#lyresbird

[peonycats]

What are your favourite kinds of Japan content? Or alternatively, what are your least favourites?

I'm a huge aph Japan fan, and I'm always curious abt this stuff.

Hmmm, well honestly I could talk all day about this topic LMAO but for your sake and mine I'll keep it brief and focus mostly on two especially grating depictions i dislike. I have some posts queued up down the line for how i tend to see japan so feel free to ask me about that when i get around to posting it ehehe

"Polite, cute, shy, quiet" japan depictions reallllly don't work for me. Like it's one thing to say that Japan is a reserved guy who puts value in having good manners and doesn't want to come across as rude, but it's another to turn him into a wilting flower who's easily dominated by louder personalities and turns into a side character. Besides it falling into ur typical trope of the "diminutive east asian who needs to be taught by their loud non easian (usually white) partner how to stand up for themself and live life a little," I think it's just patently false, both canonically and historically lmao. Like hima has called Japan a stubborn old man before, and history will tell you that Japan is nothing if not resourceful and very very proud, lol. He may bite his tongue, but I imagine that hes not someone who easily gives up or submits or at least without a fight 😂

Germany-Italy-Japan trio, or "Axis" trio, depictions never go over well for me, lol. I'm of the mindset that you can't really divorce them from their history in WW2, especially if you're going to call them the Axis, like lol the least you could do is call them something new. Furthermore, Geritapan depictions in my opinion are terrible with tokenizing japan as the sole character of color/east asian in the group, but the Worst Geritapan Depictions as of late are shipping gerita with japan off in the cuck chair?? I'm not saying we need to give Japan bitches (because lord knows he doesn't deserve any) but wow, congrats, you made your only East Asian man an emasculated yellow guy who just pines and copes over a white love interest who dgaf about him <3 a win for diversity!!!

anyways, if you're going to ship gerita but treat japan like this, i would rather you ship germany and italy together like a normal person and leave japan out of it 🙏

[faunabel]

Hi! I’m the person on ao3 who lest a comment on Candlewax recently and just wanted to say what a huge fan I am of all your works and how happy I am that you’re still active here

oh WOWWW i was so curious who you were! tysm for commenting! :D

i'm not suuuuper active on tumblr rn as i'm coming out of a very severe depressive + dissociative episode, but i'm still around! and i'm open to talking or anything if u want, too~

still very happy someone liked my silly little smut shot hehe

i really hope i can start posting more again!!

[ask-hws-eire]

Dia duit! Hello! I'm The Republic of Ireland! Also known as Éire, but you can call me Sean!

I can't wait to hear from you all! Have a good one!

Ask Rules and OOC under the cut

About me

Hiya! Name's Lyre! 20 year old Irish/Italian and the owner of this blog. My other blogs are @lyresbird for reblogs and @crooked-sketches for Fandom art. Lyrebird is my main so all follows will come from there.

This blog will be multiship and Headcanon heavy. My art blog has a list of general rules abt me in the pinned post so please check those out bec the same rules apply here.

Other than on this post, all OOC talk will be in Purple.

Rules for asks

Please keep your ask to one or two topics!

Please don't ask about serious IRL events that have happened less than 10 years ago as I feel it's insensitive to engage with them in this format.

No NSFW but suggestive is ok

I will ignore any ask I don't feel comfortable answering

Historical asks are very much appreciated!

I will try my best to answer all asks with art so I may be a bit slow

Back and forth rp with other ask blogs may only be in text posts depending on the scenario

Tags

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#EireRP - RP responses

#LyreYaps - OOC posts

#LyreArt - reblogs from my art acc. This will only be for Ireland related art

Events/Collabs

-#RoundgoestheQ&A

[kostevysen]

Some dividers and headers I made for tumblr! Feel free to use them with credit!

And yes, this is the graphic art designing era of my blog.

I’m also taking requests for specific themes, (primarily hetalia, please let your requests be hetalia— /hj)

All made on Canva ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Specific uncredited use ( Individuals who I give the permission to use my work without credit.) goes to these individuals (moots):

@aphfroghat

@lunakagayake

@starringshots

@imtrappedinthepitsofhell

@potatovampires

@magdalenepie

@lyresbird

@lunathewitchcat

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For Others:

Please reblog/like if you use this, as well as make sure to credit me as well! (Mention me, ex. @kostevysen anywhere in your post. Thanks!)

[kopifuran]

Send this to all your favourite moots and pass the pumpkin round! KEEP THE PUMPKIN TRAIN GOING 🎃🖤🎃🖤🎃

(from Lyresbird)

7 DAYS BEFORE HALLOWEEN!!!!!!

[crooked-sketches]

About me

Alex

20

Queer

ND

Italian/Irish

live by the principles of ship and let ship and Don't like don't interact

Uninterested in the vast majority of fandom discorse. Especially ship discourse. Unless it hurts actually real people 99% of the time I don't care.

Accounts

Reblog Tumblr account- Lyresbird

Ireland ask blog - ask-hws-eire

AO3- Crooked_Pictures

Main Fandoms

Hetalia

One Piece

JOJO's Bizarre Adventure

Tags

All art- #MyArt

Jojo art- #myjjba

One Piece art- #myOP

Hetalia art- #myHetalia

My oc's- #myocs

My jojo oc's- #myjojoocs

My fics- #Crooked_Pictures

Current Art Projects

Hetalia x jjba crossover- #Hetaliasbizarreadventure

This is a crossover I'm working on between Hetalia and Jojo's bizarre adventure. It's a human au and does not have a concrete plot line yet, however I plan on designing a stand for every character basically until I get bored. I will also do oc's/countries that don't have canon Hetalia designs yet. My one rule for this au is that for every stand the reference must be from an Artist of that country. If you have any suggestions for song references for your own country feel free to drop by and let me know!

Characters done so far in order: England, America

Hetalia painter tribute- #tracesleftbehind

[chaoshiki]

Send this to all your favourite moots and pass the pumpkin round! KEEP THE PUMPKIN TRAIN GOING 🎃🖤🎃🖤🎃

(from Lyresbird)

Omg ty for the pumpkin!!! 🎃

[jikimo-world]

Send this to all your favourite moots and pass the pumpkin round! KEEP THE PUMPKIN TRAIN GOING 🎃🖤🎃🖤🎃

(from Lyresbird)

You're so sweet; my sugar level is increasinggg

BOOH-nny!

[spiceandtealeaves]

Thank you sm for the tag!!

Tagging: @batatapako @kitaychan @zeawesomebirdie @lyresbird @timetravellingkitty + anyone who wants to!

Tagged by @s6samcas. Describe yourself using only pics from your phone!

No pressure tags: @sadundefinedbread @pavlovianfuckery @doofcas @slutsons-blog @deancaslover

[goodlucktai]

68 for Luffy?

PROMPTS LIST

68. “It’s okay, I’m here.”

you already know what it is... smile again

x

The funeral is more of a roadtrip. Ace's family and Luffy's family and a rag-tag caravan of Jeeps and luxury SUVs, crawling down the coast.

Luffy sits in the backseat of Shanks’ car with one hand on the rosewood urn in his lap and the other fisted in Zoro’s sleeve. Carrot is tucked in on Luffy’s other side, having won the spot by virtue of hopping in the car before anyone could stop her and then locking the door. Following her lead, Sanji ducked into the passenger seat in similar fashion. Their friends were outraged.

The antics made Luffy laugh-- a rusty, disused sound-- and Sanji added it to the mental tally that none of them will admit they’ve been keeping.

The grief lives in their house like a physical thing. A monster they have to make space for. They have to move around it every day, even have to stop and feed it occasionally, because they learned the hard way that starving it won’t do any good.

Ace’s family has been understanding. Luffy is theirs, too, in an unspoken, roundabout way. Ace loved his little brother so much that it bled over into every single person he spent more than five minutes with. Because that’s just the kind of person Ace was, that’s just how he loved. It makes sense, Sanji thinks, that the people who adopted Ace would love like that, too.

When they met Luffy in person, almost three weeks after the accident-- this tiny slip of a kid in an over-sized unbuttoned shirt, chest and shoulder wrapped up in gauze and medical tape, hair still a mess from when he tumbled out of bed at four o’clock in the morning-- the first thing Luffy said was, “Sorry. I made everyone wait.”

There was a brief moment in which no one moved or spoke or even breathed too loudly, and then Marco knelt in front of him.

“Your big brother would find a way to kick our asses if we tried to start anything without you,” he said, and when Luffy smiled, Marco smiled, and it seemed a little bit less like the world was ending.

So they planned a trip to this little seaside village only nine hours south of where they lived now, that only Luffy seemed to have ever heard of.

“Why there, Lu?” Thatch asked.

That’s what Ace called him, and probably where Thatch picked it up. Luffy didn’t flinch even though it looked like he wanted to.

“It’s where we lived after we left home,” he said. “We go back there every March.��� He blinked, and added, “I’ll have to go by myself now.”

Then he turned and pressed his face into Usopp’s shoulder, who was closest. Usopp put his arms around him and looked ready to absolutely throw down with the next person who so much as looked at Luffy, but clearly the last thing Ace’s friends wanted to do was cause anymore hurt.

So Marco, Thatch, Robin and Franky stepped outside to finish making travel arrangements on the back porch and Sanji stepped into the kitchen to finish making dinner. It wasn’t the first night since getting out of the hospital that Luffy finished his meal, but it felt like an accomplishment every time it happened. Marco and Thatch accepted an invitation to stay and eat, and neither of them made the “Lu” slip-up again.

##

A message pops up on Shanks’ phone, where it’s mounted in a cradle on the dash. Sanji can see it from where he’s sitting. He doubts anyone in the backseat even noticed.

“Looks like we’re gonna call it a day,” Shanks says. Ahead of them and behind, their friends’ cars are throwing on their blinkers, merging right onto an exit ramp. “This is what you get for traveling with old people, Luffy. We gotta get out and stretch every so often or we’ll shrivel up like raisins.”

Zoro snorts, and Luffy laughs again. He won’t know they’re stopping due to Law’s very stern and specific orders, passed onto and enforced by Chopper. “You’re not that old!” he says loyally.

He and Carrot lean over to peer out Carrot’s window together, and even though Luffy moves stiffly, the pain from his chest is only a fleeting thing. Zoro is keeping a sharp eye on him, as he’s done since the day Luffy woke up in the hospital-- shit, Sanji amends inwardly, since the day he and Luffy first met, nearly ten years ago now. If Luffy twists too far or pulls something, Zoro will know.

For now, they’re content to let him enjoy whatever pieces of this trip that he can.

They converge upon an unsuspecting hotel that Nami had booked for their group in advance, spending a small fortune on comfortable five-star rooms. Shanks is covering all the costs, something he outright refused to budge on. He even paid their collective bill at dinner the night before with a flourish, probably just to piss Marco off more.

Sanji stepped outside to have a cigarette and ended up catching the tail-end of their heated, largely one-sided argument.

“Pops said you’d do this,” Marco hissed. His sense of responsibility must have been stung by the matter being so cleanly lifted out of his hands. “The second he’s in remission he’s gonna kick your ass.”

Shanks smiled and said, “When he’s well again, he’s welcome to try.”

It meant something to Marco, Sanji thinks, that Shanks said ‘when.’ It took the fight out of him. And maybe the fight is the only thing keeping him upright sometimes, because he had to lean against Jozu for a little while after that.

Luffy, drifting by with Chopper and Zoro towards the big crane machine games in the restaurant lobby, paused beside Marco. Perceptive, even when buffeted by wave after wave in his own ocean of sadness, his eyes wide and drowning and grave.

Then he shuffled over and pressed himself against Marco’s side.

It was a familiar gesture. And from the way Marco stiffened, and then started shaking, it was something Luffy must have picked up from his brother.

“Come help me win a shark,” Luffy said.

“Sure,” Marco said hoarsely. “All the sharks you want.”

“Oh, please,” Jozu scoffed, “we’ll be here for three years before Marco wins at a crane machine. Leave it to me, Luffy.”

It took the better part of an hour and all of their spare change, but Luffy walked out with a grin on his face and a bright orange shark that was inexplicably wearing a little cowboy hat. And Sanji clocks it as the exact moment when the overall mood of the trip took a turn.

Now they pile into the hotel lobby, a loud, obnoxious circus troupe of grieving people in good company. They each, to a man, are trying to either drown out their hurt or trick it into something else. It’s sort of working, Sanji thinks. He’s more worried about getting thrown out than he is anything else. 

The woman behind the desk, who looks like she’s coming up on the end of a very long shift, passes over their room keys without comment. Clearly she doesn’t get paid enough to deal with them.

There’s no chance to fight over the sleeping arrangements, because all of Luffy’s friends are piling into the same suite. Jozu, Marco, Thatch and all the others wander in about an hour later. Sanji will have to wonder if Robin texted them or something, because their timing was perfect.

Luffy, sitting still under Chopper’s patient hands as his wound was redressed, was beginning to lose his grip on his good cheer. But Thatch holds up two handfuls of bulging takeout bags, and Marco snatches up the remote on the coffee table saying, “Lilo and Stitch is on right now, what the hell are you guys watching? What is this?” and Jozu ruffles Luffy’s hair in his huge, gentle hand like he’s been doing it all his life. And Luffy brightens right up again, distracted long enough that the encroaching sadness doesn’t stick.

It’s a more pleasant sleepless night than Sanji has had in almost a month. He downloads a local app and has some groceries delivered to their suite. By the time Benn shepherds a groggy Shanks inside and sits him down at the counter the next morning, there’s cappuccino and French toast and scrambled eggs.

Shanks stares at the spread, and then at the clock, and then looks at Sanji as if wondering how on earth it’s possible for a person to accomplish this much before nine AM.

“You know there’s a free continental breakfast downstairs?” he finally says weakly.

Sanji twitches, ready to snatch the coffee right back on principle. “How dare you,” he settles for, and Brook, beside him, laughs out loud.

##

They set out a little before eleven, just barely making their checkout time. Sanji and Carrot both lose their seats in Shanks’ car, Franky flipping them off from the front passenger seat, Thatch saluting cheerfully from the back. Marco swears, but not as loud as Carrot does, and it’s honestly funny enough that Sanji can’t even be mad.

He winds up sitting with Marco in the back of Vista’s SUV.

“You can smoke if you want,” Vista says from the front, and Sanji smiles. Ace’s family is a polite group. He wouldn’t have guessed it from all of Ace’s stories about bar brawls and holding cells.

“Thank you,” Sanji says, “but I’ve been trying to cut back. Chopper’s always after me about it anyway, and since Zoro quit drinking, seemed like as good of a time as any.”

There’s a brief pause, not quite long enough to be a lull in conversation but long enough that Marco is clearly gathering what he wants to say in both hands so he doesn’t lose it.

“He stopped drinking after the accident?” Marco asks carefully.

Sanji’s stomach sinks a little, as it always does at the reminder, but he nods.

“The day we got home, he poured everything down the drain. Just like that, cold-turkey. If I tried that, I’d end up punching a customer at work on day one. And then my old man would probably promote me as punishment.”

Vista guffaws, slapping the steering wheel, and Marco grins.

Sanji thinks of Luffy eyeing all the empty bottles in the recycling bin, turning to Zoro with those big vacant eyes, and saying, ‘You don’t have to do that.’

‘I don’t have to do anything,’ Zoro replied without missing a beat. ‘I want to.’

It was little moments like those, Sanji thinks, that coaxed Luffy back. Little moments that reminded him of how much he loved his family. How much they loved him, too.

We’d do anything for him. Sanji turns his head to look out the window, at the unfamiliar scenery dashing by, and thinks, We’d go anywhere.

##

“You have arrived,” the GPS announces. Vista pulls up behind Nami’s Jeep and puts the car in park.

Sanji and Marco pop their doors open and step out onto the gravel road.

There’s not much to look at. Telephone poles with drooping lines, a waist-high wire fence that surrounds a field of tangled, overgrown grass, and beyond that, the treeline of what is probably a dense, wild woodland.

The only building for solid miles is probably the tiny cottage sitting a few dozen feet back from the road. It’s condemned, clearly, windows boarded up, roof caving in, little stone walkway all choked through with weeds. But maybe once it was someone’s home.

Zoro proves the theory when he asks, “This is your old house, isn’t it?”

Luffy grins, looking at it like he’s seeing something the rest of them can’t. He probably is.

“Yup! Look, we painted the mailbox. Ace said it was stupid, because we never got mail, but he still made sure he got red.”

Sanji drifts closer, hearing the gravel crunch of footsteps behind him as everyone else did, too. Sure enough, the crooked little mailbox bears some faded paint-- what was once bright, childish colors are now barely visible at all. He can only just make out a lopsided ASL.

“Our spot is back here,” Luffy says.

He leads the way around the house and up the knoll behind it, carrying Ace in both arms. The sun is drifting steadily lower, but it’s not on the verge of setting quite yet. The wind is lively and insistent, tugging at their clothes and their hair as though vying for their attention.

The climb is a short one. In a matter of minutes, Sanji is overlooking the ocean. It’s a beautiful view. It probably looked like magic to the two little boys who lived here together, dreaming of better and brighter things.

“This is where he should be,” Luffy tells the rest of them. “It’s the only place we should put him.”

Marco has to swallow a few times before he can speak. “In the ground?”

“No, the sea.”

He holds the urn out expectantly, but Marco hesitates to take it. He kneels in front of Luffy the way he did weeks ago when they first met.

“I think you should be the one,” he starts, but Luffy shakes his head, cutting him off.

“I’m not tall enough,” he says plainly. “Ace has to go far or he’ll be annoyed.”

Thatch chokes out a wet sound that might have been a laugh, and Sanji finds himself smiling a little bit, too.

This hurts, but it’s not an unbearable pain. Maybe it felt that way in the beginning.

But Marco reaches out and touches Luffy’s face-- his palm on the side of Luffy’s neck and cheek, cradling it for just a second, the way a big brother would-- and then he stands up. And it looks a little bit like there’s less weight on his shoulders.

He takes the urn from Luffy, smoothing his thumb over the plaque on the front.

“I wish I met you sooner, kid,” Marco says. “You’re everything he always said you were.”

“He loved you guys, too,” Luffy replies.

They all stand together, on some wild hillside above an empty stretch of beach in California, and watch the dust fly off on that same playful breeze that guided them here.

“Now you’re together,” Luffy says, to the sky or the sea or someone else entirely. It’s goodbye and promise and reassurance, all wrapped up in a quiet, unassuming tone. “It’s okay. I’m still here, but it’s okay. Neither of you left me alone.”

Then he steps back a little, hand reaching. Zoro takes it, because that’s just physics at this point, but Shanks moves, too, wrapping his arm around Luffy’s shoulders from the opposite side. A steady pillar of strength for Luffy to lean against, and he does, just for a moment.

And then Marco whirls around and seizes Luffy, as if he’ll literally combust if he goes without a hug for one more second, and then Thatch and Franky and Usopp jump in after that, and Shanks only barely manages to extract Luffy before all the rest of them go down in an undignified tangle of limbs. A few more of their friends-- opportunists, all of them-- dog-pile the group with complete satisfaction.

Luffy doubles over, absolutely wheezing with laughter.

Nami takes a picture on her phone, giggling through a steady stream of tears herself, and then switches to video. Benn and Vista both extract promises from her that she’ll post everything.

Sanji watches over his family-- much larger than it was even a week ago-- and thinks that Ace would have loved this.

##

Ace’s older brothers try to leave the urn with Luffy, but Luffy won’t have it.

“You let me hold onto him for this long,” he says. “Thank you.”

Clearly in the camp of people who would burn the world for Luffy in a heartbeat, Marco takes the empty urn out of Luffy’s hands and replaces it with the silly shark stuffie they won out of a crane machine.

“You can hold onto him for as long as you want,” Marco tells him quietly. “Anyone says otherwise, you point ‘em right to me.”

They part ways with promises to meet up again next month, and a round of tight embraces exchanged.

When they get home, Luffy climbs up on Franky’s shoulders, and sticks the orange shark in place of pride on the mantle. He has to move a few picture frames to do it, brow furrowed as he bends all his concentration to the task, but he makes it work. Even though it’s a little crowded, everyone fits.

Franky sets him carefully back down, and Sanji says, “We can get it down for you whenever you want it.”

“No, it’s okay,” Luffy says, only looking up at it for another minute before he gazes around at the rest of them. He’s not quite smiling, but the corners of his mouth are soft, as if he’s about to. “He can see everything just fine from up there.”

[l0verseyes]

AHHHH I LOVE THE DEMON SLAYER AU

was this the one i made for ASL? i kinda feel bad i didnt continue it (i had like 2 WIPs but got lazy..) but im glad a lot of ppl liked it!! didnt really expect the attention it got

[peonycats]

Thank you so much for answering my question! So sorry for being in here again, but there's something I'm curious about if its not too much trouble. About your Germany-Japan-Italy trio point, does that extend to the manga strips post-aph (aka HWS, Gangstertalia or things like au's) that show them together? Specifically I mean the strips of them discussing holiday traditions and the like.

Sorry again, I just love discussions about representing characters and think the fandom should have more of them. Thank you in advance!

Hmmmm, I wouldn’t necessarily consider the GerItaPan comic strips that Himaruya posts to be tokenism of Japan, given his positionality 😅 He is a Japanese person writing for what he originally thought was going to be a majority Japanese audience, and it wouldn’t feel right of me to call him tokenizing his own nation in a mostly white character cast.

Rather, I would call it “Japan is a cool guy and a valued third leg of the axis and is well-liked and respected as an equal by the West for his culture and contributions, despite his shortcomings here and there” which… hasn’t always been the case, lol, especially for the world war 2 period.

It’s a common joke among historian circles about Japan aspiring to become part the civilized and developed west by creating their own empire and colonies, and to a certain extent, I think Japan today certainly still aligns itself with the “Developed World” over the “Undeveloped South” because of how they perceive themselves. I mean you can sorta see it in the fact that the comic largely focuses on European countries, and Japan is probably the most frequently recurring non European country.

[kostevysen]

@forsoobado137

@aphfroghat

@jikimo-world

@kvietka

@lunakagayake

@moonhis2ndaccount

@imtrappedinthepitsofhell

@watering-plastic-plants

@calamitycrystal

@idisstuff

@lyresbird

@lunathewitchcat

@potatovampires

@miyusakurada84

YOUR BOOPS GIVE ME LIFE

KEEP GOING

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