#is this unreliable narrator? maybe?

[disasociatehaze]

I finally worked up the courage to post one of my in-progress crossover fics. It's a BNHA x FF7 fic because I think it's a severely lacking niche with a ton of potential. This one in particular because it's prologue works better as a stand alone than the others I got and if it gets a decent enough response here I'll actually make an AO3 account. Not sure where it's going yet story wise, but its going somewhere. Comments and critiques are accepted.

Wake Up, King o’ the Cats

Prologue

People hadn’t always had quirks, it was only 200 years ago that people started developing supernatural powers that became common in society today. However, it was only after the dawn of quirks that people started to don the costumes— that were once staples of the superhero comics they once read— to stop superpowered crime that it became an official profession. Pro-Heroes is what they were called from then on.

Izuku had always known he would be a hero when he grew up— had said as much with unflinching confidence whenever he was asked. When he was told he couldn’t be a hero because he was quirkless, he simply looked confused while his mother was devastated. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t be a hero without a quirk because he already knew that quirks did not make a hero. Heroes were not what were shown on tv or on the corners of the street; heroes were people who gave everything to make sure people were safe and keep the real criminals from hurting anyone again. Heroes are different from Pro-Heroes, though All Might was definitely both. Izuku liked All Might even if he thought his smile was strained. 

That day, when they got home from the doctors office he didn’t ask his mom if he could be a hero. He just grabbed some paper and started to draw. When Inko asked if he was alright, he looked at her solemnly and told her with confidence he would still be a hero. Had Inko not broken into tears to hug her son— who was clearly in denial, she would have noticed the drawing Izuku had made. She would have seen her son holding hands with a cat in a cape and a crown surrounded by others, all of them wearing a pink ribbon on their arms with the exception of the girl wearing it in her hair. 

Later the drawing was carefully stored in a drawer, but forgotten. Izuku made many drawings after (some similar to the first; others more like blueprints) and learned all he could as he grew older. His thirst for knowledge was seemingly unquenchable. He was still bullied by his classmates for his quirkless status, but it always felt like it wasn’t worth dwelling on for him when he had blueprints to make. He didn’t need a quirk to be a hero, not when he could just design support items to fight with. Izuku would never stop fighting to improve life for others— he knew he was an unstoppable force with enough effort.

Izuku hadn’t realized why he was so odd until this moment as his life flashed before his eyes, suffocating in the grasp of the sludge monster villain. 

He was immobilized with no way to escape. 

Izuku was falling asleep.

Maybe now he could rest.

As Izuku drifted to sleep, he remembered his life as the world faded to a soft green and began to smell of flowers. A chime of laughter on the wind urged him conscious along with a light slapping to his cheek. 

Reeve awoke and he wished All Might had just let him sleep.

[mothtral]

sunday was chained up in the rooms he secretly kept you locked away in. the family knew of the area, of course they did, it’s where they kept the traitors and the highest ranking criminals. they thought sunday was visiting various convicts to gather more information… they weren’t aware someone innocent was hidden away like a prized jewel.

mind you, many of the older members of the family wouldn’t have mattered if you were innocent, but luckily for you, many have been trying to find you for a long time. enough there’s been missing posters of you yellowing on penacony’s streets. a beloved friend of sunday and robin, including other younger elite members of the family. it was too public, them bringing sunday to that room.

so out you went and sunday guided inside. sunday said nothing. he didn’t look at you. maybe, he knew the dream you had, one where you were running through an open field under the sun, your arms spread apart like a bird about to take flight; free.

robin was horrified and bundled you away, she ignored the flinch you gave her when she got too close, too fast. most wouldn’t think you were missing for months, perhaps even years. dressed to the nines in silk clothes and not a single scratch or bruise on your body. the chains sunday used on you were cushioned; he wanted you by his side, not a walking punching bag.

time flew past you at a nauseating speed. you never were one for rollercoasters, or the pin ball transportations in penacony. one thing is for certain, when everyone’s backs are turned, you will leave and never step foot in penacony again.

first, you must do something. sunday took your life from you. but… you never wanted to see him in your place in that little cell.

“come to gloat?” sunday said. he sounded so bitter, tired. it was almost enough for you to take a step closer, to get within range of his telepathy.

sunday… he didn’t treat you badly, per se. you clung to your childhood much like he did; you, sunday, and robin. all brought to the family at young ages, the only ones at that time that were considered outsiders back then. you gravitated to each other, your dream much like theirs as a child.

your dream… you don’t dream anymore. you haven’t for a long time.

“no,” you whispered. you hadn’t spoken a word to anyone since leaving this cell. you hadn’t spoken a word since sunday brought you to this cell. it hurt. “i wanted to say farewell.”

you have never seen sunday like that before. after the words left your mouth, his head snapped up from where he was fixated at the ground, his neck audibly cracking. before, you thought sunday’s eyes looked like the evening sky, soft and sweet, the perfect sunset. now, they looked like threshold to mania, pupils shrunken and nearly glowing; something else was watching you from his gaze.

“you—cannot—leave me,” sunday rasped out, teeth bared and spit clinging to his lips. he strained against the chains holding him back that for a moment, he looked like a beast held restrained by flimsy material it could easily break free from. distantly, you noticed, they no longer held the cushions they did for you. now, they were a sickly purple; you did not want to know why it looked like that.

“i can. i will,” you replied. you thought this should’ve been more emotional; you did not have it in you to be passionate. exhaustion clung to your limbs, but somehow you kept striving forward. maybe it was the inherent stubbornness sunday used to bemoan.

you turned around; you saw enough. it was time to go, your goal accomplished.

“what about our dream?” sunday hissed. behind you, you heard something creak, and knew you couldn’t stick around for much longer.

“it has not been our dream for a long time, sunday. i hope just that one day you realize it wasn’t your dream, as well.” you wondered if you should clarify, let sunday keep this little flicker of a flame, of hope. and you decided you would. “i know i said this was a farewell. we both know you won’t let it remain that. i await the day you find me again. maybe we can find a new dream together.”

[myokk]

My writing/reading question of the day:

Do you prefer present tense or past tense? Or something entirely different like future tense? For writing AND reading🫶

The more I write (I wish I realized how fun it was before this year😭😭😭) the more I realize I like to play around with language & tense choice can have such a profound impact on how your writing comes across & even how I feel as I’m writing. With my oneshots I’ve been playing around with only present tense & my main fic is past tense (but present during the flashbacks - idk don’t ask it just felt right😆).

Or does nobody else think about tense and I’m just alone in this😆😆😆 LANGUAGE IS JUST SO COOL !!!!

[dr-mothman]

I think not a lot of people talk about AM's self-esteem issues and self-destructive tendencies and it makes me sad.

[shalomniscient]

nobody ask me why i’m on an angst kick or why i’m thinking of furina of all characters but what if. furina x reader but furina knows reader is actually in love with focalors and really is only by furina’s side as her aide/retained because focalors ordered them to and yet she still plays along because holy shit she needs companionship (and maybe the horribly overtly emotional sex) or else she really might just end it all before focalors can

[visenyaism]

the levels of haterism aegon iv reached are legendary if nothing else

awesome how thematically you can think to yourself: well of course the firstborn son of a 13 year-old boy hostage and his 20something wife he was forced to marry who was then summarily abandoned by his mother at a young age and raised in the shadow of his baby brother who is the archetypical Perfect Knight and forced to marry his sister who he did not like as a teenager and spent his entire life locked into one massive selfish hedonistic binge session would have significant deep spiritual wounds and some level of humanity motivating him to lash out like that. and then fire and blood is like so aegon iv was actually a hater from birth. straight up literal evil baby. clocked his first attempted fratricide at eighteen months. no one hated like this

[idkimtiredanddumb]

No because Neil is SUCH. An unreliable narrator but he’s also so convincing and also like confused and missing all these social cues and clues but like I am too??? It’s so easy to get swept up in his head The first time I read aftg I was just nodding along how does he make every decision he makes (most of which are insane) ??? so??? convincingly??? rational??? AND THEN (embarrassingly) the “doesn’t mean I wouldn’t blow you” blew BOTH OF OUR MINDS like upon rereading I was like … that was so terribly obvious and yet. And yet.

[youngyoo-apologist]

OG!Cale drawings, I love this guy.

[chiarrara]

i think its wild how beautiful and foundational the queer readings of jjk are considering how violently anti-queer the manga is in practice

[coquelicoq]

Perhaps I hadn't been much different from Seivarden, looking desperately for someone else to shore myself up with. And maybe Ship had found it didn't want to be that for me. Or found that it couldn't. That would be perfectly understandable. Ships, after all, didn't love other ships. "Fleet Captain." Mercy of Kalr's voice in my ear. "Are you all right?" I swallowed. "I'm fine, Ship." "Are you sure?" Swallowed again. Took a steadying breath. "Yes." "I don't think you're telling me the truth, Fleet Captain," said Mercy of Kalr. (Ancillary Mercy, ch 8, p 134)

so many thoughts to be thunk about this...

something about breq having spent most of her life (as the ship justice of toren) as the kind of entity that has intimate access to the emotional states of its crew without anybody having that same access to its emotional state in return

and something about breq being the kind of narrator who often does not share information about her emotional state with us, her audience

and something about breq, as a captain who used to be a ship, 1) being privy to detailed internal information about the emotional states of her crew again because her ship is sharing that information, but necessarily at the same time 2) now being herself subject to that same surveillance from her ship, because she is part of its crew

so that now she is unable to hide her emotional state, both from her ship within the story, and consequently from us her audience in her telling of the story (because the ship is verbalizing its observations to her and she is recounting that conversation to us)

which means that we as the audience are getting privileged information from the one entity other than breq who could give it to us - not information about external physical indicators like whether she's crying, which we also get sometimes from the human characters around her, but privileged information about her internal emotional state, information of the sort that is only available to ships (like mercy of kalr, her ship) (like justice of toren, the ship she used to be)

and her emotional state that her ship is witnessing in this moment, and telling us about, is caused by her realization that she, as crew, has been treating her ship exactly the way that she never wanted her crew to treat her when she was a ship

and her realization that she's been taking advantage of ship in another way, by expecting access to the privileged data it has about the internal emotional states of its crew

breq as unreliable narrator of her own feelings tied inextricably to breq as unreliable narrator of the feelings other people have toward her. breq's inability to understand herself as someone a person could love, regardless of whether she has access to privileged data about that person's internal state or not. the curtain being drawn back on this for us the audience in a way that exemplifies the series' broader themes of autonomy, intimacy, entitlement, and imperialism through the precise and specific mechanism of character development. thoughts are being thunk

[adelaidedrubman]

OC SMASH OR PASS

i was tagged by beloveds @imogenkol and @rhettsabbott, thank you dears! warnings for smash related topics and jestiny

RULES: pretty self explanatory. include physical descriptions or pics, and propaganda. the “other” label can be used for “sexuality misalignment” (ie: oc is femme and you’re gay, vice versa or you aren’t into smashing but a specific thing you wanna do with them like perhaps hug or study them under a microscope idc).

art by the incredible @derelictheretic!

QUICK FACTS:

full name: jestiny ellen rook

height: 5’4½

age: 28 c. 2018

gender: gal

pronouns: she/her

sexuality: bisexual

PROS:

❤️‍🔥 great sense of humor. never a dull moment

❤️‍🔥 can catch so many fish. knows all the best spots. might mock a bit but will ultimately bait your hook and gut your catch for you. you’ll never want for trout. good provider many fish

❤️‍🔥 a certain roguish charm?

❤️‍🔥 possibility of meeting hank!

❤️‍🔥 full bush (with happy trail)

CONS:

❤️‍🔥 your manic pixie dream girl is actually deranged

❤️‍🔥 does she look moderate to you? could refuse to leave you alone for months could vanish into the night and move 200 miles away tomorrow could burn your house down. that’s part of the quirky fun experience she offers

❤️‍🔥 Dark Empath™ (sexual)

❤️‍🔥 banned from the spread eagle romance route speedrun 100% no glitches no wild animals no shirt no service

❤️‍🔥 ipa drinker and you can taste it iykwim

aaaaand tags to play along to @derelictheretic @belorage @florbelles @lordundying @henbased @a-treides @nowandthane @josephslittledeputy @memaidraws @poetikat @ruvviks @wrathfulrook @galaxycunt @fourlittleseedlings @nonfunctioning-queer @voidika @captastra @confidentandgood @deputyash @blissfulalchemist @shellibisshe @strafethesesinners @shallow-gravy @direwombat @jackiesarch @firstaidspray @socially-awkward-skeleton @8bitpizzacoupons @strangefable @ladyoriza @clicheantagonist @cassietrn @mccarthycormac @afarcry5fromstraight @orionlancasterr and anyone else interested!!

[lattuce]

shoutout to media with only one female character that’s just a vessel for a sexual assault and/or pregnancy plot line with very little or no characterization beyond that

[add1ctedt0you]

Underappreciated how much worse is for jc that he couldn't kill wwx

[wyrmwhispers]

On the idea of “is Paul lying about this being the best path” my interpretation is no, he's not. At the very least not purposefully lying, although it may not be the actual truth. And by that i mean that there's no future where all the Harkonnens die miserable painful deaths and then yippee the Fremen rule Arrakis and Paul is there living happily ever after with Chani, that he sees. but what i do think is true is that the path Paul chooses is the one that allows him to meet all his goals which, in relative order of priority I'll say are:

revenge on the harkonnens

keep the people he loves alive (jessica, chani, alia)

free the fremen from harkonnen control (maybe, if it's convenient or if he has time)

and the really shitty thing about this list is that number three is extremely convenient and helpful for number one but not in a good way and number one is really non-negotiable for him. Like from his perspective he needs revenge against the Harkonnens, that's why he joins the fedaykin because fighting against the Harkonnens like that feels like revenge. But the idea of taking it all the way to the top and getting revenge not just against the Harkonnens but also the emperor for killing his family and the entire imperium for standing by and doing nothing is too tempting for him to ignore. And he caveat on the second point is that the people he loves being happy isn't necessary just that they're alive. (*cough cough* Chani in the movies *cough cough*)

So i think that the future Paul picks, the narrow way through is the one that satisfies all those best and you'll notice that “do right by the oppressed indigenous people” and “don't murder 62 billion people” aren't really on there. not because he doesn't care about those but… he doesn't really in comparison to the aforementioned goals. Post-water of life, he sees "the best path through" where he gets everything he wants and sees the jihad as an acceptable price and reasons it as "inevitable" whether or not it actually was.

all of this means that yeah, to him there very well may only be one way and yeah the one that he chooses is the best one from his perspective even if you've read the books you'll know that he kind of fails at point number two in trying to protect both Chani and Alia.

Lastly, in the later books Leto II talks about the Golden Path and that its the only way to save humanity and blah blah blah. Frank Herbert pretends like he mentioned it in Dune and Dune Messiah but he didn't. Although I do believe he had some ideas about it in Messiah but it wasn't fully formed until Children of Dune. How I always interpreted that in retrospect is that Paul saw the Golden Path but wasn't willing to make the sacrifices necessary (becoming a sentient sandworm god, living for four thousand years, etc. which... fair) and tried to half walk the Golden Path without ever fully committing to it and fucks it up and leaves it to Leto II. All of which to say, the Golden Path isn't a thing in the original book so the "narrow way through" is not the Golden Path because Frank Herbert hadn't made it up yet and its not what I'm talking about.

[foxstens]

can anyone explain to me why neil is considered an unreliable narrator

[five-nights-at-artsys]

shakes fnafblr shakes fnafblr shakes fnafblr

hey i know we are talking about a franchise steeped in the supernatural since day 1 but i beg you to read up on dissociative disorders