers to two of the characters we know he had romantic feelings for, Jester and Essek, by only their last names on at least one occasion, which reads to American audiences as either formal or perhaps fratty, but distinctly not romantic. As @essektheylyss said at some point, Caleb tends to use epithets a lot though mostly when talking about someone in the third person (eg: "our Kryn friend,") and the closest we ever get to any term of endearment is him saying "my friend," which again sounds quite formal. Caleb in general gets more formal with those he loves, not less. It's a great character detail, and anyone who peppers "spatz" into their fic like it's going out of style kind of comes off as, to put it kindly, not very good at finding characters' voices. Unfortunately, that is in my opinion literally one of like two things you cannot fuck up in fanfic for it to be good; if you don't get the voice right, then even if it succeeds as a story it fails utterly as fanfiction.

Anyway Caleb is a really good illustrative example because it's so clear from canon that this isn't his voice, but it applies anywhere. It's a sign that this person is cutting corners instead of actually establishing a base from which there will be a rewarding payoff.

(will say: this also, bizarrely, often applies to people who called Trent Ickythong/Ickythot or people who call Ludinus Luda, though it's much less reliable there. I feel it's similarly like, people who rely on shortcuts and the idea that the fandom will agree with them because these are clear villains, and never actually go deep enough to come up with an argument. Like in the end it always just feels like a cheap and insubstantial discussion.)

[electrosquash]

This may sound stupid but how do I turn off blazeable on my blogs?

And how is this bad? Again, I don't wanna sound stupid or rude. Thank you for the heads up :]

Hi! No worries, you're not the only one with these questions.

On how to turn off the option to get blazed:

On desktop you can turn it off at this link: https://www.tumblr.com/settings/blog/#blaze It looks something like this

On mobile it's in the account settings menu, there's a lof of screenshots in the additions to my other post like here (i haven't updated since i got a funny little bug that lets me add polls in reblogs of other people's posts so i can't screenshot anything).

Alternatively you can also log into Tumblr in your phone's browser and use the link above there. Don't forget to do it on sideblogs that you don't want to get blazed as well! You can also change the settings per-post in the post menu. I've actually enabled it for my complaint post that's circulating because it would be really funny :D

On how it is bad:

With the way it is set up, people can blaze your posts without active consent. This can be used to bully people, by digging out old or not-adapted posts that were not meant for a wider audience and putting them on blast. This can include vent posts, opinions you might have changed since then, selfies, niche things many people might think are cringe (like 2014 self-insert omegaverse fanfics and the likes ... idk if you've seen the drama that resulted from someone blazing their fic, it wasn't pretty), posts that were only meant to circulate in your carefully curated audience, and more.

Since Blaze's are registered in many minds as advertisement many people will react negatively to them so this opens up a way to bully a lot of people. As usual, people of colour, trans people, and other vulnerable groups will get the worst of it, many are already getting deactivated regularly because of coordinated reporting harassment and since people donate hate organizations all the time they will definitely use the option to make the life of a person they're targeting living hell for 10$.

Staff thought of some safeguards but there are several fallacies:

The option to cancel a blaze before it goes live: Not everyone has access to the internet every day, and staff might accept the blaze while you're asleep / at work / on a trip / in the hospital / on hiatus. Then when you're coming back to tumblr your notes will have turned into a nightmare.

The guarantee that staff will check every Blaze manually to prevent harassment: Let's take the case in which someone's old fic get blazed against their will. How can staff know whether it was blazed with friendly intent (to promote a friend's work) or ill intent (to get people to point and laugh)? They can't as long as it's not against the Terms of Service. In general there will be many false positives (Blazes that get rejected by staff despite being innocent) and false negatives (Blazes that get accepted by staff despite being malicious). After all, the people working at tumblr are only human too. But in this case, false negatives will have devastating consequences - and extinguishing a blaze after it's live will be too late.

Many people don't follow @staff, so many people don't know about this change. In fact many people on that other post commented that they didn't know what Blazes are at all! I think i've read that they will add a login banner to tell you and check your settings, but iirc they had banners like that for the original Blaze function announcement so i don't have faith this will prevent anything.

I should clarify that i don't think the feature itself is bad at all, but it should be opt-in so only people who want to participate get blazed (e.g. art blogs). Or add an active mandatory confirmation by OP instead of a veto option, this would prevent the issues above as well, i think that would be the best option - that way people could leave the option on. I know staff are currently getting bombarded with support requests / flames (please be civil to them guys!) (also sorry. but not sorry. i didn't expect my post to blow up but also i think these are legitimately troubling concerns and i won't make the other post unrebloggable). They're aware of these issues so i hope they will change to one of these options - if they add active mandatory confirmation by OP i would enable to option globally as well (Hint hint this means more money for you, @tumblr, because otherwise many people have and will turn this feature off completely) A bit more time between announcement and go-live (4/20 iirc) would have been helpful as well.

Here's the original announcement by the way:

And since i'm gonna pin the post as long as the other post is circulating: Listen to goatbed guys!

[imthepunchlord]

Which power would you give to peafowl and bee?

Peafowl I would work with something related to vision. For if there's one thing that really stands out for peacocks, it's the eye motif.

And there's a lot you can do with a power around vision.

It could be a power of foresight, see the future, the closer the closer the more likely (which peacocks are tied to foresight, looking to the future). You can just straight up call it Clairvoyance.

You can do an alternative take to illusions. Whoever meets a Peafowl's gaze gets trapped in a daydream of their own making, unaware of reality around them. Where Fox does illusions that they control and all can see, Peafowl has no control what people see, and no one else can see what others see. It can be called Fantasy. Additionally, peacocks are tied to maya, which is Sanskrit for illusion/magic.

Peafowl could have a power of mind reading, meet the eyes of another and get to "see" their thoughts and intentions. Could be Mind's Eye. It could also be a nice nod to the third eye chakra, which does match with Peafowl a lot in terms of symbolism and themes.

Peafowl could have something related to truth. You see what is true. You see someone's true colors. You see through illusions. You see what is hidden from you, like ghosts.

Lastly, Peafowl could have something related to hypnosis. Hypnotism through eyes is a thing that's done in media (though usually with snakes).

But given the many eyes to gaze upon you, it could be done. It could also play off a Peafowl's beauty, they're allure, how they can charm and bewitch someone.

Any of these ideas I would take for Peafowl and I think would work well. Some of these can even work off Mayura being a more out in the open.

Now for Bee, I take the stance that they should've done something related to team work, working with others, a fellowship/community, connection with other life. That to me stands out so much more than bees stinging. That's very surface level when diving into what bees are tied to, which I'll give them, there is a Hindu bee goddess (Bhrami) who stings a demon to death.

But over all, bees are more about togetherness and communication. To be kind and open minded, but take no bull.

One idea I really like that canon did bring in, was working with a magical swarm of bees.

And they could do various things for you, as you are their director. They can swarm to cause a panic (but not actually sting as that kills bees), they can gather intel and you can spy through them, they can be used for long range communication and act as little animated flying walkies, they could mass restore, they could prompt plant growth for psuedo plant manipulation.

The catch to this pretty OP power? You got to be a good director of this hive. If you are a terrible leader or a terrible person, these bees will unionize and leave. And they will not come back. No matter how many times you retransform, your hive is gone, at least until Pollen thinks you're worthy to direct them. So until you grow and change how you are, you are powerless as a Miraculous user if your bees unionize. Could call this Hive Mind to work off a community working as a big unit.

The other option would be to just straight up doing plant manipulation, though I would like to have it be that plants are resistive to you if you lack compassion for life. This could be Pollination to work off Pollen's name.

Between the two, would lean more Hive Mind, but if some think that's too OP, Pollination still works well. Both meet what I want for Bee, something related to teamwork.