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sunnnfish · 1 year ago

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oh my GOD where do I begin. Uhhhmmm. Okay. So Love & Passion is a chapter is the Sasaki and Miyano: First Years novel. Every chapter in that book is from a different characters perspective, and Love & Passion is from Tashiro’s POV. It is mostly about tashiros first year of high school and his joining of the ping pong club. Here look at the cover illustration

Going under a cut now due to exceeding length.

So like. There’s like. A Lot. Certifiably. Especially if you’re a tashiro enthusiast like me. Phenomenal characterization and narration that is usually very fun and lighthearted and tashiro-esque!

Gonzaburo Tashiro, first-year. At the moment, I’m facing an insurmountable barrier.

^ First lines of the chapter. He’s continuously very silly and like. Dramatic narrator. Yknow.

And such a personality lends itself to awfully poignant lines of crippling sincerity and simplicity that make me bawl my eyes out.

I don’t get it. What happened to the loneliness?

But of course tashiro doesn’t exist in a void to we have our delightful cast of his dear friends and acquaintances! Middle school bestie shirahama, who gets him into This Whole Mess (I’ll get to that later). Dearest Hanzawa Masato, who he makes various umh. Comments about.

“Game, set!” announced the referee, a second-year.

Man, he sounds so cool saying that.

…

As I stood there, drooping mentally and physically, I was approached by the guy who had refereed our match—the club’s vice president, Hanzawa.

And last but CERTAINLY not least. Dearest dearest previous president of the ping pong club!!!!

There he is. The saulty little binch on the right.

And if you’re wondering why we call him that. Well. He’s never given a name. Ha ha! But he has such a presence. The way he speaks and moves and looks feels so intentionally intense and like. designed. He’s so on purpose. Makes me wonder if we’ll ever get a spinoff of hanzawa masato[GETS SHOT] ha ha sorry who said that. Anyways

Dearest previous president (prev pres for short) and hanzawa torment poor tashiro. Endlessly. From the moment he joined the club—which was kind of an accident (he and shirahama joined just to check it out but eventually wanted to quit, but to quit you had to win a ping pong match. Shirahama won his match against a newbie easy peasy. Tashiro got matched up against the president of the club himself. Obviously couldn’t win and thus forced to join the club permanently)—from the moment he joined the club, prev pres and hanzawa are like. All over him. Obsessed with him. He tries to skip practice but both of them come drag him out of him classroom to come practice.

But despite his desire to not really be there, he takes club so seriously. He’s so sincere about it. He knows everyone else there is really passionate about ping pong so he cant let himself be the odd man out and rain on everyone’s parade. And this paradox—being so avoidant of the club but coming to care about it and bond with other members—really catches the eye of dearest prev pres.

“I thought Tashiro’d be spoiling for a fight, but he isn’t. That’s what makes him a genius worthy of my inner circle. Remember that, Hanzawa, ‘cause when I graduate, you’re gonna be the next club president.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And I think that guy might be a good successor to you!”

Dearest tashiro overhears this and promptly realizes the two freaks he’s met will not let him out of this. Ever. But he tells himself he’ll decline the offer. Surely they’ll find “someone more appropriate. Someone more serious about the club, maybe.”

And this is what like. Gets to the heart of this chapter. Love & Passion. AND REALLY QUICK touching on the fact that all the other chapters are named in ways that refer to specific characters. They’re all in pairs, and the chapter cover art reflects that too. She & Kuresawa. Miyano & Kuresawa. Sasaki & Miyano. Senior & Junior. SO IT MAKES YOU THINK. Who is love and who is passion. Anyways Tashiro meets and knows these various people around him and they’re all so passionate about what they do and what they like. Shirahama ends up joining the basketball club and gets really into it. Miyano and kuresawa are passionate about their books and clubs. Hanzawa and previous president are passionate about ping pong. Tashiro is passionate about… ? he doesn’t really know.

We so rarely know what other people’s passions are.

“Are you into anything, Tashiro?” Ms. Toyoda asked, and I flinched.

“Uh, me? I dunno. I guess I hadn’t really thought about it.” I racked my brain for anything I might be passionate about, but nothing came to mind.”

Later in the chapter he participates in a ping pong tournament and its like. He’s like the rush of it all and cheering for him teammates and stuff but. He doesn’t cry like everyone else when he loses.

Still, when I saw players from other school practically weeping when they lost, I couldn’t help wondering: What made them so different from me? I didn’t have the passion within me to cry when I lost.

Maybe that’s what real passion looks like. What did I have, then?

…

But something held me back, a sense that ‘passion’ was reserved for something you really, truly loved. Something you couldn’t replace, couldn’t even dream of giving up.

Ping-pong isn’t exactly the hill I would die on. But then again…

And he kinda goes through this arc where its like. Im not passionate about this like everyone else. But it has given me a goal to work towards.

And amidst all that We also get into what tashiro gets up to outside of school. Namely, he frequents a bath house where hes become the grandchild of all the old people that also frequent the place. And he also practices ping pong with his new grandpas, because he totally doesnt care about ping pong. He just. Wants to win. So he can beat the president and leave. Yeah thats it.

But he never does get around to beating the president before he has to graduate. Queue the moment that makes me the most insane

“So you’re never coming back, President?” I said.

“I ain’t President anymore.”

“Not the point! I haven’t beat you yet…” I clenched my fists, a yawning, lonely feeling of loss opening within me.

“Ahh. You mean the thing about getting to quit if you win? The next president’ll keep that promise. Dont’ you worry.”

“What?”

I don’t get it. What happened to the loneliness?

The new president—in other words, Hanzawa.

This like. Special relationship hes had with the president. This game of cat and mouse remains unfulfilled. And he feels loss and he feels lonely about it. But at the same time he can renew that relationship with Hanzawa. And it suddenly doesn’t feel so lonely anymore. And its the simplicity and bluntness of this whole exchange is what really sells it—tashiro is not particularly eloquent. He’s brash and blunt but extremely observant. And thats reflected in his chapters. He recognizes the ways other people interact with the world and their expressions and language. And its so like. Factual to him. It is the way it is. And that observancy is applied to himself too. This feels lonely. Oh. This doesn’t feel lonely anymore. But he doesnt necessarily have the self-reflection to understand why he feels certain things. Anyways.

And amidst all THAT theres these few moments where he gets this really weird adjacency to queerness. Like. If i had a nickel for every moment he asked about queer people, id have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot but its strange it happened twice.

First one:

Miyano’s hobby was man-on-man romance comics. I sometimes wondered about that (like, even though he’s a guy?),

Second one, where hes relaxing in the bathhouse common area and is listening to the old ladies talk about yuri.

Finally, I asked, “What’s yuri?”

“You don’t know? It’s stories of love between girls!”

“Huh, Haven’t heard of that one before…” I guess Ms. Toyoda and her friends had been into reading that sort of thing many years ago, and now their interest was being rekindled thanks to their grandchildren. “I didn’t realize women liked stories about girl-on-girl love, too…”

And its like. ITS NOT MUCH I KNOW. But it really is so weird it happened twice. Why did author Hachijo Kotoko do this. What does it mean. AND THEN IT ALL COMES BACK TO THE TITLE. Love & Passion.

I may not have that burning love that Miyano or Ms. Toyoda have, I thought.

Like. Specifically calling out the love miyano and Ms. Toyoda have. For queer stories. It sits so strange with me. Oddly meaningful but i dont know what it means.

Anyways. There’s also a really good shirahama and tashiro moment that i could get into but. I wont. Yet.

Anyways again. All that writing and i feel like i haven’t even touched on everything. Did not talk nearly enough about hanzawa’s presence but like. It’s very specific and hard to explain. But i also have an incessant desire to just quote like the entire chapter. So just go try to read it if you can. I unfortunately don’t know of any sources online but who knows. The book also has a second tashiro pov chapter so like. Cannot recommend it enough. I love tashiro gonzaburou so so much. He’s everything to me. Peace and love on planet tashiro.

#sasaki to miyano #tashiro gonzaburou #sasaki and miyano: first years #sasaki and miyano #Love & Passion #sunnfish.hzsr #sunnfish.txt #sunnfish.ask

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floatingcatacombs · 17 days ago

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Trying to Talk About Touhou Two

12 Days of Aniblogging 2024, Day 10

Hot off the heels of my touhoublogging last year, I continued playing through the games, and am proud to say that I now have a one-credit clear on every Touhou game from 6 to 19! It’s been a hell of a journey, and I’m legitimately proud of myself for rising up to the challenge, taking my own advice from last year whenever I could to great effect. Today’s post is mostly going to be about various official Touhou manga, but I might as well wrap up the game discussion from last year first.

My favorite games of the pack ended up being Subterranean Animism (11), Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom (15), and Double Dealing Character (14). While I praised the hell out of Subterranean Animism last year, the other two might surprise you! I’ve totally flipped on LoLK since last year – it’s a rough game if played traditionally, because it’s really meant to be played on the new checkpointing mode. The checkpointing system unique to Touhou 15 also leads to the spell cards in having a fundamentally different design than the rest of the series – attacks are actively designed to trip you up, like they’re puzzles to be solved more than anything. There’s a lot of micrododging and fast maneuvering required, but most of the patterns are fairly deterministic, so experimentation is strongly encouraged. It leads to a frustrating first playthrough but an incredible sense of satisfaction with every small bit of ground gained, and the ability to save and quit and return later helps sell the feeling of going on a long journey that the game’s plot is conveying. The music is amazing and I love you Junko. Meanwhile, Double Dealing Character ended up being a sleeper hit for me! It’s got a chaotic and lighthearted story where you beat up a bunch of monstergirls before proceeding to explore an upside-down castle, which means that it’s legally a Castlevania game. There’s a real sense of constant forward momentum here, with the expanded point of collection system encouraging frantic risk-taking with very high potential rewards on the other side. It’s straightforward, simple fun, and Seija’s whole deal is great, so I'm glad that she got her own spinoff. The soundfont for Touhou 14 and 15 really feels special…. I love you Retrologue Crystal Lake and Retrologue Pristine Chime for being part of ZUN’s toolkit during this time.

Of course, there are some more flawed games, too. One of the reasons that Touhou 14 feels like such a breath of fresh air is that 13 is just plain sleepy. Ten Desires offers very few resources to the player, meaning that dying once early on can be a run-ender. There aren’t really any systems you can engage with to gain extra bombs or lives beyond a passive accumulation of fragments over time, making the whole thing a slow and unexciting affair. Miko’s fight is at least brilliant. Touhou 16, Hidden Star in Four Seasons, sought to provide a very “traditional” experience for those turned off by LoLK’s radical one-time changes. Unfortunately, this leaves it a bit uninteresting and aesthetically bland, though I get that it’s important to the lore. Finally, Touhou 18, Unconnected Marketeers, is ZUN’s first swing at metaprogression mechanics, and suffers a lot for it. It’s very difficult to gain power in this game, which means that dying just once is ruinous, especially since it's a very hard game to begin with. You really have to cheese this one, which means that I kept going for the same ability cards again and again once I found out what worked. I managed to beat it with liberal use of the “your power cannot fall below 3” card, so thanks Mamizou. Unconnected Marketeers does at least have a spinoff called 100th Black Market which I found to be great. People tend to like one or the other, but not both, because the metaprogression systems play out very differently even if they share ability cards.

So, what are my Optimal Touhou Design takeaways from all of this? You want an extra lives system which rewards you the more you engage with it, while also allowing for small mistakes here and there. Games with a higher ceiling of earnable lives feel a lot better than the alternative, while being stingy with bombs is a valid decision and makes those games feel like an extra challenge to rise up to. I’ll learn to love the new characters no matter what if the game is fun enough, but the music and atmosphere are important to get right. And lastly, continued experimentation is decidedly worth it.

Having familiarized myself with all of the modern Touhou characters, I could finally read all the manga! I tried a few times in the past, when the only games I’d really played were 6 and 10, but I felt intimidated by an endless onslaught of characters I didn’t know and was expected to at least be somewhat familiar with. While I’m sure some wiki-diving would have cleared that up, playing through all of the games felt like it would be the more fun approach, and it paid off. Without further ado… some Touhou manga I read this year!

Wild and Horned Hermit

First things first, the artistic evolution here is quite impressive. The manga goes from dinky little sketches in the early chapters to a fully developed and soothing style. Wild and Horned Hermit was being published for ten years! That's a long run for any manga, but here it means that it spanned from Touhou 12 to Touhou 17, which was an incredibly pivotal time for the project that introduced some of my favorite characters. As far as broader arcs go, we move from the religious wars into the sage conflicts, but these generally aren't the main focus of the manga. Instead, Wild and Horned Hermit is about the minor antics and everyday lives of all the humans and youkai you’ve hopefully come to know and love. This is the slice of life-inflected version of Gensokyo that’s plenty implied in the games, but that you can’t ever actually experience there because you’re too busy shooting danmaku at every fairy and youkai in sight. The Incidents of each main game happen off-screen, which seems to be a constant with ZUN-written manga. Instead, we’re dealing with the setup and aftermath of larger events, and the girls from the new games will usually get be introduced with a few focus chapters, which is nice. Kasen is a fairly straightforward POV character, even if she’s got plenty of mysterious connections, helping her bridge the gap between the humans and some of the more out-there youkai. But ultimately, the manga’s goal is to follow Reimu and Marisa as they go about their lives, and it’s a joy to witness.

Forbidden Scrollery

I know this manga has its fans (it’s also the only one to be officially published in English), but it didn’t leave nearly as much of an impression on me as Wild and Horned Hermit. They actually ran concurrently for a while! Our insert character this time is a librarian in the human village, so the stories lean towards rumors and legends, though there’s plenty of other youkai schemes afoot as there always are. It’s funny to see which youkai keep showing up in these largely human-centric stories, and it makes sense that it’s Aya and Mamizou, both of whom really like blending in with humans and causing mischief. As far as I can tell, this is the manga that introduced Aya’s plucky newsboy outfit, so I can’t be too hard on it.

you are perfect

The Fairy Bullshit

Makoto Hirasaka has illustrated three separate comedy manga series about the misadventures of the shitty little fairies that live in a tree by Reimu’s shrine. He also did the all the portraits for the spinoff game Fairy Wars! These are breezy, inessential reads, but the artwork really is special. It is canon to me that all of the fairies look this stumpy, and maybe also Marisa.

Marisa exists in the superposition of being both 5'1" and 6'1"

Lotus Eaters

This may well be the definitive Touhou manga. While Wild and Horned Hermit has the privilege of getting to introduce a lot of important characters and lore details as they emerge, Lotus Eaters demands more of a setting understanding up front. But if you’ve got that, it’s like seeing old friends. This is what Touhou has ultimately become to me and so many other people – a framework for these beloved characters to hang out, occasionally get up to some antics, and otherwise take things easy. Every mini-incident in this manga begins and gets wrapped up in two long chapters, which provides a nice narrative rhythm that still manages to feel fairly organic. The new character, Miyoi, is far less of a presence than Keisen was – this is The Reimu Show, and maybe sometimes The Mamizou Show. And isn’t that why we’re here at the end of the day? To check in on the friends and inhabitants of the Hakurei Shrine, especially the times when they're not resolving major incidents. And in that regard, it’s decadent. True to the narrative framing of a supernatural bar, this is Touhou Cheers. Characters are constantly drinking together and running festivals and having a grand old time, and I love it. The manga really does feel true to its name. Coming from Forbidden Scrollery and Hornet Hermit, the artstyle here took a few chapters to get used to, but now I truly adore it. It’s like everyone’s hair has been ruffled just a bit.

There are a few stray series that I didn’t get to, and obviously an endless amount of doujin to chip away at, but I’ve really enjoyed my time in the world of Touhou manga. All of these would probably be uninteresting as standalone works, but as corollaries to the games and the broader Touhou world, they’re fantastic. The games and the print works really round each other out – characters don’t get many lines in the games, and the world of Gensokyo is only broadly sketched out. The manga helps fill in these spaces, making them feel more real and lived-in, while also periodically canonizing popular fan characterizations and extrapolations.

Maybe next year I’ll become a Hifuuhead, but seeing as I’ve already read its greatest cultural export (Otherside Picnic), it doesn’t feel quite as urgent. Adieu.

#12 days of anime #touhou

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simplynims · 1 month ago

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Rating Redacted Audio Characters Based On If I Would Realistically Date them:

This is based on personality compatibility and how realistically I'd be willing to date each character. All of this is lighthearted and just for fun, hope you enjoy!

David Shaw - 4/10 I personally wouldn't date him mostly for the fact our personalitys don't mesh well to begin with. Don't get me wrong he's hot as hell, but realistically I feel like I'm a more sensitive person than him and would get hurt easily by his words especially at the beginning. It's just something I wouldn't like in a relationship unless we're already close like that as friends before we start dating. He seems like a decent friend though that has your back in tough situations

Asher Talbot - 10/10 Yeah I would date him! Definitely someone I see myself dating, he's very charming and funny and I'm a sucker for anyone who can make me laugh so hard I'm absolutely wheezing lol. Realistically, I feel like we could make it work, we have a lot in common and he seems like a good communicator. Although, I'd probably pick up more of the cooking aspect of the relationship.

Milo Greer - 6/10 I wouldn't date him due to two reasons. The first reason is because I'd be too nervous to interact with him. The second reason is because I see him as this really cool person you wanna be friends with but you're just very awestruck by them that you chicken out and end up not interacting. I don't want to date him but I do want his gender and his fashion taste as well.

Vincent Solair - 6/10 He's very hot but I wouldn't date him. Mostly cause we don't have much in common, and also I'd be too intimidated to approach him to begin with. Plus, although the cocky flirty attitude is very attractive, realistically I wouldn't know how to respond to the flirting other than "Thank you, you look nice too!" 😭 But he seems like a good friend and I wouldn't mind hanging out with him.

Sam Collins - 8/10 Yeah I would date Sam! Realistically we'd start off as friends and if things developed I wouldn't mind dating him. He's a good communicator and tells you things straight forward, he's very sweet and someone I could see dating long term. I'd much rather us start off as friends and see where it goes but I'm also completely fine with us just being close friends. He's a nice fella that I'd love to get to know.

Porter Solair - 5/10 I wouldn't date him for a few reasons and one of them being we simply don't have a lot in common. Great for a one night stand but I'm not interested in one night stands. That plus I don't think I'd be able to approach him as he seems pretty intimidating overall.

Alexis Solair - 2/10 She's pretty but genuinely I don't think I'd be able to be near her let alone date her. Even if I did meet her without knowing what she did to Sam, her whole rude and entitled personality would scare me off pretty quickly. Like I said in David's section, I'm a sensitive person and she would probably make me cry.

#redacted audio #redacted fandom #redactedverse #redacted david #redacted asher #redacted milo #redacted vincent #redacted sam #redacted porter #redacted alexis #simplytalks #simplywrites #Part 1? I wanted to add the D.A.M.N characters in here but I got tired

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voxofthevoid · 2 years ago

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your thoughts on the other (popular) yuuji pairings? 👀

How many hours do you have 👀

I love too many Yuuji ships for my own good, honestly. But I'm not much of a multishipper, so everything else comes secondary to goyuu. Buuuut JJK is also the first fandom for which I've liked multiple ships enough to try and write more than just my OTP, so it's safe to say I like these Yuuji ships a hell of a lot.

Putting it under a cut because concision and I are arch-enemies. Also, I don't want to clog up the ship tags with my ramblings, so before you click through, know that this talks about nanayuu, chosoita, itafushi, and sukuita.

Caveat that I've read very, very few JJK fics, so I'll be talking mostly in relation to canon and my own writing.

Here goes, in order of adoration:

Nanami/Yuuji

Their canon dynamic is so good; I love how Yuuji's exuberance contrasts with Nanami's reticence, and more than that, I love how they're both intrinsically kind in a really similar way, even if Nanami's version has been tempered by the harsh realities of their world. Plus, it never gets old just how much Nanami lets Yuuji get away with—I mean, Nanamin, seriously. He protests once and then goes "well, guess I'm Nanamin now." Amazing. Predictably, Shibuya did unholy things to my poor heart. When the "You've got it from here" scene gets animated, I will lose my entire goddamn mind.

That said, I started out liking them platonically, but well, other than vertical incest, there's no relationship dynamic that's safe from my gremlin hands, so I wound up shipping them sooner than later. Specifically, I wrote a goyuu fic with a heavy focus on platonic Nanami&Yuuji and plummeted headfirst into shipping them, so now I've got like three different ideas that's a mix of nanayuu and goyuu. If I don't write at least one of them, someone should punch me.

Chōsō/Yuuji

Listen, brocon just comes very naturally when Chōsō is involved, and it doesn't help that sibling incest with fuckery potential has always lit up my brain (Sam/Dean from SPN, Vash/Knives from Trigun, etc.). What I like about their canon relationship is the...imbalance that's kind of there, especially at the beginning. Chōsō has family revelations after hallucinating one near-death-experience-induced (and Yuuji's NDE at that) picnic scene and is immediately ride or die, while Yuuji's just there going "???" He's treated complete strangers with more delicacy than he affords Chōsō when they're alone in Shibuya, which makes perfect sense given the circumstances and Yuuji's mental state at the time. And even once Yuuji seems to remember his "mum" and realize Chōsō is his brother, there's the distinct sense that Chōsō's attachment is a hell of a lot more intense and more explicitly connected to the blood relation, as opposed to Yuuji's usual warmth to an ally and friend. And that contrast of complete, immediate devotion and cautious, burgeoning affection makes me want to do unholy things to them both.

Which is why Chōsō is currently getting enthusiastically eaten and eaten out by Yuuji in my Word document. It's not even subtle as far as metaphors go.

Megumi/Yuuji

A friend described my thing for this as a "tiny, doting crush," and it's pretty accurate. Canon sells this pretty hard from the get-go, and something that struck me is that, a lot of the time when you have a shonen hero who's dragged into a new world, it's a female character, usually the future love interest/main heroine/first girl, that does it. In JJK, you have Megumi in that role—fun all over. Also, the narrative is highly consistent about highlighting both of their complicated feelings about their involvement in the other's current predicament. Their interactions are also interesting from the beginning, both the lighthearted moments and the heavier stuff. And the manga panel split between a freshly Sukunafied Megumi and a very horrified Yuuji remains one of my favorites.

Thing is, since canon feeds me pretty well in terms of this ship, I don't feel much of an urge to read or write it. I have one(1) idea that's a mix of goyuu+gofushi+itafushi+goitafushi (it's...complicated), but it's pretty low on the priority list.

Sukuna/Yuuji

I'll be frank: I want to like this ship a lot more than I actually do. And that's mostly because Sukuna is a bit hit-and-miss for me. There are parts in the story where I've loved him and parts where I wanted to step on his face—not in the fun way either. And ever since he took over Megumi, I've been in "step on his face" mode. Their canon relationship appeals to me mostly because Sukuna brings out a side of Yuuji that only Mahito has managed, and their scant interactions while sharing a mind and body were pretty interesting. The blend of hostility and humor was nice, and I kind of like that there's pretty much zero chance of it getting resolved like with, say, Kurama and Naruto.

Anyway, I do see a lot of potential in this ship for hate sex, except what I'd like to see is a very specific dynamic that I haven't been able to find—and one that's complicated enough that I'm not sure I could write it either. I might try some day, especially if inspiration strikes.

Thanks for asking, anon ❤

#i love my anons #anon #jjk

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jojohotel · 3 years ago

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Howdy, may I book room 8 for a platonic headcanon with Noriaki and Jotaro(pt.3), please? With a fem reader that loves physical affection a lot, and maybe the others tease them about it. How would they feel about that?

Tysm for everything💚💚

Of course! I really enjoyed writing this piece.

Thank you for requesting! Enjoy your stay.

Jotaro and Kakyoin with a S/O that loves physical affection

Jotaro Kujo

Jotaro isn’t the one for physical affection, at least in public.

The maximum of physical affection he'll give you in public would be an arm around your shoulder, or maybe if you initiate and hold his arm. So yeah, you are not getting a lot of affection.

When in private spaces Jotaro is more physical with you, being less shy about initiating touches, but, even inside a relationship, it would take him a long time to do so and get used to it.

He doesn't like to seem needy or desperate for affection, even if he does enjoy receiving a certain quantity of it.

Jotaro learns a bit about not being so shy and more open about physical touches with you, which is fun since your nature makes such a contrast with him.

So yeah, at the beginning of the relationship there are barely any touches on his part, but with time, he learns with you that there's nothing wrong about liking touching.

The relationship develops, and he's more ok with it.

Jotaro isn't vocal about his feelings or needs, so when he needs physical affection you'll have to initiate or wait until jotaro gets needy and impatient, and he initiates.

Jotaro likes to mess with your hair as a way of affection.

Like said before, even though he does like physical affection, when you start to ask too much of it in public makes him a bit uncomfortable.

When in private, Kujo will give as much affection as you want.

If you are always clinging and holding your boyfriend, the crusaders would mostly tease you about "Why didn't you choose someone more affectionate?" (usually giving Polnareff as an example). Of course, it's all jokes and lighthearted.

When you start physical touches, it is clear to see that he is blushing, even with his hat down.

Whenever Jotaro corresponds to your affection in public (by kissing, holding you, etc), usually Mr. joestar and polnareff say a bunch of aww's. Followed by Jotaro telling them to fuck off.

On days you require physical affection, Jotaro just gives up on trying to look tough. He becomes softer and is more willing to start touches and accept yours. And if anyone talks bad about it, they are about to get ora ora'd

When Jotaro is too embarrassed to give you affection in public, Star Platinum does all the work since no one can see it.

Noriaki Kakyoin

I think that Kakyoin is like Jotaro on this subject, but with some differences.

Kakyoin would be more vocal about his needs and initiate touches more often than Jotaro (even though he is always blushing and quite nervous when he initiates them). Besides that, he corresponds to your touches more often.

Also, he doesn't mind PDA as much as Jotaro does, but at some point, it does make him uncomfortable, small kisses, hugs, hand-holding, having an arm wrapped around their partner, and things like that, Kakyoin is ok with.

Much like Jotaro, it would take him some time to get used to affection. He does like it. It's just that he never really entered into a relationship, especially one where his partner is so touchy.

At the beginning of the relationship, kakyoin would be scared about making you uncomfortable with his touching, but as soon as he saw how much you like physical affection, he would relax.

He likes to surprise you by hugging you from the back, in private or in public.

He also likes when you two go out and you hold him by his arm.

In private, Kakyoin gets quite clingy, so that's usually the moment you get most affection, kissing, hugging, cuddling, holding each other with no restrictions.

The crusaders (a.k.a Mr. joestar and Polnareff) usually tease the boy by saying things about how "who would say the shy Kakyoin would be so touchy"

#jjba headcanons #jjba x reader #kakyoin headcanons #jotaro headcanons #jotaro x reader #kakyoin x reader #hotel.service.com #hotel.jotaro.com #hotel.kakyoin.com

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seasteading · 3 years ago

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so you're missing a plot

over the course of my 3+ years on writeblr and some time on writing twitter, i’ve noticed that a lot of people can come up with characters and worldbuilding, but then get stuck on creating a compelling plot around those characters. so, here are a few tips that have helped me, and that i hope will help you too!

note: this will apply mostly to fantasy and sci fi, since that's what i write and what tends to have more plot-heavy storylines.

these are also all my opinions! you don’t have to listen to any of this—all of these are tips that i’ve used in my own experience, and what works for me won’t necessarily work for you.

tone

this is one of the first things you want to decide. even within the same genre, you’re going to have a lot of variety in tone and atmosphere. the kind of plot that works for a fun fantasy adventure romp might feel odd and out of place for a darker fantasy with an emphasis on political intrigue. to figure out what kind of tone works best for your wip in particular, you want to look back at your characters. writing is a massive investment of time and energy, so you want to go in a direction that’s actually interesting to you. this is the very first step, and will help you decide what direction you end up going, and will most importantly give you a hint towards what ending will best suit the story you’re trying to tell. if you go with a more lighthearted tone, then suddenly having a tragic ending won’t make any sense since it’s the equivalent of a bait-and-switch. the same applies for having a darker tone—a happily ever after where everyone lives and gets therapy won’t necessarily fit.

worldbuilding

worldbuilding is important of course, but it doesn’t need to be completely developed before you start coming up with a plot. in fact, you should try to avoid dumping all of your time into worldbuilding, and instead get the basics down before moving onto the plot. i’m sorry to say it, but you’re not tolkien. you will never be tolkien, and you don’t have to aspire to be like him either. you don’t want to write yourself into a plothole because something in your worldbuilding ends up conflicting with the story, so generally it’s good to have a little bit of wiggle room. sometimes you also run into a situation where the plot itself inspires an important piece of worldbuilding that makes the story richer and more interesting. your worldbuilding is there to enrich your plot and inform your character motivations, not the other way around. however, you do want to establish any rules your world has before getting into the plot, since breaking them can itself become a driving factor in characters and their arcs. this is especially common in fantasy, where a frequent premise lies in the fact that everybody can’t use magic while the protagonist can, or the other way around. this isn’t a plot quite yet, but it can be a good starting point.

character driven vs. plot driven

you will also need to decide the main focus of your story. character-driven writing is common in literary fiction and shorter works, and it’s focused specifically on the internal conflict within characters, as well as their thoughts and personal arcs. few external events are going to happen in character-driven stories, which tend towards more towards slice-of-life where not much really happens but you’re still invested due to the characters. plot-driven writing puts emphasis on (you guessed it!) the plot, and this is a lot more common for longer works. the two can and do certainly overlap, but most works tend to lean a bit more one way or the other, and you can determine this by asking whether you’re more interested in the characters as people or in what happens to them.

motivation

so now that you have an idea of the direction you want to go, how do you actually come up with your plot? no matter if your story is character driven or plot driven, you still need compelling characters, and one way to find your plot is to look at their motivations. every one of your characters should have something they want to achieve or to obtain. your character’s want is going to be their main driving motivation. something is wrong in their life—if it wasn’t, then you wouldn’t be writing this story—and they think that obtaining what they want will fix it. this can be a macguffin-style quest for an object/place/person, the desire to climb the social ladder, solving the mystery behind a disappearance, etc. at this point, i would recommend taking a look at media with similar character motivations to yours and dissecting them to see what works and what doesn’t. you want to be genre-savvy and know what tropes are common to the type of story you’re telling.

gay is not a plot

repeat after me. gay is not a plot. gay is not a plot. gay is not a plot. there should be something to your wip’s plot other than “they’re gay, what more do you need?” (see this post). a romance isn’t going to be interesting if the characters aren’t interesting on their own, and that requires them to actually have their own motivations which (see motivation) themselves create the basis for a plot! in that same vein, having representation shouldn’t function as your plot or your primary selling point. representation should be a given, and making that the only descriptor for your work essentially boils down your characters to just their marginalization.

retellings

i know retellings of fairytales, myths, and shakespeare’s plays have gotten really popular, especially as of late. retellings are a great starting point since they already give you a base off which to work with, and instead of having to come up with all of your concepts from scratch, it becomes a question of putting your own spin on them. these tend to require some knowledge of the genre and common tropes, which you should have regardless of whether you’re writing a retelling or not. here, instead of having characters and a world first and a plot second, you’re working backwards from an existing work to reinterpret the characters and world surrounding a common plot. the important thing to note is that just because you have a starting point doesn’t mean that your work is done—i’d recommend researching other variations of the story you’re retelling and cataloguing similarities and differences, what works and what doesn’t, and moving things around/restructuring them depending on the changes you yourself want to make in your retelling.

prompts

i actually wouldn’t recommend relying on generators and prompt lists for your plots, since they tend to be extremely vague and difficult to get invested in, since you weren’t the one to come up with them. prompts can be really good for sparking inspiration, though, and once you get an idea for a few scenes, you can build off of them to figure out what circumstances lead to each one and what the pivot points are. prompts are a useful tool, but shouldn’t be used as the basis for your entire story.

final thoughts

if you’re here that means you’ve made it to the end of this behemoth of a post, and hopefully something here was helpful! at this point you should be able to find a premise, but it’s important to note that a premise is not a plot. here is where the real work begins—interweaving your characters and worldbuilding with your storyline, figuring out if there are any holes in your cast or if there are a few darlings you need to cryogenically freeze for now. you don’t need to fill in all of your plotholes; that’s a problem for when you actually have a draft down and more material to work with. for now, focus on creating a storyline that’s interesting to you. most importantly, don’t try to force it. you don’t want to treat a plot as a trope checklist, but instead let it come naturally so it actually fits the story your characters are made to tell.

#long post #anyway #r.writing #writeblr #writeblr advice #again take all of this with a grain of salt AHSDFKJLHASF

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arvandus · 4 years ago

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Congrats on 750. May i have Aizawa and/or Hizashi(Present Mic) headcanons?

Of course! I’m gonna go with Hizashi because I haven’t written for him before, so I think it’d be fun. :)

Hizashi x Reader (SFW & NSFW)

SFW:

🎵 Not one to shy away from his feelings; as soon as he realizes he’s crushin’ on you, he will immediately start courting you. Flirting with you at your desk, asking you out on dates, buying you little gifts, and surprising you with lunch.

🎵 Loves to take you out on fun dates. Carnivals, open-mic nights (ha ha), obscure/indie music performances at hole-in-the-wall dive bars… he’s very into the arts and loves having someone to explore them with. Not so big on the nature activities though… this man is a city guy 100%.

🎵 However, that doesn’t mean he can’t also have the occasional stay-at-home-and-veg date, either! He works a LOT, so there will be times that he’ll be tired and not want to go anywhere. His has a huge social battery though, so it’d take time for it to get to that point. And once he’s recharged, he’s back out on the town.

🎵 Favorite home activities would be watching movies with you (preferably something lighthearted) or one-on-one game nights. Will also sometimes just lounge on the couch, making up songs to make you smile. Maybe they’re sappy love songs. Maybe they’re funny songs with toilet humor lyrics. Either way, fiddling with his guitar is an excellent way for him to relax.

🎵 Loves to dote on you. Nothing makes him happier than seeing your face smile at him when he does something nice for you. He’d definitely be the type to leave little love notes on your desk and to send you random silly pictures of himself or of memes that he knows you’d enjoy.

🎵 Enjoys annoying you with silly nicknames. It’ll start off somewhat normal at first. “cutie pie,” “sweet cheeks,” etc. But it’ll just get worse and worse. “Boo,” “cuddle cakes,” “muffin,” “Sugar-baby-honey-love.” He loves when you glare at him and roll your eyes. Beware if you try to do the same to him… it’ll turn into a never-ending game of who can come up with a worse nickname for the other.

🎵 This man loves praise, both giving and receiving. It’s so validating for him. Not just because of the attention aspect, but because he desperately wants to make you happy. The surest way for him to know that he does, is for you to tell him so.

🎵 He strongly values open communication. If there’s an issue, he wants you to be able to tell him about it. He’ll do his best to work through whatever problem you two might be having.

🎵 If his extroversion and companionship starts to become too much for you, you can always tell him so. After all, his best friend is introverted, so he’s used to it. He’ll miss you, but he won’t take offense. Just make sure you reciprocate by showering him in appreciation once you’ve recharged your own batteries.

🎵 Is 1000% committed to you. Loyalty and honesty will never ever be an issue with him.

🎵 That doesn’t mean that he’ll dump all of his past trauma and stuff onto you right away, though. If anything, he might refrain from bringing up topics about himself that might be upsetting. It’s not that he doesn’t trust you with them or anything. It’s that he doesn’t want to make you feel sad, especially over things in the past that can’t be changed.

🎵 If you ask him about his past though, he’ll answer honestly. And when he’s able to open up and talk to you about it, it’ll leave him feeling relieved and so much closer to you.

🎵 I definitely see Hizashi as the type to say he wants kids, whether his own or adopted, even though he’s around them 24/7. But it’s something that’s always “in the future” for him, since he’s still enjoying his artistry, his friends, and his job.

🎵 If he ever does become a parent, he’d be such a fun dad. But he’d also be a complete sucker for his kid(s). They’d have him wrapped around his little finger. You’ll probably have to be the responsible one most of the time (unless it’s something very serious, of course.. he’ll know when to put his foot down).

🎵 If you don’t want kids, that’s okay too. Hizashi is all about flexibility and going with the flow. As a teacher, he understands the level of responsibility that comes with children and would never ever pressure his partner into it if they didn’t want it. If anything, he’d have a lot of respect for you because you’re honest and you’ve thought heavily about it. Besides, there’s plenty of other things that can be enjoyed in life that don’t involve kids. And the most important thing to him is that he’s able to do those things with you.

🎵 Would be open to a polyamorous relationship, but he’d be very responsible about it - there’d be a lot of talking and hashing out important details, like ensuring that trust is established as well as important ground rules. And once you’re in one with him, the communication wouldn’t stop. He’d always make sure to check in from time to time, and make sure that everyone is happy and getting their needs met (including himself).

NSFW:

🎵 Hizashi has zero problems with PDA (as long as you’re okay with it, of course). That won’t be limited to just kisses and hugs, though… He will thoroughly enjoy grabbing a handful of your ass and whisper dirty secrets in your ear before giving your earlobe a small nibble. He’ll be sneaky, about it though, doing these dark little deeds when no one is looking and watch as you try to save face when the other person turns back around. LOVES to see you get flustered.

🎵 He’d be a very sweet lover. He’d whisper sweet praise in your ears, cover your body in kisses. He’d be a gentleman, making sure you’re feeling your best from start to finish. 100% will always make sure you finish before he does. He will straight up worship you.

🎵 He LOVES giving oral. LOVES. IT. If you let him go down there, you better buckle up and make sure your schedule is cleared for the next few hours. He literally wants to live between your thighs. And dear GOD is he good at what he does.

🎵 Favorite position is when you ride him, preferably facing him so he can see your face. It’ll start with him leaning back against the pillows, one arm propped behind his head while the other hand rests on your waist. He likes giving you the reins, watching you work yourself on his long cock. He’ll have the most languid, serene smile on his face, his eyes drinking you in. Seeing you enjoy yourself so much only riles him up more, and at some point he’ll forgo his relaxed posture in favor of placing both hands on the meat of your hips, guiding you up and down on his hard cock. When you’re both close to unraveling, the tension wound and ready to snap, he’ll sit up from his pillows and wrap an arm around your waist and begin pounding up into you as his other arm keeps him propped up on the mattress. He’ll definitely take your nipple in his mouth during this final sprint and will cum with a groan, his breath hot against your skin.

🎵 Afterwards…? So much aftercare! There will be cuddles, pets, massages… he’ll sing to you softly, the tenor of his voice vibrating against your ear as you rest your head on his chest and his fingers stroke your hair. If it’s a particularly long session, he’ll bring you a platter of snacks and something to drink. If it’s a particularly messy session, there will be a bubble bath together (and don’t you dare doubt that he’ll have a bathtub big enough for the both of you!).

🎵 He’s definitely got a mischievous, kinky side. He’d enjoy sex in public places. Bathrooms, dressing rooms, empty hallways, stairwells… places that are mostly private but still have a risk of getting caught.

🎵 Will totally buy you lingerie to wear for him; or better yet, take you shopping (and find a way to secretly join you in the fitting room….)

🎵 Definitely has switch energy. Would enjoy being blindfolded and teased. Can absolutely be reduced to a begging, whimpering mess if you want him to be.

🎵 He trusts you completely to take care of him just as he takes care of you.

🎵 Your sex life with Hizashi will never be boring.

#Arv's 750 Followers Event #Hizashi x reader #Hizashi yamada x reader #Hizashi x reader hcs #Hizashi x reader headcanons #Present Mic x reader #present mic x reader hcs #present mic x reader headcanons #Hizashi smut #Hizashi fluff

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connan-l · 3 years ago

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I finished Seventh Lair!! (okay technically I finished it a month ago but only got to finish writing this now so shut up) And, all right, that was… something. I liked it! More than I thought, in fact, which was… surprising to me in a way, as I wasn’t expecting anything out of it.

I had briefly played Mujou no Erasmus where the whole story mostly… just left me confused and I really wasn’t into it lol, so while I was curious about Seventh Lair I still didn’t have much interest in it. But ultimately I did enjoy it, certainly much more than Erasmus, and in fact even got pretty invested in it and in its characters at times.

It’s obviously not FataMoru, and… it’s nothing particularly impressive either; if it weren’t related to Fata or written by Novect I don’t think I would have given it any attention. But it’s fine and simple, kind of cute and kind of interesting at times, a little silly at others -- and, for something that was originally a short and free April fool’s game with reused characters, it still manage to be its own solid little story with a few compelling bits. So if you love Novect’s works and is curious about it, then sure, go ahead.

(Small rant time but : I REALLY wish there’d been a more visible and detailed trigger warning somewhere about the suicide and graphic CG. I HAD been spoiled about the game tackling suicide and getting dark, but I was just Not expecting that graphic CG to pop up and it almost triggered a panic attack for me (I’m a horror fan and tend to be okay generally with all sorts of gruesome content but you know, sometimes a warning’s still nice). Yes there IS a short warning for self-harm/suicide on Steam’s page of the game, but it’s kind of vague, not very visible and not how the game was presented in bigger social media space like Twitter; plus there’s a difference between saying ‘this tackle the topic of suicide’ and ‘this game features a graphic CG of someone committing suicide with a graphic description of how he did it’ so… yeah, it would’ve been great to have some kind of more thorough content warning beforehand.)

Aaanyway, spoilers under the cut, because for as much as I said it was a fairly simple story I still ended up having lots of thoughts lol (and warning for discussions of all of the heavy topics the game includes, especially suicide and transphobia):

The best aspects of the game to me was all in all: the way it dealt with online relationships, the entire musing regarding creators/developers and handling of suicide (with some caveats but I’ll come back to it later), Michel’s psychee and his developing relationships, and Iméon. I LOVE Iméon. I mean I always love Iméon but here he was literally my favorite character lol.

I’m actually someone who enjoy a lot of isekai-harem-ish animanga, even the ones who can be bad, so the concept of ‘real nerds find themselves trapped in a video game’ was more than familiar to me; but the spin they put on it, about it being the literal creator of the game who get himself imprisoned in it, was actually pretty fun and... not something I see often, so it also felt pretty fresh to me. The comedy at the beginning was effective as well as I actually chuckled out loud a few times (which was surprising to me because comedy certainly wasn’t Fata’s forte), and even the tonal shift was… decently handled. I imagine it probably won’t be the case for everyone and I can see some people struggling a bit with it, but I felt the way they progressively lulled you in with lighthearted humor before hitting you with the drama and tragedy was done okay, if maybe a little jarring. The music was really good too! There are many catchy and memorable pieces, which is again pretty impressive they took the time for this for a free and short game.

But well all this asides what really stuck out to me the most was the… relatability of the themes and narrative as a whole. Like, listen, I’m a depressed nerd in my twenties who struggle to keep a steady job and is a small creator in my own right (although mostly only in transformative work but still) who probably spend way too much time online so YEAH of course a story like that was going to hit close to home on some level lmao. For one, I really love the way it portrayed online relationships in a way that felt pretty... genuine? One my fave parts of the game was definitely the attached website they made where you can read all the forums conversations (which I checked before actually playing the game) and I was like, lol yeah, it does truly feel like real exchanges I’ve had myself on there. Nellie was the most touching character on that topic to me, probably because even if I’ve never lied or literally created another internet persona she was very similar to how I was as a young teen online, and so a lot of her interactions and friendships with the others and especially with Michel were quite affecting (I especially loved the scene of him telling her it was fine even if she couldn’t make friends her own age at school when she was able to already make other friends online...) And all the authenticity and nuances in Iméon and Michel’s friendship as well... It’s great that they were actually able to represent as much of the bad sides of online friendships as the good — the way that yes, you can definitely create very genuine and deep bonds even with people you’ve never meet in real life or even know their real names and that they can be just as meaningful as real life friendships, but that there’s still some kind of wall between you that might lead to actively makes assumptions about others or dehumanize them, which can sometimes lead to very awful consequences like what happened here with Michel’s story. Iméon’s guilt in the epilogue about how if he’d tried to reach out to Michel more or meet him in real life then maybe he could’ve prevented his death, but that he was too scared to try, felt very real and broke my heart.

The way it explored creators/developers and their relationship with both their creations and their audience was done well too and I enjoyed a lot of the conversations it brought in, be it in Michel’s own musing and experience (the way he first started working in a big company, but then stopped because of the restraints and thought he could be more creative in the indie world but then still found himself struggling to get well-known or make original content… ooff) or with Iméon and Michel’s arguments. Shortly before the game was released on Steam, Keika Hanada actually tweeted about how Seventh Lair was one of his most favorite works and how he was anxious about how it would be received, even moreso than FataMoru, and I think I can understand why better now because… there’s definitely something that feel very intimate in a lot of this game’s writing. Now I don’t know Hanada or what he had in mind while writing this VN, but given he is literally an indie game developer himself it did seems natural to me there was a lot of heart and maybe personal experience in this that felt very genuine and sincere, and I’m speaking for myself here but I think that’s definitely something a lot of creators will resonate with. That’s probably the most interesting angle of this game in a lot of ways, to be honest.

(Also a small random thing I appreciated was Michel asking Giselle why she bothered typing out all these thoughts about his games because it takes a lot of time and effort to gather your thoughts and express them like that. I’m saying this cause as someone who does spend a lot of time typing out my thoughts on various media I really love seeing this acknowledged haha (Writing this post for instance was genuinely a struggle for me lol))

And then there’s the… entire suicide theme. So, I always tend to be... really critical of stories that broach up suicide as a focus, not only because well, I’m someone who’s had first hand experience with it, but also because much like abuse or mental illness it’s a hard topic to handle in general. It can be pretty difficult to find a just balance between not coming off as an easy simplistic “suicide is bad :( You shouldn’t kill yourself, live your life to the fullest, people will miss you :)” morale in a way that often completely disregard and downplay the very nuanced and different socioeconomic circumstances, mental illnesses and traumas that push people into this kind of extreme actions, and at the same time not depicting a bleak and exploitative “well that’s just how it is with those people, no way to save them, maybe death’s better for them” and... Seventh Lair wasn’t entirely perfect with it (not that there’s ever a way to tackle something like this ‘perfectly’ anyway), but to me at least it actually was… sort of able to juggle between the two extremities in a manner that is nuanced and, more importantly, compassionate, with how it presented different experiences and reasons that might lead people to killing themselves.

They took some very harrowing experiences someone might get through like grief with Michel, transphobia with Iméon or bullying with Nellie, but the one that stuck out to me the most was actually Jacopo, because of the genuine way he just admit there was “no real reason” he considered suicide, just that he felt like he couldn’t keep up with life and had nothing else going on. I just liked the acknowledgment that sometimes people don’t have a very specific reason for committing suicide or it being the consequences of a particular traumatic incident like being abused or losing someone; sometimes it’s just the result of a chain of simple events or of a depression that’s too big to bear — and, more importantly, that he’s still treated with as much compassion and humanity as the others. On that sense, I also appreciate the game seems to makes a point in saying that even when suicide might be a consequence of something specific, more than that it’s also often a product of the person’s environment and of the way they’re isolated and lacking a solid support system that can lead them to do this, which was the case for each of the characters here. There’s just a lot of media that simplify the issue as: they kill themselves because something bad/traumatic happened to them, when in reality it’s rarely a single particular event but everything surrounding it and then the inability to cope with it that causes the killing.

Related to this, one thing I also found interesting was the reveal of Michel’s suicide and the intent behind it; so there seemed to be a bit of supernatural mixed in with how just his Bad Emotions would trigger the others’ suicides, but I thought it was really percuting in how it echoes the concept of ‘suicide contagion’; how exposing suicidal people to graphic suicide imageries and in-depth methods of preparations can possibly lead to furthering suicidal urges and pushing them to execute it. I remember there was this whole controversy about it surrounding the show’s Thirteen Reasons Why with the depiction of the main girl’s suicide for instance, and I just thought it was effective when you consider Michel’s suicide that way given it heavily reflect this. Now, in that sense maybe actually showing a very graphic CG of him stabbing his wrist along with a graphic description lessen a bit the meaning of it as a result — I think it would’ve worked better if they’d stayed vague, the impact of the scene would’ve been just as shocking and more meaningful. Though, yeah, overall I think some aspects of this could’ve been more explored at times, but in the end it did the most of what’s important to me when you tackles suicide, and the part it did well felt satisfying.

The plot as a whole was kind of simple, and the first part of it feel a bit too meandering without a cohesive purpose, but it worked fine that way; I liked the structure of alternating between between what happened in the game and Michel’s past, all while trying to unravel the cause of the game little by little. The entire last part of the story felt pretty rushed though; from the moment they learn the truth about Nellie and Mell up until the final. They took their time at the start, but at the end they suddenly throw at you Nellie’s issues, then Jacopo’s issues then Iméon’s issues and than we learn the truth about Michel all at once without taking the time to breath. I wish we’d gotten more introspective on Nellie, Jacopo and Iméon’s characters as well? I don’t see why YUKIMASA get to have an entire part in his POV but these two doesn’t… Iméon at least gets the epilogue and that short story I guess but still.

The characters is a fun topic though because... like, let’s be real, it is a bit difficult to judge them on their own merits as a result of how they do feel like the characters we know from Fata. Obviously besides some similarities they’re pretty different people in a lot of ways, but they still bear the same faces and names and some personality traits as their original Fata counterparts, which is, I think, both a bad and good thing. ‘Good’ in the sense that us knowing and in a way expecting them to acts like their Fata counterparts made some twists works well — like with Mell, for instance, where of course we’re not going to question whenever Mell starts acting cowardly or won’t support his sister when she needs it because, well, that’s how Mell is in Fata; but nope, in reality it’s just he’s not even a real person at all lmao. Or us not suspecting Iméon’s true identity because of his appearance and him saying things very similar to what Maria said in Door 8 like ‘not being a princess,’ but then obviously their reasons for saying this are radically different. However it also means that an audience who have played FataMoru first will instinctively expect and transfer what they know of their FataMoru counterparts onto these characters, even when they’re distinct people with distinct roles; I admit I probably wouldn’t have cared as much for instance about Michel and Giselle in Seventh Lair if I wasn’t already attached to them from FataMoru. So it does makes me wonder what the story would’ve been like if they’d actually designed completely new characters without them being related to Fata and if maybe it would’ve been better, and I remember thinking the same thing about Erasmus too. (Actually, I wonder what it would like for someone to play Seventh Lair and Erasmus before FataMoru lol, it would be quite an experience.)

All that asides, I did like most of the cast. This Michel’s a good and interesting protagonist — similarly to FataMoru!Michel, outside from him being an awkward nerd, I love the way he can often be very defeatist and petty and kind of an asshole, but that you can still believe he’s a nice dude at heart; Hanada is definitely great at writing this type of characters who can be genuinely good people at heart but end up self-destructing, causing harm and hurting others as a result of their own pain or unresolved issues. As I said earlier, the way his relationship to his games are developed throughout and how he switches between being kind of pretentious about it to super self-loathing is really neat. What’s interesting with him too is that, his backstory with Giselle asides, unlike Fata!Michel it doesn’t seem like he got any kind of bad childhood or trauma. He’s not close to his family, but he doesn’t seem to have a bad relationship with them either (I kind of wish they’d developed a bit more his family though. It surprised me when he mentioned he had a brother and a sister; I was like ‘wow is Georges a woman in here?’ Or does he just have siblings completely unrelated to Fata? Or maybe it’s even just a translation thing, who knows), and the way his arc revolve into getting to know and sympathize with the people he otherwise pretty much dehumanized and almost killed was effective; just like the best parts of Door 8, it was really nice seeing him interact with each of the cast. (It also… doesn’t seem like this Michel is trans/intersex, right? I mean I guess you could read him as such, but I feel if he was it would’ve come up at some point; especially given Iméon’s storyline, it wouldn’t make sense to keep it as being Not Explicit? Though I admit cis Michel is kind of an odd idea to wrap my mind around lol — that’s also a bit part of the issue with using preexisting characters as models instead of entirely new ones.)

The rest of the cast was good too; I got pretty endeared to Nellie and Jacopo. I mentioned Nellie before but she was instantly likable to me, and I like the twist of Mell being another persona she created, especially with her using it as a way to cover up her meaner streak (and it is very compelling to have a version of Nellie who doesn’t have that codependent relationship to her brother and actively get to live on her own without him). I liked this Jacopo as well, but admittedly except with his storyline regarding suicide he still felt like the less interesting character of the bunch to me… I mostly liked him in his interactions with others, he was pretty fun in this lol. And oh yeah there’s Yukimasa being Yukimasa ssfsdff. Like okay, Yukimasa was just super hilarious to me as always (did they really went with the guy being a serial killer who DECAPITATE his victims?? and killed A BABY at the age 12?? I’m sdsfdsfds. That guy is the funniest FataMoru character, I just can’t with him) but his whole arc left me… super dubitative lmao. It just legit left me wondering ‘okay… what was the point of this exactly in the end?’ I guess I can see them making a parallel with Michel’s attempt at… ‘indirect’ serial murder in the end, but even so his story felt pretty goofy and in the end his and Pauline’s presence were very annedoctic, the others even barely mention them at all after his sacrifice; even in the epilogue we got one line that’s like ‘oh yeah and these 2 died as well I guess but anyway’ lol. I kind of feel maybe scrapping him off from the game completely and instead focus more on the characters you already have would have been better, they didn’t need that big of a cast to start with. Honestly, I’m just biter that Yukimasa got to have an entire part in his POV while Nellie and Jacopo didn’t; I would’ve been much more interested in seeing their backstory and psychee explored much more than this guy orz. (It was notable though that the narrative specifically precise here Yukimasa was in love with Pauline, given the original Fata went out of its way to mention that he was not. Which honestly I find less interesting; I thought Fata!Yukimasa not being in love with her was actually very refreshing and compelling in a lot of way, so I’m not fond of them doing otherwise here. Not that they do much with it in the end either way.)

NOW Iméon. So I already said it but Iméon was definitely my personal favorite in this game; I just, well, I really love him as a person but I also really love the way his character was written and presented to us… The way how we only get to know him through his chats with Michel in the first part of the game, giving him a very palpable presence throughout the story right from the start even without knowing anything else about him, and his actual proper introduction as the ‘princess’ (which, ooff) until the last part where his identity was revealed was just really nicely executed, and it did so in conveying so much about him as a person. Everything about Seventh Lair!Iméon’s character seems conflicted, be it as a creator and his feelings on games, his feelings about himself and his identity, his feelings for Giselle and then for Michel… And of course I also really loved his friendship with Michel; even without the added context of Assento dele, there was something just so genuine and complicit between them and the way you can instantly feel that they’re very close and care a lot about each other, but also that there’s some tension in their friendship and a struggle to be properly open with the other.

I actually will even say that to me, their friendship felt like the heart of Seventh Lair even moreso than Michel and Giselle’s romance (I actually have issues with Giselle and Michel but I’ll come back to it); they really encapsulate so much of the overall story’s theme about creators and games and relationships, and the fact that the epilogue ends from Iméon’s point of view at Michel’s funerals just really cements this to me. Now, on that sense, I really wish we had… more of a conclusion on their friendship? Because I didn’t feel really satisfied by the brief exchange they had at the end, and it didn’t seems like they really cleared up or had the time to clear up everything left in their air between them — especially the reveal about Iméon being Giselle’s friend for whom he also had feelings should feel like a bigger thing with more time spent on, rather than it just being thrown at the very end; we really barely saw Michel reacts to it. I also wanted to see more exchanges and development between Iméon and the others, as well as with his relationship with Giselle (yeah we got that short story afterwards but, I don’t know, it felt pretty unsatisfying to me?). Oh well. Anyway, in my head Seventh Lair!Giselle also had feelings for Immy and they’re all living happily as a OT3 somewhere in a parallel universe.

And so on the other obvious topic about Iméon: I actually already knew beforehand that he was a trans man in Seventh Lair, because a mutual of mine who’d played the game in Japanese had told me, so it wasn’t a surprise lol. I WAS surprised though when they used Maria’s sprite to represent him (and it did felt kind of confusing for a while lmao), even if thinking back on it yeah, it must makes sense given the game was released in 2013 iirc, and at the time Assento dele hadn’t been out, so even if they’d conceptualized Iméon’s character in Fata from the start they probably didn’t have a proper sprite/design for him just yet. Now, confusion asides I do think this actually add an interesting layer to Iméon’s character and his trans storyline to have Maria’s appearance; Iméon in Assento dele is described as being very androgynous, to the point where it’s very easy for Michel to believe they are a man without second thought. Maria, on the other hand, even with her very short hair (and even without the sexy skimpy outfit) has a traditionally feminine appearance — which is important to Iméon in this story given him not being able to ‘‘pass’’ properly as a man is very emblematic of his struggle, and I think that’s a very interesting thing to tackle especially when you put him in comparison to Michel’s trans narrative from FataMoru. One thing with Fata!Michel’s story is that after puberty, even with his very long hair and being described as slender/’weak’, he actually has not much issue passing as a ‘traditional’ man even without any proper transition or surgery (which would’ve been complicated in the middle ages anyway lol); no one in the story question his gender when they first meet him, be it Giselle (even when he actively tell her he is a ‘witch’) the villagers or anyone in Door 8, and even Georges at some point said something like how ‘it’d be hard to treat him as a girl with that appearance’ ; in other words, for anyone who hasn’t known him as a child and who doesn’t know about his body, and even despite Michel struggling with gender dysphoria and often wishing he could be more ‘masculine’, he can still pass pretty easily as a ‘man’ by society’s standards. It’s more complicated for Iméon in Seventh Lair, with Maria’s obvious feminine appearance, who cannot pass as anything but a ‘woman’ and who obviously suffers from that in a more insidious way.

It is also interesting to compare those two trans masculine narratives with the way they’re developed and resolved — Michel in FataMoru comes out as a man openly shortly after coming to terms with his gender, and only present himself as such to everyone afterwards; he is very adamant about his identity, which he refuses to compromise no matter what he might endures as consequences because of it and there’s a lot of emphasis about him wanting to live true to himself, which, in the true end, he gets to have and live happily as such, even if it’s via reincarnation; Iméon in Seventh Lair, on the other hand, while also being certain of his gender identity is still trapped in his old one because of how he doesn’t feel able to either have enough money to help him ‘properly’ transition or just the fact that coming out would likely means losing his entire or most of his current life, and the ending also doesn’t say anything about him openly coming out or living his ‘true’ life as a man or anything like that. What is both compelling and really moving to me about it is that, well, the fact it takes the time to acknowledge this kind of issue at all which is obviously something a lot of trans people faces unfortunately, but also the fact it never seems… ‘judgmental’ in Iméon’s choice, if that makes sense? Even if obviously he is unhappy with his situation to the point of furthering suicidal urges, throughout and by the end of the story there’s no emphasis on him having to comes out or how he ‘doesn’t live true to himself’ (unlike, say, Fata!Michel) – and that reminded me of how not long ago I read a post about how it was nice the show Heartstopper was very clear in showing that being closeted isn’t a bad thing or being a coward/liar or a burden (I haven’t seen Heartstopper so I cannot personnally comment on it though), and how this… can actually be surprisingly rare in queer stories — at least in more ‘popular/mainstream’ ones, I’m sure there are a lot of gay/trans authors who’ve tackled the topic in more niche stories before — but that was similar to how I felt here in Iméon’s case, that there was a genuine kindness and understanding in acknowledging this awful situation he’s stuck in which can lead to terrible consequences like suicide, all while the story being very considerate to not… treat it like something insurmountable, that of course it completely makes sense for Iméon to want to stay closeted and not risk losing his job and social circle and, especially, that it doesn’t mean he cannot find other meaning to be himself in other ways — and that’s where highlighting just how important Iméon’s online persona where he could be himself so unabashedly was to him, as well as in the epilogue where he hints at creating future video games where he could express himself in this way, even if he can’t do it in real life. And I dunno, it was just one small aspect of his character that was very touching to me personally (Mind you, I’m not saying FataMoru doesn’t acknowledge that on some level, as for instance Michel not telling the truth to Giselle about his identity is never portrayed as him ‘deceiving’ her or anything, and the only one who frames it that way is Morgana, all while the way she forcefully out him against his consent has always been framed as a really heinous thing (honestly, this is legit one of Morgana’s most violent act towards Michel and it’s not talked enough if you ask me), but somehow it was made… very clear in a lot of ways in Seventh Lair and… yeah. I loved that.) Anyway, this trans Iméon also made me think back about FataMoru!Iméon and how odd it is that this one is… so far canonically not a trans man? I really wonder what was the writing process behind this character’s writing, and maybe I’ll make a separate post on it later on. One day.

With all of this, I think the game do fumble or leave me very... confused on a few things:

— Giselle. So, I feel I’ll get booed for saying this but, man... Seventh Lair!Giselle was a pretty weak character, and her role in the story as well as her romance with Michel, actively bothered me. Like, all right, they were very cute in a lot of ways, don’t get me wrong, and some of their emotional scenes worked quite well regardless; but the thing is that it… now I don’t like using that term because of how often it can be thrown around undeservedly nowadays, but it pretty much tend to reduce Giselle to a ‘manic pixie dream girl’-type love interest. She’s very sweet and bubbly and cute, barges into the male protagonist’s life out of nowhere and suddenly gives meaning into his life and teach him how to live again — but while Michel gets plenty of inner struggle and complex emotions and development, Giselle doens’t, and we… barely learns anything else about her either. She lives in Lyon, she’s a student, and err… she loves Michel’s games? And books too?? That’s pretty much it. I just kept expecting for them drop something about her and felt suspicious at times, but no, that’s… really all there is to her. We don’t even learn anything about uhh what she’s majoring in or what plans she has for the future or her family or dreams or what; I’m shocked they don’t even dig into why she loves Michel’s games that much? I thought they’d go something about how the House Fairy game really affected her like with Jacopo but… nope. I guess they could’ve gone with her hiding her illness, but no given she learns about it until after she dates Michel, and then she just gets sick and die. If you know me then you must know that I already have some issues with original Giselle’s writing in FataMoru, but at least Fata!Giselle was... you know, an actual person. She had a lot of inner struggles and conflicted, ugly feelings; she’d get angry and frustrated and have breakdowns, had other relationships and objectives and character development. And that’s really wild especially when you compare the two of them, because this ‘manic pixie dream girl’ — type love interest is also how Door 5 Giselle is introduced at first; just as this bubbly, cute young woman, only for the story to actively deviate from the trope and reveals that a lot of her attitude hides so much baggage and that most of her ‘I’m always smiling’/positive attitude stems from her coping mechanism, which I really loved. That, plus the fact in Fata we actually gets POV from her and that Michel at first can’t stand her; in Seventh Lair it just seems like Michel is really idealizing and romanticizing this image he has of Giselle without… truly learning much more about who she truly is as a person? It basically seems like they played straight a trope that they actively deviated from and developed in a nuanced way in FataMoru, which is weird (I felt the same way about The White-Haired Girl in Erasmus too, thinking about it), and thus it makes their romance as a whole appears pretty superficial as well. The only reason why didn’t entirely felt that way is really because it felt like characters we already know and were already attached to; but if Seventh Lair!Michel & Giselle had been entirely new people with different designs... I’m not certain even their emotional moments would have worked that much.

And I admit that just… the whole her getting cancer/terminally ill actually kind of annoyed me. Like, okay, I can understand that the plot does revolve around their tragedy and how it pushes Michel over the edge so you have to kill her off, but there really wasn’t a better/less cliché way to do this? I don’t know, the trope of the terminally ill loved one when played as straight as this and presented in a very unnuanced way just tend to make me roll my eyes or irritates me — maybe it’s because I’ve actually lost family members to cancer in real life, so if you’re going to use it in a story to me you’ll really have to actually, like, deal with the illness and how it affects the person in a complex manner, and I’m sorry to say that it just... wasn’t the case here. It really just felt to me like a cheap drama tool and that only furthered my struggle to get invested both in Giselle as a character and in her romance with Michel. I’ve been thinking back about Silent Hill 2 quite a bit lately too, and (uhhh brief spoilers for the game I guess?) one thing I always liked about it is that while it also uses that trope and that Mary is dead before the events of the story and that we never get any of her perspective, it’s still somehow able to paint her as a whole, flawed person who struggled and coped very badly with the disease and the idea of her future death, often lashing out at her loved ones as a result of this, which was a stark contrast to how she’s first introduced as this sweet, gentle wife who just died tragically through James’ repressed mind — now I’m not saying Seventh Lair should’ve taken the same route of having Michel and Giselle’s relationship deteriorate like it did with James and Mary’s in SH2, or that Giselle should’ve become horrible to Michel towards the end or whatever, but there was something more in that same vein they could have done to properly humanize her instead of just portraying her as taking the illness in tow when we concretely know nothing of how she truly felt about it? The only thing we get anywhere close to this is when she actually breaks down and tell to Michel she doesn’t want to be forgotten, which was a little bit of something compelling, but that’s pretty brief and it never dwell much more than that on it. And it’s actually wild for me to say this because— You know, I’ve seen criticisms leveled at FataMoru that… basically accuses it of being tragedy porn or ‘emotionally manipulative,’ which I disagree with — you can argue it feels a bit heavy on the drama at times, but I think the narrative still does manage to use the horrible things that happens to the characters, Giselle included, in a way that is well done and interesting and, ultimately, humanizing; which, you know, is the opposite of it being ‘tragedy porn’ or using this a cheap tool. So the fact it just wasn’t the case in this story, at least in Seventh Lair!Giselle’s case, is disappointing.

Hey, you know what would’ve been actually interesting to do with Giselle’s character? Have her commit suicide. I mean, I get if she had done that she would’ve ended up, uhh, in hell as well (I�� guess? The whole hell thing wasn’t very clear to me, but more on that later), but at the very least it would’ve, you know, given her some agency in how she chooses to die and it would’ve also tied into the overarching theme of the game regarding suicide. Hell, you know it would’ve actually makes that superficial portrayal of Giselle’s character and her romance actually meaningful — imagine if she had killed herself some time after she and Michel starts dating without any indication as to why. No letter or anything, she seemed just fine, and then she commits suicide — and there’s just no way to truly know for Michel what went wrong. I think it would’ve been a more intriguing twist as to her always-smiling facade hiding something deeper behind, and even added some depth as to how she ended up feeling so connected to the fairy game like Jacopo? It would’ve been more compelling as well when it come to her friendship with Iméon, whether Iméon would know more about the reason behind it or not. I don’t know lol, but I feel they could’ve gone with a route and depiction with more depth that they just didn’t. (…God and after typing all of that I just now realized Giselle was never even part of the forum’s community either orz)

— In that sense, I feel the way the story treated Pauline also felt kind of shitty — pretty much for the same reasons, except worse because she never even concretely appears in the story. Pauline is also a character that I have a few problems with in FataMoru, but at least one thing they did right with her in Door 8 is letting her know the truth about Yukimasa and makes her own decisions regarding their relationship (...well, mostly. I’ll still never like the way they sideline her in Door 8 after they save Michel and that he’s the only one who gets to hear Yukimasa’s full story because of how he thinks she couldn’t handle it somehow?? That felt pretty infantilizing towards her. At least they get to rectify it in Reincarnation for me but— anyway that’s not the topic here lol), which… sure, they kind of do this in the flashback as well, but that doesn’t change the fact she still gets killed while having no say in it before the starts of the story — and while the whole NPC thing was creepy in a cool way, it also means that unlike in FataMoru she never gets to be a proper person on her own except on the forums; she’s literally just a prop to Yukimasa’s story and given she’s literally his victim it felt… really gross. I wish she’d survived and had gotten to be an actual character in the RPG too. (Or, as I said before, just scrap her and Yukimasa from the narrative altogether, but if you keep them then at least make sure to give the TWO of them a proper place.) The others also barely seems to give a damn about her death after the reveal… Plus honestly I would’ve been interested in seeing a story where Pauline actually get to make the choice to live on her own without Yukimasa, much like Nellie that would’ve been interesting.

— I’m... I don’t know what to makes of the ending. It’s like, there are some things that are fine, but… there’s still a lot I have mixed feelings over. I think the whole religious/fantasy aspect was… kind of interesting, if a little silly, but I did like the reference to Dante and the Divine Comedy and the call back to the title. But, at the same time I think I would’ve preferred that the origin of the RPG game was… bit more ‘personal’ ? As in, not with a literal God’s messenger/angel being the source of it (even if the Morgana cameo as literally DETAINED OF GOD was hilarious ngl) but instead it being created from another character we knew… I’m going to bring back Giselle here but I think it… would’ve maybe been more compelling if the culprit had been Giselle lmao. I don’t konw, just give poor Giselle something more to do instead of simply being the Tragic Dead Love Interest. Especially given ultimately we learn that the angel’s intentions were… more-or-less to save everyone, so. Maybe it could’ve come across as a little predictable but it would’ve fit better in a sense.

The other aspect I’m perplex about is Michel’s fate. I kept wondering until the last minute whether or not they were… actually going to, you know, keep him dead or if he would be saved and get another chance at life. But in the end his demise felt… particularly cruel? Like, okay, he technically already killed himself so he can’t come back to life — I think it would’ve been interesting if he had been saved, having him learn how to live again and properly mourn Giselle and getting to know the others even better — but I can also understand keeping him dead but still leaving his legacy with Iméon and the other two, of, in a way, allowing these three to live with his, and on some level Giselle’s, memories (which would’ve been more impactful if, again, Giselle had had more of a presence and been a part of the forum like Pauline? But oh well I’m just repeating myself at this point). I would’ve been fine if it concluded that way. But then they also added the whole thing about him having to go to hell which… meh. I can get the fact that the guy basically tried to commit an ‘indirect’ mass murder which could qualify as hell-worthy, but the story put a focus on him going to hell specifically because of his suicide, so… like yeah, that’s definitely a thing that exist in Christianity; suicide is considered to be a sin and so if you kill yourself you go to hell. But I feel that’s a particularly harsh thing to implant in a story that’s been very compassionate so far about the way it handled suicidal people — to me it just kind of came across as, outside the religious aspect, keeping it in the same morale of the ‘suicidal people are just selfish and should be punished for that’ which felt at odds with what the narrative’s been saying until then. Like at least I like the angel was like ‘yeah me and my buddy God realized that whole going-to-hell-cause-you-kill-yourself doesn’t really work so that’s why we’ve been trying to rehabilitate suicidal people instead’ but if so… why still sends Michel to hell at all after all of this? And I also know the angel said he could still get out one day eventually (only cause he proved himself worthy of it though so errr lol) but ummm I dunno, it still felt weird and a not really good way to conclude his story. The others’ reactions to this seemed a bit tame too… At first I was really expecting them to like, fight the angel on this and point out how that system is pretty fucked up and be able to give Michel the opportunity to move on, but in the end they just gave up pretty quickly. Even Iméon. I was just… I dunno. I don’t have anything against endings that are not uplifting or that are even kind of depressing, but that just didn’t seem to go well with the story’s themes and overall left a sour taste in my mouth, especially when you compare it to FataMoru that had a very good and fitting ending.

The ending feel pretty cruel towards Iméon as well, not only because, well, sure he does survive, but he still lost his two closest friends in all this and there’s also that… Iméon doesn’t really feel like a friend to the other two survivors by the end? Even in the forums it doesn’t seem like he interacted much with the others besides Michel, and because of how late he appears in the RPG we don’t see him really bond with anyone there either. I absolutely could buy the cute friendship between Nellie & Michel & Jacopo, but with Iméon it just… doesn’t work because they never seem to get to share any kinds of bonds, and Iméon in general seemed a bit hostile towards everyone in the game (for good reasons but yeah). And that’s kind of a big problem given the ending really rely on the survivors’ friendship at the end, so while I can see it with Jacopo & Nellie it’s not so much the case with Iméon. And that’s what I mean by it feeling particularly cruel for him, because as a result he’s just his two best friends, escaped a suicide attempt and a pretty harrowing experience and he still doesn’t seem all that close to the ones he could bond with, which instead of making it seems like he at least has a new group of peers he can rely back on it just… makes it seems like he ended up even lonelier (which is super bad for someone suicidal too). I’m sure we can guess he’ll be able to form a deeper bond with Nellie and Jacopo later on especially given what they went through together but I don’t know, I wish they’d spent more time deepening their friendship throughout the story, maybe even make Iméon appears earlier or something. (HE DESERVES BETTER.)

But anyway yeah, that was pretty much all of my thoughts on Seventh Lair, Ithink. Which was actually A LOT for only a 4 hours short game orz. So all in all it was nice, not really something that’s going to stay with me but it has its good and compelling moments. I guess that now it’d be neat to see Erasmus being officially translated as well, even if like I said at the beginning I didn’t really like it.

For now, I’m just glad that Novect seems to finally decide to move on completely from FataMoru and properly starts new things like their new Project M, which is definitely something that I’m looking forward to!

#Seventh Lair #Seventh Coat #Novect #The House in Fata Morgana #FataMoru #Michel Bollinger #This is way too long even for me man #Connan's Ramblings #Connan's Posts #07th Lair #07th Coat

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navegandoaciegas · 4 years ago

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Fic Recommendation list #2

Check out my first list if you’re interested (and 18+)

Some are light, some are dark. Most are smut. Be mindful of the warnings.

Mostly Bucky Barnes. Lee Bodecker and Sam Wilson too.

I hope you all enjoy these as much as I did 🤍

DARK

📌 Twice Bitten | by @cherienymphe Hands down the best fanfiction I’ve ever read, from the plot to the characterization of Bucky and Steve, and every other little detail. I literally felt like I was watching a movie.

📌 Promises | @giorno-plays-piano Dad’s bestfriend is always a huge yes. Poor reader just latches onto him after a string of tragedies. Dark, hot, and surprisingly sweet.

📌 The House of the Rising Sun | @cryptidcasanova The descriptions in this story are so vivid that I could literally feel New Orleans’ humidity on my skin. Cryptid Bucky is mysterious and hot af. 10/10 would give him my name, let him drag me in a swamp and sell him my soul.

Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4

Also check out her Sam Wilson x Reader story: “Love Potion no. 9”. I love the magic atmosphere, and I love dark Sam with all my heart. (Part 2 here)

📌 What You Can’t See | @honeyhan-123 Delusional, obsessed Bucky gets me every time. Suprisingly sweet for a dark fiction. Very accurate description of the conflict between the reader’s mind and body.

📌 Breeding kink | @softboibarnes I love yandere, dark Bucky, especially if he’s scheming and creepy af. Hot smut as always.

📌 The Wrong Idea | @mypoisonedvine I’m slowly becoming a Lee Bodecker hoe: something about chubby Sebastian, probably. Rough yet sweet. The daddy kink is the cherry on top.

📌 Push, Pull, Pressure | @darkficsyouneveraskedfor Another great Lee Bodecker story. Very vivid setting, many asshole men, absolutely irredeemable Lee.

📌 The Thrill of the Kill | @nellblazer Absolutely unhinged, psycho Bucky. Badass reader. The story is written in the first person, so if you’re very much into that, you’ll love it. And even if you’re not, you’ll love it anyways because it’s so good. And creepy af.

📌 кролик | @mariessecretfantasies I love sensory deprivation, and I love this story. You wouldn’t expect the Winter Soldier to be as caring as he is in this one, but he is, and so he gets my heart and...other parts of me.

DARK-ISH?

Not really dark but... just being safe.

📌 some of them want to get used by you | @youtastelikesugar Darkish, brainscrambled Bucky owns my heart and my whole being. I love a good story of obsession, what can I say. Not completely dark because the obsession is reciprocated. The smut is steamy and the ending is sweet.

📌 Voyeurism Drabble (Bucky Barnes x Reader x Steve Rogers) | @sweeterthanthis Hottest smut I’ve ever read. I am a slut for voyeur, dark-ish Bucky, and exhibitionist Steve and reader. Also has a sequel that includes double penetration. I need to lay down a sec and catch my breath just thinking about it.

📌 mutual | @buckycuddlebuddy Yes, I have a problem with voyeurism, and another with creepy Bucky, and I feel no shame. I wish my neighbor was as hot as Bucky, tbh. Very hot if you’re into this kink. Check out Elif’s kinktober masterlist. Many great, steamy stories you’ll love.

LIGHT

📌 The patient in room 212 | @constantwriter85 Very original story, I’ve never personally read anything quite like this in the Bucky fandom. Bucky’s inner monologue is the best thing ever, second only to the amount of pining and fluff.

Also recommended: Where I belong. Short and sweet. Bucky is very good with kids in this, so be prepared. (Pt. 2, 3)

📌 Lose Control | @navybrat817 Words can’t even begin to describe how hot this story is. Possessive Bucky is something else, I swear, and so is the raw, passionate sex he has with the reader.

📌 thoughts and actions | by @ballyhoobarnes Bucky has a stutter and is super shy and the concept itself makes me all soft. This one is my favorite out of her librarian!Bucky masterlist, but you should read all of them!

📌 my sweet girl | by @sunmoonandbucky Heartbreaking but so, so sweet. It’s a story of love and mental illness. I don’t cry easily when it comes to fanfiction but I bawled my eyes out for this one.

📌 Abstract | @suntrastar Moody, broody Bucky is everything. Very fun, lighthearted story. I love the reader too much.

📌 All Good Things | @sagechanoafterdark I have a thing for Ghost!au, and in this one, the ghost...kinds comes back to life. Very interesting story, very original too.

📌 pictures of girls | @subtlebucky Hot and cute at the same time. If Bucky Barnes asked to take my nude photos for a class, I’d say yes. No hesitation. No questions asked.

📌 All of You | @moonbeambucky Heartbreaking but so, so sweet. Bucky is so used to being tossed away like he means nothing that it’s the reaction he always expects. Fluffy, happy ending.

📌 It’ll last longer | @angrythingstarlight If you’re gonna have sex in a photo booth, make sure you have a Steve Rogers with you. Public sex and hot af smut.

📌 Zoom Meeting | @tuiccim In a time where most of us work or study from home, this fic is basically... all of us horny hoes dreams come true.

These amazing authors put a lot of time and effort into writing their stories. Please make sure to reblog and comment on their fics, and show them your appreciation. Reblog this list too so that it can reach as many people as possible. 🤍

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes smut #bucky imagine #marvel fanfiction #bucky barnes fluff #bucky barnes x you #dark!bucky x reader

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borrelia · 3 years ago

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Fuck it. pinnt post of utena amvs i like :)

can i offer you an amv in this trying time? organized and all by “thematically Gets It,” “pretty to look at,” “goofy silly fun,” “editing effects drive me nuts,” and “i just like these” :) tumblr video limit kills me tho so some r just Links 😔

+ warning for the series’ main subject triggers, specifically heavy suggestion of p*philic and inc*tuous abuse

x warning for heavy 90s-style flashing, especially yellow-black, white-black, and red-black. rarely yellow-red-white. no warning for usual amv flashing

* uses clips from the finale, but does not spoil major plot points

** uses clips from the finale and spoils major plot points

You...You Get It

youtube

**+ Learn to Let Go

This gets it... it’s about Anthy.. it’s about her healing.. also it does a great job comparing all the visual parallels throughout the show (of which there r many)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCWAIlk65Sc

**+x Still Feel

Yes yes yes the climax is about all the LITTLE things not the big things! Girl the thematics... its so on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGwSw2nTJ4g

**+x For Your Love

Flashing is brief red-black. A slow video but man.. I have been a snake, I have been a dog, I have crawled on your floor...I’m not real, I’m a doll to play with... girl you get it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygpy3-OAh9U

**+White Houses

The song in this is a lot more lighthearted and childish-sounding, maybe a little melancholic and bittersweet, which imo... matches how the show actually feels to watch (at least the first time). The dramatics are fun but this Feels like rgu to me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQwipIHUEwg

**+xRed Right Hand

Mostly about evil akio moments but I think that its neat it sometimes touches on that idea of “You too, beware... the witch still wanders our world luring in new victims”

This Anime Looks So Cool

youtube

**x+ I'll Find You

I saw this at a con a few years ago before watching the show, and it’s what finally got me to watch it :)

youtube

*+ Overflow

Movie only. “Spoils” the movie but that will mean nothing to you bc its all allegory allegorier allegoriest anyway. The energy she has... so fun :)

youtube

**x Make me Real Again

This and I’ll Find You are very similar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THN3gYKYojs

**x+La Voiture

Depeche mode shifted down a couple notes for an Apocalypse Arc-centered amv... I go nuts and insane and this makes me want to go Fast

Jast A Little Fun :)

youtube

**+x Bet On It

Legitimately so good and thematically on it omg. love you bet on it utena

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl0Avf9ZNRc

xThe Boys In The Ohtori Sports Car

An older amv that gets bonus points for absolute shit SD image quality (affectionate). Literally just Akio Car Compilation

Oughghg Editing...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjIjG4x49H0

**+xTake You There

girl im obsessed. Yesss add those scanlines add that thematically significant VHS corruption distort those colors overlay all these scenes yessss. Big part of the flashing warning is from the editing in this case.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlSKvz8KNKA

Blinding Lights

In love with the beginning of this especially. Very short. Lots of fun FX, very pretty :)

I Like The It

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27FtMooYZXM

Black Roses

Entirely within the Black Rose arc :) its just sooo fun i love swordfights

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks9E-TzV8x4

**+x Sunflower

its just nice :) its good amv is what it is

#utena #amv #half of my enjoyment of utena is just from these amvs lol

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kaizokuou-ni-naru · 4 years ago

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The Voyage So Far: Water Seven

east blue (1 | 2) || alabasta (1 | 2) || skypiea || water 7 || enies lobby || thriller bark || paramount war (1 | 2) || fishman island || punk hazard || dressrosa (1 | 2) || whole cake island || wano (1 | 2)

i’ve mentioned several times before that the davy back fight is one of my least favorite arcs, mostly because i found it very dragging and tedious when i was reading it, but there are a couple things i really like in it, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, most of them have to do with zoro. i really like his moment here with chopper, and it also showcases his ability to act as more of an authority figure to the crew, which is something that makes a substantial return after enies lobby with the matter of usopp’s return.

zoro and sanji’s match in the davy back fight is far and away my favorite part of the entire arc. it’s just really fun.

like i said, this arc isn’t a favorite of mine, but i do definitely understand why it’s important to the saga and greater story in a couple different ways. one of them is that it’s just an easy, lighthearted detour that both gives the audience a chance to breathe and the strawhats a chance to showcase just how much they love each other and work well together- which turns into a fucking sledgehammer to the skull in the next arc when that unity is directly threatened. and the other reason this arc is important...

...is because of aokiji.

aokiji’s introductory scene is a brutal showcase of absolute power, and a very clear reminder that the strawhats are still very much little fish in a very, very big pond. all of the strawhats are impacted by this to some degree- it’s how badly they get curb-stomped here that leads luffy to come up with his gears as a way of closing the huge power gap he’s just learned about.

most important, though, are robin and usopp. for robin, this is a stark reminder of the fact that the government will never stop hunting her down; for usopp, who’s less obvious, it’s the seeds of the full-blown inferiority crisis that will later explode with the news about merry. both of their arcs throughout water 7 and enies lobby, essentially the twin emotional backbones of the saga, start right here.

i really like that the other strawhats all fell asleep waiting for robin and luffy to wake up. it calls back to them doing the same when nami was sick before drum, and also it’s just so fucking sweet.

water seven is my favorite island, full stop. if i was going to live anywhere in one piece’s world, i’d want to live on water seven. it’s just so creatively designed and visually great, with the canals and the tiered city and the massive fountain in the middle. the supporting cast are still one of my favorites, and the culture feels very real and authentic. i just love water seven a lot.

i just said it but it bears repeating- the water seven supporting cast is really good. iceburg, the galley-la shipwrights, franky and his family, kokoro and chimney are all really memorable, and most of them are really likable, too- and cp9, with all their eccentricities, fit in perfectly. water seven’s cast is very interconnected, as well, and their relationships all feel very believable.

all of which, of course, only makes the later treachery hurt all the more.

the atmosphere of water seven is really, really well done. the bad starts slow, with the news that merry is unfixable, and then continues into an accelerating downwards spiral of hopelessness: usopp and luffy’s fight and usopp leaving the crew, robin’s seeming betrayal, the assassination attempt on iceburg, the city and galley-la turning on them as a result, and the agua laguna- it just gets worse and worse and worse.

and then, after they’ve been stomped down about as far as they can go and come out alive anyways, they pick themselves back up again and go to save their friend, because that’s what the strawhat pirates do.

i just really like getting to see these four going feral on the franky family, it’s one of my favorite scenes in this whole arc. in general, i tend to love the moments where luffy specifically gets properly angry, and we get a lot of them in this arc.

even though the fight between luffy and usopp is genuinely very tense and fast-paced and would probably be exciting if it were any other two characters fighting, it never really feels anything other than melancholy. i think that’s a testament to just how good oda is at setting the mood of the scene. it’s made very clear, especially through the reactions of the other characters- merry ‘crying’ is fucking heartbreaking- that this is nothing less than a tragedy.

i think it’s kind of interesting we aren’t shown franky’s face until about halfway into water seven. prior to this, we’re given pretty much only reasons to hate him, with his theft of the strawhats’ money and the franky family beating usopp to shit. but just after this point is when we start getting our first humanizing and sympathetic moments for him, starting when he gets worried and a little frantic when he hears about the attempt on iceburg’s life.

i just really, really like the way some of these water seven action sequences are depicted. they feel very tense and desperate, which matches the general mood of this part of the arc perfectly.

this panel of usopp working on merry always reminds me of the shots of the klabautermann doing the same during skypiea. i’m not sure if it’s even intentional, honestly, but it’s an extra little bit of heartbreak either way.

one piece has a lot of amazing spreads, but this might be one of my favorites for sheer impact. cp9, watching as the city they’ve lived and worked in for years burns down in a fire they set, satisfied by a job well done. it’s almost all in black and white with very little grey, which creates some fantastic contrast, and their pitch-black silhouettes against the nighttime inferno are just striking.

this entire scene between usopp and franky, as usopp works on the merry and franky gives him advice and tries to make him see its hopeless and they kind of awkwardly, accidentally bond, is probably my favorite in the whole of water seven. it was also the scene that singlehandedly made me love franky as a character.

they have a really good, really enjoyable dynamic, and at the same time the conflict between them is real and understandable, and brought about because they’re both trying to do the right thing.

tom’s workers are one of my favorite little groups of characters in the whole of one piece’s story, and they deserve more appreciation. they’re family!! a little family of broken pieces who worked together to build something really, really amazing. and they still care about each other in the present, even though they got shattered apart so badly and none of them ever really recovered.

this is a tremendously under-appreciated chopper moment. not only did he carry two full-grown men out of a fire, he even managed to get zoro’s sword and iceburg’s hamster. extremely cool of him.

this is also the exact moment the strawhats’ collective luck begins to turn: chopper saves the day, and nami learns that robin did what she did to protect them, and sanji gets aboard the sea train, and from there it’s a no-brakes train from their very lowest low straight to the triumph at enies lobby.

i love all the shenanigans sanji gets up to with the sea train, i think the whole sequence is absolutely one of his shining moments. it’s always a delight to see sanji get up to Sneaky Bastard Bullshit, and the whole thing is just so fun, which is a dearly needed breath of fresh air after how relentless this arc has been until this point.

robin’s little smile when thinking of luffy and when she joined the strawhats... :( i’ve noticed it’s a recurring trend for strawhats who try to leave the crew to flash back to when they joined as they do. usopp has it earlier this same arc just before leaving, and sanji does it in whole cake island in the sanji vs. luffy chapter.

i really like how much everyone comes together at the end of water seven leading into enies lobby. after how fractured and fraught things have been throughout the arc, both within and without the strawhat crew, it’s great to see them not only all united again for a common goal, but with a huge group of allies at their backs.

these three are SUCH a hilarious team, and i would love to see them work together again like this sometime. they’re literally just clowning on the marines all the way up the train, it’s fantastic.

factually i understand sanji’s aversion to fighting with his hands and his fighting style is very unique and cool and also meaningful to him because he learned from zeff, and also if i remember right it’s implied he learned how to swordfight from the vinsmokes which makes it very reasonable he would want absolutely nothing to do with that skillset

but speaking purely in terms of stupid idiot lizard brain i think sanji should fight with knives more

this is another of my absolute favorite spreads, and i think what makes it for me is the casual confidence- luffy tells zoro to cut the train, and zoro does, both of them with no doubts at all about zoro’s ability to do so. it really goes to show how far they’ve come from back in east blue when zoro couldn’t even cut luffy out of a metal cage.

there’s something very impactful about the fact that of all the strawhats, robin gets this speech from usopp. usopp, who’s had the worst falling-out with luffy in the series to date, is the one who tells robin: you haven’t left the crew yet, you can’t leave the crew yet, luffy is coming to get you. believe in him.

franky’s “existing is not a crime” line is one of the most memorable and iconic lines from this entire saga, and for good reason. it sums up one of the main themes of not just this arc but also the series as a whole- the very same idea will come up again for ace during marineford, and in law’s backstory as well. it’s never a crime to just exist, and people should not never be persecuted for their blood or heritage. one piece doesn’t fuck around with its theming, it really doesn’t.

to be continued next time, with enies lobby!

#the voyage so far #one piece #long post #arc: water 7 #not japanese #opmeta

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peachiimilquetea · 3 years ago

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i’m back!

hi everyone!! hiatus is officially over!!

so a few new housekeeping notes!

i changed my name!

i mostly did this in accordance with my side blog (which i’ll be talking about more in a little bit) but i also hated the name for a while and i think this suits me just a little bit more! all my links have already been changed so if anything on my masterlist is broken/leads to nowhere please let me know!!

i also changed my tags! so anyone who has my old nsfw tag blocked might want to update that, altho it might not be an issue later on down the line, as you can see by my next heading

i’m highly considering stopping making nsfw content

i think this is the biggest change that might be coming to this blog tbh. i’ve been thinking about it A LOT and the discourse is super conflicting on what is right and what’s not right

as much as i love to write smut, and nobody has directly come after me for writing smut, i keep seeing opinions and takes that are starting to make me want to quit it altogether. like apparently as a minor there are legal implications for me writing smut? which??? idk how true that is but it’s enough to make me more wary

the discourse around aging people up is also conflicting and confusing and the last thing i want to do it be on the wrong side of how to interact and behave in fandom spaces, especially being so new

furthermore, people don’t really go feral on my blog? like people don’t interact with my nsfw content all that often so i feel like it’s just there idk. maybe i’ll split the content into two blogs, maybe i’ll just private all of it and become purely sfw, idk im still thinking about it but i’ll let you know when i come to that decision

i will not be as active as i previously was

i hate to be so frank but the tumblr writing community is dying. nobody gets the interaction or hype that they deserve and it’s a huge blow to a writer’s morale to write something and barely get recognition

it’s not selfish for writers to feel this way and for this reason i won’t be posting as often or as regularly as i did previously. when i finish all requests and i open them up again, you probably won’t be getting it as quickly as you’ve seen in the past.

school is also starting up for me and it’s a very important one (senior szn or whatever) so i’m gonna be super busy with college stuff and AP classes and all the fun stuff that comes with being on the verge of adulthood

requests are actively being finished

this isn’t really a new thing, but i know there are at least two event requests that are in progress rn and one request for an orginal piece i wrote at the very beginning of my blog

i’ll tentatively open my requests up again really soon (probably with slots tbh) and we can move from there

i promise they’ll be done (one is already fully finished and formatted in my drafts), ive just been burnt out and really not feeling writing (hence the hiatus)

i’m making a sideblog!

yayyyy smth a little bit more lighthearted! i made a side blog! its callled @peachiimilquecoffee (see what i did there) and it’ll be a little bit more laid back, more behind the scenes, and maybe i’ll post more WIPs and sneak peeks there as well as the stuff that interests me so i don’t clog up your dash with random pointless stuff

i’m also probably gonna talk more about my original content, and post about my other interests. if you’re into that kinda thing just check my navi and it’ll be up sometime soon! i just finished setting up camp and getting my tags situated there and whatnot so come hang out!

closing

when i started this blog, i didn’t think i would get this far or even meet so many other people that i enjoy interacting with and seeing! i do want to stay here for as long as the site will let me, and as long as i feel welcome.

like i said previously, the writing community on tumblr feels like it’s dying, and it’s hard to make fan content unless you have a shit ton of followers that interact with you every day (and honestly some big blogs are struggling with a lack of boundaries as well).

all this to say, it often feels like there’s no winning. this is a tentative comeback, and i really hope something will change soon and making writing as fun as it was in the beginning for me. the hiatus was good for me to reset and be more inclined to get back in the groove.

thank you sm for your follows and your support! i really appreciate every single one of you and im looking forward to writing more stuff!

#important #[🍑]peachiimilquetea #[🍑]peachiiwrites

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stxphxn-strange · 4 years ago

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(no) rest for the innocent

summary: Tony wasn’t even on trial, but the jury found him guilty and he couldn’t disagree.

a/n: idk last night i was thinking about tony dealing w survivor’s guilt after endgame (and IW) so i threw this together, tw for mention of death and implied thoughts of suicide

“Good evening, Doctor.” FRIDAY’s warm, pleasant voice always reminded Stephen of home and cinnamon scented candles. “How was your trip?”

“Too long for a meeting that could’ve been handled over email. Or through carrier pigeon, as Tony would say,” Stephen replied as his cloak sailed off down the hall.

He washed his hands carefully, drying them on an Iron Man dish towel that Peter had given them as a joke wedding gift before putting the kettle on.

As the water was boiling, he noticed a covered plate on the kitchen counter. There was an obnoxiously orange piece of paper in front of it, which made Stephen smile. Tony always left him little notes on purposefully electrifying paper, that way they were easy to find.

The sorcerer’s smile only widened as he read the note.

Steph—

I wasn’t sure when you’d be back, but I decided to make you dinner anyway. But not because I’m missing you and wanted to surprise you, I just accidentally cooked too much. You know how that happens sometimes and you just end up with an ungodly amount of chicken parm? Life’s funny like that.

Anyway, I’m in the lab. I had some good ideas earlier and I wanted to start them while I still felt productive. Welcome home sweetheart, and if you go to bed before I do (because you probably will, you responsible asshole you), sweet dreams and goodnight.

Love, Tones

PS— Orange you glad you met me? … don’t answer that, I just couldn’t help it and had to write that down.

Stephen rolled his eyes fondly. “Fri, will you tell Tony that even though he’s not funny, I’m very glad I met him?”

FRIDAY was quiet for a few moments before responding. “Boss says, quote, ‘fuck you Gandalf, I’m hilarious,’ unquote.”

Stephen smiled, heating up his meal before sitting down to eat. He flipped through a magazine while he ate, FRIDAY turning on some soft jazz music as background noise until Stephen cleaned up and left the kitchen. After a refreshing shower, the sorcerer found himself in his most comfortable pjs and slippers as he walked through the house. Stephen wasn’t sure if he was going to bed yet, but he wanted to see Tony (and maybe he wanted a kiss or two or even three).

The music in the lab automatically lowered when Stephen shut the door behind him, and Tony looked up with an expression that could only be described as tired.

Actually, he looked exhausted. Weary. Barely holding himself together. Stephen wasn’t a thesaurus, but very concerned about his husband.

Tony was trying to smile, but he seemed too exhausted to do that and just gave up, not saying anything as Stephen sat beside him.

“Hi.” Stephen leaned over and softly kissed his husband’s temple. “Thanks for cooking for me, you didn’t have to.”

Tony shrugged. “I had a lot of energy earlier, and I accidentally cooked way too much. Maybe it was intentional, you know I’d take any excuse to go out of my way for you.”

His words said one thing, but his tone betrayed him. His voice was brittle, hard, and almost staticky. Stephen thought he sounded like a rusted hinge that was trying not to cry out for repairs… or maybe that analogy only made sense given where they were.

Stephen kissed him again as Tony sat back at his desk, closing his well-used sketchbook. “You alright?”

“Yeah. Tired I guess.” Tony sounded as unconvinced as Stephen felt.

“Come to bed with me,” Stephen offered. “I’ll bore you to sleep by telling you about the meeting.”

Tony laughed hollowly. “That bad?”

“I don’t know how to describe it, but it was a waste of time. Even Wong was bored, and he watches the Antiques Roadshow remake for fun,” Stephen replied. He yawned and leaned against Tony’s side.

“I see what you’re doing,” Tony murmured, trying to be lighthearted. He was just feeling some kind of way right now, he felt serious and was so endeared by his husband that it hurt.

“What am I doing?” Stephen asked, resting his head on Tony’s shoulder.

“Being cute and sweet so I’ll go to bed and let you be the big spoon,” Tony accused. “And maybe I just really fucking need a hug, but… it’s working.”

Stephen shifted and pulled Tony into his arms, holding the mechanic close as he went lax.

“My Boss Is Singing Closing Time Protocol please, Fri,” Tony mumbled.

“Goodnight Boss, goodnight Doctor,” the AI replied, beginning to run the lab’s standard closing protocol.

“Portal?” Stephen asked. Tony was getting better with going through portals, but some days were harder than others. Stephen didn’t know what tonight would be like and opted to ask, selfishly wanting to make sure Tony got some rest as soon as possible.

He was so out of it by that point that Stephen wasn’t sure if Tony registered the question, but he nodded slowly and trusted Stephen to lead him through it and into their bed.

Despite “resembling a sloth clinging to a tree bough,” (Tony’s words) Stephen was intuitive and knew when not to hug Tony. Even when he was asleep, if Tony woke up thrashing or fighting against something in a dream, Stephen let him go.

Tonight was a bit different. Stephen wasn’t brought to the edge of reality by Tony thrashing in their bed or accidentally tangling himself in their sheets, so he assumed everything was fine. That was until the sorcerer hugged his husband closer, still mostly asleep and just following his instinct, and Tony outright begged Stephen to let go of him. He wasn’t quite awake, but Stephen backed off immediately and heard Tony trip over his own feet as he left the room. The sorcerer fell asleep again after that, trying to stop the sound of Tony’s broken plea from cementing itself in his memory. When Tony climbed back into bed some time later, Stephen was stirring a little bit more. Tony hid his face in Stephen’s collarbone and said nothing, his breathing still slightly erratic.

“Sorry if I woke you up,” he mumbled.

“Don’ be,” Stephen replied, his voice unsure whether or not to wake up.

“Will you hold me again?” Tony asked pleadingly, his voice almost imperceptible.

Stephen wordlessly obliged, kissing the top of his head. “Whatever’s bothering you… you can talk to me about it. When you’re ready. And you don’t have to, but I’m here for you.”

Tony nodded. “It feels like too much right now. What I’m thinking about, I mean. I need time to process, I guess.”

“Okay,” Stephen said simply. “But I’m here for you whenever.”

“I know. I love you,” Tony replied.

Stephen began to trace soothing patterns on Tony’s back. “Love you Tones.”

++++

Tony didn’t seem any more rested the next day, but his confident Tony Stark™ pose seemed natural. He’d easily be able to fool people who didn’t know him as well as his family did. So it was a “fake it until you make it” kind of day, and Tony’s energy was on a strict schedule. There was only so much he could take today, and if his teammates wanted to call him selfish then that was their choice.

It would just go in one ear and out the other, especially this late in the day and after brutal team training. Tony was close to skipping the meeting, but a cutting remark in the hallway made him change his mind. Why did they always act like it was breaking news when Tony needed to step back from something anyway? He was just as human as anyone else, and the world was happy to throw responsibilities on his unenhanced, steady shoulders just because he was a natural caretaker.

The arguments about Tony’s quiet, withdrawn demeanor started two minutes into the meeting. Stephen was ready to defend his husband as soon as they got to the conference room, Tony collapsing into a chair and leaning his head against the cool metal of the table.

He didn’t want to talk today, and Stephen didn’t want him to.

“It’s not nap time, Stark.” There was a small hint of fondness in Natasha’s cold, clipped voice.

Tony was already regretting his decision to show up, wishing he hadn’t told Stephen again and again that he was fine. He wasn’t, and they both knew it. Everyone knew it, but Tony knew better than to advocate for himself in front of his… colleagues.

“I don’t even remember what we’re meeting about,” Tony muttered, looking up enough to address whoever was talking to him.

Rhodey took a seat beside Tony, encouragingly patting his back. “You good?”

“I’m fine, Honeybear,” Tony replied. He was sitting between his two favorite people, and that helped him feel a little more grounded. “I just didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”

Someone scoffed. “I don’t think anyone’s slept right in months. And don’t say you haven’t slept in years, Stark. We don’t need a story about how everything you’ve ever done has led to years of sleepless nights. We know already. Put it in a book or something and make the team more money so I can have better arrows.”

Stephen was two seconds away from dropping the archer into the Dark Dimension, or flipping a table. He wasn’t sure how to handle the man yet, still taken aback by the rudeness and stupidity of his comment. “Barton, what the fuck—”

“Steph, don’t bother with him,” Tony said. He stood up, forcing his tiredness into a corner and giving his coworkers a confident glare. “Pardon me for giving it my all and being a bit tired as a result. Now I’m going to get an ice pack for my shoulder and maybe a cup of coffee. Does anyone want anything?”

“I’ll take a—”

“Get it yourself, you know where the kitchen is.”

For dramatic effect (and moral support), the cloak landed on Tony’s shoulders and billowed out as he left the room. He returned with the aforementioned ice and coffee, and a mug of tea for Stephen.

“You didn’t have to do that sweetheart, but thank you,” Stephen said appreciatively.

“That’s why I wanted to,” Tony replied. He relaxed a little into his chair, starting to believe he could get through the meeting.

Then, like clockwork, Clint opened his mouth to complain.

“Why did you bring him tea and nothing for the rest of us?” He whined.

“Doesn’t Tony do enough for you?” Stephen asked, innocently taking a sip of his tea. It was his afternoon green tea, made exactly the way he liked it.

Tony was always so sweet and attentive with his loved ones, it warmed Stephen’s heart. The sorcerer stifled a laugh as Rhodey poured half of Tony’s coffee into his own empty mug.

“Thank you,” the colonel said impishly. “Consider the roommate tax paid for this month.”

Tony tried to smile at the old inside joke, but Stephen noticed that it fell flat.

“Are we done with the interruptions? We need to talk about what’s out there. We don’t know if Thanos is the exception or the rule, and—”

Tony stopped listening. Clint’s snootiness was doing his head in, but the idea of another threat, another thing, another colossus he’d have to conquer and survive if his luck had anything to say about it… that was the breaking point.

Tony didn’t have a good relationship with luck. He didn’t really believe in it, but apparently it believed in him. Because Tony was lucky. It was true that he was lucky in meeting his husband, his friends, and his family, but this was a different kind of luck. Tony was intelligent and skilled, shrewd and savvy, and there was virtually nothing he couldn’t do or solve, except for one thing.

He was constantly lucky, constantly cheating death.

And he didn’t realize that he was hyperventilating, didn’t recall dropping his head into his hands. He didn’t recall that he’d just walked out in the middle of the meeting after a minute, didn’t realize that he was home when he opened his eyes.

Tony was home, in his spot on the couch in Stephen’s library. Stephen was sitting beside him, quietly watching a documentary or something like that. Tony was laying down, his head in Stephen’s lap with the cloak draped over him like a blanket. The crimson fabric continued to cling to him as he sat up, further proving Tony’s point that Levi liked him best, but he wasn’t in the mood to banter now. He just appreciated the support and the warmth of his sorcerer and their shared, sentient blanket.

With some hesitancy, Tony leaned over and rested his head on Stephen’s shoulder. They locked eyes for a minute, Tony’s gaze deliriously bright and vacant.

Stephen didn’t know what to say or do to make the man trembling in his arms feel better, but started by hugging him closer and softly stroking up and down his spine.

“I’m sorry,” Tony whispered, lowering his head and hiding against Stephen’s chest.

“No apologies,” Stephen reminded him. “I don’t want or need them, and you don’t have to explain yourself.”

“I have to give a good reason,” Tony said, his voice beginning to shake. “Everything I do needs a reason.”

“Why? Says who?” Stephen asked. He was more thinking aloud, half expecting Tony to leave the question unanswered.

For a while, he did. He just sat, furiously trying to blink back tears and gather his thoughts as Stephen held him protectively.

“Sometimes I think about… things,” Tony began vaguely. “And people. And places. I guess I just like nouns.”

At this point, he didn’t even know if he was trying to deflect or just tell a joke, but his attempt at humor fell flat. He tried to force a laugh, but halfway through it turned into a painful sob. He cried harder with each breath, ignoring the ache in his chest. Tony barely listened when Stephen encouraged him to breathe, but eventually he gave into his exhaustion and listened to his lungs.

His stupid lungs, which apparently were just as stubborn as his brain.

“I can’t keep doing this,” Tony whispered. “I shouldn’t have survived Afghanistan, New York, Sokovia, Siberia, or Titan. I can’t keep cheating death, Stephen. I don’t want to. I don’t want to be lucky and survive when the damage I’ve caused, the damage I claim full responsibility for, has taken so many lives. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt or killed for me.”

Stephen pressed a soft kiss to his hair, feeling Tony’s guit and fatigue as if it was his own.

“I don’t want to do this,” Tony repeated. “I’m probably just spiraling or being needlessly selfish, but I… I don’t know.”

“You’re taking on too much responsibility where you don’t need to,” Stephen said. “I know that’s easy for me to just say from the outside, but you aren’t the only Avenger. It’s about time the team, if you can even call them that, takes accountability for their actions and stops bulldozing you with their problems. You aren’t selfish, Tones. You’re tired and overworked, and you deserve a break. You deserve to breathe, to just exist without feeling like you have to look over your shoulder or justify your every step.”

“I don’t think I know how to even do that anymore,” Tony replied. “And I don’t deserve it.”

“You do,” Stephen argued. “And rest assured I’ll keep telling you that. And I’ll keep telling you how much I love you, because I really do.”

Tony smiled sadly, trying to press himself closer to Stephen if that was even possible. “I love you too.”

He was starting to settle down, soothed by a flurry of soft kisses in his hair and the gentle brushes up and down his spine, when FRIDAY quietly spoke up. She almost sounded remorseful.

“Mister Parker is requesting one or both of you in the lab, whenever it’s convenient,” she began. “And he’s asked me to assure you that it’s nothing major.”

Tony sighed, sitting up again. “I’ll investigate.”

Stephen shook his head. “No, let me. I’ll tell Peter that you’re resting, and he’ll understand.”

“I don’t want him to think I don’t care,” Tony whispered.

“He would never think that. You know how he gets about making sure you take care of yourself, and Peter knows with certainty that you care about him. Our son is much more mature than the Avengers,” Stephen replied.

“I still feel bad,” Tony said.

“I know. I can promise him Thai food if that’ll make you feel better?” Stephen suggested, half jokingly.

“It actually would,” Tony admitted. “FRIDAY, will you schedule a Thai food delivery for 6:30pm please?”

“Scheduled,” she replied simpy. She still sounded apologetic for disturbing them right as Tony was falling asleep, but maybe Stephen imagined that.

The sorcerer stood up gracefully, covering Tony with another blanket as the cloak wrapped a bit tighter around him. “Look after yourself and relax, or get some sleep. No one’s expecting anything from you right now Tones, alright? I love you.”

Tony nodded, a little smile on his face as Stephen kissed him again. “Love you.”

He really wanted to sleep. He actually put effort into falling asleep, which was something he never thought he’d do, and of course sleep didn’t come easily. Sleep never came easily, but the memories did. It was all too easy for Tony to get caught in a thought stream, whether he was planning a surprise, inventing, or remembering unpleasantries. Today he was overwhelmed by guilt, readily convincing himself that he was a selfish failure like Howard Stark and his teammates liked to say. It was too easy to get lost in their ire and wanting to please everyone, and Tony had given up so much of his agency just to try and make other people happy.

It was exhausting, and he didn’t even feel like he’d succeeded at that.

The mechanic started tearing up again as he continued to think in a circular pattern, faintly aware of the Cloak trying to comfort him. It was a sweet, welcome gesture, and Tony let it happen and let himself cry. He was still laying there in tears when Stephen came back in half an hour later.

“Pete says he hopes you feel better,” Stephen said, returning to his spot and pulling Tony close. “And I told him to just go ahead and eat whenever he’s hungry, or when the food gets here.”

Tony just nodded, feeling relieved and supported in Stephen’s arms again. He nodded again, as if trying to shake the unending self-deprecating thoughts from his head, before saying anything. “Sounds good.”

tags: @salty-ironstrange-shipper @stark-strange-love2 @chocopiggy @katninjagirl97 @kitkatfat15 @taruyison @funkylittlebidiot

#tony stark #stephen strange #ironstrange #not endgame compliant #non infinity war compliant #peter parker #ironstrange and spiderson #not avengers friendly lowkey #not clint barton friendly #james rhodey rhodes #tw mention of character death #tw death mention #tw sui mention

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theheightofdishonor · 4 years ago

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Teen Wolf triads are something that can be so personal, so here’s a list of my faves

Scott/Stiles/Allison

The OG trio. The gang that dies together might not stay together, but they’re still iconic.

Scott/Stiles/Lydia

Any Scott/Stiles/X dynamic is brilliant, but few more than this one. These three have been there since the beginning and they’ve gone through so much together. There’s no Teen Wolf without them.

Scott/Stiles/Derek

They were the driving force in S1&2 and had some absolutely iconic moments together. Hate that there wasn’t more of them after that.

Scott/Derek/Isaac

Mostly based on S2/3. I was very invested in Isaac’s struggle to pick between these two.

Scott/Stiles/Isaac

This triad’s dynamic completely changes between S2 and 3. In Season 2, Isaac, as part of Derek’s pack is a slightly antagonistic figure and it’s very much Scott&Stiles vs Isaac but in S3, Scott and Isaac grow closer while Isaac and Stiles erm, don’t. It’s very fun to watch.

Scott/Isaac/Allison

My ot3 and the only trio on this list that I 100% ship.

Isaac/Erica/Boyd

Ayy, it’s the OG Hale Pack aka 3 teens bonding over being thrown headfirst into something they weren’t prepared for and Derek’s horrible leadership. Isaac should’ve ran away with Erica and Boyd for solidarity’s sake.

Chris/Allison/Isaac

Chris’s struggle between hating Isaac for dating his daughter and wanting to adopt him is hilarious. One of my favourites.

Scott/Melissa/Isaac

Who didn’t completely melt at Isaac joining the McCall fam? The scene where they’re ‘guarding’ Melissa was so cute. As a bonus, it made Stiles’s animosity towards Isaac that much stronger. Will forever hate that this trio was more or less non-existent in 3b even though I love Chris/Allison/Isaac.

Derek/Cora/Peter

The non-dead Hales. Why oh why did Cora have to leave? Their family dynamic was great.

Allison/Lydia/Cora

I know they only had a couple scenes as a triad, but there was so potential. We love antagonism with underlying sexual tension. And ofc, the only thing better than 1 terrifying badass that can secretly be super sweet is 3 terrifying badasses.

Derek/Isaac/Boyd

At one point, the only non-dead members of the Hale Pack (TW quickly amended that). I always think of the S3a Loft scene where Boyd and Isaac skip school to protect Derek. Despite how awful of an alpha Derek’s been, they still care about him and he cares about them (as actual people and not just betas that he needs for power like he did originally)

Derek/Allison/Lydia.

Yes it’s my 5th s3 based trio in a row, but can you blame me? This is 100% based off the classroom scene in 3x02.

Allison/Lydia/Jackson

Although Lydia and Jackson were both awful in S1, their friendship with Allison and their immediately taking her under their wing was beyond precious. Additionally, it combines both the asshole-who’s-soft-towards-1-person- dynamic (jydia w/ allison) and assholes-who-secretly-care-about-each-other (jydia) And ofc, the underlying tension due to Jydia’s disdain towards Scott and later, Jackson and Allison’s experiences/knowledge of the supernatural.

Malia/Kira/Lydia

Comedy gold. Their scenes speak for themselves and we needed more.

Liam/Mason/Corey

Their S6a dynamic is sooo underrated and should’ve been given more screen time. I loved watching Liam and Corey struggle to get along for Mason’s sake because they want him to be happy. It was all very wholesome and one of the few things that made 6a worth watching.

Stiles/Scott/Liam

Aka the best part of S4.Their dynamic is so fun and well-balanced and infinitely better because they’re a triad. You’ve got Scott and Liam figuring out their mentor/mentee relationship with Stiles co-parenting and preventing the Scott/Liam dynamic from turning unhealthy. (Liam and Scott’s S6 dynamic veered way too close to parent/child for my taste. They need Stiles to balance it out) It’s also hilarious how quickly Liam accepts being aggressively adopted by two idiots who are barely older than him. And Stiles takes so easily to playing older brother/co-parent. It’s adorable. They’re adorable.

Erica/Allison/Lydia

Very similar dynamic to Allison/Lydia/Cora due to Cora and Erica’s similar personalities but also not, which has a lot to do with Allison and Lydia’s reactions to Erica’s weaponized feminity. Also, there’s a lot more history between these girls and I want to know everything about what Erica thinks of Lydia after going to school with her for years.

Sherriff/Melissa/Chris

Of the top of my head, I can only remember that time where they were trapped under the Nemeton and that’s simply unacceptable.

Sheriff/Noshiko/Melissa.

It’s a crime that this triad never got scenes. Especially after the Sheriff tried to arrest Kira. I know Melissa bitch slapped him but I wanted to watch these two badasses gang up on the Sheriff together. ( the Noshiko/Melissa dynamic would be so iconic.)

Victoria/Noshiko/Melissa

Another triad that never shared scenes (obviously because Vic is dead) but their power would’ve been off the charts. I want to make a joke about milfs, but I’ll refrain.

The Yukimura fam

Seemed appropriate since my last two also included. Noshiko.I love family dynamics and the Yukimuras are no exception. The attraction of this triad, for me, is mostly the dynamic between Kira and Noshiko and how Ken navigates between them. They’re also a trio that we didn’t see nearly enough of in S4 and 5. Like seriously, where were they? Noshiko’s on the dead pool, but she’s barely mentioned. (on a mostly unrelated note, how is the 900 yr old Kitsune worth less than a girl that just found about her kitsune powers?)

Derek/Allison/Scott

I don’t need to explain this one. The angst, the drama, Derek projecting Kate onto Allison and Allison trying to murder Derek and their evolution to reluctant allies with a good dash of Scallison and Scott navigating his own difficult relationship with Derek. Aka the complicated, tension fraught trio we all loved/should love. ( ok, I kind of explained it)

Derek/Scott/Liam

And here we have a two for one deal; two mentor/mentee dynamics in 1 triad. People much smarter than me have written about this trio in extensive detail, so all I’m saying is that Derek’s that one uncle who occasionally comes around and gives somewhat helpful advice.

Braeden/Malia/Scott

Braeden and Scott were great in S4. Braeden and Malia were great in S5. Scott and Malia are pretty great when they’re not in a relationship. Combine, and you get what had to be a kick-ass triad that’s sadly never canonly shown together (I think)

Melissa/Chris/Isaac

Not actually featured in the show, but Isaac deserves all the parental figures and I want to witness the surely epic custody battle between Chris and Melissa.

Malia/Scott/Peter

That this trio is on here is actually pretty funny because I hate both Scalia and the forced Peter/Malia bonding in S6. But I loved the scene where Peter warned Malia not to fall in love with Scott because a) he has absolutely 0 right to advise her on anything and b) because of the history between Scott and Peter. In a way, a relationship with Malia is just another thing tying Scott to someone that’s repeatedly caused harm to him and his friends and was the initial cause for all the pain he’s suffered in the last couple years. I just find this dynamic worth exploring.

Malia/Derek/Peter

The Hales 2.0. Derek and Malia deserve to bond over unwillingly being related to Peter, that scumbag.

Malia/Stiles/Peter

Stiles and Peter are so fun together and Stalia is my jam. Throw in an antagonistic Malia and Peter relationship and they’re entertaining as hell. Much more lighthearted than Malia/Scott/Peter.

Stiles/Malia/Lydia

To clarify, this has nothing to do with a love triangle and everything to do with how their personalities play off each other. It’s one of those trios where together, they’re either terrifying or absolute morons.

Stiles/Cora/Derek

Admittedly, my version of this is very Sterek+Cora and the hilarity of Stiles and his attraction to Hales but it’s also 3x snark and you really can’t go wrong.

Scott/Stiles/Melissa

It’s Melissa and her boys 1.0. This woman is by far the best parent on this show, and I love the specific dynamic among these three. Melissa might not always like Stiles, but she cares about him and there’s the mutual understanding that they both adore Scott and would do anything for him. Also, Mel being exasperated by the dumbass duo is always funny.

Kate/Allison/Chris

Lowkey another custody battle because Kate and Chris do fight to be the bigger influence on Allison This is such a tragic trio to me, and the lesson here is basically that sometimes love isn’t enough. Chris and Kate both genuinely love Allison and she loves them too but can’t have both and at some point, she has neither. Kate and Chris care about each other, but that’s not enough either. In the end, they all lose each other. There’s no happy ending for them, at least not with each other.

Derek/Stiles/Peter

Stiles just has chemistry (not necessarily romantic) with all Hales and this trio really shines through in 3x01 and in S3 in general. “Chess is Stiles’s game” asgdhfjgh. I wanted more of that very specific dynamic.

That was a hell lot longer than I thought it would be, but what can you do. Feel free to tell me your own opinions in the tags/comments.

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