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#the ONLY thing is that he’s not very good at translating originals onto what fits for them
starlooove · 2 months
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Theatre kid Damian is so real
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Do you have any thoughts or insights about tanizaki? We’ve known him for so long but I feel like I still know little to nothing about him 😭
That was the truth. He had made it this far in life because he was easily swayed by others. He went along with Kunikida’s scheme because he was asked to, and he was going to play the bomber because that was the role shoved onto him. Despite having a slightly bizarre skill, he wasn’t great in combat like the other agents, nor was he especially cunning. Tanizaki didn’t have any mortal enemies, nor did he have a dark past or any trauma. He was an ordinary guy. The only thing he really even wished for was his little sister’s happiness. - A Day at the Detective Agency (from The Untold Origins of the Detective Agency light novel)
Tanizaki sees himself as a pretty average guy, as someone without a notable past or fancy skills... and as a pushover. He doesn't really have convictions besides "Naomi" and goes along just about anything. But...
Tanizaki is the person who comes the closest to “evil” among all the Detective Agency employees. This is what I always tell everyone involved in this work. [...] [...] Tanizaki hit the enemy with the truck of a civilian who happened to pass by. By doing that, the truck would be completely destroyed and the driver would not be able to come out intact. But Tanizaki couldn’t care less about such things. Because for him, justice, morality or peace for the people, all come after his “sister”. - Asagiri, for the bsd expo (source and complete translation)
Tanizaki is canonically leaning on the "evil" side of bsd's grey morality. Since he has no bigger motivation than keeping Naomi safe, he'd do just about anything for her, no matter the price. He is in a good place, being at the Agency, where he is surrounded by people who do want to uphold great ideals and help others. However, he was also very quick to offer himself up as tribute to be transferred to the Port Mafia in Yosano's place. Again, he's a pushover at heart and lets himself drift around as the people around him see fit.
Naomi being his "sister" is probably a cover of some sort, since the book she's based on had exactly that (a scandalous marriage hidden behind a false, more familial relationship). Even our Naomi points out that she and Tanizaki look nothing alike (while groping him) and seems to make a show of their supposed relationship. There's no way they are actual blood siblings, and there definitely is a story behind that. There's also that book!Naomi was making her husband, who was obsessed with her, do whatever she pleased. It matches our Tanizaki's pushover nature and our Naomi's assertiveness, at least as inspiration.
That's about as much of an input we have of him at this time, but Kenji's backstory was just revealed, so surely Tanizaki's turn will come... his ability came from somewhere, he met Naomi somewhere, he got into the ADA someway/somehow... and even if it's ultimately not that eventful... well... characters can get their trauma during the story, instead of before...
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crystallinestars · 4 months
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I saw the banner and it’s kinda relief that Kaveh isn’t pulling up with Haitham, even though the community I’m in is absolutely losing their marbles over this ahahah. Hopefully he will be with Nilou instead, I want them both 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻
Though OMG I saw one of the voice lines from new Sumeru guy Sethos regarding Haitham and Kaveh and the ship pandering that you’ve mentioned before, it’s so real 🙁 Like it’s along the lines of “Something about those two guys hanging out together, you just can’t look away.” Apparently the original CN line doesn’t even carry the same implication, like it focuses more on the fact that ah, these two famous people are hanging out and it’s eye-catching (?), iirc. For some reason English translator wanted it to look more sus ig. And the fandom is gobbling it up… haizzzz 🙄
I don’t know anymore honestly, when Mihoyo tosses the bait, the fandom will absolutely latch on to that stuff and make sure to rub it in everyone’s faces. “Ah, they are GAY for each other and everyone else who doesn’t feel the same way is WRONG” kind of thing. As far as I’ve seen, the only other ship whose fans get so insistent and up in arms about their ship and the sexuality HCs is a certain pair of Inazuman women (and even for these two idk if Mihoyo has baited as hard as they have for Haitham and Kaveh???). To many fans, close same-sex friendships are no longer viable; they must be kissing and getting hitched next week. And as usual, bisexual people do not exist in Hoyoverse fandom’s eyes. They’ve locked me out of Pride Month 🤣
Also, I was thinking about how pushy the fans could get and I wonder if it’s something that’s exclusive to the English-speaking fandom? IIRC I’ve also seen other nationalities such as the Indonesian fans who say that their part of fandom is not any better 😅 Cos I’m genuinely curious if the CN/JP/KR (or any other nationality) fans get so aggressive about ships, sexuality HCs, etc. I remember another anon mentioned how shipping as activism has become a thing and it seems like it’s really big among American fans in particular (and at this point, probably other anglophone fans).
I don’t even play HSR (cos no space on my device) but I’m just absolutely eating up the AvenStelle and AvenPaz feasts in lieu of what NL crumbs there are for Kaveh because hot DAMN Aventurine is just so fine. 😭 And Stelle, Topaz… they’re soooo pretty (it’s a digression but when I was at the con, many girls dressed as Stelle, and I observed that her fit looks good on pretty much everyone). I find it kinda interesting that even though Aventurine has a popular BL ship and a fandom that also likes to do the “he can’t be anything but gay because of his looks and personality” thing, he also has not just one but two popular NL ships. The tags for both on Twitter are alive and kicking, compared to if you go onto KavehLumi, KaveLou, etc and it’s a very, very small trickle of activity in comparison.
Not quite ready to stop playing yet because I need to build up my new team with Layla, Faruzan, Scara but maybe after I’ve done this, I’ll take a break to cook Kaveh food on AO3 ahahahah.
I think that I lack the ability to write short asks… Hope it is not too painful to read (and sorry for negative vibes 🙁).
-🍓
Welcome back 🍓 Anon! No worries, I like receiving long asks ^_^ They're not painful to read at all, trust me. Nothing will ever top the pain that is reading academic research papers 😐
In the same vein, I hope my super long responses aren't too much for you. I can't keep them short even if I tried. And don't apologize for negative vibes, I get that sometimes you want to vent your frustrations and thoughts with someone who can relate. I would even say that between the two of us, I'm more negative haha 😅
I legit wanted to celebrate with a bottle of champagne when it was revealed Kaveh wasn't on Haitham's banner. Finally a win. I know the community is having a meltdown, but truth be told, their tears water my crops, clear my skin, and and extend my life by 10 years. 😊 I'm having a good day. If I actually bothered to look at their comments, I'd grab a bag of popcorn and have a field day.
And yes, I also hope he's with Nilou! I always thought they'd be together since they're both bloom-based, but some people speculate he might be with Furina/Sigewinne. Guess we'll see. Kaveh has been gone for over a year, which is so unusual for a 4 star. I though they were withholding him because of the deletion glitch a hacker did using him, but it's been a good while since then...
Regarding English localization... it has been established since a while ago that the English translation for Genshin and HSR leaves much to be desired. There have been multiple instances of mistranslations and butchering of characterization. Rhinedottir, Nahida, and Arlecchino had masculine pronouns in the beginning before the translators realized they messed up. Characters dialogue is often translated to sound more aggressive than it actually is, or subtleties get omitted entirely. It's a mess, basically.
I also wouldn't be surprised if the English localization team for Hoyo is trying to push their own agenda using their translations. Over the past year, I've seen proof that English localizers for anime and Japanese video games push their personal beliefs by butchering the original source material to suit their political standpoints.
The fandom doesn't even need poorly-translated dialogue to gobble up ship crumbs. They twist and misconstrue official media to try and push their ship being canon. Basically make their own crumbs haha.
I would agree with you that the only other same-sex ship that gets as much gatekeeping and toxicity as the Roommate Ship TM is the one with the electro Inazuman ladies. I would also go as far as to say that yes, they also get almost as much pandering, though maybe a tiny bit less? Just a bit. At least both of them can be seen solo or interacting with other characters frequently, and don't have forced moments of interaction for ship bait.
Please don't get me started on same-sex dynamics in Genshin and HSR. It feels like you can ask any shipper of a popular same-sex ship, and they'll tell you that every single character is either gay or lesbian, no in-between. And if they do accept other sexualities, then characters can be anything but straight. NEVER straight (as a saw someone say about Aventurine while using his lightcone art with Ratio as "proof" that he can't possibly be straight, how dare you ship him with a woman).
So yes, according to a significant portion of the fandom, only homosexuality exists, all other sexualities be damned. And yes, characters of the same sex can never be just friends, they're only ever "implied to be a canon gay/lesbian couple". The worst part is that Mihoyo actively encourages their delusions by pandering to the BL and GL sides of the fandom, and the toxic portions of those rub it in everyone else's face, as you said.
It's ok 🍓 Anon, even if they locked you out of Pride Month, you can come celebrate it with me 😊 (I'm straight though, hope that's ok).
The English-speaking side of the fandom is definitely extremely toxic. They've become notorious for harassing artists from East Asia over ships, so they've got a bad rep there too.
As far as I've personally seen, the Japanese side is pretty chill. People liberally block and mute stuff and people they don't want to see, but they do it quietly to avoid conflict.
I have a friend in China, and she told me that the toxicity is just as bad there as it is in the West. Chinese fans don't fight over sexuality, but they do fight over BL and NL ships. I can't say anything about Korea since I haven't seen anything from them, but I imagine it might be similar.
I also want to add that I haven't seen any ship wars for the Russian side of fandom, but I might just not be looking in the right places. I'd be pressed to find NL stuff there, though...
Lmao, Aventurine converted so many players to HSR. I was one of them (thought I started before he was drip marketed). That man is simply too gorgeous. And oh my god, you cannot imagine how stoked I was that Avenstelle (and Avenpaz) became so popular! It helps that Aventurine is still a new character, so his ships are very popular at the moment, but for two NL ships to be so abundant? Mihoyo would be fools to shoehorn him with Ratio, like what they did to Kaveh. Lowkey, I hope Avenstelle can be as popular as Chilumi so Mihoyo does more with them in the story (and I can continue seeing fanart of them years later).
Kaveh is a tragic case, but I think that's mostly because he has two things going against him:
1) He's a "tall" man, and as we have all seen, Mihoyo loves to create "tall" characters in same-sex pairs.
2) He's a 4 star. 4 stars are always less popular compared to 5 stars, both in ship combinations and overall popularity (I would know, 90% of my fav male characters are 4 stars. There's so little solo and NL content for them).
Surprisingly, Kaveh has a lot of NL ships (with Faruzan and even Layla too), it's just unfortunate they're not popular. Kinda hard to be popular when Mihoyo gives no food for those ships, and the toxic shippers harass you for shipping him with a girl. Mihoyo isn't even trying.
On the bright side, though there isn't much regular content for Kavehlumi and Kavelou, there are dedicated fans for those pairings that still create things for those ships.
I run a Daily Kavehlumi Twitter account, and though it's not bustling (I'm just not good at garnering a following lol), it's got over 200 posts and I still haven't even gotten through the majority of all Kavehlumi content that exists on Twitter. We'll be hosting a Kavehlumi week in July, and I hope we'll get a few participants to make even more content to celebrate the ship. I'll be taking a break from posting on Tumblr this month to write some things for it.
I'm curious though, what kind of Kaveh food are you hoping to cook? 👀 Is it for a specific ship, or something else?
Anyways, I wish you luck on building your Scara team (Who is the 4th member, btw?), and may you have a good day! 😘
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cptn-m · 2 months
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One Piece chapter 1121 review
I think there can be no doubt about it – this is the climax of Egghead and the finale of volume 110. There may technically be one last chapter to go at the start of the next volume as Emet makes his final play and Vegapunk signs off, but there’s no mistaking that the moment Oda wanted to build to is this.
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First thing of note here is the title. People have been saying this since the spoilers dropped, so you’re probably not hearing it from me first, but the chapter’s title references part of Roger’s quote from the start of chapter 100. “Inherited will. A man’s dream. The tides of the eras.” Both previous parts, at least in Japanese, have also been chapter titles and the titles of the volumes containing those chapters (chapter 145/volume 16 and chapter 224/volume 24). The English releases, unfortunately, have not maintained the same consistency of wording between the original quote and their chapter/volume titles. I really don’t want to become the kind of content creator you come to for a simple review and have to skim over him pitching his side projects, so I won’t go on too long, but catching these kinds of things is exactly why I wanted to start my One Piece Rewrite Project for so long. This is such a powerful set of series-long connections to draw and a shame for English readers not to have, but also not something you can blame the older translators for because it would take more than 20 years of foresight to know how important it was meant to be.
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The colour spread has a very pleasant, summery vibe to it with some really strong colour work. It’s the coldest, wettest part of winter here, so I appreciate the reminder of warmer weather. Off-hand, the idea of a giant Nami and a lot of ice cream sounds like its reusing the concept from chapter 1011’s spread, but in practice the two look and feel different. But having seen the prototype with the crew building a model Merry, yeah, I wish we’d gotten that instead. It would have been a much better fit to celebrate the anniversary as well. Can only hope Oda decides to take another shot at the idea at some point.
Finally moving onto the chapter proper, the first thing that stands out is Luffy’s choice to elevate Bonney. He’s winding up his own attack when he notices her feelings, and, even without knowing the backstory himself, encourages her to participate in the final blow. This shows both an emotional perceptiveness and a willingness to share the spotlight that might scan as uncharacteristic of Luffy. But it feels like character growth to me. We saw this behaviour develop through his relationship with Momo, and it seems to have stuck. And boy does that final punch feel good. Bonney’s bit about her loneliness and the family she wanted to have is tragic and moving. Saturn well and truly earned that hit, even if he’s almost definitely not dead yet.
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But I can’t help thinking this might have had more impact if this had been the first time Bonney achieved the Nika transformation. Let it be the giants and/or Strawhats who team up with Luffy to throw Mars away and save Bonney for the battle that’s personal to her. But whatever. Maybe the mood would have been wrong to achieve a Nika transformation if Saturn was already on deck. He’s not exactly a figure who inspires joy.
It might also have been cool to see Kuma contribute, but that tiny little smile he offers after it’s done speaks volumes. His survival, combined with Bonney’s little fantasy spot of living with him and Ginny, feels like death for Bonney’s odds of joining the crew. She’s got a home to return to that she’s been missing. Her happiest ending is getting it.
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Vegapunk sneaks a few final revelations into his closing remarks. Connections are drawn between the Lunarians, Buccaneers and Three-eyes as races oppressed in relation to the Void Century. The first two we knew about, but as much sense as it makes, what with the ability to read Poneglyphs, the Three-eyes are not something I’d thought about tying into that thread. It’s reiterated, also, that the World Government might have usurped the top of the Red Line from the Lunarians. I wonder if the oni/ogres will eventually fall into this category as well?
And of course, we have the kick-off of the final scramble for the One Piece. Given what’s been said, it makes sense for the Marines to finally consider prioritising it to keep a pirate or Revolutionary from claiming the power the decide the fate of the world.
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I’m going all in on the last spread being the key figures of this last war. Maybe Law and Kid could struggle back as wildcards, but I think Oda’s telling us they’ve lost their shot at being major contenders. Plus, we’ve got an existing wildcard in the totally unknown silhouetted figure down there. People are maybe jumping the gun being so quick to call him Shanks-y with so little info, but I am personally a believer in the evil twin theory. What’s sticking in my mind though, is how many of the faces shown are obstinately on the same side presently. Blackbead and Kuzan; Sabo and Dragon; and Sakazuki and Koby, who themselves are subordinate to Imu and Garling. I wonder if the suggestion is that each of these figures has some kind of their own agenda and could end up at odds with any of the others. For some, the divide is obvious. Kuzan’s true loyalties have been the subject of debate for years. SWORD making a splinter group of good Marines is on every final arc bingo card. But Sabo embracing his new solo identity as the Flame Emperor and creating friction with Dragon could be an interesting twist.
So that’s it. The world has caught up to where the readers are and the race for the prize has been officially declared. Things can only get really crazy from here. I’m tempted to use the break week to reread Egghead in full, but I’d rather save it for when the island is definitively done with, Emet and all, rather than have to adjust opinions over a last few chapters like when rereading Wano during the mid-epilogue break month.
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whathappenstotheheart · 4 months
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35, 17 and 7 from those fun "weird writer" asks 🥳
I've been pondering how to answer #17 for so long that's it's become tomorrow, twice. Anyway, here we are:
7. What is your deepest joy about writing?
I think for me it's a pretty even split between two things:
Realizing a vision. Getting that scene to move just like I imagined. Getting that dialogue to flow just like it does in my head. Getting that one line to be just as pretty or poignant as the feeling behind it.
Reader impact. Someone reading my words and feeling them deeply. Someone seeing themselves or their emotions or experiences reflected in my writing. Or for fic, someone seeing something they love or resonate with in a character in how I render them.
17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.
This is a tricky one! I feel like I should talk about fic (since this is a fandom blog primarily, though I should make a sideblog for my original stuff soon) and honestly I have so many fic WIPs that are roughly at the same stage of production that I'm not sure which to pick.
Plus, with fic I tend to be so focused around whatever details (canon or headcanon) that draws me to a character or dynamic that not much gets left out, because if I can't fit it in the main fic I will write a fluff snippet or something with it. Also, most of my long-form fic are pre-production or very early days, so it's hard to say what might have been left out.
So instead, since my Beverly/Deanna fic is the only long-form one that actually has chapters up on AO3, let me regale you with some random Beverly Crusher headcanons that will probably end up in the fic eventually, but have not yet:
Beverly is bi/pan. The end of the Host says nothing about her sexuality and everything about the mindfuck of your lover suddenly dying and being told this new person is them, and I will die on that hill.
Beverly has ADHD and/or whatever neurospiciness I have (jury is still out on that. In fact, jury has not yet been assembled). Like, seriously. The impulse control that makes you fly into a literal sun to prove a point. The teenage experience of saying something and not realizing you'd hurt someone's feelings. Just her vibe is the vibe of someone who is making a real effort not to move more. Do I project onto her? Yes! Am I still right? Also yes.
Beverly has very specific comfort foods and whenever she moves, she always spends a period of time wrangling the replicator into making them right. Am I still projecting because I'd probably do that? Yes.
Beverly speaks some Portuguese. Why? Because I like to make chars bilingual whenever I can, and also I speak some Portuguese so there you are.
Relatedly, I have a sorta lore-headcanon that some subset of people would struggle with listening to music through the universal translator because of the disconnect between the relative mismatch between the length of the music for a given line and the length of the (translated) lyrics (which would be more obvious with some language pairs that others, obviously). I imagine like a lot of things, some people's brains would be able to compensate for and ignore this mismatch better than others. For some reason, I hc Bev as one of those people who always switch the UT off for music because it makes her brain itch otherwise.
Beverly will always love Jack but struggles with accepting that not all her feelings for him are as noble. And reasonably so, because uuuh... he sounds like kind of a crummy spouse. Like, between canon and inference from the infrequency of promotions in Trek broadly, there's a good chance he fucked off into space while Wes was still an infant. Maybe even before he was born. And iirc the way the years work out, there's a chance Bev was still in med school while basically single mom-ing a newborn. I side-eye that man, I tell you.
I really should stop there especially since I am not actually answering the question XDD.
35. What’s your favorite writing rule to smash into smithereens?
Hmmm, tricky. Probably the idea that adverbs should be avoided. Love me some adverbs! Same for the passive voice. Well-used passives can be so impactful!
Oh also (though I haven't seen this one as much) the idea that you shouldn't use a buncha different verbs as speech tags! Yes, they can definitely be overused but used well, you can pry "murmurs", "sighs", "grumbles" etc. from my cold, dead hands.
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sephandhadesweeks · 2 years
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Hades’ week!
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For the next seven days, we will be using this blog as a celebration of Patrick Page’s Hades.There will be 8 days of prompts. (Why is there an 8th day of prompts in a Hades-week? Because the King commands lol.)
You can create new fanworks of any stripe or reblog old ones you’ve created with #hadesweek, and I will reblog it onto this blog. All fanworks are welcome. We are open to anything and everything as long as its related to the character of Hades in Hadestown. Covers? Sure. Interpretive Dance? Go for it. Art? Sure. Gif edits? Course. Translations of songs into other languages? Sexy. Fanfic? Cromulent. Fanart? Very nice. Cosplay? Sounds nice. Reblogs of previous work are also welcome. This week is meant to just be a celebration of Hades art and fic and meta and whatever else for a week.
Prompts:
January 9. The King on the Chromium Throne (Hades’ outfits and accessories; a focus on character design)
January 10. Think of It as My Desire for You (Hades and Persephone’s relationship in focus;  it has its highs, it has its lows, but its always clear)
January 11. Hey Little Songbird (Hades relationship with Eurydice, in any/all meanings of the word)  
January 12. He Said He’d Harbor Us/He Said He’d Shelter Me (Hades’ relationship with the workers/the chorus)  
January 13. Orpheus, the Undersigned (Hades’ relationship with Orpheus; a foil, a priest, and a poet all in one)
January 14. The Electric City (Hades’ relationship with his eponymous Hadestown)  
January 15. Word to the Wise (act 2 focus + her worship among the Workers/Hermes/Orpheus and Eurydice)
20th. A Love Song (a coda, a bonus day to bring us back to where the show begins, in a garden)
If you use one of the prompts, tag it with the prompt (e.g, for the 13th, tag #the king on the chromium throne) and I will add it under the prompt’s hashtag on this blog as well. But if you do not want to go off the prompts, just add #hadesweek and I will add it to the reblogs without adding any prompts to it.  
What kind of content can I add?
Sugar, spice, and anything nice – as long as its Hades-related. Seriously, anything. Meta about what you like about Hades is appreciated; thank you posts for Patrick or welcome (back) posts for Tom are great; fanfic is lovely, fanart too. Interpretive dance or covers or gif-sets or videos or just your favorite show memories about Patrick? Great. Wanna post a crossover between the Green Goblin and Hadestown? Sure. All fan works are welcome. It’s an Patrick Page love fest. By Patrick fans, for Patrick fans.
Reblogs and original content are both allowed!
See below for a FAQ:
I wrote something a year ago that fits a prompt - can I reblog it for this?
Yes! As long as it’s Hades focused AND the reblog is something you yourself created (eg don’t reblog someone else’s art with #hadesweek or something; like Hades, I will only reblog what others choose to offer freely), go nuts! If you want to use this as a challenge to make some new art or fic or meta or whatnot, that is very cool and I would love to see it. But realistically, with just a weeks notice, not everyone will have time to make new works, and honestly tumblr moves so fast there’s lots of good stuff we haven’t seen for a bit that I’d love to have reblogged here. If you would like it featured too, please add #hadesweek to a reblog.  
….I have Hades content that doesn’t fit the prompts tho. Can I post or reblog that for Hades week?
Yes. This is all about creations that feature Hades. The prompts are just ideas to get started, but they are optional. If you don’t like them, don’t use them. Just reblog #hadesweek and it goes up here on this blog for posterity.
How many times are you going to post/reblog things? WIll you add stuff for a prompt even after that day is over?
I reblog as much as I can, as fast as I can. I’ll check the tag for a month for new works but will post it after if you can make sure I see it. Make sure that you have your blog visible to be searched and that you’ve filled in the tag right: #hadesweek . If I miss yours for some reason assume user error on my part and send me a msg; I’ll add it.
What if I have fanfic or fanart that’s about Hades, but it’s not entirely Patrick’s version? Are transgender/non-binary/alternate gender or design Sephs that are inspired by Patrick in some small way welcome?
Yes. All Hades are good Hades. All Hades make me press the reblog button.I’m not going to judge how much your Hades is Patrick and how much it’s anyone else.
Does it have to be Broadway version of Hades?
No. Patrick has been Hades from NYTW on and we respect all her work. NYTW, Edmonton, London, and Broadway works are all welcome.  
I have Hades content but it also has Persephone/Orpheus/Eurydice/The Fates/Hermes/The Workers/A Lamp/An Original Character - is it allowed?
Yes! Hades is a flavor that is delicious both as a sole ingredient and in a group composition. We accept every Hades relationship and every Hades gen combo and Hades solo works, too. All Hades with some Patrick inspiration are welcome. All versions of Hades with Hades’ friends, family, and lovers are welcome, too.
Can I follow this blog? Do I have to follow to participate?
You can follow if you want to, but its optional. To participate all you need to do is tag something you post on tumblr.com with #hadesweek.
Do I have to add content warnings/are you going to add content warnings?
No, though common sense ones like NSFW are appreciated to help people curate their experiences. I will reblog content warnings if they are there. I will only add tags to aid in blog organization otherwise: e.g. identifying if it fits a prompt, who the characters in the picture are,etc.
Who runs this?
@acequeenking​ right now.
Why are you planning this for a week after Patrick left?
Because Patrick left around the holidays, and I figured this way we would have more time to appreciate it!
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jackrrabbit · 3 years
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Adversary /// Overhaul x f!Reader (18+)
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Summary: You make a deal with the devil to save your life, but it turns out Overhaul’s not interested in your soul.
A/N: Remember when I said I was going to do a fantasy collab and then dipped for like 9 months? Hahaha…anyway…
@pleasantanathema @ present-mel @shadowworks—if it’s not too late, here’s my part for the Pleasant & Strider Fantasy AU Writing Collab from a million years ago. Go check out the masterlist and gorge yourself on these amazing pieces!!
Tags/Warnings: dubcon, demon fuckery & occult things, big heresy/sacrilege/perversion of religion, sex in a church ft. Catholic sex guilt, other than that it’s not that bad lol, inexperienced reader, mild degradation, shameless camp and demon-fucking clichés, Overhaul calls you “little girl” 👉👈
He doesn’t look like a demon.
Not that you really know what demons are supposed to look like. But…red skin, right? Fangs and claws and swirling masses of bad energy. Maybe cloven hooves for feet. Yes, that’s the Disney version—but even if you didn’t expect a cartoon personification of evil, you didn’t expect this.
He looks like a doctor, you think. Lab coat hanging open, surgery mask pushed down under his jaw, stethoscope draped over his shoulders. No, he’s a little young to really look like a doctor…an intern, you amend, shifting back in your hospital bed. He looks like he fits right in here, not a hair out of place. Except for, you know, the polished black horns curling out of the sides of his skull.
Overhaul. It was written in the book. That’s the only thing you have to call him in your head.
He’s standing in the center of the sigil you drew at the foot of your bed before midnight, surveying the room critically without meeting your gaze. He looks annoyed—that’s not a good sign, is it?—but then again, of course he’s annoyed. You’d be annoyed too if you got summoned out of your cozy hell dimension in the middle of the night. According to the book, you’re lucky he even showed up…although ‘lucky’ isn’t really how you’d describe yourself most days.
“So,” Overhaul says after a long moment of silence in which you question every choice you’ve made in your relatively short life. “You’re dying.”
You nod.
“And you don’t want to be.”
You nod again, wondering if you’re supposed to be contributing more to this conversation. It’s a bit difficult when your mouth is so dry it feels like you’ve been eating dirt, but you suppose being in the presence of an unholy servant of Satan will do that to a person.
“Fine.” He sighs, frowns, and then finally lowers his gaze onto yours—and you shiver.
Those eyes. No human has eyes like that.
“Make me an offer,” Overhaul tells you, and through his open mouth you catch a flash of sharp white teeth.
Okay. Okay. The chirping of the heart monitor speeds up (as if it weren’t obvious enough that you’re terrified) and you fold your knees up to your chest and fidget with your ring and think. He’s giving you a chance to establish parameters. You’re supposed to start with his end of the deal, the thing you want from him. That’s what it said to do in the grimoire, aka the 19th century demonology volume your creepy cousin brought back from her pagan anthropology research trip in rural France. The one you keep hidden under your bed because your mother would burn it if she knew you were reading about summoning demons.
Offer nothing to a hell creature without first telling him your price. You know the words by heart, both the winding calligraphy of the original French from the grimoire and the rushed scrawl of the English translation your cousin left for you in sheets of lined paper layered between the pages of the book for you to read. Really, this is her fault. She was the one who slipped you the book, who told you that it worked, who snuck you the ingredients for the summoning. She was the one who left a bookmark at the chapter on this particular demon, one that specializes in ‘Contrat pour Remédier au Déséquilibre des Quatre Humeurs’, which she said meant a contract to cure any illness. Even his ‘name’ is translated in her hand, practically an afterthought in the margins of the page.
‘Le Malin qui Ravage et Rebâtit’— Overhaul?
You looked up the literal meaning of this phrase on your own. It did not reassure you.
“Girl.” His voice is cold, irate. Your eyes snap back up to his and it feels like that burning gaze is laser-beaming into your skull. “Do not test me. My time is limited…as is yours.”
You swallow. “How long do I have left?”
“Less than a single human year,” he tells you without a trace of sympathy. “Seven months, twelve days, three hours. Or so. You’ll be too exhausted to leave this bed in four months, and the pain will become intolerable in six… By the end, you’ll wish—“
“Stop,” you breathe out. The heart monitor is beeping wildly and you squeeze your knees into your chest, trying to calm down your breathing. “Stop, I—I want to live.”
“Of course you do.” Overhaul’s lip curls. “How very predictable.”
Be specific, you remind yourself, doing your best to ignore the stifling disapproval from the man—the demon—in front of you. Something about him (maybe how clean-cut he looks, maybe the indisputable authority in his demeanor) makes you want to impress him. But you didn’t turn your back on your religion—you didn’t draw pagan symbols on the floor in chalk, fill silver cups with various questionable substances (including your own virgin blood), and turn the crucifix your mother hung over your bed upside-down so you could let a demon make you feel guilty for wanting to survive. “I want to be cured. I’m okay with whatever natural death I have instead when I’m older, I just don’t want to die of this illness. I want you to make me healthy.”
“Simple enough. What else?”
‘Simple’? Your heart surges with something you’ve felt very little of since your initial diagnosis—hope. “T-That’s it. Just the cure.”
Overhaul glares at you. “Humans… Every vice in the world available to you, and you limit yourselves to the basest priority of survival.”
“But you can do it? You can cure me?” you persist.
Overhaul steps forward (quiet, so quiet you wonder if he really moved) and holds a hand out to you past the foot of your bed—you hesitate, and a second later you can see the muscles in his hand flex, stretching the latex of his plastic gloves tight over his knuckles.
Just do it. You give him your hand. Carefully. Like you’re scared the contact will burn you. It doesn’t (although his skin feels warmer than yours), but after a moment his grip tightens, sliding down past your hand to circle the fragile bones of your wrist and squeeze.
“Ow?” You wince.
The demon’s eyes flicker closed for a second, lips moving silently like he’s talking to himself—and then he drops your hand unceremoniously back onto your lap. “You could be cured before the sun rises this morning. I doubt your stay in the hospital will extend past the end of the week.”
He sounds bored, voice as flat and passionless as it was earlier, but your heart is soaring. Cured. You’ve lived with this illness for so many years, you can’t remember the last time someone told you you could be cured. And getting out of the hospital that soon? You can just imagine taking down all the decorations from the walls of your room here and setting them up in your old bedroom at home. You could see friends on the weekend and not take an oxygen bag, you could get a job or—or apply to college, you could have a life—
“That is…assuming you have something to offer me in exchange for the cure.”
Your stomach drops. You’d almost forgotten about the other half of the deal.
“Don’t tell me I came all this way for nothing.” Overhaul steps back, and the orange light of the candles you set sends strange shadows over his arrogant face. The fires look brighter now, and you find yourself tracing the lines of those shining black horns. In an odd way, they look natural—so organically framing his temples that you can’t imagine him without them.
“N-No, of course not. I have some money—I mean, my mom has some, and I can get it for you…” Which is half the truth. If you know anything, it’s that your mother’s spent most of her savings on your treatment and care. You probably have more debt than you have money in the bank right now—you’d try to get rid of that, too, if you hadn’t read in the book how important it is to keep your request as simple and straightforward as possible.
…Although it’s apparently not enough. Overhaul’s eyes narrow, molten gold irises carved into slits. “Even if I had a use for human money, do you really believe your life is worth so little?”
“No—no,” you say quickly. “I just thought—in case you were interested—”
The air crackles with energy, the candle flames spark bright blood-red, and the hair on your arms stands straight up. “I am not.”
“Okay! I get it.” You wave your hands back and forth, pulling your IV line from side to side with the motion. The book was very clear about staying calm and rational while you work out the terms of the deal, but that’s easier said than done when you have a real live (live?) hell creature in front of you. You always knew this was going to be the hard part—all the stories say there’s only one thing that a demon would be interested in, and no matter how inviting the prospect of living past this illness is, you know you’d rather die than sell your immortal soul to the devil. “I’ll give you anything except my soul! And—and don’t hurt anyone I care about, or— just don’t hurt anyone, okay? Other than that, if there’s anything I can give you, I will.”
Overhaul’s lip curls, baring a thin strip of those unnaturally sharp canines. “And is your soul really so valuable?”
This throws you for a loop. Isn’t that the standard deal? A soul for a wish? That’s how it’s supposed to work—at least in this twisted version of reality where you can summon a demon to perform unholy miracles for you. But if you think about it, it doesn’t really make sense, does it? Why would your soul be valuable to him? You can’t form an argument, especially since you’re not willing to barter it away in the first place.
Your mouth is pursed open as you search for a response, but Overhaul doesn’t seem willing to wait. A gloved hand wraps its way around the railing at the side of your bed, and he leans in closer. “Little girl…what makes you think you possess anything I desire?”
Little girl. You’re not a little girl, you’re a grown woman—and yet there’s no untruth in the statement. In front of him you feel insignificant, immature, weak. You have nothing real to offer, and something tells you that you’re not going to get rid of the demon you summoned without a sacrifice you’re not willing to make.
You twist your ring around your finger—the nervous habit you haven’t bothered to break because you’ve always had more important things to worry about—and the glint of silver in the candlelight must catch Overhaul’s eye because before you even notice him moving, your delicate hand is trapped in his larger one to give him a better view of the tiny piece of jewelry. “What is this?”
“It’s—um, a ring. A purity ring.” Has he never seen one before? Well…actually, that makes sense.
Overhaul turns your hand over in his without touching the band of silver. He’s looking at it closely, inspecting the lovingly engraved cross in the design and the inscription on the other side. “Matthew 5:8,” he reads out.
“…Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” you recite cautiously. It feels wrong to speak the words in front of him, but somehow you can’t help yourself.
Overhaul’s hand doesn’t leave yours. “This ring is important to you.”
“It’s a symbol of a—a promise I made to God. To save myself for my future husband.”
“To ‘save yourself’? To save what?”
You can’t believe you’re explaining this to a literal demon. You close your eyes and inhale slowly and taste smoke. “My…virginity. It’s a promise that I won’t have sex until I enter into a biblical marriage.”
At this, Overhaul is quiet. You give him a moment to answer, half expecting him to question why you think God cares about your sexual status (honestly, you’d be lying if you said you haven’t wondered this yourself), but he stays quiet until you peek up at him to try and gauge the look on his coldly handsome face.
He’s still staring at the ring. He hasn’t touched it—maybe he can’t, because of the cross?—and through the latex, his skin feels hotter than a human’s is supposed to be.
“Is there…” you start, but you trail off when you realize you have nothing to ask. You give a little tug to try and take your hand away and you’re surprised when your wrist actually slides out of his grip to fall back on the nest of sheets in your lap. You didn’t think he’d let you go so easily.
Overhaul turns his head to the side, eyes drilling into you so you feel like you should lower your gaze. The candlelight flickers in strange shadows over his horns. “This will do,” he says quietly.
“What?”
“In exchange for your cure.” The demon taps his own left ring finger, the place where the purity ring sits on your hand, and your heart soars. He actually wants that? It’s just a simple silver band, not worth much, but you’re not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe it has some special significance because of the religious connotation. Your mother will be angry you’ve lost it, but you’re happy to cope with that if it means living to actually get married!
“Yes!” you blurt out before he has a chance to rethink his offer. Sure, you’ll miss the purity ring—you’ve had it since you were a kid, after all—but there’s no question you’re getting the better end of this deal. At least in your opinion.
Something flashes through his yellow eyes, something you don’t even want to try and identify. “The contract, then.”
You barely have time to notice that his voice has gentled, that it’s practically silken in comparison to before, when the candlelight flickers again and suddenly the contract is everywhere. Everywhere. Writing appears on every surface in the room, covering the walls, stretching over the ceiling, coiling around the sides of the hospital equipment and decorating your bedsheets until you and Overhaul are the only untouched surfaces in sight. The characters are inscribed in red, dark red like—don’t think about that, you tell yourself squeamishly. You can make out some of the letters, even a word here or there—French, you recognize, mixed with what looks like Latin and interspersed with what you can only guess are runes.
“I can’t read this,” you tell him, fidgeting with your ring for what you now realize will be the last time.
“I only need your name,” he purrs, and then you feel a fragile weight in your hand: a feather, pearl-black and glossy and too large to belong to any bird you can think of, its angled tip glistening with wet ink. There’s an empty space in the writing before you, and Overhaul’s gloved hand comes to yours again to guide you into place.
This feels wrong…then again, of course it does. Even if you’re getting off relatively easy and just losing your ring rather than your soul, you’re still making a deal with a demon. You sign your name, forcing yourself to think about the future you have ahead of you rather than a disapproving white-bearded caricature of The Man Upstairs wagging his finger at you for haggling with a literal servant of Satan. People have done worse things to survive, haven’t they? It’s just a ring.
You set the feather down and Overhaul sighs, thick black eyelashes obscuring his intense gaze for a moment—and then the contract is gone, leaving your hospital room as blank and sterile as it’s supposed to be (well, aside from the candles and all the other ritual stuff you threw together to summon a demon in the first place).
“Are you going to cure—heal me now?” you ask.
“…Patience, little girl.” He’s pulling his glove off, peeling it down his fingers to bare the pale skin of his hand. You catch your breath and wonder what this is going to feel like, and then the tips of his fingers meet your cheek and—
you stop breathing.
It doesn’t hurt.
Or if it does, you don’t remember the pain a second later when breath floods back into your lungs. What you do feel is energy. Strength in your muscles, blood pumping through your veins, every inhale and exhale as light as a bird and freer. You feel healthy. You’re surprised you even remember what health feels like but you do: it’s like you’ve only been half alive, and now life is surging into you and through you and around you, bubbling up in your core like a spring overflowing. You blink rapidly, thinking you might cry from the sheer pleasure of it, but when you open your mouth it’s laughter that comes out. You’re healthy. You’re alive. You barely notice the IV line literally falling off of your skin because the hole where it entered your vein is sealed shut and healed perfectly.
No more needles. No more hospitals. Even without all the monitors beeping out your heart rate and measuring your vitals, there’s not a shred of doubt in your mind that you’re cured.
“Thank you!” you laugh, looking up at Overhaul and for the first time, not caring that he’s evil incarnate. “I feel—I’m okay! It worked!”
“Of course it did.” His expression is inscrutable, but he lets you have a few moments to enjoy your newfound health.
You roll your shoulders back, flex each muscle you can isolate one by one to test, make fists with your fingers and then run them over your hair, which is already thicker and shinier than it was a moment ago. Your body thrums with energy—you want to run, to feel the ground against your bare feet and the cold night air on your face, and you think you could do it! Your legs are already swinging over the side of your cot, ready to run barefoot out of the hospital if that’s what it takes, but before you can stand up Overhaul’s pushing you back down onto the bed.
“Have you forgotten your end of the bargain already?”
Honestly you did forget, but only for a second, only because you were so excited to just be outside again. “Oh, yeah. Of course.” Your hand goes to your left ring finger, ready to slip the ring off and hand it over, but Overhaul shakes his head.
“Not here.”
“What—?”
You’re falling. Your hospital room is disappearing, the image of your walls and your window and your bed disintegrating into yawning black, and you’re falling through it into nothing, into emptiness, and Overhaul’s still-bare hand in yours is the only anchor you have so you clutch onto it and squeeze your eyes shut. You want to scream—that’s the sane thing to do when you’re falling through miles and miles of empty space, right?—but when you open your throat the sound is swallowed up just like the light was…
Overhaul’s hand burns into yours, an improbable lifeline that you pull closer more out of terror than conscious thought. The slick, empty air rushes around you and you think I am going to die like this and then, incredibly, as soon as you’ve accepted your imminent demise, you feel your back mold onto a chilled, flat surface, vertebra by vertebra up to the back of your head, as if you’ve been lain down onto it.
Your heart thuds in your ears and you brace for an impact because your body hasn’t quite accepted yet that it’s not falling anymore—but at the same time, you know you’re lying down on something. You pry your fingers away from their vice-grip on Overhaul’s arm and feel around blindly for what’s underneath you, and when it seems reasonably tangible you let yourself open your eyes.
Way above, vaulted dozens of feet over your head, is a ceiling studded with gilt-edged frescoes and stained glass. It’s raining (even though it wasn’t in the hospital, you think) but through the massive panes of colored glass there’s enough oily blue light to make out that you’re in a church.
You’re in a church, with a demon. Isn’t that against the rules?
You sit up stiffly and look over at Overhaul, who’s standing at your side and looking down at you…which is how you realize the soft, cold surface you’ve been deposited onto is the blanket on top of the altar in the sanctuary. “Where...did you take me?”
“You should know this place.”
And you do, when you look around. It’s empty now and you’ve never been here at night, but this is a church your mother would bring you to when you were little, back before the disease got so bad you couldn’t risk traveling to it anymore. This is where you took your purity vow…the ring feels heavy on your hand. “Why—why—“
“I can’t stand human hospitals. Filthy places… How that reek of illness and death doesn’t bother your kind, I’ll never understand.” Overhaul pulls his latex glove back on. He’s dressed differently now, no longer impersonating a doctor—black shirt, black pants, and a…bird mask in red leather and gold. So are you, as a matter of fact. Instead of your hospital gown, you’re in a gauzy white dress that’s already been pushed up to pool around the tops of your thighs.
The slip is too thin for the cold, and you can feel your nipples standing up under the cloth so you fold your arms over your chest and hug yourself. “Why did you take me here?” The sound of your voice echoes off the walls eerily and you wish you hadn’t spoken so loudly. The reflection of your words sounds girlish, nervous.
“I told you. Your side of our contract.” Even in this dark, the angular features of his face are clearly concentrating—on you. “Are you already having second thoughts? Such a fickle little thing…”
“You mean the ring?” You reach for it again, ready to tear it off and throw it at him if that’s what it takes to see your deal through, but Overhaul snatches your hand away, pinning it above you.
“Not the ring,” he says. “The promise.”
The…promise?
A chill makes its way down your spine despite the heat radiating off the demon’s body and onto yours. “I don’t understand.”
“The promise,” Overhaul repeats—and you hear a sound almost like wings flapping and then he’s on the altar with you, knees straddling your hips as a single hand holds both your wrists above your head. “To remain a virgin until marriage. Your promise to God.”
A streak of lightning cracks down on the other side of the stained glass window behind the altar, illuminating the room briefly in spectacular pits of red and orange and yellow…and then it’s dark again, and the only color you can make out is the gold in Overhaul’s eyes.
“I’m going to break it,” he murmurs, lowering his head toward your ear right as the answering thunder rolls through the sanctuary, up through the altar, up into you.
///
Méfiez-vous de son piège, the grimoire said. Beware of the catch.
Of course it wasn’t just a ring.
Overhaul’s fingers are in—inside you, his middle and ring finger pumping through the length of your cunt like they belong there, like you were made to be touched this way. A mixture of your juices and your own spit cling to the latex because he made you suck his fingers before he put them in you and he hasn’t bothered to take his gloves off—not that you asked. You’ve been too busy biting your lip to try and muffle the moans that he keeps forcing out of you. He’s bracing himself on top of you with one hand and fingering you with the other, so your own hands are free to push into your eyes and hide your face…until he yanks your arm back and stops.
“Look at me.”
Your eyes are screwed shut and you shake your head back and forth, the movement shuddering your whole body right down to your pussy wrapped around Overhaul’s fingers. He slows the movement and kneels back, pushing one of your thighs up into your chest as he does it.
“Look at me.”
And you’re not sure whether it’s some unearthly power he has over you or the plain old deterioration of your willpower, but you can’t refuse him. You crack your eyes open and he’s glaring down at you, skin pale as ice in the blue light. Once he’s satisfied that you’re watching, the demon leans back in to fuck your cunt with his fingers, slowly at first and then quicker when he hits something inside of you—a spot, a place on the inner wall of your pussy that makes you feel like you’ve been shocked— heat blooms through you like blood in water and you gasp and he curls his fingers up to pet over that spot again.
“Wait—wait, that’s—it feels—weird!” You’ve never felt like this before. You’re not supposed to feel like this, it’s wrong.
“I understand you’ve never touched yourself, but don’t pretend you don’t like it.” Overhaul says, voice as indifferent and calm as ever even though your cunt is dripping clear sticky liquid over the plastic of his glove.
He pushes back in and grinds his palm over the little button on the top of your pussy—your clit?—and you want to scream. “No, I—I don’t—nnhh...”
Do you like it? The demon’s body is so hot next to yours, like he’s running a fever except you’re the one going out of your mind… You’ve heard metaphors for sexual pleasure before (that it’s like having something to drink when you’re dying of thirst; or that it’s the ultimate act of intimacy, love in physical form) but all of that’s a fucking lie. There’s nothing to compare it to, no reference that makes sense, because it doesn’t make sense—you don’t even want him to keep going, do you? You’re only doing this because you signed your name on a devil’s contract, because you don’t want to die and there’s no alternative…but that doesn’t explain why you feel so warm from the inside out, why you’re squirming and your hips are rocking involuntarily no matter how much you try to keep still. This isn’t right. You feel like you’ve been lied to.
A good girl wouldn’t like this.
Overhaul isn’t going to let you close your eyes, so you don’t—but the sounds coming out of your mouth are so…indecent (and how can you think these things about yourself? the word feels like someone else is saying it when you hear it in your head) that your hand is drifting up to your mouth before you can stop yourself, trying to stifle all of it…
“Let your voice out. I want you to hear yourself moan.”
Long fingers slide their way out of your pussy and then move up to rub quick little circles around your clit and you moan, like a whore, like a girl getting her cunt rubbed by a demon— “Oh, uhhhn—something, it’s—coming—“ There’s something building up in your core—a peak, a climax, something that makes you fist your hands in the nightgown he put you in (so tight you’re surprised the thin fabric hasn’t torn) and tilt your hips up into him, begging without words because you don’t have any to express what your body is asking for…
But he doesn’t give it to you. Overhaul takes his hand away from your pussy and the shock of the cool air after his too-hot touch is almost enough to send you over that edge—almost. Not quite. And without it, you’re left shivering and quaking, thighs twitching as your baser instincts beg you to just put your hand between your legs for once and hump your fingers to completion if the demon won’t do it.
You’re not going to risk that, though. Not when Overhaul’s dragging your body closer, bunching up the blanket on the altar under your spine, so your pelvis is angled to his… He’s already shirtless and you hear him unzipping his pants but you can’t bring yourself to actually look at him, even when you feel something hard and hot nudging up against your inner thigh and then aligning to your sticky wet slit.
“This will hurt a bit, but I want you to look,” he says, and you don’t even understand at first until you make yourself feel it—his cock, pushing up against your tight cunt to finish this, this perversion of what your first time was supposed to be…
And what was it supposed to be? Roses and candles and soft kisses? A nameless, faceless husband unzipping your wedding dress and making love to you with the lights off? The way the demon touches you should be cruel in comparison but it isn’t, it’s lighting fires under your skin and turning your brains to mush, so how is your body supposed to tell the difference?
It’ll hurt, you know that, you’ve heard enough about sex to know that it always hurts the first time for girls…women. It was already a stretch to fit his fingers in your virgin pussy, so of course his cock is going to hurt. You turn your head toward the window at your side and try on look out at the rain drawing rivulets like veins over the glass, something to focus on instead of him.
“I said look,” the demon hisses, and his hips push forward a bit and you bite off a whimper of pain. “Watch me take your virginity…look at your tight little cunt swallowing me up just like it was made to.”
“N-No—“ you whine, even though it’s not like you can ignore it. “Don’t make me, don’t make me look, I can’t—“
“Then look at me.”
It’s what he wants, some kind of wicked satisfaction he gets off on, but you’re lucky enough to even get an option so you choose that one, shifting your gaze up into his face instead of the place where his cock is pressing deeper and deeper inside you. Overhaul’s eyes are half-lidded and it’s hard to tell from behind the mask but the look on his face is…pleasure? No, that would be too human. Restraint, at least. He could just thrust up into your body in one stroke, but he wants you to feel it for some reason.
Maybe because it’s a worse betrayal of your chastity if you want to get fucked.
Lucky for you, though, you can barely feel anything aside from the pain. The heat you felt building earlier is draining out of you even as Overhaul tilts deeper, layering his chest over yours. You’re almost grateful for the modest barrier the dress provides between your torso and the solid muscle of his abdomen. His cock in your pussy feels like it’s too big too deep too much and it’s the first time you’ve felt like your body wasn’t created specifically for this purpose so you hold it tight.
“Does it hurt?”
A second of clarity makes you want to snarl (of course it fucking hurts, I’m losing my virginity to a demon I summoned from hell) and you dig your fingernails into your palms to stop yourself from saying it out loud. Overhaul pulls out a fraction of an inch and then pushes back in and you feel like the breath’s being pushed out of your lungs. “Yes! Yes, it—it hurts—“
“I can make you enjoy it…for a price,” he sighs, settling into a slow rocking motion of his hips pushing into yours.
And you want to, every sore muscle in your cunt is telling you to give in and give up, give him what he wants so you can enjoy it like he says—but you’d rather hate every second of this than make another deal. You shake your head quickly and because you’re still too afraid to look away from him, you don’t miss the look of surprise that flits across his face before he tamps it down. “I don’t—I don’t want to—like it,” you gasp out between thrusts. “It’s better if—if it h-hurts…”
This time it’s obvious—his eyes really do widen, and you feel some petty triumph at having caught him off guard like this. Who’s predictable now? you think—and then he’s lifting one hand off the altar at the side of your head and tugging his glove off with his teeth, and you don’t even have time to be afraid of what he’s going to do to you because it’s too late, his bare fingers are already stroking over your mound and onto your core, massaging into the flesh of your stomach so he can feel his own cock sliding in and out of you—
and it doesn’t hurt anymore?
You only have a second to try and understand—he cured you, he healed the pain from your first time just like he healed your illness?—before he hooks his grip under your thigh and folds your legs into your chest so he can fuck into you harder than before. His cock slaps into your pussy and you can hear it, hear how wet your filthy little cunt is, smeared through with your juices. It’s sick—the sound of skin against skin, and the moaning you can’t hold back, you sound like a woman in a porno and you wish the pain would come back just so you could keep hating what he’s doing to you. “What—what did you do—“
The demon ignores you. “It feels good, doesn’t it.”
“Nn—“ It’s deeper like this…deeper and rougher and you can feel it. Now that the pain’s been reduced to the dull ache of a stretched muscle, you can feel everything—his cock sliding against that same spot in your cunt that makes you want to squeal, the friction of his body moving against your clit, all of it, everything you wanted to block out— he pumps into you and you hear your breath sobbing out a moan a second out of rhythm, the sounds of you bouncing on demon cock echoing over the walls. “Please—ah, ahhh…”
“‘Please?’ Are you begging—me, little girl?” Overhaul pushes your thigh up and drags his cock through you, excruciatingly slow, forcing you to feel the thick head slide over every gummy wall in your slick pussy.
You shake your head, mewl, try to force your hips to stop rocking back into his and grinding your clit against him. But you can’t. You’re a—you were a virgin, for fuck’s sake! Overhaul’s immortal. Probably thousands of years of experience on how to make you feel like you want this, like you’re only alive in the places he touches you… You’re at his mercy, if he has any. You never stood a chance.
“Then are you begging your god?” His body lowers directly onto yours and like you’re being controlled by puppet strings your arms fold around him and rake your fingernails uselessly into the smooth skin of his back. You can feel the vibration of his mirthless laughter through his chest. “It must hurt terribly…to know he isn’t listening.”
“Don’t—stop, please,” you sob. “Don’t say—don’t stop—please!”
“Listen to yourself, girl—“ Overhaul’s breath is faster now, but you don’t have time to question it because you feel your peak coming again, the tension rising up through your cunt and your abdomen, harsher and crueler than when his fingers were in you but you want it just as much. More. “Has he ever answered your prayers? Has he...ahh, fuck—who’s the one giving you what you need?”
“No— please, please just let me let me, please—“ You’re talking nonsense now, begging for the release—at least then it’ll be over, and you need it, you need it so badly you feel your muscles locking up, cramping, your ankles crossing each other behind Overhaul’s back.
“Good girl,” the demon breathes, and then he lifts off you so he’s kneeling upright with the two of you still connected, his thick, heavy cock still speared in your pussy, and his fingers come down again to rub at your clit. Everything’s so wet you can hear the motion of his fingers slicking themselves through your juices, sliding up and down the little button over and over and it feels so good that a tiny part of you almost wants to drag it out, to savor it, but the rest of your body is going to die, is going to go crazy if the demon doesn’t let you cum right now, right now, right now!
And he does. Praise the Lord. The pads of Overhaul’s fingers pass over your clit one last time and your head rolls back, your throat moves but you can’t even make a sound, your legs shake and you cum.
You didn’t know it was like this.
Your cunt squeezes down on his cock, throbbing and pulsing and your toes literally curl (you didn’t think that was a real thing!) and your vision goes black for a moment and—oh fuck oh fuck i want this i want more how is it possible that i’ve never felt like this—you understand, more intimately than ever, why sex is wrong:
because nothing that makes you feel this good could possibly come without a cost, could it?
///
It must take longer than you thought for you to come back to your senses, because when you regain awareness of your body you’re in your hospital bed. You’re clean, too, and you wonder for a second if Overhaul bothered to clean you up? Or no…he probably just snapped his fingers and transported you back to your room. You’re not really sure how it works.
What you are sure of, however, is that you just got fucked by a demon. You’re sore in places that you didn’t know it was possible to be sore, and there are already bruises forming on the flesh of your thighs from how tight he was holding you. You don’t really have time to inspect these, though, because apparently your…ordeal (if you can call it that) isn’t over.
Overhaul’s still here.
He’s facing the hints of sunrise through the east window, dressed again in the immaculate lab coat and surgeon’s mask. “You’re awake,” he says without looking at you.
You nod hesitantly. You’re not really sure what the protocol is in this situation, but at least you’ve finally held up your side of the contract, right? And so has he. Despite having been up all night doing sinful things, you’re still itching to get out of this bed and test the limits of your healthy body. “You’re…going to leave, right?”
“Yes—”
At that, you sigh in relief and settle back into your starched bedsheets.
“But there’s one more thing you owe me.”
“Goddamnit,” you swear for the very first time in your life. After what you just did, taking the Lord’s name in vain seems like a relatively minor sin.
Overhaul’s mildly irritated expression doesn’t change, but he holds his hand out to you, palm up, the way you imagine someone would if they were helping you out of a car or requesting a dance at an old-fashioned ball. And really, you want all of this to be over—you want to get out of this hospital, you want to taste what the air outside is like, you want to distract yourself from what you just gave up in exchange for a future. At this point you’re just going to have to hope God isn’t as picky about the whole premarital sex thing as you grew up believing.
So you put your hand in Overhaul’s.
Slowly, carefully, like he’s afraid it’ll burn him, he slides your purity ring down your finger and balances it in the palm of his bare hand. It sizzles when he touches it, glowing orange until it eventually burns down into a ash-black circle in the center of his palm. Once he’s satisfied that your pretty little ring has been reduced to nothing more than a scorch mark, he closes his hand around yours and you feel something sharp, painfully hot, etching onto your finger.
It’s over in a second, but you still yelp and yank your hand away from him as soon as he lets you. “Ah—ow, what was that?”
He burned you, he literally burned you! He’s already healed it, but there’s still a thin, pale scar, an intentional one left wrapping around the skin at the base of your left ring finger. Like a wedding ring.
When you look close, you can make out a symbol on the back of your finger where the cross used to sit—and even though your conscious mind doesn’t recognize it, the sight of it rings out something inside your ribcage, deeper and truer than flesh and blood. It’s the devil’s mark, you think. It’s his.
“…A promise,” Overhaul says softly, and even though it’s a chilly morning, you can feel the heat of his hands on yours a long time after he vanishes back into the dark.
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janecrockeyre · 3 years
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scum villain is a greek tragedy disguised as a regular tragedy disguised as a comedy disguised as a danmei
this is going to be long, and this is only PART ONE.
a.k.a, Analysing the plot of Scum Villain’s Self Saving System through Aristotle’s Poetics, because I Have Mental Issues
Part One: Introduction and the Tragic Hero
Scum Villain’s Self Saving System is a tragedy disguised as a comedy, unless you’re Shen Yuan, in which case it’s a mixture of a romance and a survival horror. It's a fever dream. It's a horrible, terrible book that made me feel new undiscovered emotions when I finished reading it. 
The thing is... SVSSS shares characteristics with some of the most famous tragedies in the West, such as Oedipus Rex, Medea, Antigone, the Oresteia... if you haven’t read these, I’ll explain everything. But the gist of my argument is this: SVSSS is the perfect tragedy. In triplicate. 
Tragedy as a genre is old as balls and so it has meant slightly different things to different people over the last few thousand years. I'll be focusing on ancient Greek tragedy, which was performed at the yearly Festival of Dionysus in Athens during the 500-350s BC (give or take a hundred years). Aristotle, when writing about this very specific subset of tragedy, had no idea that one day Scum Villain would be written, and then that I would be using his work as a way to look at Shen Qingqiu’s Funky Transmigration Mistake. Anyway!
Greek tragedy greatly influenced European dramatic tradition. I have a lot of opinions about white academics idolising and upholding the classics as the "paragon of culture" but I'll withhold them for now. I have no idea if MXTX has read Greek tragedy or not, so don't take this as me saying they are writing it. 
In my opinion, tragedy is a universal human constant. We are surrounded by pain and hurt and none of it makes any sense, so we seek to process that pain through drama, art, literature, etc. We want to understand why pain happens, and how it happens, and try to make sense of the senseless. The universe is cold and cruel and random. Tragedy eases some of that pain. 
On that note: Just because I am analysing Scum Villain through a Greek lens doesn't mean that it was written that way. I'm pasting an interpretation onto the book when there's probably a very rich and deep history of Chinese tragedy that I just don't know about. If you ever want to talk about that, please, god, hit me up, I would love to learn about it!! 
Anyway, tragedy. MXTX is excellent at it! Mo Dao Zu Shi? Painful dynastic family tragedy. Heaven Official's Blessing? Mostly romance, but she managed to get that pure pain in there, huh? 
But in my opinion, Scum Villain holds the crown for the most tragic of her stories. MDZS was more of a mystery. TGCF was more of a romance. Neither of them shy away from their tragic elements. 
Scum Villain would fit right in between the work of Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus. How? Let me show you. Join me on my mystery tour into the world of "Aristotle Analyses Danmei..."
Part One: The Tragic Hero
What is a tragic hero? Generally, Greek tragic heroes are united by the same key characteristics. He must be imperfect, having a "fatal flaw" of some kind. He must have something to lose. And he must go from fortune to misfortune thanks to that fatal flaw. 
There are two (technically three) tragic protagonists in SVSSS and all of them are tragic in different but formulaic ways. Each protagonist has their own version of “hamartia” or a “fatal flaw”. 
Actually, hamartia isn’t necessarily a flaw - rather, it is a thing which makes the audience pity and fear for them, a careful imperfection, a point of weakness in the character’s morality or reasoning that allows for bad things to happen to them. For example, in Oedipus Rex, the king Oedipus has a “fatal flaw” of always wanting to find the truth, but this isn’t exactly a flaw, right? Note: this flaw can be completely unwitting, as we see with Shen Yuan. It can also be something that the protagonist is born with, some kind of trait from birth or very young. 
Shen Yuan
Shen Yuan’s “hamartia” is his rigid adherence to fate and his inability to read a situation as anything but how he thinks it ought to be. He believes that Bingmei will grow into Bingge, and it takes several years, two deaths, and some truly traumatising sex to convince him otherwise. 
Shen Jiu
Shen Jiu’s fatal flaw is his cruelty. It is his own sadistic treatment and abuse of Binghe which directly leads to his eventual dismemberment. This is kind of a no-brainer. Of course, it isn't all that simple, and as an audience we pity him for his cruelty as much as we fear it because we know it comes from his own abuse as a child. This just makes him even more tragic. Delicious. 
Luo Binghe
Luo Binghe’s fatal flaw is a complicated mix of things. It is his position as the “protagonist” which compels him to act in certain ways and be forced to suffer. It is his half-demonic heritage, something entirely out of his control, which sets in motion his tragic reversal of fortune when he gets yeeted into the Abyss. He also, much like Shen Yuan, has the propensity to jump to conclusions and somehow make 2 + 2 = 5. 
As well as having their respective “flaws”, all three protagonists match the rough outline of a good tragic hero in another way: they are in a position of great wealth and power. Even when you split the different characters into different “versions”, this still holds true. Yes, Luo Binghe is raised a commoner by a washerwoman foster mother, but his dad is an emperor and he also ends up becoming an emperor himself. 
Yes, Shen Jiu is an ex-slave and a victim of abuse himself, but Shen Qingqiu is a powerful peak lord with an entire mountain’s worth of resources at his back. 
Shen Yuan is a second generation new money rich kid. 
Bingge is a stereotypical protagonist with a golden finger. Bingmei is a treasured and loved disciple with a good reputation and a privileged seat by his shizun’s side. 
In a tragedy, having this kind of good fortune at the beginning of your story is dangerous. Chaucer says that tragedy is (badly translated into modern english) “a certain story / of him that stood in great prosperity / and falls out of high degree / into misery, and ends up wretchedly”. If we follow this line of thinking, a good tragedy is about someone who has a lot to lose, losing everything because of one fatal point of weakness that they fail to address or understand. 
If we look at Shakespeare, this is what makes King Lear such a fantastic tragic protagonist. He is a king in control of most of England, who from his own lack of wisdom and excess of pride, decides to split his kingdom apart to give to his daughters, favouring his murderous, double crossing progeny, and condemning his only actually filial daughter to death. He loses his kingdom, his mind, and his beloved daughter, all because of his own stupidity.
This brings us to:
Part Two: Peripeteia
This reversal of fortunes is called peripeteia. It is the moment where the entire plot shifts, and the hero’s fortunes go from good to bad. Think of it like one of those magic eye puzzles, where you stare at the image until a 3D shark appears, except you realise the shark was always there, you just couldn't ever see it, waiting for you, hungry, deadly, always lurking just behind that delightful pattern of random blue squiggles. 
Each tragic hero has their own moment of peripeteia in SVSSS, sometimes several:
Shen Qingqiu
In the original PIDW, SQQ’s peripeteia presumably occurs when he finds out that Bingge didn’t perish in the Abyss but has actually been training hard to come and pay him back. There’s really not much I’m interested in saying here - as a villain, OG!SQQ is cut and dry, and the audience doesn’t really feel any pity or fear for him. As Shen Yuan often mentions, what the audience feels when they see OG!SQQ is bloodlust and sick satisfaction. There is also the trial at Huan Hua Palace, which I will talk about in Shen Yuan’s section. 
Shen Yuan (SQQ 2.0)
One of SY’s most poggers moment of peripeteia is the glorious, terrifying section between hearing Binghe for the first time after the Abyss moment, and getting shoved into the Water Prison. 
“Behind him, a low and soft voice came: “Shizun?”
Shen Qingqiu’s neck felt stiff as he slowly turned his head. Luo Binghe’s face was the most frightening thing he had ever seen.
The scariest thing about it was that the expression on his face was not cold at all. His smile wasn’t sharp like a knife. Rather, it showed a kind of bone-deep gentleness and amiability.”
This is the moment of true horror for Shen Yuan, because he knows what happens next: the plot unfurls before him, inevitable and painful, and he knows that death awaits him at Luo Binghe's hands (lol). Compare it with the bone deep certainty with which he faces his own downfall during the sham of a trial later in the chapter (I’ve bolded the important part):
“In the original work, Qiu Haitang’s appearance signified only one thing: Shen Qingqiu’s complete fall from grace. [...] Shen Qingqiu’s heart streamed with tears. Great Master… I know you’re doing this for my own good, but I’ll actually suffer if she speaks her words clearly. This truly is the saying “not frightened of doing a shameful deed, just afraid the ghost (consequences) will come knocking”!”
After the peripeteia is usually the denouement where the plot wraps up and the threads are all tied together leaving no loose ends, but because this tragedy isn’t Shen Yuan’s but the former Shen Jiu’s, it’s impossible to finish. 
Shen Yuan cannot provide the meaningful answers that the narrative demands because 1) he doesn’t have any memory of doing anything, and 2) he wasn’t the person who did them. Narratively, he cannot follow the same path as the former SQQ because he lacks the same fatal flaw: cruelty. 
This is why Binghe doesn’t kill him - because he loves him, rather than despises him. And this is why Shen Yuan has to sacrifice himself and die for Luo Binghe in order to save him from Xin Mo: because the narrative demands that denouement follows peripeteia, and SQQ’s fate is in the hands of the narrative. 
(Side note: I believe that this literal death also represents the death of OG!SQQ's tragic arc. The body that committed all those crimes must die to satisfy the narrative. SQQ must die, like burning down a forest, so that new growth can sprout from the ashes. After this, Shen Yuan's story has more room to develop instead.)
It must happen to show Bingmei that SQQ loves him too. And this brings us to Bingmei.
Bingmei
Bingmei has two succinct moments of utter downfall. The first is a literal fall - his flaw, his demonic heritage, leads his beloved shizun to throw him down into the Abyss. From his point of view, SQQ is punishing him simply for the status of his birth. He rapidly goes from being loved and cherished unconditionally, to being the victim of an assassination attempt. 
He realises that he is totally unlovable: that for the crimes of his species that he never had a hand in, he must pay the price as well: that his shizun is so righteous that no matter what love there was between them, if SQQ sees a demon, he will kill it. Even if that demon is Bingmei. 
The second moment is when SQQ dies for him. Again, from his point of view, he was chasing after a man who was struggling to see him as a human being. Shen Qingqiu’s death makes Bingmei realise that he has been completely misunderstanding his shizun: that SQQ would literally die for him, the ultimate act of self sacrifice from love: that SQQ loved him despite his demon heritage. 
Much like King Lear holding the corpse of his daughter and wailing in sheer grief and pain because he did this, he caused this, Bingmei gets to hold his shizun's cold body and cry his eyes out and know that it was his fault. (Kind of.)
(Yes, I’m bringing Shakespeare into this, no I am not justifying myself)
Maybe I'm a bit sadistic, but that scene slaps. Let me show you a comparison of scenes so you get the picture. 
Re-enter KING LEAR, with CORDELIA dead in his arms; EDGAR, Captain, and others following
KING LEAR
Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:
Had I your tongues and eyes, I'ld use them so
That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone for ever!
I know when one is dead, and when one lives;
She's dead as earth. Lend me a looking-glass;
If that her breath will mist or stain the stone,
Why, then she lives.
[...]
 KING LEAR
And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never!
Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir.
Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips,
Look there, look there!
Dies
Versus this scene in SVSSS: 
Luo Binghe turned a deaf ear to everything else, greatly agitated and at a loss of what to do. He was still holding Shen Qingqiu’s body, which was rapidly cooling down. It seemed like he wanted to call for him loudly and forcefully shake him awake, yet he didn’t dare to, as if he was afraid of being scolded. He said slowly, “Shizun?”
[...]
Luo Binghe involuntarily held Shen Qingqiu closer.
He said in a small voice, “I was wrong, Shizun, I really… know that I was wrong.
“I… I didn’t want to kill you…”
PAIN. SO MUCH BEAUTIFUL PAIN. Yes, I know Shakespeare isn’t Athenian, but he was inspired by the good old stuff and he also knew how to write a perfect tragedy on his own terms. Anyway. I’ll find more Greek examples later.
This post was a bit all over the place, but I hope it has been fun to read. Part Two will be coming At Some Point, Who Knows When. This is a bit messy and unedited, but hey, I’m not getting paid or graded, so you can eat any typos or errors. Unless you’re here to talk to me about Chinese tragedy, in which case, please pull up a seat, let me get you a drink, make yourself at home.
ps: if you want to retweet this, here is the promo tweet!
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mordigen · 3 years
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Unpopular opinion: Christians are not witches
I said it. Fight me.
There has been a trend that has been growing ever more problematic recently: overbearing, hyper-zealous, hyper-vigilant "acceptance" This means the pagan community is an absolute free-for all, and you are not allowed to so much as even feign the possibility that you do not agree with absolutely 100% of everything, lest you be named a gatekeeping, ignorant bigot.
Whether you like it or not - there ARE paths out there that have specific rules...regulations...stipulations...tenets - whatever the hell you want to call or classify them. End. Period. There's no other colour that comes in - that's it. Sorry for you, but they DO exist. In fact, there are many of them.
If you do not follow those rules, tenets, etc..., then you are not of that path. Point. Blank. And there is nothing wrong with that - it simply means that you are of some other path. That's it! That's all that means! It may be *nearly* identical to the path in question - but it is not, hence the 'nearly'.
If you happen to be a part of one of these paths, there is absolutely nothing wrong with saying so. If someone claims to be a part of one of these paths, but are absolutely, blatantly not - there is nothing wrong with saying that, and explaining why that is. Some people just honestly don't know there is a difference, or that these certain prerequisites are indeed a definitive factor - so they learn something, they broaden their horizons. Everyone seems to be all about educating themselves about being sensitive to other cultures and customs - except the pagan community, apparently, because this mentality does not translate across that pagan/witch line. Instead of taking it as a learning experience, you are immediately pounced on with notions of 'there are no rules!' 'you can't tell someone what to do on their own path!' Or, simply, the name calling. Well yes, while all of that is true - it still remains that how ever you want to practice or whatever you personally decide to do, may just simply not be what you are claiming, or calling it. It may just be semantics - but semantics matter when dealing with nuance. And paganism is extremely nuanced.
You can call a tomato an orange all you want to - but that thing will never be an orange, no matter how much you believe in it. And people are not wrong for informing you that you may have the wrong name, that is in fact, a tomato. If you go on deciding to call it an orange, you can do that - but that is willful ignorance. So, in your fight to be unapologetically accepting of every ridiculous notion, you are perpetuating willful ignorance - whilst being directly in opposition of your goal and being, *GASP*, unaccepting to those who follow a path where distinction and definition matters. You are completely invalidating those people's paths and beliefs while trying to defend another's (another who may, in fact, actually be wrong) and actively using their path & beliefs as the very reason to berate and ostracize them. Pretty fantastically hypocritical of you. Now...on to the second problem. I do not, at all, in any form, believe in "ritual magick" - as perpetuated by Aleister Crowley hardons. And no, that is not a knock on Crowley, just the idiot followers that don't understand half of what he taught and latch onto the superficial.
When you look at the origins and make up of magical beliefs, and magic itself as a separate entity - no matter which particular branch - they were all created by religion. They all have roots in highly spiritual cultures and customs. So, I absolutely do not believe for one second that you can believe in magic without SOME form of religion - whatever one you adhere to is your choice, but you cannot have the first without the latter. You cannot. Even if you claim that you have no religion, or spiritual faith, your practices absolutely do. You are calling on elements and agencies that absolutely have divine ties and connections one way or another. Oh, how many atheists I see calling on the seals of Arch Angels.... are you fucking shittin me? Really?? So let's bring it all together now - with the fact that many faiths DO have prerequisites, AND the fact that magic is religious/spiritual -- Christians are not, and cannot be witches or pagans. They are mutually exclusive. Not only because so many various paths have such prerequisites, and very define religious/spiritual beliefs that are contradictory to others - but simply because Christianity DOES, very much, have very clear and stringently defined Do's & Don'ts, and obviously the religious aspect itself clashes with the religious beliefs of others. Their religious beliefs clash with people who believe in their same god - so how could they not with those who believe in other gods?? Considering this, no other path would even need such stipulations themselves for them to be mutually exclusive, as Christianity already covers that issue so completely, but the fact that so many pagan paths do only exacerbates an already existing problem. That being said - that does not mean you cannot believe in the Christian 'god', by whatever name you know him by - or that you cannot believe in Jesus, and also be a witch or pagan. In fact the latter has an even bigger argument for believing in both, as paganism, generically, in itself is polytheistic, so it is very fitting to simply have the Christian god and Jesus amongst the many deities being worshipped. But those two things alone is not what makes Christianity. A good start, yes, but that is not all it takes - in fact, there are many that are shunned, excommunicated, banned, condemned and moreso whilst having those very two qualifying factors. You can find this in *every single* sect of Christianity, so...the proof is in the pudding, as they say, that it is much more than simply believing in 'God' and Jesus that makes a 'Christian'. And if you take that to heart and follow all those rules - you cannot be a witch or pagan, many times over, as you would be in direct opposition, or violation, of a number of their teachings - both on the aspect of simple 'rules', but also on a much deeper spiritual level of the entire foundation of their faith. Cannot serve two masters, and all that... If you do not follow those rules, then sure, you could be a witch or a pagan - but then you cannot be a Christian. That is just the facts.
Many people like to argue the use of magic and mysticism in the bible - but the issue is what parts of the bible they are found, and all the amendments of the further books. Again, what really carves out being a Christian vs. any of the other sects of Abrahamic beliefs. As, news flash - there is far more than just Christianity. And some of them, do, in fact, do hand in hand with magic. The Kabbalah is an astounding example of that - and, in fact, where a lot of the so called *ahem* 'non'-religious 'ritual magick' comes from. In this same vein, I would like to note that I have never had any issue or seen conflict with the Hebrew or Jewish take on shamans, mystics and witches, as they really do go hand in hand - They have their own very in depth, detailed, spiritual and sentimental form of mysticism that was a natural progression from pre-Abrahamic religions and culture, and grew into their teachings and belief system, so it does not go against their core beliefs the same way it very stringently does in Christian theology. Considering their ethnical histories and cultural heritage - this is a brilliant example of the natural evolution and progression of faiths - not simply ripped from the hands of the brutally oppressed and rewritten as a mockery to wipe out the preexisting notion of faiths -- as the Church has a history of doing. The Book of Enoch is another shining example of Biblical magic, or Angelic magic. But, this also also turns my point into a self fulfilling prophecy, as in the fact that it is accepted amongst all denominations as heresy, and it is taught that these magics - though they do, in fact, exist, were for the angels and completely forbidden from mankind. So, thusly, if you are a follower of Enoch, you are not a 'Christian', by name and membership, as you are outright going against it's teachings. You are a heretic, a blasphemer. Perhaps you may be one of the many other forms of the Christian god's followers - but not a Christian, as being Christian denotes a very specific set of beliefs and tenets - end of story. Magic, and paganism, is in direct conflict with those teachings, and therefore, cannot coexist.
On top of the logic - there is also the emotional issue. Christianity has a long history of abuse towards various pagan, tribal and indigenous faiths, while stealing our beliefs as their own, and demonizing those they couldn't successfully acclimate into theirs. To now be expected to be OK with this faith, yet again, latching on to *our* sacred rites and practices as being a part of their own is a hard pill to swallow at best, a slap in the face to most, and flat out perpetuating trauma at worst. Once upon a time, people sought out these very same communities and groups within their pagan circles as an escape, a safe space, and a shield and guardian against the Christian onslaught, torment, oppression, or just exhaustion - and now, we must not only tolerate them invading our private spaces, but must now welcome them with open arms and expected to be happy about it? Forgive me if I don't sympathize....
If we are going to now be forced into being shoulder to shoulder with them, the very least you can offer us is neutrality. You can be accepting of all and still be neutral grounds - not taking any one side anywhere, all you have to do is be respectful to each other. Disagreement is not disrespectful. Could someone who disagrees with a certain viewpoint *become* disrespectful? Sure, of course they could. But simply the act of disagreement is nothing hateful or hurtful in any way shape or form - in fact, good discourse is how progress is made. So we need to remain neutral grounds and normalize the acceptance of different viewpoints - we need to recognize and accept that, yes, there are paths out there that do have specific requirements, expectations and limits - there are paths that are going to disagree, or just flat out not believe in something. Instead of name calling, when someone of those paths decides to speak up and enlighten and elaborate on information that may be inaccurately described or depicted, you need to LISTEN and learn, and not just bludgeon them with presumptive judgement. You also need to accept that there are many, various different closed practices out there - beyond Native American & Voodoo practices (as those seem to be the only ones the pagan community recognizes) and if someone of those closed faiths tell you - no, you are not xy or z, that is also not being judgmental or hateful or hurtful - that simply is. ....a very important side note here is that acknowledging closed practices is also not a carte blanche for screaming about cultural appropriation. Please shut the fuck up about cultural appropriation. Not being of a specific faith is not equivalent to cultural appropriation - Telling someone "no, you're not xyz" is very different from telling someone "no, you can't practice xyz" (looking at you smudge-Nazis) You can enjoy, practice, learn or celebrate anything you want of any faith you want while not actually being apart of it - that's the beauty of sharing and learning. And I think that is where all the trouble boils down from:
Yes, you can do whatever you want and can create whatever path you want for yourself...just don't misrepresent it, don't call it something it is not, and don't deny those who are more educated & experienced in that particular department. We get enough of that from outsiders to start doing it to each other.
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rivalsforlife · 3 years
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have u seen the aai musical? i dont think that one has subtitles but it being the only piece of media in the entire ace attorney franchise that wholeheartedly attempted to give edgeworth a female love interest is bold imo
ohhh the aai musical. if you can call it that. the greatest insult to aai2 and gregory edgeworth I've seen in my life. I did actually find out recently after MUCH digging that it actually does have subtitles, and it's been there for over a year, although it is the subtitle file on its own and not timed to the video you'll be able to find somewhat easily (you can find the subtitles here) - since the person who did the translation and subtitling specifically requested it not be uploaded onto a public video I've kept quiet about it until now, so like... honor system for whoever's reading this to not go against their wishes, that would be extremely rude. I basically opened the subtitle file in notepad and read that side by side with the musical and it's. hm. something.
(And since I'm weirdly obsessed with the musicals I also modified the subtitles a bit to clean it up a bit (some grammatical things, modifying the names in places to make them fit the characters better like having Larry call him "Edgey" instead of "Edgeworth", and changed some of the repeated songs to match the other two translated ones) and THEN timed my new script to the copy of the musical I could find. I don't want to upload this subtitle file because idk what the original subtitler's thoughts on that are and I'm too scared to ask, but. all this is to say I have watched a subtitled version of this musical. I MAY be persuaded to give a link to the script I wrote out for people to watch side by side; I just don't want it to be too easy for someone to take the file and upload it to a public video, which although I don't really have any major moral objections to it because this *never had a dvd release so you can't find it anywhere anyways*, I want to respect the wishes of the person who did all the hard work of translating.)
I'm waiting on the person who did the other two musicals to finish this before I talk about this one since I think it's kinda unfair of me to talk about this version that I have that I refuse to share with anyone? Plus the original subtitler has made it clear that the subtitles may not be the most accurate, and this musical actually deals with some more sensitive subjects (primarily the topic of illegal immigration) where I'd like to be sure of the true meaning before I start commenting on it.
However I WILL give you the rundown of Heterosexual Edgeworth's Greatest Hits:
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^ that's a rose. just to be clear. he takes it out of his pocket and dramatically sniffs it a few times throughout the musical.
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^ he’s known her for all of two minutes
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yeah they're on a cafe date and he says this out loud to her.
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^ he asked her where she learned to dance and she got upset and ran away. The original subtitles said "women are difficult things" so pick your favourite thing for him to say. oh haha edgeworth just doesn't get the woman he's attracted to inexplicably.
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^ this is supposed to be internal narration.
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^after this he says “I won’t forget your warmth” which is. well.
And of course we can't forget our good old friend Corrupt Gregory. Which tumblr won't let me post for some reason because it only wants ten images, which may be for the best. Suffice it to say they changed "A Defense Attorney's Knowledge" into a song about him singing about how all he cares about are not guilty verdicts and the truth can be washed away and sink in the dark or whatever.
I'm very much looking forward to being able to rip apart this one because I'm determined to make my insulting of this one break ten thousand words. Heterosexual Edgeworth deserves no less.
* insert general disclaimer that yes you could read Edgeworth as bi or like comphet or something like that especially considering I made the argument that he's in love with Phoenix in the second musical but You Know What They Were Going For.
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caffeinatedseri · 4 years
Text
Dead Apple Light Novel
Recently, I decided to buy LN 5, Dead Apple, purely because I’m a sucker for all of BSD’s light novels, so this post will revolve around what I took away from this novel. 
Dead Apple is Canon
Since the story jumps around in the timeline a lot, I had originally thought that Dead Apple took place outside of canon (especially with Atsushi’s flashback). 
However, a particular part of Asagiri’s afterword stuck out to me:
Now, allow me a moment to discuss some of the particulars of Dead Apple. Chronologically, the story takes place after the second season of the anime — in other words, after the war with the Guild, which puts Dead Apple somewhere between the ninth and tenth volumes of the manga. 
The novel also ended up affecting the main story in numerous ways, and I’m sure this new experience will continue to influence my future work as well.
It’s not unusual for a light novel to insert itself into the main timeline (see 55 Minutes which takes place in the 10th volume), but it’s nice to have confirmation that the same applies to Dead Apple. 
Of course, just because a work isn’t canon compliant (see BEAST), doesn’t mean that it has no potential for further analysis or it doesn’t bring any added complexity to the main plot. Regardless, this post serves as somewhat of a precursor to my other posts concerning Dead Apple since I have a tendency to talk about it a lot, and I’d like to establish a basis for a lot of my posts. 
Differences between the Movie and Light Novel
In the afterword of the light novel, Hiro Iwahata (the author of this LN) said:
“Furthermore, I worked on this book under Asagiri’s supervision, meaning there are several lines in certain scenes that differ from the movie. It might even be fun comparing the two!  Nothing would make me happier than the fans enjoying this novel alongside the movie.”
As per Iwahata’s request, I went into the light novel, looking for differences between it and the movie. However, the novel is surprisingly, almost identical to the movie (maybe not surprising considering it is a “movie novelization”).
Because the differences are so miniscule, I believe they hold an even greater significance, since Asagiri must have wanted to change these specific details for a certain reason. 
Some of the differences I talk about might be unimportant, but I did my best to catch everything that was changed from the movie.
1. The movie doesn’t mention SKK as a part of the Dragon’s Head Conflict, but the novel says, “Some fought under the alias Twin Dark.” 
This probably means that SKK became a pair either before the Dragon’s Head Conflict or during (although I’m pretty sure that the “organization” they destroyed over night was Shibusawa’s organization).
2. When Dazai says that he would’ve continued killing people in the mafia if it weren’t for Oda, Atsushi has little to no reaction in the movie; I would describe it as maybe a hesitant or concerned feeling.
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In the novel, Atsushi has a more outward reaction.
““Huh...?!” Atsushi was baffled. He had no idea whether that was true. What did Dazai mean by that? (...) The melancholy Atsushi felt from Dazai had disappeared, and Dazai continued to speak in his usual lighthearted manner.”
Not only does he react verbally, but the novel also adds an inner monologue (mainly for Atsushi) that can’t be portrayed as well in movie format. 
To me, this change highlights how Atsushi sees Dazai purely as a good person; he reacts in such a startled manner because he believes that Dazai is too good of a person to be in the mafia killing people (which we know Atsushi hates). This trend reoccurs throughout the story, of Atsushi turning a blind eye to Dazai’s “bad side.”
3. This one isn’t at all the movie’s fault, but the novel gives a lot more clues as to what the “dead apple” and the dagger in the apple motif represents.
The first time it appears is when Kunikida and Tanizaki meet the Special Division’s agent, but they find out that he’s already dead.
“It [the apple] was, without a doubt, a simple fruit... save for the fact that there was a knife sticking out of it as if to condemn the taste of sin. A blade had been driven into the symbol of original sin. A dreary, ominous aura, oozed from the ripe fruit like venom. 
Throughout the novel, it seems to associate the “dead apple” motif with Fyodor pretty strongly, especially since this paragraph ties in Fyodor’s ideals nicely with the symbolism of the apple and dagger.
The apple represents sin, the very first sin — which you could interpret as sin at its purest — while the dagger represents the condemning of such sin. However, the apple can also potentially symbolize life, while the dagger stabbing into life can mean death. 
Fyodor’s ideals revolve around “removing the sin” of ability users (represented by an apple in this case) but he does so through manipulation. The dagger is associated with stealth and deception, which is fitting with what Fyodor does to “remove the sin” of ability users.
However, he’s also taking the lives of ability users in this process, hence stabbing the apple, coincidentally committing another sin in his attempt to relinquish all sin.
4. In the “Snow White” Oda and Dazai flashback, everything is identical to the movie (word for word), but there is some additional narration.
“It was an alarming sight — Dazai sounded like he was in a trance. It was as if he was ignoring all this world had to offer while in pursuit of something else.”
I’ve talked about this particular scene before here, but the gist is that Dazai was discreetly talking about himself while referring to Snow White. 
Dazai joined the mafia because he believed that the violence (or true human nature) would give him a reason to live, but we already know that this kind of thinking was flawed.  Thus, this line most likely means that Dazai was ignoring all of the “good” qualities of the world while pursuing a reason to live, which inevitably wouldn’t work. 
5. Right after the flashback, when Dazai takes the pill, the novel really sells the act of “Dazai walking towards his death and going to the evil side.” 
Personally, this scene in the movie felt more open to interpretation after you’ve seen the ending. You could say that Dazai took the antidote and said “Being on the side that saves people is more beautiful,” because his plan is to continue living to save more people. 
However, the novel throws away any possible double meaning with this paragraph:
“Dazai then reached for the pill with his bandaged hand, neatly picked it up, and slowly brought it to his lips — just like Snow White and the sweet, poisoned apple. The venomous red-and-pure-white-pill disappeared inside his mouth.”
After Dazai’s tangent on how Snow White could’ve committed suicide out of despair, the narration compares him directly to Snow White. With the added venomous pill stated outright, it only further cements the idea that Dazai’s actually committing suicide here.
I don’t particularly like this change, because it feels like this moment was set up entirely just to divert the audience’s expectations, rather than it be a standalone scene that makes sense when considering the rest of the story. (It might not necessarily be a change, possibly just a rough translation from movie to novel). 
6. When Atsushi wakes up from his nightmare, there’s some additional inner monologue:
Everything’s okay. I’m not the same person I was when I lived at the orphanage. I have friends. I have a place where I belong — the Armed Detective Agency. Things are different now.
The anime (and in turn the movie) tends to downplay the effects of Atsushi’s trauma — probably due to the limitations of anime — but regardless the novel portrays it much better with how Atsushi’s trauma affects practically every aspect of his life. 
7. I thought Fukuzawa’s ability only gave his subordinates control over their abilities, but the novel says:
“Yukichi Fukuzawa and his skill, All Men are Equal, a peculiar ability that allowed him to suppress and control his subordinates’ skills.”
Does this mean that Fukuzawa could control and suppress all of the agency’s abilities? It could be a weird translation, but it seems oddly specific.
8. This detail isn’t actually a novel exclusive, but it is an extremely small detail that I missed while watching the movie, so I figured I would add it here too.
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“the phantom’s notebook had the word Compromise written on the cover. A copy of himself that didn’t follow ideals but made compromises was an abomination to Kunikida.”
Considering how abilities act as the shadow to every character in this story, this is a nice detail that shows how Kunikida’s inner desire is to compromise, because carrying such heavy ideals is undoubtedly a burden. However, because he holds onto his ideals so strongly, it becomes his biggest weakness AND his biggest strength.
9. There’s a super small detail added to this scene with Dazai, Fyodor, and Shibusawa. When Dazai suggests that Shibusawa could be saved by an angel or a demon, the following exchange occurs:
“Hmm... Maybe an angel?” Dazai picked up the skull on the table. “Or maybe a demon?” “It’s obvious what both of your true intentions are, if you ask me.” The third man mirthfully cackled and took the skull from Dazai’s hand.
In the movie, Dazai doesn’t pick up anything, so as a result Fyodor doesn’t take anything from Dazai either. 
Because Fyodor walked into the scene after Dazai suggested that an angel or demon would save Shibusawa, I strongly suspect that this was foreshadowing future events in which Fyodor does “save” Shibusawa by giving him his memories back.
The novel adds more to this foreshadowing by having Dazai pick up the skull before it’s taken by Fyodor — essentially having Fyodor take the cards out of Dazai’s hands and put them in his favor. 
It’s also worth pointing out that the skull is also the object that Fyodor uses to revive Shibusawa into a supernatural ghost of some sorts at the end of the story.
10. This may be just a difference in translations but in the movie, Shibusawa refers to Fyodor as “Demon Fyodor-kun”, whereas in the novel Fyodor is called “Fyodor the Conjurer.” (Ango uses the Conjurer title as well).
In western esotericism, a conjurer is a person who summons supernatural beings, like spirits, demons, or God.
This slightly changes the connotation of Fyodor’s title from a inhuman being of pure malicious intent to just a human who summons these otherworldly beings. This idea also aligns with Shibusawa’s revival, since he’s some sort of supernatural ghost that was “summoned” by Fyodor. 
11. Skipping past the parts where Kyouka and Akutagawa regain their abilities, and Chuuya talks to Ango in the government facility, (since they have little to no changes between the movie and the novel) there is a somewhat significant detail changed in Draconia once again with Dazai and Fyodor.
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In the novel, this glowing ball of energy from the movie is actually described as an apple: 
The two lights melted into one and spun until they formed a juicy sphere. They had produced a single apple — a juicy, poisoned apple red as blood.
It birthed a skill — and an extremely powerful one at that — the ability to absorb. Every last crystal adorning Draconia’s walls was sucked into the apple with intense force. Ten — a hundred — a thousand — two thousand — every last one was greedily devoured by the apple...
The apple swelled as it absorbed the numerous crystals until the red light became hotter than the surface of hell.
Since the “dead apple” motif aligns with Fyodor’s character, we can assume that the apple is representative of sin, and sin is associated with abilities, as Fyodor believes.
This strange poisoned apple is made of abilities and has an ability (the ability to absorb), and it commits a sin (greed) in its devouring of other abilities; it’s also hotter than “hell”, which is a very specific connection that leads me to this idea:
My theory is that a normal apple represents life, while a poisoned apple (or dead apple), indicative of a stained, impure life, represents sin. Fyodor believes abilities are akin to sin (what a clever rhyme), therefore all of their lives are sinful.
12. This is arguably the most insignificant change of this entire post, but I feel obligated to put it here regardless since it was different from the movie. When the Special Division detects the singularity of Shibusawa’s dragon form in the novel, it says:
“Abnormal values for singularity are increasing! They’re twice — no, 2.5 times higher than they were six years ago.”
In the movie, the number is five times higher instead.
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Why did this number change? Is it significant? I honestly have no idea (I’m surprised I even caught this), but it’s there and I had to document it anyways. 
13. The novel adds this narration for Shibusawa when he gets his memories back and he’s in the orphanage’s room with Atsushi:
“Shibusawa clearly recalled the events from six years ago. Fyodor had enticed him to go to the orphanage where he tortured a young Atsushi... until Atsushi fought back and killed him.”
There’s two things to take away from this: Fyodor had known Shibusawa for at least six years, and Fyodor had been planning the events of Dead Apple since at least six years ago. 
I find it hard to believe that Fyodor’s plan was thwarted by Dazai, because of how Fyodor demonstrated his ability to plan ahead in the main series, but I’m not sure what the long term effects of this plan could be. If Shibusawa succeeded, then it could’ve aligned with the DOA’s goals, but once again I don’t think Fyodor’s plan was actually foiled.
14. Super minor once again, but right after Shibusawa gets revived, the last sentence of chapter 5 is,
“Nobody would ever see the smile on Fyodor’s face.” 
Honestly, I think this was just added to create an ominous tone, but it’s a nice detail regardless.
15. As the red fog spreads across Yokohama, there’s a good part of exposition that connects the “dead apple” motif to Fyodor once again:
“After the red fog devoured the earth, the planet would undoubtedly look like a floating red apple from space. There would be no humans left on its surface, nor any signs they ever existed. It would be a true paradise, and with that, the Dead Apple would finally be complete. A dead planet covered in red fog — that was what Fyodor had planned and sought out.
Nothing other than death could wash away the original sin of man, so it was only fitting for the sin, which started with a fruit, to end with one as well. 
It’s pretty long, but I like the way this passage is written, more specifically the last part since it fits well with the sinful poisoned apple idea.
It also aligns with Fyodor’s ideals of creating a true paradise, free of ability users. However, if Fyodor had planned to have the Earth covered in fog, that could mean that his plan was actually stopped by Dazai and Atsushi in the end.
16. Shibusawa has a few additional lines of dialogue when he talks to Atsushi in their final fight.
“The dragon and tiger... I see now why they are called rivals.”
The dragon and tiger have their roots in Chinese Buddhism, but to go further into that topic would make this already lengthy post even longer.
“Don’t get the wrong idea, though. I’m not blaming you for what happened.”
This line is a brief moment of weakness for Shibusawa, which is interesting in contrast to his strong will to kill Atsushi. Just as Atsushi learned to accept the past and the tiger’s ferocity, Shibusawa shares the same attitude by separating the blame from himself to just simply accepting the past for what happened.
17. In the aftermath of the last fight against Shibusawa, Atsushi and Kyouka meet up with Dazai.
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Kyouka asks, “Are you sure this is what you wanted?” which prompts two different responses in the movie and novel respectively.
In the movie, Atsushi says, “Just as Shibusawa was able to forget that he’d been killed before, I think Dazai can put his past behind him again. But this is fine.”
In the novel, Atsushi says:
“... I could probably seal away this memory just like how I’d forgotten I’d killed him before. But... I’m okay with this.”
I interpreted Kyouka’s question in the movie to be questioning Dazai’s loyalties, as he did betray everyone, and Atsushi responded in Dazai’s defense because he trusts him.
However, the novel does change Atsushi’s response to focus on himself rather than Dazai, which in turn changes the implications of Kyouka’s question. 
Kyouka seems to be asking Atsushi whether he was okay with killing Shibusawa, and Atsushi responds by acknowledging that he did kill Shibusawa, and that’s okay. (a very clear development from the beginning of the story when he believed it was unnecessary to kill anyone, and he didn’t want to kill anyone)
18. In the epilogue, Ango talks about the underlying motivations behind the “Dead Apple” case. This change could be attributed to translation differences (like many others in this post), but the connotation does slightly differ from movie to novel. 
In the movie, Ango says, “How is a man like Shibusawa, so intelligent that others look like alien creatures to him, to act, to be destroyed, or to be saved?”
In the novel, Ango says:
“Perhaps the two of them [Dazai and Fyodor] just wanted to get a glimpse of someone like them... Perhaps they wanted to see what he would do and how he would meet his demise... or perhaps how he would be saved.”
The movie simply poses a broad question of what would happen to Shibusawa, a person alienated from the rest of society. 
The novel changes this to focus on Dazai and Fyodor’s perspective — two irredeemable aliens from society just like Shibusawa — executing this grand scheme out of curiosity to see what would happen to someone of the likes of them, and if there’s a possibility for redemption.
19. This is the final difference on this list, and it’s quite a large change. In Fyodor’s monologue at the very end of the story, he has a completely different tone from the movie to novel.
In the movie, Fyodor says, “But in order to end this world, rife with crime and punishment, I do need that book.”
The novel says: 
Glittering high-rises and stately brick buildings stood side by side in this port city with its countless citizens who struggled against crime and punishment. “I think I’ve taken a liking to this city myself..”  Fyodor took a bite of the apple in his hand, and the juicy nectar ran down his delicate fingers. “You’d all better be on your best behavior until next time.”
The reference to the book may have been removed for consistency with the main series, as the book is a part of the DOA’s plan (or more specifically Fukuchi). 
It also seems like Fyodor has grown fond of the city, and no longer wants Yokohama to be destroyed, so it’s still possible that his plan deterred from what he had originally intended.
Beyond that, I’m not entirely sure why crime and punishment was mentioned, or why there’s such an ominous tone to his ending statement, but that’s up to personal interpretation. 
That concludes the long list of extremely specific and minor differences between the Dead Apple movie and light novel! 
Overall, I would say it’s worth checking out the light novel if you don’t have a strong grasp of the Dead Apple story, because it definitely presents the small intricacies of the plot in a more comprehensible way. 
On a side note, the manga adaptation has a lot of noticeable differences from the movie and light novel, mostly with the addition of entirely new scenes (which you can read @buraihatranslations​ — what a shameless self plug). I would highly recommend reading it as those extra scenes are very amusing, to say the least without giving any spoilers.
Honestly, this post was a lot longer than I intended, but I hope you enjoyed it regardless. Thank you for reading!
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cheri-translates · 3 years
Text
Headcanon - When you suddenly hold his hand
Original title: 当你突然握住他的手
Original author: 池离子
[ VICTOR ]
You’re sitting on the sofa while Victor’s next to you, looking through documents.
Peering at Victor, you watch as he pores over the documents very seriously - so seriously that he doesn't even notice you staring at him. Carefully admiring him from head to toe, your eyes finally land on Victor’s hand.
His hand is much larger than yours. Looking at your own small and petite hands, you find them adorable and a perfect match for Victor’s well-defined hands. Reaching out, you place your hand atop the hand that he’s using to hold the documents. 
He turns to glance at you, realising that you’re staring at his hand. In response, he swaps the documents to his other hand, freeing the hand that’s held by you.
“You’ve already had one pudding tonight. There isn’t a second one."
You swat his hand angrily.
"What? In your eyes, is everything I do linked to pudding?”
He’s taken aback slightly, but eventually returns his gaze to the document.
You spread his hand flat, then put your own hand on it. One big and one small - a good fit. You can feel the warmth of his palm. This hand held yours at the dance, held your waist in the ski resort, and wiped cream from the corner of your mouth. Thinking about it, you unfurl your hand before clutching Victor’s tightly.
Victor’s eyes never leave the document, but he returns your grip with equal force.
Your hand is delicate and small. His thumb strokes the back of your hand, and the ticklish sensation makes you stifle your laughter. Despite wanting to pull your hand away, he doesn't let you go. Instead, he tightens his grip, as though fearing that you’d pull your hand away from his.
"Don’t move.”
“In this lifetime... you can’t leave.”
-
[ GAVIN ]
Gavin is watching TV with you, the both of you huddled in a corner of the sofa, squished into a small ball. Your head is resting on his shoulder, and your hands are on your kneecaps. A faint light has been purposefully left on in the room to prevent it from being in complete darkness, and also to set the ambience.
Your gaze shifts from the boring advertisement to Gavin, and see that his hand is on his leg.
You’re suddenly struck with a mischievous idea.
You place your small and delicate hand on the back of Gavin’s. Noticing your action, he lowers his head slightly and asks if something’s wrong.
Ignoring him, you continue playing with his hand, feeling the rough callouses on it from years of wielding a gun. After giving them careful touches, you burrow your own hand underneath Gavin’s. With this, your hand makes direct contact with his leg.
Gavin doesn’t say a word. You can sense that he’s gradually tightening his grip on your hand. He’s exerting pressure, but is in control to ensure that he isn’t grasping your hand too tightly. He wraps your small hand in his large palm. His heartbeat seems to be following his palm, sending you a steady stream of signals.
Lifting your head to look at him, you find that his eyes are fixed on the TV, and his ears have turned crimson.
Using your free hand, you reach out to touch his ear. It’s terribly hot.
“Gavin, your ears are so red and warm...”
Gavin turns to face you.
“Cough. That’s because... you lighted the fire...”
-
[ LUCIEN ]
You’ve come to Lucien’s laboratory to pick him up from work. By this time, Lucien should have already hung up his white coat, and should be sitting on his office chair, grinning as you rush in with snacks you bought along the way. But today, when you rush in with the egg tart you purchased, the white lab coat is still on Lucien. He sits before the laptop, holding some documents while perusing through them.
"You’re here? Sorry, there was a little issue at work today. I'm currently looking for the cause of it. You might have to wait a while. I'll be done as soon as possible.”
You nod, placing the egg tart on his table. Shifting a chair over, you sit beside him.
Lucien always smells good, you think to yourself. There’s always a cool and fragrant scent on him, but you’ve never seen him spraying cologne. The flowers at home don’t have this scent either. Giving him a careful whiff, you can’t guess what it is.
You haven’t seen Lucien in an entire day! Right now, you really need a Lucien-recharge, so you stand up to move behind him. Wrapping your arms around his neck, you bury your face in his white coat, one hand hanging loosely in front of his chest. He isn’t too surprised, nor is he caught off guard. After all, you’ve used this trick many times, and he’s grown used to it.
Inhaling Lucien’s scent deeply, you find that he’s really nice to smell. Lucien seems to be tickled by your breath. He chuckles lightly while giving the arm in front of him a gentle pet. You grab his hand.
"Lulu... how much longer will you take?”
He grips your hand tightly, as though he’s giving you a response.
“Ten minutes. Just wait for a little longer. I’ll be done soon, okay?”
With this, he brings your hand to his lips, giving the back of your hand a gentle kiss.
This action flusters you so much that you want to find a hole to burrow into. Although you hurriedly attempt to withdraw your hand, Lucien’s stronger than you, and he clasps your hand tightly, giving it another firm kiss.
As though succumbing to fate, you slump against his neck, putting your arms around his neck.
Even though you can’t see your own expression, your face has already started to feel warm, and your ears are probably red to their tips as well.
"You must be feeling shy. Let me see...” After saying this, he turns his head.
“Don’t look!" You mumble, burying your face in the shoulder of his white coat.
-
[ KIRO ]
The two of you have just finished a game, and are slumped on two beanbags next to each other, surrounded by potato chips and soda. Kiro tosses the controller to the side, then leans against you coquettishly.
"Miss Chips is too good at playing! I can't beat her at all! I’m not playing anymore! It’s so embarrassing!”
You rub the golden head that has leaned over. His hair is so soft. For a moment, you even feel like you’re petting a large golden retriever.
You glance at the controller which has been thrown onto the carpet. Eyes shifting upwards, you see a pair of hands that you’re highly envious of.
He’s a celebrity, so of course it’s very important to have a pair of nice-looking hands. Kiro has taken off his ring. Originally, his hands are thin, long and pale, and the part where he often wears the ring is even more tender. You look at your own hands. As compared to Kiro’s, you probably aren’t even considered a female.
Brimming with jealousy, you slowly stroke the back of his hand. The delicateness of Kiro’s hand is just like yours.
"Miss Chips..."
You hear him calling you like this, but you have no intention of responding. You simply rely on your courage to continue. You put your hand in his palm and look at him, anticipating his next move.
Kiro is fascinated by the huge watery eyes you’re giving him, and immediately grabs your hand.
"I knew it... You’re just as hungry as I am, aren’t you? Let's find something to eat! There’s never enough snacks!”
"?"
He gets up quickly and grips your hand tightly, trying to pull you up too.
"What do you want to eat? I'll make it for you!"
You look up at him as he radiates with light, and release a chuckle.
"Okay, okay!”
Borrowing his strength, you stand up as well. The two of you walk to the kitchen while grinning and swinging each others’ hands like little children.
-
[ SHAW ]
It's too hot. Surviving the summer is going to be difficult.
The air conditioner at home is broken, and you’re still sweating despite wearing a blouse. Shaw steps out of the kitchen with a large glass of iced cola in his hand. Judging by the volume, it’s clear that he mixed Cola and Sprite again. 
He sits next to you, gulping it down, and you watch as water vapour surrounds and the glass. it must have been chilled. You’re going crazy from the heat, so you unfurl your hand in front of him, indicating that he had better give you a sip of the iced cola.
Instead, this ignorant man put his hand on yours. Not only is there no cola to drink, but it’s also warm.
"Stinky Brother, I asked you to give me a sip, not your hand." You swat his hand away, moving forward to snatch the cola in his other hand.
"Hey hey hey Mary Sue, be careful. I mixed two soft drinks in this. Don't spill it on me..."
Shaw knows that you genuinely can’t stand the heat, so he doesn’t tease you this time. Instead, he obediently places the cup in the palm of your hand. The wall of the cup is icy cold, and it’s so comfortable that you want to stick your face against it.
You take a small sip, and the cooling sensation fills your mouth, and your mood becomes exponentially better. Filled with a sudden impulse, you reach out, grabbing Shaw’s hand tightly.
You expected Shaw to respond by returning your grip.
But Shaw is Shaw, and he’s always testing your patience.
"Oh? Auntie, you maintain your skin pretty well for someone who has reached middle-age... tsk tsk tsk.” He speaks, lifting your hand up and scrutinising it.
"You brat. I’m right here, so you better cleanse your mouth...”
With the cola in one hand, you try to retract the other.
Not caring that it’s warm, Shaw grasps your hand tightly, uttering a casual apology. On account of the cola, you decide not to hold a grudge against him.
"Mary Sue, save me some. Don't drink it all." Shaw leans over, and the only thing separating your faces is the glass.
“Also, let’s head out later. Your hand’s really empty... I need to get you some jewellery... Do you like rings?”
More translated and original works: here
[ Permission to translate ]
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池离子: OK! Just state that the source is LOFTER池离子. Also, if you’ve posted it, could you also take a screenshot for me? No need for the whole thing - just a little will do!
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whatanoof · 4 years
Text
Of Angels and Promises
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Rating: Explicit
Pairing: Boba Fett x Reader
Word Count: ~12.2k
Warnings: fluff, smut, violence, swearing, sexual tension, rough sex, daddy boba is a warning all on his own, implied throne fucking
Summary: Promises are bad. They imply attachment and accountability, both  very hard to come by in the maker-forsaken deserts of Tatooine. Falling in love inspires promises that one isn’t able to keep, and you let your guard down with him.
You saw the ship. It soared through the sky, slicing through the air like an arrow. It was the same one that he had drawn for you on the rough sketching paper in your mechanic’s workshop, and it was even more beautiful in person. It was a cloudless day, and the green paint contrasted the sky perfectly. You could track every movement across the blue expanse and expected to watch the ship set down directly by your hut. But it didn’t. It continued, stretching farther away in the direction of the palace with every passing second that you stood, frozen in space and time. 
So you do what every other abandoned lover would. You ignore it and tell yourself that you were mistaken. It’s easy to pretend you’d imagined it. Because if Boba ever came back, he would come back to you, right?
A gentle knock on the doorframe rouses you from the depths of overthinking, and you accidentally slam your head on the shelf in surprise. “Shit! Motherkriffing, dank fucking farri-”
Your first name echoes through the building and cuts through your vicious curses like a bell, and you stop in shock. No one out here calls anyone by name. Your hand drops to your workbench and grasps a heavy wrench. You slowly approach the door and slide to one side of the frame to prepare an ambush. The voice calls your name again, and this time you register that it’s female, low-pitched and soothing. An arm appears through the doorway, and you swing the wrench with all of your might.
You expect at the very least to graze the limb appearing through the doorway of your workshop, but you’re sorely disappointed when you miss entirely. You stumble forward, off-balance from the misplaced strike. A hand seizes your wrist, torquing it violently to one side and forcing you to drop the makeshift weapon. Before you can blink, you’re pinned against the wall with your arm twisted behind your back.
“Let me go!” You struggle against the grip, but it’s too strong, and you grunt at the strain in your joints. “Please, I have water, maybe a handful of credits in the house.”
She doesn’t release you and your name is muttered sharply again. “Is that you?”
“You found me. If you’re going to kill me,” You turn your head enough to spit on the ground, “Tell Bib that I’ll come back to haunt him and shove it where the suns don’t shine.”
“I don’t come on Fortuna’s orders.” She spits the Twi'lek name like a curse. Now you’ve pissed her off. If you weren’t going to die before, you would now. “I come on Boba Fett’s.”
You stop struggling immediately, “What?”
“Boba Fett sent me to bring you to him.” You inhale sharply at the confirmation. 
Betrayal flashes through you like lightning. “Let me go.” The words are an angry hiss, reminiscent of a desert serpent ready to spit venom.
She does so and you turn, rubbing your shoulder. The woman is deceptively small, with dark hair in a long braid down her back. A form fitting leather tunic and coat accents her slim waist and fit body.  She’s wearing a helmet, though you can see dark eyes through the visor, and a long rifle rides on her back.
“Who are you? Are you a bounty hunter?” 
“I am.” You wait for her to reach for her rifle, “But that is not why I am here.” She disengages her helmet lock and pulls it off. She’s too pretty to be a hunter. You wish that wasn’t your first thought, because now you can’t help but stare. You’re vaguely aware that you probably look stupid, but you’re too busy gaping at her smooth skin and fine features. The only indicator of her profession is the stern set of her mouth and perfectly shaped eyebrows, okay you need to stop.
Because you weren’t mistaken earlier. Boba is back on Tatooine, and you’re not sure how to handle that after so much time.
---
“Come on, don’t do this to me right now. No, no no no no n--” A puff of smoke drifts from the comm unit, and you drop the screwdriver with a defeated sigh. Kriffing hell. Weeks of searching for the right parts, the blazing hope within you that you might be able to finally get off this ball of sand when you saw the Imperial signal boosting unit, all ending in a smoking and sparking mess in your hands. Anger flashes hot through your veins, and your hand flies up and whacks the communicator hard, hard enough that the stinging impact chases away the anger momentarily. Then the fury returns, doubling in intensity, and the sheer injustice almost makes your vision white out. 
The distant grinding of the sandcrawler shakes you out of your fervor, and you haul yourself to your feet with a sigh. Trading days always... intensify you. But you can’t afford to get hung up on one comm unit. It has been years of fried comm units. Even if you managed to patch together a working one on your limited knowledge, who would you call? A single name flits across your mind, but you veto it instantly. Even if he was in range, he wouldn’t come to get you.
So, back to the original plan. The long plan, the one that has stranded you on this planet for solar cycles. You busy yourself with the various scavenged parts that you’d collected over the past month, polishing and dusting the pieces until they glint like gems in the late afternoon suns. Every small scratch garners another twelve minutes of debate over whether the rebuilt astromech viewport would be worth the trade for the polished transparisteel, or the additional inhibitor units.
The first thing that’s off is the Jawas themselves. They seem… tense. No, that’s underselling it. They’re always high strung, running around and worrying about different bargains and barters. But today, they’re absolutely freaked out. Dual sun-stroked. High on their anxiety. Which is good for you; they’ll be distracted and maybe they won’t try to barter for your spare vapor consolidator again this time.
So you naturally pay it no mind while setting up your line of wares. You had a good haul this week, enough to make the water taxes this month.
The Jawas crowd out of the sandcrawler deck, and you greet them as you recognize them. A flurry of Jawaese flies around your head as they run about, laying out the wares for you to examine.  One scurries to your offerings this week: random parts and a series of old mouse droids that you had reprogrammed. They examine the small droids while speaking to each other too quickly for you to follow. Finally, they come back with two of the small droids, nodding to each other as they present the desired pieces to you.
“Got any working EC processors lying around in there to trade?”
They look at each other, and one says a single phrase that you translate roughly to, ‘Bring him out.’
“Bring what out?” But you’re too late and the Jawas are already inside, hauling a mass covered in sackcloth down the ramp. “Is that a patch-in droid? Where the hell did you scavenge a whole one fr…”
The second thing that’s off is the human body. They rip the sackcloth off of the form, and you trail off. “What in the kriffing hell is that?” After further examination you confirm that it is probably a he. His eyes are closed, and he’s lying in the sun too limply to be healthy. There are bruises and cuts on the skin that you can see, but he’s draped in dark clothing that has to be sweltering hot in the Tatooine suns. A Tusken gaffi stick lies pinned underneath his body. 
The Jawas erupt in a storm of chattering, waving their arms around their heads as you try to keep up your limited Jawaese. You crouch by the man. He’s breathing shallowly, and you don’t see any visible injuries, but dammit, you don’t know much about first aid. “Slow down, please!”
They don’t slow down, and you’re left scrambling trying to remember the difference between preterite verb forms while continuing to try to check on the man’s health. “He broke into the sandcrawler, killed your warriors, and took a nap?”
More unpleased Jawaese flies around your head, “He broke in, killed your warriors, and didn’t try to escape, just sat down and tried to interrogate you. And then you knocked him out and broke his legs.” The Jawas cheer gleefully in affirmation, and you sigh. A second glance at the man reveals the sunken skin around his eyes and the unnaturally pale color of his skin. There are white scars over his face that look like acid burns. “Maker, how long has he been in there?” The Jawas keep talking, but you’re not paying attention. He won’t last another day without attention, and that is coming from an inexperienced mechanic. You may not know medicine, but you can’t leave him in good conscience.
“I’ll take him off of your hands. Keep the mouse droids.” 
It’s a kriffing miracle that you manage to get him back inside your hut and onto the cot without pulling a muscle. You don’t even know if he’s going to wake up. He just lies there, and the weight of the situation slams down on you in a single crushing moment. “What the hell did I just do?” You rake your fingers through your hair, “Take in a dying stranger, why don’t you? Sign away half of your supplies, half of your food, half of your water, half of the credits meant to get you out of this damned place? Dumbass.”
He groans, and you start. He’s awake. With a heavy sigh, you face the newest burden in your life. “Here, drink some water.” You grab the half-empty jug from the table and kneel beside the cot. “You’re lucky that the Jawas decided to meet me today. If they had gone to Tokonu’s farm, you might not have lived through the next few hours.” You reach to prop his head up.
In retrospect, you shouldn’t have tried to touch him. There’s an explosion of movement, and you suddenly find yourself pinned to the ground, arms locked painfully behind your back. Maker, he’s half-dead, and you barely saw him move. “Where am I?” The growl is so deep that you can feel it in your toes, though the roughness of his voice suggests that it hasn’t been used in a while.
You look over your shoulder, and you see dark eyes piercing into you. A shudder runs the length of your spine at the predatory gaze, and you’re feeling less like an unlikely caretaker and more like trapped prey. This is a dangerous man, no matter the state of his health. Then he curses and the weight on your back lifts as he falls to the side and you remember the broken legs.
You shakily roll to the side and sit up, studying the man next to you on the floor, who’s clutching his legs and muttering rude phrases about Jawas and thieves that you’d rather not repeat. He’s older, with creased skin and a dark scowl contorting his features. Scars run the length of his face, adding to the aged appearance. His dark clothing masks most of his body, though you’re sure that the rest of his skin bears similar scars to the ones slicing through his features. 
“You done staring?” The rasping voice makes you jump and look away hurriedly, cheeks flaming red in embarrassment. 
You stand. You have to find a way to splint his legs. “I don’t see many other Terrans out here.” He grunts, and you hurry to your workshop. You need wood, or metal, or something straight. Fuck you’ve never set a broken bone before, but you grab the bacta from the back cabinet. Your gaze lands on the ladder in the corner of the room.
“Hey.” His head lifts when you re-enter the room, lugging the ladder through the door frame. You dump it on the floor in front of him, and he looks up at you with a raised eyebrow.
“Angel, I’m not going to be climbing anywhere anytime soon.”
You ignore the endearment and the sass, “I’ve never set a broken leg before. I need your help if you ever want to walk normally again.”
“You’re going to set my legs?” He asks.
“I’m assuming that you know how to.”
He doesn't confirm your theory, instead tilting his head and looking at you more seriously, “Big assumptions.”
“If you know how to break an arm, you know how to set one.” 
He just leans back and laughs, “You have a tongue on you.” You won’t dignify that with an answer, and his smile only grows. “Break the ladder. I need two straight planks.”
---
The massive palace is dank and cold, the polar opposite of the planet outside. It’s a new world compared to the heatwaves and sand dunes. The silence amplifies your quiet footsteps as Fennec leads you through the hallways. Speaking of which, she is absolutely silent. Her footsteps are nonexistent even on the cold metal floor. She put her helmet back on when you entered the palace, so you can’t even hear her breathing. The only sounds are the ones made by you, and the walls seem to amplify them to the point where you’re sure that wherever you’re going, you will be expected.
You can’t help but feel like you’re walking to an execution, though you haven’t decided if it’s your own yet. It could be. You don’t know if he’s changed. It’s been years. You’ve changed, that’s for sure. Actually, scratch that. You know that he’s changed, because he didn’t come straight to you.
You frown. There’s a piece of the puzzle missing, though you can’t place your finger directly on it just yet. After years of being tied to no one, of being perfectly free and independent, why would he come back to Tatooine?  What is tethering him to this desert of a planet besides his own suffering? 
Out of nowhere, a staircase yawns in front of you, and you hesitate slightly before following after Fennec. The arched ceiling opens into a large room that prominently displays a raised dais, though it all falls away when you see who is seated on the throne. 
It’s been a long time since you’d seen him, and you’d never seen his armor in color, only a sketch. The smooth green and red accents are color combinations that are in short supply on Tatooine, he cuts a menacing figure against the dark throne. He’s splayed out on a throne built for a Hutt thrice his size, legs spread and arms resting on the sides. It might be intimidating if it were a stranger, but you keep telling yourself that he’s not a stranger. It’s easy to imagine that he is, due to the blatant showmanship and armor. It’s been so long since you’ve seen him, but this suit of armor isn’t the Boba that you knew.
---
“What’s that?” You’re sitting at the workbench while he’s in a kitchen chair that was dragged into the workshop so that he could have a place to rest. He’s recently become mobile, though he’s only allowed to move under your sharp eye, making sure that he doesn’t try anything stupid that will leave him bedridden for another month. That would be another seven weeks of extreme food rationing and existing on supplies only meant for one. That being said, he mentioned that he was willing to lend an extra pair of hands in your workshop, and you’re not one to deny free help, so long as he promised to not push himself too hard. Your measurement tools were left on the table, and to your surprise, he picked up the stubby pencil and began sketching with it. The rough parchment now shows evidence of a human-like figure.
“My armor.” 
“What color is it?”
“Green.” Another purposeful sketch on the paper and there’s a prominent blemish in the helmet. “And red.” Stars, it’s like pulling teeth.
“Did you lose it?” Maybe you’re intruding, but you’ve been taking care of him for the past month, so you’ll excuse yourself from this one.
“Yes. These--” He waves a hand around his face, indicating the pale scars, “--are from a Sarlaac. When I fell in, I lost consciousness. Woke up without the armor. I need to find it.”
The Sarlaac pit is an execution site for those who oppose the Tatooine crime syndicate. You’ve never heard of anyone surviving either the wrath of the Hutts or the Sarlaac. “It’s important to you.” “The armor belonged to my father.” It’s hard to imagine the toughened man in front of you ever being dependent upon someone else. Though, you suppose that everyone comes from somewhere. You wonder not for the first time where this man came from. “It’s part of who I am.”
---
“Boba?” The name is a quiet whisper that echoes emptily through the chamber.
He says your name in return, but his deep baritone makes it sound so much more full than his did floating in the air. “Just as beautiful as the last time I saw you.”
“Can’t say that I can make the same observation.” You shift nervously. It’s too empty and cold in here, the absolute antithesis of the world you made your own. You can feel the dampness leeching the energy from the air. 
“That’s fair.” There’s a beat of silence.
“How have you been?” It’s a passive question, nothing more than something to say to break the silence.
“Good. And you?” The conversation is stunted and awkward, though it only used to be stunted. Now, you’re looking at this man and you don’t know him anymore. Even before, he was your friend above all else. Now you’re stuck making basic observations about him.
“You got your armor back.”
The helmet inclines once, barely an acknowledgement of a statement that you feel should receive so much more. “Found it through a friend.”
“Some friend. Am I going to get that story?”
“Later.” It’s infuriating, the distinct lack of personalization. For solar cycles, you had Boba. Then, nothing. Now you have Boba Fett, the bounty hunter.
---
“What’s your name?” You can’t believe it’s taken you this long to ask, though in all fairness, there’s not much need for names when there are only two people around for leagues. You simply speak, and he assumes you’re talking to him. He rarely speaks, so when he does, he’s always talking to you.
He doesn’t answer at first, only continuing to hold the sheet of metal in place so that you can continue welding it shut over the gap in the droid’s body. You don’t mind. If he wants to answer, he’ll answer. Though it would be nice to have a name to place to the stoic face. It would also be nice to have a name to whisper when you touch yourself at night. 
You hadn’t meant for it to end up like this, but you can’t help but admit that you had been setting yourself up to fail. Living with a man, especially one so tall, strong, so… kriffing dominant in how he carries himself? You’re just surprised that it took the dreams half a solar cycle to start up. But now you can’t stop thinking about how it would feel for him to back you up against a wall and pin you to the rough stone with just one of those wonderfully strong hands. 
“Watch it angel--”
You snap back to the present just in time to see your torch drifting dangerously close to your hand. You yank it away, but the damage is done and your glove is burning. He curses, bare hands immediately flying to the thick cloth and yanking your arm forward. A few rough pats later, and your glove is smoldering. Shit. That had been your last good pair. You sigh, pulling the glove off and getting up to find another. You snag a mismatched glove from the bottom compartment of your storage unit and settle back down to finish the job.
You’re two inches into the welding line when he speaks. “If I had known you’d be so distracted by silence I would have spoken.” The tone is dry and sardonic, and your gaze darts up to meet his deadpan one before flicking back down to your work in time to keep the welder from drifting again.
“No you wouldn’t have.” It’s the truth, based on how he doesn’t seem to have a snappy answer.
Finally, he sighs,  “My name is tied to my past. I’ve done some bad things.” This time, you know better than to look away from your work. 
You raise an eyebrow at the sheet metal, “I know.” You finish and click off your torch, settling it carefully down on the work station beside you. “No one ends up in a Sarlaac pit by following the law.” Air puffs out of him a little more forcefully than normal, and you squint. Was that a laugh?
“I wasn’t the one getting executed.”
“Didn’t take you for a clumsy person.” He doesn’t dignify the jab with a response, and you suppose that you deserve that. You examine the weld before pulling the torch back out. It’s a little sloppy. “Do you regret those things?”
“No. The sum of a person’s lifetime is found in his actions. Regrets or none, they are who I am.” That… is shockingly poetic considering that you’d only asked for a name. 
“You’ve killed people.” It’s not a question, there is no doubt in your mind of the answer, but you want to hear it from him.
“Yes.” A beat of silence. “Is that going to be a problem?”
“Depends.” You inhale slowly, trying to figure out how to phrase this, “I… understand that you don’t have an easy past.” He snorts at that, and you glower at him before continuing. “Tatooine doesn’t need more war.”
“You’re scared.” It’s a pointed statement, blunt and uncaring about the blatant assumption.
“No.” No, a million times no. You had not cowered in fear during the Clone Wars, you had picked yourself up and survived. But ever since Bib Fortuna took over the syndicate, violence had been minimal. You do not need more. “As long as you live here, I do not want you to be the one who brings it back.” You’re on shaky ground here, considering that you really don’t have much control over him or his choices. But this is the only request you have made of him so far.
He grunts in response, a thoughtful silence settling over the workshop. “You really care for this planet?”
“No. I fucking hate deserts. I’m blowing this joint as soon as I can.” You yank the glove off with more force than perhaps you needed. Whatever, it got the job done. You squint down at your calloused hands, “I just don’t want to be the reason that more innocent people get hurt around here. Bib does enough on his own.”
Bib Fortuna. The Twi-lek that currently commands the most powerful force planet-side on Tatooine: the crime syndicate that was left leaderless after Jabba the Hutt died in mysterious circumstances involving a Jedi and a Sarlaac execution. Wait a minute...
 “No violence?”
You shake your head, chasing away the puzzle pieces that just began to slot together. “Only self-defense.” You’re not unreasonable, Tatooine may be more peaceful than during the war, but lowlifes still exist. “And if you get a chance to get off-world, take me with you.”
“Steep price.”
You raise an eyebrow, “I saved your life. You may as well return the favor.”
“Fair enough. You have my word as a…” He slaps a hand over his chest, but trails off before finishing the sentence, as if only realizing then that his armor is not there. He amends, “You have my word as a man.”
An awkward silence settles over the shop again, though there is no logical reason why it should be awkward, giving you the moment to remember the seed of the conversation. “A man with a name?” It’s a fumbling and clumsy attempt to turn the conversation back towards your objective, and you can tell that he picked up on it. 
He looks at you with amusement, “Persistent.” There’s a half-beat of silence as he considers you. “You may recognize my name.”
“I live in the middle of nowhere.” You counter. “Who would I tell?”
“That’s not why I don’t want to tell you.” 
Oh. You can’t really think of a response to that, so you stand and begin cleaning your station. Rusty bits of scrap go into that bin, useful parts go into that one over there so you can tinker late at night when you can’t sleep. 
“I don’t know your name either.”
You turn a prop a hand on your hip, dramatically lowering your voice, “My name is tied to my past. I’ve done some bad things.” There! Another huff of breath, and a halfway crooked smirk from the usually grim-faced and unreadable man. You smile back, “Trade?”
He considers it briefly, “First names only.”
You grin. That’ll do nicely. “Deal.”
“Boba.”
You introduce yourself, “Nice to meet you, Boba.”
---
“Why are you back?”
“Are you not happy to see me?” He sounds amused.
“I am.” You shift back and forth on your feet. “Why am I here? Why are you here?”
“Because I wanted to see you. To know that you’re alive and healthy.” He’s avoiding answering. 
“That’s only half of my question.” Your voice becomes small, “Why didn’t you come home?”
“If I had come to the farm, Bib would have sent hunters out again. You know how that ended last time. You have to cut the krayt’s head off, or it will just keep coming.” You don’t miss how he’s avoiding calling the farm his home. 
“You don’t have to pretend, Boba. You have your armor and your ship, you don’t need me anymore. If you came back to take over the syndicate, I won’t be angry.” Even if it means that he’s throwing you away and not looking back. Your heart would heal.
“I--” He hesitates to finish the sentence, and your stomach drops as you expect him to confirm your suspicions. “I didn’t only come back for the throne. I still wanted to see you.”
 “If that were true, you would have come yourself.”
“Ang--”
“Stop making excuses.” Your gaze narrows onto the visor blade, meeting his cloaked eyes, “If you really wanted to see me, you would have come to the farm, not sent your lackey.  You have your armor and your ship. Why are you back?”
---
It’s all he talks about anymore. And it’s not like he talked that much before, so now ninety-nine percent of the conversations that you have with him are about the nearest pawn stalls, or the Jawa trading route, or the ship scrap yards scattered around the planet. He’s been moving about independently for the past two months, each day venturing out further into the sand hills in search of his armor. 
The jug of water is disgustingly lukewarm, but refreshing all the same. You swipe a hand over your forehead as you pace around, propping open all of the windows and shoving the door open. You don’t want to work anymore, it’s too hot for this shit. Late afternoon is the worst, hanging the promise of sunset overhead while continually beating the world into submission with the heat that makes it feel like you’re dragging fire into your lungs. With nothing better to do, you slowly sweep the floor of the house, brushing sand outside just as it continues to blow inward.
The moisture vaporator is functioning passably, your supplies were restocked two days ago, and you made decent headway in your workshop. Nothing is urgent enough to spur you into action. All there is to do is wait for Boba to come home. That’s the brightest point of your day; seeing his figure appear in the shimmering heat waves as he treks through the sand towards you.
He still doesn’t talk much. Neither do you, but there is a comfortable sense of companionship every night when you set the meal down and eat together. If conversation is needed, then it’s needed. But until then, you’re content to sit with him. He’s my friend. The stark realization nearly makes you stop in your tracks. You’re friends with the gruff man who you took in with two broken legs and who leaves you alone for the better part of the day. The man who you imagine on the rough nights when you long for a body beside you.
Finally, finally it’s sunset. You climb to the top of a nearby dune. He’s there in the distance, he always is. You watch the suns sink beneath the horizon and turn to head inside. 
You don’t hear him come in, though to be fair, you never do. You expect him to sit at the table. Instead he appears at your elbow, silent as a wraith but as large and solid as any human. You nearly jump out of your skin, “Stars, Boba, you kriffing scared m--” You turn, but are stopped short because he’s right there, crowding you against the counter and there’s something feral in his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
He’s breathing heavily through his nose, face hovering an inch away from yours and gaze fixed on your lips. Your eyes are glued to his almost black ones. His flick up to meet yours. You can smell him, something spicy and musky that’s drawing you in. Stars, you want to fuck him. 
Your eyes flicker down to his lips and the tension shatters. He shoves past you, planting his hands on the counter. He hasn’t changed out of his gear, and the gaffi stick sways threateningly on his back. The tip is darkened and shines in the dim light of the lantern. 
Dread pokes your heart. “Boba, are you hurt?” You try to look over the rest of his body for hints of injury, but his baggy clothing masks his body. He seems to be moving fine.
There’s a strained silence before he rips himself away from the counter and stalks away with a terse, “I need to change.” He halfway out of the door when he stops, and you watch him carefully as his head turns back halfway. “Meet me in the bedroom.” The ‘fresher door bangs in the distance, and you nearly collapse against the counter. 
You’re not sure how you make it to the room. You’re a trembling ball of nerves, anxious and fidgeting as you stare at the corner of the room. He killed someone. Someone is dead, because of him, and he doesn’t seem to be torn up about it. Only… tense. Like he’s more concerned about the consequences on you than him. You remember his promise.
He’s standing there now, dressed in clean clothes and looking at you like you’re the most complex problem in the room. He seems calmer, though he’s in this mode that you can’t describe with a single word, though you had witnessed it before when you first brought him into your home. There’s a feral intensity about him, almost primal. You don’t know what to say, so you keep your mouth shut.
Finally, he speaks, “I would never hurt you, angel.”
You nod. There’s a shared understanding of this, though it had never been verbalized. He has your back, and you have his. A mutual survival and benefit exists between you two. 
“Will you come here?” There’s an underlying question to read in the rasped question. Will you go to him? There’s also a warning. He’s not a safe man, but you’re willing to ignore your fears about that if it means you'll have him. You stand and walk towards him purposefully, each step sealing your choice. You stand in front of him, barely allowing yourself to breath as he scrutinizes you. A hand comes up and tilts your chin upwards carefully.
And then he’s kissing you, more like absolutely devouring you with how far his tongue is down your throat. It’s sensory overload, because all at once he’s so close and so there right in front of you, pressing against your front so closely that you can feel him hardening against your thigh. His hand comes up to tangle in your hair, and you gasp as he yanks your head back. 
“I don’t know if I can be gentle, angel.” His pupils are blown, dark eyes even blacker with desire and boring into yours. You can see the restrained lust in his eyes, and you shiver at the silent promise in them.
You grin, only barely aware that it’s slightly feral, “No one asked you to be.”
His own responding smile is nothing short of primal. “Maker, you’re fucking perfect.” His hand roughly smooths over your hair, and you melt into his touch. “Now strip.”
You can’t yank your shirt off quickly enough, but he stops you as soon as the offending fabric flutters to the ground. A hand traces over your collarbone, the rough calluses scraping over the crisp outline of the ink. “What’s this?”
You hesitate before answering, “It’s, uh, it’s artistic.” He makes his skeptical face at you, and you step in closer to him, pressing your body against his more clothed one, “I saw the design in a shop and liked it.”
The distraction seems to work, because he crushes his mouth to yours again, his hands removing the rest of your clothes so that you stand completely bare before his piercing gaze. You fight the urge to cover yourself. He has this way of making you feel like an open book even when you’re clothed, and now you feel that he can look into your soul without any other barriers.
“Beautiful.” The compliment is growled into the tension filled air. Blood rushes to your face, and you duck your head shyly. A hand tilts your chin back upwards to meet his eyes, “Get on the bed.”
He pushes you backwards gently so that you land on the mattress, bouncing slightly as you watch him remove his coverings. With every delicious inch of skin revealed, you feel another shot of heat between your legs. You hadn’t seen much of his body since that first day, and it’s like watching a gift unwrapped in front of you. When he pulls the last of it off, your eyes unavoidably drift between his legs, and your heart stutters at the sight. Stars he’s thicker than you’d expected. 
You don’t get anymore time to overthink because then Boba is caging you to the mattress with his body. Your breasts heave, nipples brushing against his chest with every inhale. One thick finger slides through your folds, and you almost cry at the contact. Maker, you’ve wanted this for so long. He pushes into your heat and you swear your body seizes at the sensation. 
Boba grunts, “Angel, you’re so tight.” His hips jerk seemingly of their own volition against your leg, his erection sliding over your skin. “Want to be inside of you. But--” He adds another finger, scissoring his fingers to stretch you out more, “--I think I’d break you.” 
The heel of his hand grinds into your clit, “Boba. Please, fuck. Told you not--” He curls his fingers against your g-spot and you gasp, “--not to be gentle.”
He pulls his fingers out with a growl and flips you around to your hands and knees. You shiver in anticipation as you glance over your shoulder while he aligns his hips to yours. He barely gives you any time to prep before he sinks into your heat. 
Oh shit.
He is so much thicker than you expected. The stretch burns so good, and-- you spare another glance over your shoulder as it just keeps coming. Your arms give and you collapse to your elbows with a whine. Your teeth clench as you focus on taking him, and your hand slaps the mattress as you tense. He stops behind you, “Angel, you need to relax.”
You exhale shakily. Fuck, you can’t relax, it’s too much. He’s going to split you in two. You’d told him to be rough, but you hadn’t been prepared for this. So you crouch on the bed, trying to breathe enough to allow yourself to form words. 
“I can stop.” His cock inches marginally out of you, and you panic. 
“No! Fu-- keep--keep going. I can do it.” He’s holding himself back. You can tell in the tiny quiver of his hips as he inches further into you. All you can focus on is the feeling of him rubbing against the inside of your cunt. His fingers rub your clit, and a garbled moan escapes your throat as your hips press backwards into him. The pain mixes with pleasure, a bone-deep one that you feel through your entire body as it arches against the bedsheets.
When his hips finally fit to yours, you let out a breathy moan. But he doesn’t continue. He just rests there, which is ridiculous considering how every nerve ending in that region of your body is firing with pleasure and how is he staying so still when this feels like fucking paradise? You might go insane just lying here with him bottomed out so deep inside of you that you can feel it in the back of your throat. His hand leaves your clit to grasp your waist. He eases out of you, the satisfying fullness retreating until the head of his cock hovers at your entrance, just barely inside of you. He’s teetering on a cliff, all of that potential energy built up behind his body as he hovers there, waiting for something. He’s trembling, Boba is trembling as he waits for something that he never asked you for. There’s molten lust creeping through your veins, you need him to move, to fuck you nine ways to next week. “Move. Please. Need--need it.”
He rolls his hips forward and you swear the world implodes behind your eyelids. He doesn’t stop this time, just yanks you closer on the bed and fucking wrecks you. The pace is unforgiving and rough, and the obscene slapping sound of skin on skin echoes through the small home, making you ever more grateful that there are no neighbors for miles.
A whine escapes your throat before you can help it, and you clap a hand over your mouth. He chuckles as he pushes back into your dripping pussy, “Oh, you like that angel?” His hand seizes your hair and drags your back flush against his body, “Ah ah ah. Take it off your mouth.” You do so, your hand trembling, “I want to hear every.” Thrust. “Beautiful.” Thrust. “Noise.” Thrust. You could almost feel him in the back of your throat with that last one, and a strangled cry is ripped from you. “Understand?”
You whimper and nod at the velvety purr against your throat and he hums in satisfaction. “Good.” He shoves you back down onto the sheets, one hand pinning you to the cot by your neck, the other curling around your waist. Without your hand to muffle the noises, your sounds come without you intending; choppy moans that are only broken by the force of his thrusts. He’s anything but quiet himself, a series of soft grunts and curses coming from the general vicinity of his head as he continues to slam into your body.
Your orgasm peaks without warning, ripping through your body before you can think to prepare yourself for it. The climax ripples outwards from your center, white flashes appearing behind your eyelids as you keen high in the back of your throat. Your floor muscles clamp down on Boba, and his rhythm stutters.
“Angel--” With a curse, he rips himself out of you, painting your ass with his release. You’re in a daze of pleasure as you come down from your high, the sheets smooth beneath your cheek and his cum warm on your back. He pulls the sheet, and you whine in protest as he yanks the comfortable bedding from underneath you. He cleans you up with the cloth, tossing it to the side into a random corner of the room.
It’s dark now. The only light in the room comes from the flickering lamp in the corner. Boba pulls blankets over your cock-dumb body, and you snuggle down into your bed, fully expecting him to leave. He doesn’t sleep much, but when he does, he naps on the floor with a blanket or two. You don’t expect him to climb into bed behind you, arms wrapping firmly around your waist and pulling you close to him. You drift before finally surrendering to peaceful sleep.
You wake when he moves behind you. The sunrise glints through the window, spraying warm light around the room. You’d have to get up soon, but not yet. He doesn’t have to go. You turn and look at him.
Your voice is raspy with sleep, but it cuts decidedly through the silence of early morning. “I trust you. You know that, right?” You don’t wait for an answer, because if you don’t say it now, you probably won’t have the courage to do it later, “It’s not hard to earn my trust. It’s hard to keep it, and even harder to regain it.” He’s quiet, and you can feel his deep, even breaths against your front and how his arms tighten fractionally around your waist.
He rolls over, and you feel the mattress dip as he stands. “I need to cover another sector by tonight.”
You turn on your side so that you can’t see the door. Best not to get attached anyway.
---
“Should I be calling you a title or something?” You’re hesitant to refer to him as anything in your mind. He’s just Boba. Not your boyfriend, or your lover, because you only name things you expect to endure. If you find a super cute loth cat, but you can’t keep it, you don’t name it, that's just a rule of life. Don’t label it if you don’t want to keep it. Don’t get attached to something that will not stay. “Lord Boba? King Boba? Master?”
He snorts, “Not necessary, Angel. Though I wouldn’t mind that last one.” You blink at the old nickname, the familiarity of the endearment stirring up emotions that you’d thought had long since been buried. “I’m still me.”
“Are you?” The question slips out before you can think to restrain yourself, the tone more accusatory than you expected. 
“Do you want me to be?”
Now you’re the one caught off guard. You had thought about it, in the empty silence while he was gone, when the bed was too cold and empty after so much time adjusting to his weight on the other side of the mattress. No decision had been made. But once, in the darkest hours of the morning, right after you’d made yourself cum on your own fingers that couldn’t hope to measure up to him, you’d wished. You had wished that you had labelled it when you had the chance. Because maybe you had wanted the relationship to stay. 
---
“Why do you call me that?” The words are whispered into the darkness of another early morning. He’s curled around you, the heat of his body keeping you warm despite the freezing cold desert night. You need to start thinking about getting up soon. It’s a new day, a fresh start, a time to restart. Chores are waiting, like they always are. But you can’t seem to bring yourself to want to move when he’s at your back.
He shifts, breathing in the scent of your hair, “Call you what?” His arms tighten around your midsection and you wiggle slightly in his grip, your hips pressing back against his half-hard length. “Ohhhh, angel you’re going to start something that you won’t be able to finish.” 
You turn so that you’re facing him in the darkness, his features just a ghost of an outline against the early dawn rays glowing faintly through the doorway. “That. Angel. Why do you call me that?” He grinds against you, and you stifle a whimper at his heavy erection against your thigh. “Stop distracting me.” 
He sighs heavily, but he does stop and allow you to regain your focus,  “I call you angel because of that first day. Do you remember?”
You roll your hips against his, “Hard to forget.”
“Yes.” His teeth sink into the bare flesh of your shoulder, licking and sucking until you’re sure that there’s a mark. “I was in that sandcrawler for days, it’s a haze in my memory. Just blinking in and out, hoping that the sound would stop, that the world would stop moving, that those damn creatures would stop jeering at me for just a few minutes.” Your hand slips down and grasps his erection, and he inhales sharply, “And--and then. They’re grabbing me and dragging me out of that hell. And you’re there, standing above me, framed by the suns. And my first thought was that you--” He grunts as he thrusts up into your fist. His cock is leaking profusely over your hand, and you swipe your thumb over his head, “-- you must be an angel. How could you be anything else? You saved my life.”
“Bold of you to think that I’m from heaven.” With a wicked smile, your other hand drops to fondle his balls, massaging the flesh in your hand as you continue to slowly jerk him off. He snarls quietly, hand anchoring in your hair and tugging your head back so that he has access to the bare flesh of your neck and shoulder. 
“Now, you’ve become more of a devil in my bed, my angel of death.” His teeth sink into the juncture of your shoulder, no doubt leaving a mark. You were prepared for the pain, but you weren’t ready for his hand zeroing in on your sensitive clit, rubbing with the exact amount of pressure that could cause you to come in seconds, and you have other plans. 
You roll on top of him, swinging your leg over his hips and positioning his head at your entrance, “So you try to break the arm of every angel you encounter?”
“That was your fault.” You can hear the smirk in his voice as his hands reach to grasp you around the waist. “For pushing me, like you are doing now.” His hips roll up, and your eyes roll back. The day can wait.
---
The surge of emotions only serves to make you more frustrated, and that’s not going to help matters. You may have a long fuse, but once your anger ignites, it burns hot and long. He knows this, and yet he continues to push you. “I came down here because I owe you one, for saving my ass. So you better talk if you’re going to keep me here.”
“I saved your beautiful ass twice in return.” He’s amused, and that only serves to make you angrier. “So you owe me two, one for coming and one for staying while I explain.”
Hell no, he doesn’t get out of this by throwing in a shabby compliment, though you furiously fight the rising embarrassment all the same, “No, the first one repaid me for dragging your dying carcass out of the sandcrawler. And the welding incident hardly counts, so you’re on thin fucking ice right now.”
“Angel--”
“No, you are going to stop with this pretentious bullshit and tell me what the fuck you think you’re doing.” Your arms are waving in the air, you’re on the verge of hyperventilating, your voice is rising in pitch and you’re vaguely aware that you shouldn’t be working yourself up like this, but you can’t seem to bring yourself to care, because he’s there. And you’re here, at the foot of the throne.
“Why are you so angry, angel?”
A laugh explodes out of you so forcefully that your throat stings, “Your fucking audacity, is pissing me off. You leave without explaining. You come back, and don’t think to come to find me yourself. You send your incredibly attractive, what are you, his sidekick?” Fennec raises her chin in response, though you don’t know if that’s a confirmation or not. “You drag me down here where I find out that you’ve killed Bib Fortuna and become Tatooine’s newest crime lord. And yet, you still haven’t shown the basic decency of telling me why I’m here. Do you have to kill me because of some new fucked up bounty hunter code? Because you know that I won’t go down easy, whether you have me two to one or not.” You’re scarily aware of Fennec’s gaze boring into the back of your neck.
Silence screams into the empty air as Boba freezes on the throne. “You know.”
“That you’re a bounty hunter? I’m not an idiot. It was smart to not give me your last name that first time I asked. As soon as the hunters told me, I knew. Jango Fett was your father.” The name drops a bombshell in the center of the throne room.
“What do you know of Jango Fett?”
“Not much. Only what Hondo told me.” Hondo Ohnaka. The pirate, the outlaw, the man who had morals enough to take in a starving child rather than leaving her to die.
“Hondo Ohnaka.” He leans forward, clearly interested once he recognizes the name. “But you’re not Weequay.”
“Fortunately, the man cared for children. He wouldn’t abandon one in need. He fed me, essentially raised me.” You’d been caught picking his pocket. Instead of killing you, Hondo took you in. You feel the corner of your mouth quirking up at the memory of the old pirate and the small-time smuggling jobs he’d allowed you to help out on, with your small size and quick fingers. “He’d always remind me that he used to be a feared outlaw throughout the galaxy, and that he wouldn’t be as soft the next day.”
“But he kept you anyway.” 
You shrug, “He lived by a code.”
“The pirate code?” There’s skepticism in his voice, and you don’t blame him.
“Hondo… didn’t exist by societies’ laws. He was honorable, but never good. Told me to be the same.” The advice was the best that you’d ever gotten. It allowed you to move on from guilt, to live isolated from the chaos of the galaxy. It taught you to live on your own and to be independent, to not feel for the suffering of the collective galaxy. But it also commanded you by the morals that saved your life. Don’t steal from the poor, but the rich won’t miss a handful of credits. Don’t hurt a sick child who’s just trying to eat. Don’t kill a helpless enemy, even if he hijacked your ship and crashed it onto a desert planet in the middle of nowhere. Leave him to die in the sand instead. 
“I was stranded on Tatooine a few years ago. I had no money, and no ship. I found the abandoned farm, and put together something so that I could save enough to escape one day.” No communicator either, and you’d only just struck out on your own too. Hondo was lightyears away by the time you’d thought to try to comm him, and none of the technology was current enough to reach that far. You’re pretty sure he wouldn’t have come to pick you up anyway. “Whe--” Your voice breaks, and you curse your emotionally sensitive vocal cords. You clear your throat, “When you left--” “You think that I could have taken you with me.”
“You could have!”
“It was dangerous, angel. I hated that I had to leave the way that I did, but--”
“You smeared bacta on me and disappeared. Was I supposed to feel happy?”
---
The day he left started the same as any other. The moisture filter needed replacing, but you didn’t have the credits yet. So you had a date with an ancient filter and your multitool. You look up, flicking hair out of your face when you hear the footsteps behind you. “Hey.”
He doesn’t answer, as per usual, but he nods and rubs your hair with a gloved hand. “I’m scouting towards the flats today. Only a day trip, I’ll be home before dark.”
“Sounds good. See you.” You turn back to your multitool. You’re too focused on tweaking the settings to allow for a greater flow rate to see him smile, a rare one-sided grin before he turns to leave. His path takes him south, so he doesn’t see the three dark shapes in the heat waves approaching from the north.
The vaporator beeps loudly, protesting the absence of the filter and loudly proclaiming that it needs the filter to harvest water from the atmosphere. You tune out the obnoxious sound. After a ten minute struggle, you snap the filter’s frame out of place, exposing the internal wiring. You’re going to need a smaller drill point to reach the last resistor knob. You walk towards the workshop, wiping the sweat out of your eyes, fiddling with the screen as you do so. You’re too distracted by the tech in your hands to notice the figure slipping around the outside wall of your hut.
You grab the smaller bit and unlatch the last knob, absentmindedly walking outside to get better light into the inner workings. Despite the heat, Tatooine’s afternoons were perfect for mechanics, with the twin suns illuminating all but the tiniest crevices. Unfortunately, with your attention elsewhere, it doesn’t reveal the crime syndicate members waiting outside your door. 
The air rushes out of you as something slams into your midsection, effectively knocking you onto your ass on the sand. The filter flies out of your hands, but you’re focused instead on the helmeted figure standing over you, vibroblade levelled at your throat. “Where is he?”
Your hands are shaking as you raise them in the air, attention fixated on the masked figure. Adrenaline surges through your veins, and you almost don’t notice the second one hanging back near the wall. A third, the only unhelmeted one, stands beyond the first, smiling nastily. The blade grazes your throat, and you whimper at the cool metal against your skin. “I said. Where is he?”
“Who? Maker, please, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Fett! Boba Fett!”
Your stomach drops at the surname. The hunter curses viciously, holstering the weapon and grabbing you by the front of your shirt. You’re yanked to your feet, “Intel said that he’s here, so I’m guessing that you’re his little pretty piece on the side.” An arm presses over your throat, and you gasp as your airway is almost cut off. “Where is he?” The question is purred into your ear silkily. 
He must be insane if he thinks that you’re giving him that information. “I don’t know, he said he’s going towards the Dune Sea today. I swear, he’s gone. Left an hour ago.” You inhale sharply as the blade stops against your jaw.
“You’re pretty.” Your stomach turns at the sneer, and you fight the urge to bite him. Better to bide your time. “But an awful liar.” The angle changes so that the point is pressing into your skin and you cringe in anticipation of the cut.
A sharp command rings through the air and your captor stops. You exhale shakily, but don’t allow yourself to feel any hope. Boba’s gone and will be all day. They’re going to kill you, or use you as leverage when he returns. Or both. You’re not getting out of this alive, but you’re not going to lay down and die. Your eyes fix on the knife in front of you, but you’re visualizing where the hunter’s holster is.
Blaster fire explodes behind you, and you duck as sparks shower down onto you and your captor slumps to the ground. You don’t waste a second, ducking to rifle through the hunter’s pockets, snatching the blaster. Boba is there, features contorted in rage. He’s standing over a body, blaster in one hand and his staff in the other. Your eyes lock, and for a moment, you can almost hear him asking if you’re okay. You nod your head almost imperceptibly, but he gets the message.
A laugh rings through the air, and the moment shatters. There is a single hunter left, the one who was hanging by the hut while the other one threatened you. The cocksure swagger tells that this is the one in charge, the one who gave the command to keep you alive. And yet, the favor doesn’t hold any value to you as the helmet tilts up at Boba, “Boba Fett. You’re a hard man to find.” Boba doesn’t answer, instead jerking his head and you move towards him, “Bib Fortuna wants to talk.”
Now Boba responds, “I don’t.”
“150,000 credits to me says that you will.” Another blaster(fucking blasters) points at you, and you stop in your tracks, fighting to keep your breathing steady. He’s only a few meters away, a dead shot if he decides to let his finger slip.“Because he may want you alive, but not her. And she lied to me. Drop the blasters, or I shoot her now.”
You slowly lay the weapon down, eyes fixed on the barrel. Boba does the same, his hands raising placatingly as the shiny metal plops into the sand, “She’s nothing to me.” 
“You can try to tell Bib Fortuna that, but he’ll believe it even less than I do. I’ll cut you a deal. You come with me, I get my credits, she gets to live.” You focus on Boba’s face, trying to steal some of his stony calm. 
Boba smirks, “You’re even stupider than you look.” Then he’s moving, eating up the meters between them faster than you can blink. The staff arcs up, the wicked point glinting in the sun before smashing into the hunter’s helmet, crushing the metal with stunning ease. Your mouth is still hanging open when white-hot pain flares through your shoulder. Fucking blasters. You drop to the sand, curling in on yourself as your entire body seems to throb in agony. There’s no blood on your hand when you pull it away, but the smell of burnt flesh almost makes you vomit. The suns are too bright and you blink rapidly, trying to get rid of the spots dancing in your vision.
A form crouches over you, blocking out the light. Someone is saying your name repeatedly, slapping your face gently as they support your head and neck, “Wake up, stay with me. Gotta get bacta on that shoulder.”
You blink blearily. The world is swimming before your eyes and nothing is focusing correctly. It’s a struggle to stay awake, never mind focusing on what Boba is saying to you. The sand is so warm. Sleep would be nice. You wouldn’t have to stay awake and focus on the implications of what just went down. You wouldn’t need to feel the hole burned in your shoulder. Fuck, Boba had been shot before? How did he bear it?
He turns away, but he’s instantly back, gloved hands ripping apart your shirt at the shoulder. You mutter, “Leave it. Self cauterizes. Best way to get hurt.” The suns blend into twin slurs of light across the sky. ‘Meteors,’ you think, ‘They look like meteors. Or shooting stars.’ People make wishes on those, right?
Boba snorts, “Bantha shit.” He smears the bacta on the wound, and you shudder as the pain lessens marginally. He starts talking as he works, though it’s a struggle to understand anything when you’re so distracted by the world spinning beneath you. “Angel, I have to leave. They’ll be coming for me. I can’t stay here with you. Do you understand? Tell me you understand.” 
Okay. Okay, you tell yourself it’s okay. You’ve been expecting this day for some time. He’s a dangerous man, it was right to assume that he’s wanted by someone, you just didn’t expect the someone to be the resident crime lord of the planet he is kriffing living on. It’s hard to stay in one place for some time, but he did. For you. And now it’s your turn to let him go, to sacrifice for him because he sacrificed for you. But you can’t seem to bring yourself to say it. You have to settle for a shaky breath and a tiny nod. 
He lifts you and carries you inside, arranging you on the bed. He brushes a strand of hair out of your face, a second of tranquility before he turns and begins gathering supplies. You fight against the encroaching sleep, resolving yourself to watch and savor these last moments. He won’t be coming back, not while Bib Fortuna holds the bounty on him, and Bib has a long memory. 
So you commit every detail of him to memory. His grim and stoic face and the deadpan sarcastic humor that you’ve grown to love. His broad shoulders remind you of the first time you met him. It was absolute hell fitting his massive frame through the small doorway of your home, only for him to flatten you to the ground when you moved wrong. His careful and smooth gait that you observed every time he walked out into the dunes and away from you. His lips, which sometimes wear that devastatingly attractive sideways smirk that promises trouble, but more rarely wear a genuine smile that you’ve only seen once or twice. His powerful legs that pinned you to the mattress more than a few times. And you wish on the twin meteors outside that this wouldn’t be your last memory of him.
You try to summon words to your dry throat, but they come out as a raspy cough on your first attempt. “Boba.” 
He’s by your side instantly, so quickly that you would do a double take if you had any strength to do so. “Here.” He offers the water jug to you and you sip, remembering the first day that you met him.
But there’s no time to reminisce, “I know that you have to go. I know that I probably won’t se--” Your voice breaks, but there’s no need to finish the sentence. “But I’ll be here. If you ever come back.”
---
“You broke your promise that last day.” 
“It was self-defense.” A huff of air echoes through the modulator, and he sits back on the throne, “Angel, everytime I kill, I kill for a reason. It’s not senseless.” No, that’s not what you’re talking about.
“You broke your promise when you left Tatooine without me.” You took a chance on him. You trusted him to hold to his word. And he’d betrayed that trust.
“I was trying to protect you. You couldn’t come with me, it would have been too dangerous. You have an entire life ahead of you. Coming with me off-world would have thrown it all away.”
You laugh scornfully, “So what, you just made that promise without ever intending to keep it? Is that all your word as a man is worth?”
“I made the promise intending to keep it.” His voice is stiff, mirroring his posture as he regards you with all of the bearing of a king lording over his subject. You hate it. “But my loyalties changed, angel.” You open your mouth to continue, but he cuts you off, “I couldn’t bring you into my life within good conscience. I promised to save you in any opportunity promised. My way of saving you was leaving you here.”
“You don’t get to decide that for me.”
“Angel, if you had come with me, I would have been violating both aspects of the promise. You would have seen killing, pointless and meaningless death. And it would have destroyed you, whatever good hope for the universe you had left.”
You scoff, “I am not a good person. I have flaws, Boba, you just refuse to see them.” You tear your collar open, revealing the tattoo inked into your skin. You’d told him that it was artistic, and it was the most beautiful reminder of your old life that you had. It’s the mark of a thief on your home planet, curling into your skin and reminding you everyday of what you had run from. “I lied and cheated and stole my way through life. I am not too naive to hear the real reasons for you coming back.” Because that’s why he didn’t tell you. He thought you were too pure to know about his job. He thinks you’re too innocent to know why he’s back. Well, you're done with him handling you with kid gloves.
“If you ever cared about me, you’ll explain why you’re here now. Because I won’t stay.” You stare down the emotionless visor, knowing that you can’t hold your ground. Your anger is still burning white hot, but it’s beginning to subside for lack of fuel. You’re exhausted, and you have no power here. You inhale, ready to continue to ream him out except the breath catches in the back of your throat and comes out a strangled half-sob. You continue to stare at him, but all you can manage is a little, “You promised.”
The suit of armor staring back at you holds the power, and he could kick you out in an instant without a backwards look. What’s a few solar cycles compared to a lifetime of independence? But someone is going to have to give ground here, and you’re almost convinced that it’s going to be you when he speaks. 
“Fennec.” Without a single word, she turns and leaves. You watch her retreating back, not knowing if you should feel relieved or trapped. “Do you want to know why I came back today? Or that day?”
A rebellious tear slips down your cheek, and you scrub it away angrily. “Pick one first.”
He’s silent again for several heart breaking moments, and you’re terrified that you’re going to have to leave, “I didn’t break my promise at first. I didn’t leave Tatooine that day.”
“What?” The tears have stopped, and that’s one little victory you won’t have to fight for here.
“The day that I left.” His hand rubs against the visor of his helmet, and you can almost imagine that he’s rubbing the visor of his helmet, right over the bridge of his nose the same way he always used to when he was stressed. “I went to Bib and bargained. A year of my service to leave you alone. I had no choice, it was the only way I could try to protect you after they came after me.”
Your heart drops and rises in your chest simultaneously, making you feel both like you’re plummeting off of a cliff while bound to a torn parachute. Puzzle pieces click into place too quickly, laying out a picture that’s still unfinished, but one that you understand primitively. The next command from Boba is unexpected, slicing through your problem solving.
“Up.” 
You blink, “Excuse me?”
“Come here.” You stand and walk to him. “Give me your hands.” His grip is gentle, guiding your fingertips under the lip of the green painted beskar. His hands stay on your wrists as you carefully lift the helmet, inch by inch, and it’s a good thing that they did because without his support your hands might have been shaking too hard to get the damn thing off. 
He looks the same as when he left all that time ago. Same strong chin, stern mouth, and scarred skin. But you look at his eyes, and you know that he did change in the time away. There’s a soft look in his eye that you had never seen before. 
“What happened to you?” Your hand grazes over his skin, and he leans into your touch.
“I fell into a Sarlaac pit.” The familiar sardonic smirk appears, but you don’t smile along with him. It vanishes, “I--” He breaks eye contact with you, looking down and licking his lips as if he’s trying to gather the words to explain, “I met a man. And a child.” He looks back up, and you almost melt at the muted shine in his eyes, “They reminded me of what is important. I came back.”
You gently set the helmet on the ground and raise your hands to cup his face. “Boba--”
“I came back that last day because I realized that I loved you. I turned around and came back to tell you, and it’s a good thing I did.” His hands come up to cover yours, and there’s the wicked spark of humor in his eye. “I wanted to stay, angel. I wanted to stay so bad, but you were safer if I didn’t.” Your eyes slip closed as you lean down and graze your forehead against his, the way that he taught you. His hand leaves yours to plant on the back of your neck and holds you there. “We couldn't be together until Bib was dead. I was wrong, to come here first and to send Fennec for you. But I needed time to… prepare.”
He had to prepare for the possibility that the bargain didn’t work, or that you had moved on. He hadn’t needed to worry, because you promised that you’d be here. You slip onto his lap, straddling his thigh without moving your head away from his. “I’m here.” 
“Are you still upset?” A hand comes up and ghosts over your hair. You lean into the touch almost subconsciously. 
“I’m working through it.” You pull back and fix him with a stern gaze. “This isn’t resolved.”
“But?”
“We’ll work through it.” He nods, his mouth hanging slightly open in a look of contemplation.
“I won’t stay.” What? You freeze, dread spiking through your chest. He must feel the tension in your body because he rushes to clarify, “I-- uh I, ah shit that was a bad way to put it.” He pulls away and meets your eyes, “I will leave this. I’ll be Boba. Not Boba Fett. Not king of the crime underworld. I’ll be anything for you. We’ll escape off-world together or some shit. We can go find Hondo, if he’s still alive.”
You snort, “That old man is too tough to die.” You tap his nose with your fingertip, “Like one other that I know.”
He snaps his teeth playfully at your finger, and you squeal happily. “My point is--” He looks up at you with such peace in his eyes that you want to curl up against his chest and never leave, “We can do whatever you want. Just the two of us. But I want to stay with you, this time around. That past life is all done. We’ll find something else to do, besides hunting bounties.”
Your eyes track towards the doorway that Fennec disappeared through, and his gaze follows. “Fennec will be fine. I’ll release her from my service. Hell--” He chuckles dryly, “Maybe I’ll leave the throne to her.”
That’s a terrifying thought that you’re not quite ready to consider just yet. “You’d give this all up for me?”
“Angel, that’s what love is. Sacrifice. I just didn’t learn it soon enough.”
You kiss him, a real one this time, melting into his lips, “Love can be compromise. And this is a point I’m willing to give on.” 
“What?”
“I’ll admit,” You tilt your head, a mischievous grin sliding across your face, “Queen of the crime underworld has a nice ring to it after being a moisture farmer for several years.”
He smiles, the real one this time, “I like the title on you.” His hands attach to your hips, holding you down on the hard ridge of his thigh as he grinds the leg up into your cunt. “Makes me wanna act out, Your Majesty.”
You gasp at the surge of wetness between your legs. Stars, it’s been so long that you almost forgot how much you loved the feeling of his body beneath you. “Boba--”
“Ah ah, is that any way to address your king?” So this is how he wants to play? Fine.
“No, Your Royalness.” Wrong answer. One hand comes down hard on your ass, and there’s going to be a mark for sure. “Your Excellency?” Nope, and another spank burns on your butt. “My king?” You brace yourself for another, but the hand stays. 
“Hmmm, I like that one.” His grip tightens, and you know that you’re going to have finger shaped bruises on the pillowy flesh. He captures your lips against his, and you roll your hips downwards onto his thigh. His erection rests heavy against the inside of your thigh, and you purposefully angle your hips to create more friction against it. “Angel, I want nothing more than to take you now, but--” He stands with a grunt, easily hoisting you into the air with his hands supporting your butt. 
“--I’d rather taste you first.”
A/N: Okay wow this took me so long. This project has literally been in the works for months, and I found a way to finish it finally! I’m not sure if the Boba Fett craze has passed yet, but either way here we have Boba. Some throne-fucking for those of you who would care for it. 
Taglist: @alliterative-albatross​
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sanjuno · 3 years
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Sanjuno’s Story and Fandom Masterlist
I’m going to pin this list of titles so that people can more easily figure out what they want to vote for each Friday. Anything labelled with Meta, WIP, or Concept can be voted for.
1.    ATTACK ON TITAN
1.1.  Coordinates T by H: Eren’s coordinator abilities allow him to metaphysically bond with other humans, thereby giving everyone in the group the ability to psychically communicate with the rest and also boosting everyone’s healing ability exponentially to be on par with the Titan Shifters. Chaptered, WIP - Posted
2.    BLEACH
2.1. What Happens on Vacation: Crossover with YYH – turns out that Kurosaki Misaki was a senior ferry girl on sabbatical (which translates as living a mortal life unaware of her true nature) and she was late returning to work due to being trapped in Grand Fishers gut. Ichigo and Uryuu are very confused when their “cousin” Kazuma shows up to introduce his new bride to the family. Koenma is just really pissed off by all the paperwork he needs to deal with while cleaning up his father’s mismanaged pet project. Chaptered, WIP - Unposted
3.     CODE GEASS
3.1.  A Code of Ice and Fire: Crossover with GOT – Lelouch, his two younger siblings, and Lelouch’s most loyal followers are reincarnated into Westeros. Lelouch proceeds to make it his lifelong mission to drive Cersei into frothing fits and strengthens the Baratheon dynasty to the point that even Tywin is impressed by his grandson’s machinations. Then CC shows up with dragons and Ned Stark starts to think that maybe Robert’s onto something with the “drinking to forget” idea. Meta
3.2.  Abandon Thyself: Post-Zero Requiem Suzaku travels back in time to the scene in the Shinjuku Ghettos when the truck explodes. Given that the people closest to him haven’t actually spoken to Suzaku in years, the origins of Suzaku’s obvious mental instability is hilariously misattributed by various outside PoVs. So when Suzaku hits his knees in front of Lelouch, swearing eternal devotion and vowing to make Lelouch the next emperor nobody panics. (They should really reconsider panicking.) Drabbles, Prompt Fill - Posted
3.3.  The Sun Also Rises: At the moment of his death in the Zero Requiem, Lelouch travels back in time to his childhood body. With only a week to go before Marianne is “assassinated by terrorists” Lelouch sets out to rearrange the board in a way none of the other players will see coming until it’s far too late. Lelouch has been given a second chance to make things right, and Lelouch wouldn’t be Lelouch if he didn’t plan big. This time around, Lelouch plans for his victory to be a bit more obvious. Chaptered, WIP - Posted
4.    DCU
4.1.  Time Enough: Terry McGinnis, his little brother Matt, and their dogs are the only members of their timeline to survive because Bruce Wayne was too old to see any more of his sons die in front of him. So they all got knocked out, shoved into an escape capsule, and ejected from the Batman Beyond timeline before it crumbles. Said time pod crashes into the middle of a Red Hood versus Match throw down, and Terry’s Wayne-inherited charisma is so powerful it allows him to banter his way into good graces of both villains. Jason drags them all off to his lair because every single member of the Batfam hoards orphans. Chaptered, WIP - Posted
5.    DRAGON BALL
5.1.  Saiyajin Pride: Alien biology has a larger impact on characterization that it does in canon. Mirai comes back to the main timeline live in sin with Videl and Gohan. Vegeta and Goku deal with some shit that comes from being the last full-blooded members of their species. Then just as things are settling down… Garlic is an idiot who thinks up a loophole in the “can’t wish people dead” rule and wishes Goku and Vegeta’s families straight out of existence and they end up in an entirely different reality. The only upside is that Vegeta finally gets to kill Frieza. Chaptered, WIP - Unposted
6.    FAIRY TAIL
6.1.  Flight Of Dragons: Future!Lucy misses her target and ends up landing further back in time, during the same year Natsu and the rest of the Dragon Slayer kids were brought to when they were pulled forward in time.  Fairy Tail luck kicks in, and future!Lucy runs into child!Laxus as he escapes from his father after being fed the Lightning Dragon Lacrima. Laxus is handed a Prophecy and runs with it. Children have never needed Fairy Tales to tell them that Dragons exist, but they certainly help. Chaptered, WIP - Posted
6.2.  My Heart Overflows: Juvia and Grey have finally started dating, but the Fairy Tail Mage Guild has some interesting traditions when it comes to proving the validity of a romantic relationship. Oneshot, Prompt fill - Posted
7.    FAMILIAR OF ZERO
7.1.  A Velvet Glove: Crossover with TMNT – Leonardo gets summoned to be Louise’s Familiar. Since all of his brothers are dead, Leo sees no reason not to make the most of this “lifelong bond of magic and spirit” and adopts Louise as his little sister. Halgenkia is not prepared for a Louise Francois le Blanc de la Valliere with ninja training. Henrietta is probably far too gleeful over making her best friend her Spymaster, but it’s not like anyone knows enough about what they’re doing to stop her. Reconquista gets exposed and smashed, and Wardes really should have respected his fiancée more. Chaptered, WIP - Posted
8.    FINAL FANTASY VII
8.1.  A Dirge of Ice and Fire: Crossover with GOT – Several members of Avalanche and the Elite Soldiers are reincarnated as the spares and bastards of Westeros’ Great Houses. Given that Rhaenys Targaryen used to be Cid Highwind, the Sack of King’s Landing goes very differently. Meta
8.2.  A Feather’s Weight: Crossover with Naruto – Kakashi and Obito, along with their respective subordinates, are reincarnated in Wutai, and are thus in position to undermine a lot of Hojo’s plans simply by being themselves. Wutai still loses, but by a much smaller margin, and SHIN-RA realizes much too late that Wutai’s “concession” was a trap. Kakashi is a big shiny distraction for Sephiroth, the SOLDIERS revolt, and nobody knows who assassinated President Shinra. Chaptered, WIP - Unposted
8.3.  Antiviral: Woden and Gaia conspire to create antibodies to fight off Jenova’s infection. Cid and Vincent end up bearing the brunt of this decision, get roofied by Divine Intervention, and also end up the Gaian equivalent of demonic werewolves. Also the Planet is transforming all the SOLDIERS into werewolves too, yes, even the dead ones. Chaptered, WIP - Posted
8.4.  For Love Of: Cid Highwind crashes the Tiny Bronco into Lucrecia’s cave, does the metaphysical equivalent of tearing her heart out and eating it to absorb her power, and them proceeds to adopt General Sephiroth as his son because it’s not like anyone can stop him. Cid Highwind does what he wants. Sephiroth does what Mother wants. SHIN-RA soon regrets everything because Cid Highwind is a hell of a lot better at rewriting the social order than Avalanche is. Chaptered, WIP - Posted
8.5.  Hindsight is 20-20: CHAOS decides to rewrite time because they have a massive crush on Cid and they don’t want him to die. CHAOS fumbles the landing and Cid ends up in the body of some weird Lucrecia/Ancient-Cetra-Who-Was-Jenova’s-Host Clone and ends up giving birth to Sephiroth. Things only get worse from there. Chaptered, WIP - Posted
8.6.  Like it Rough: Cid likes Vincent a lot and also has a bit of a kink for scars. Cid walks in on Vincent naked, runs away to hide his raging boner, and Vincent ends up chasing Cid around the airship until he can pin his friend down in the Captain’s bunk because the demons are all drunk on the pheromones. Oneshot - Complete
8.7.  Names of Power: Jenova’s taint getting mixed into the Lifestream has far-reaching consequences, and Avalanche gets tapped to handle the fallout whither they like it or not. Series, WIP - Posted
8.7.1.     Small Packages: The Lifestream meddles in Avalanches lives even after the Planet has been saved. There are clones and ancient powers better off left alone but it’s not like Avalanche ever gets a say in the matter. Chaptered, WIP - Posted
8.7.2.     History Inverted: Jenova isn’t all the way gone and the Planet really doesn’t care if Humanity survives or not as long as the infection is burned away. Aerith shoves the spirits of Avalanche and their children into a new timeline because she doesn’t want to watch their souls get shredded. Avalanche proceeds to mosey along and wreak havoc in the way only they can manage. Chaptered, WIP - Posted
8.8.  To Earn the Sky: Echidna, Mother of Monsters and Heroes, and Jenova, the Calamity From the Skies, are at war. Hojo makes a very big mistake when he uses the Blood of Echidna’s Children in his Revenant Project. Cid Highwind is a good son, and his Mother wants to meet her new Grandchildren. Chaptered, WIP - Posted
9.    FINAL FANTASY XV
9.1.  A Light of Ice and Fire: Crossover with FFVX – Noctis, his Retinue, and the loyal members of the Kingsglaive and Crownsguard are reincarnated into Westeros. Jorah Mormont is Cor Leonis, but Cor Leonis is not Jorah Mormont, and so the Northern Forces are something to fear in Robert’s Rebellion. By the time King Robert visits Winterfell, it will be a very different Northern Kingdom that he finds there. Meta
10. GAME OF THRONES
10.1.               Crossover Fixits to Help Westeros be Less Miserably Doomed: Various casts from other series end up reborn in Westeros and use knowledge from their previous lives to change the Game. Series
10.1.1. An Assemblage of Ice and Fire: Crossover with MCU – Team Iron Man focus, since Tony is reincarnated as Ned Stark. Starks are made of Iron, and Winter is coming. Tony’s genius intellect, knowledge of politics and economics, experience with magic and alternate realities, and the fact that Extremis carried over through his reincarnation and adapted to work with First Man magic means that the Stark siblings who go to the Tourney of Harrenhal are nothing like the canon versions. Rhaegar gets his Stark bride, and he proceeds to regret it for the rest of his life. Meta
10.1.2. A Balance of Ice and Fire: Crossover with SW – Qui-Gon Jinn’s three Padawan Learners and Padme (who got taken in Anakin’s place) are reincarnated as the Tyrell siblings. They proceed to follow the Will of the Force and prepare the Seven Kingdoms to win against the Long Night. Meta
10.1.3. A Code of Ice and Fire: Crossover with CG – Lelouch, his two younger siblings, and Lelouch’s most loyal followers are reincarnated into Westeros. Lelouch proceeds to make it his lifelong mission to drive Cersei into frothing fits and strengthens the Baratheon dynasty to the point that even Tywin is impressed by his grandson’s machinations. Then CC shows up with dragons and Ned Stark starts to think that maybe Robert’s onto something with the “drinking to forget” thing. Meta
10.1.4. A Dirge of Ice and Fire: Crossover with FFVII – Several members of Avalanche and the Elite Soldiers are reincarnated as the spares and bastards of Westeros’ Great Houses. Given that Rhaenys Targaryen used to be Cid Highwind, the Sack of King’s Landing goes very differently. Meta
10.1.5. A Dying Will of Ice and Fire: Crossover with KHR – The Tri-Ni-Sette holders and all those bonded to them are reincarnated into Westeros Noble Houses. Xanxus is born as Robert’s eldest trueborn son and Heir to the Iron Throne, and so all it takes is one look at the Wall to know that there is something to fear on the other side. Tsuna is busy swooning over Arya’s muscles but in-between reciting odes to his amazing betrothed he takes time to tell Nono’s ghost “I told you Xanxus would make the better Heir.” Meta
10.1.6. A Light of Ice and Fire: Crossover with FFVX – Noctis, his Retinue, and the loyal members of the Kingsglaive and Crownsguard are reincarnated into Westeros. Jorah Mormont is Cor Leonis, but Cor Leonis is not Jorah Mormont, and so the Northern Forces are something to fear in Robert’s Rebellion. By the time King Robert visits Winterfell, it will be a very different Northern Kingdom that he finds there. Meta
10.1.7. A Space Between Ice and Fire: Crossover with Naruto WCE – The Konoha Founders and their siblings are reincarnated as Starks and Baratheons and manage to save the Realms of Men while resolving their many and varied issues with one another. Meta
10.1.8. A Transformation of Ice and Fire: Crossover with TFG1 – Most of the Cybertronians who died during Unicron’s Awakening end up reincarnated as dragons (Seekers) and Direwolves (Autobots). The sapience of the animals causes significant changes to outcome of several key canon events. Meta
10.2.              Singing In A Different Key: SI is reborn as Jon Snow, who then precedes to Machiavelli the fuck out of the North in preparation for the coming Long Night and also to screw over the Lannisters. Because fuckthe Lannisters. Meta
10.3.               Wolf At The Door: When Ice takes the head of Eddard Stark, Valeryian magic mixes with the Blood of the First Men. It’s wild, uncontrolled, and Ned ends up as a four year old in Winterfell’s Godswood, staring at his reflection in the water. Eddara Stark, second-born child and first-born daughter of Rikard and Lyarra Stark looks back up at him. Ned, fully believing that this is his punishment for failing his family and best friend the first time around, decides to fix the Realm by fulfilling the Pact of Fire and Ice. The thing about being a woman is that no one ever expects you to be a threat, not even other women. The thing about being the Quiet Wolf is that everyone overlooks you until the moment your teeth sink into their throat. Concept
11. GET BACKERS
11.1.               Holy Days of Yore: Various celebration themed fic that explore Ban’s backstory as the “With Queen’s Grandson” and bring a bit more of that old black magic into the Get Backer’s lifestyle. Series
11.1.1. Lupercalia: Ban gets a magic matchmaker box in the mail and everyone wears their heart on their sleeve for Valentine’s Day. Oneshot - Posted
11.1.2. Oeastre: Ban gets roped into being the master of ceremonies for Maria’s coven and Easter gets interesting. (Everyone makes like bunnies.) Oneshot - Posted
12. GIRL GENIUS
12.1.               The Other Side of the River: One of the Jagermonsters manages to catch wind of Lucrecia’s plans and absconds with Klaus Barry during the confusion caused by the first explosion. This understandably causes some disruption in everyones plans when KB and his nanny run into Agatha during her time with the Circus. WIP - Unposted
12.2.               Threefold Path: Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek get their brains booted back in time during the si vales valeo and decided to run away and join the circus until they’re old enough to take over the world properly. WIP - Unposted
13. GUNDAM WING
13.1.               Mistakes and Misdemeanors: Heero was on blockers for the entire war due to a series of implants, which did no favours to his mental health. When the implants run out Heero gets run over by a hormone train and absolutely nobody knows how to handle that. Chaptered, WIP – Posted (Under Revision)
14. HARRY POTTER
14.1.               Black As His Name: Sirius Back lives! Because the Veil dumps his mind-and-soul into the empty body of his younger self in a world where Walburga Black lost it on her eldest son much earlier in life and Sirius was tortured until he was left brain-dead. Arcturus Black is pissed off over the treatment of one of his Heirs and since Sirius’ magic is still intact, names Sirius the Heir to House Black and proceeds to hold the Heirship over everybody’s heads for spite for as long as Sirius continues to “live”. Everyone in the Black Family is very surprised when the annual shaming ritual disguised as Sirius’ birthday party is crashed. By none other than the birthday boy himself. Sirius rolls with it and becomes a True Black in the most Marauder manner possible. WIP - Unposted
14.2.               Black Hunt Under Bloody Skies: Crossover with KHR – Regulus and Sirius both end up dumped into KHR because Death owes them a favour on its Master’s behalf. Things start to get weird after the Arcobaleno curse is broken. Regulus is actually Skull and Sirius is his Sky and they confuse the entire Mafia so much. WIP - Unposted
15. HOMESTUCK
15.1.               A Jump To The Left Behind: Post game reality has all the races living in a Galactic Republic, and the Troll Ancestors and Human Guardians all need to team up in order to solve the mystery of the planetoid-sized meteor that just barreled into the middle of their busiest spacelane because their names are written all over it. In the process of exploring the meteor they accidently wake up the Players and Sprites. Chaos ensues. Concept
15.2.               Pandora’s Final Gift: A mermaid AU where a Deep Old One gives Eridan (and only Eridan) the memories of his Game Player Self as a lark. Eridan hits the level cap for his current reality, freaks out, saves Sollux’s life, and then absconds as far away from the center of the Empire as he can get. Concept
16. INU YASHA
16.1.              Hunter’s Moon: The standard “Demon Mating Season” idea that draws on the infectious nature of demon energy in the Sengoku Jidai and runs with it. Everyone over the age of eighteen gets some. Kagome gets to go home and take a nap. Chaptered, WIP – Posted (Under Revision)
16.2.              Cry Wolf: Playing straight with the crack concept that Inuyasha and Kouga were betrothed as children. Kagome isn’t in the picture because she got yeeted back to her own time when the Shikon no Tama got purified. Chaptered, WIP – Posted (Under Revision)
17. KATEKYO HITMAN REBORN
17.1.               A Dying Will of Ice and Fire: Crossover with GOT – The Tri-Ni-Sette holders and all those bonded to them are reincarnated into Westeros Noble Houses. Xanxus is born as Robert’s eldest trueborn son and Heir to the Iron Throne, and so all it takes is one look at the Wall to know that there is something to fear on the other side. Tsuna is busy swooning over Arya’s muscles but in-between reciting odes to his amazing betrothed he takes time to tell Nono’s ghost “I told you Xanxus would make the better Heir.” Meta
17.2.               Black Hunt Under Bloody Skies: Crossover with HP – Regulus and Sirius both end up dumped into KHR because Death owes them a favour on its Master’s behalf. Things start to get weird after the Arcobaleno curse is broken. Regulus is actually Skull and Sirius is his Sky and they confuse the entire Mafia so much. WIP - Unposted
17.3.               Burning Salt Water: Crossover with OP – Xanxus gets dumped onto the Oro Jackson during the Pirate King’s last voyage when Nono’s Zero Point goes sideways and he ends up adopted by Rouge and Roger while he heals. After the execution Xanxus ends up raising the ASL trio to take over the Pirate Throne and Ace sets the Moby Dick on fire when Whitebeard kidnaps him. Meta, WIP - Unposted
17.4.               Cat’s Paws: Uri has seen enough Time Travel bullshit to know how it works, and so when Hayato gets himself killed she grabs his soul and flings herself backwards in time because fuck the timeline this is her human and he’s not allowed to abandon her again. The other Box Animals think it’s a great idea and do the same with their humans, and this results in the kind of alternate timeline that gives Byakuran a headache. In other words, Uri creates a timeline where Flame Actives are a lot more Alien than they used to be and now everyone thinks Youkai and other myths are real. Chapters, WIP - Posted
17.5.               Fire Shall Waken: All of Nono’s sons are still alive when the Cradle Affair happens and it results in the entire 10th Generation gathering up their Harmonies, rolling Xanxus into a blanket burrito, and taking off to Japan under assumed names where they proceed to spend the next eight years coddling Tsuna and being spoiled rotten by Nana in return. Meta
17.6.               Gremlins Della Varia: Mammon’s experiments with the Curse have had some odd side effects on the Varia. It all comes out during the Ring Battles and the other Arcobaleno are Judging You, Viper. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted
17.7.               Karma, and the Repercussions Thereof: Crossover with Naruto. Legendary Ninja from the Elemental Countries get reincarnated into KHR and proceed to adopt all the Magic Rainbow Fire Children. Nono and Iemitsu suffer. Series, WIP
17.7.1. Karmic Balance: Kakashi and Obito are ninja married from the very start because of metaphysical bonding and some minor haunting during their last lives. Between Ninshu Shinobi needing to be in Clans and Flame Actives needing to be in Harmonies it does not take long before the child stealing begins. Gokudera Kakashi is the best wife and Dokuro Obito repents, repeatedly and often, while also having the time of his second life. Tsuna loves his Kakashi-sensei and wants to be just like him when he grows up. Chaptered, WIP - Posted
17.7.2. Karmic Justice: Madara and his brothers are reborn as Fon’s nephews and do not take kindly to the Arcobaleno curse being put on one of their relatives. The Hibari Clan proceeds to start hunting for the Man in the Iron Man en mass. Madara and his brothers hit Namimori during Nono’s visit and witness the sealing of Tsunayoshi. They don’t take well to this either. Things go worse for Tsuna than they do in canon and Madara hunts down Tobirama because he needs the resurrection to be done perfectly. Tsuna loves his Madara-shishou and wants to be just like him when he grows up. Oneshot - Posted
17.7.2.1.      Karmic Justice – Hubris: Madara comes across Xanxus in the ice while investigating the Vongola and despite Xanxus being a bit older than the usual target for child stealing decides to steal him anyway. After resurrecting Tsuna, Madara and Tobirama’s next project is defrosting Xanxus. Concept
17.7.2.2.      Karmic Justice – Providence: Madara finds Xanxus on the streets while hunting in Italy for the Man in the Iron Mask. Wrath Flame calls to Wrath Flame and Madara instantly adopts the delightfully savage little boy. Then Namimori happens, and Tsuna’s seal gets him temporarily killed, and Xanxus reaches 100-year-vengance-plot levels of overprotective big brother. WIP - Unposted
17.8.               Music of the Spheres: Crossover with SM – Post Stars Usagi and Post Vongola Inheritance Tsuna are cousins who meet for the first time ever only after the Vongola’s enemies kidnap Ikkuko and Shingo. Usagi gets taken into protective custody by her Mafia relatives without being given the chance to say she doesn’t need it. Usagi then proceeds to seduce all the women, charm all the men, and accidently throw Iemitsu out the nearest window every time he’s in the same room she is. Chaptered, WIP - Posted
17.8.1. MotS - Celestial Chorus: Chibiusa’s arrival has Usagi dragging her family to Namimori to prove that Chibiusa isn’t their cousin and things get wildly out of hand. Meta
17.8.2. MotS - Sing In Exaltation: The Shingo from The Sharp Knife Of A Short Life hears the name of his ‘cousin in Namimori’ and immediately begins to meddle. Meta
17.9.               Overlooking the Obvious: They say that to truly know someone you need to walk a mile in their shoes. The adage is proven true rather dramatically when a misappropriated Possession Bullet ends up switching Gokudera and Hibari into each other’s bodies. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted
17.10.           Reach For The Sky: Kamen Rider Sora and his team are the protectors of Namimori against the invasion of Youma from the dark dimension. Reborn shows up to tutor the last remaining Vongola Heir and ends up in the middle of a longstanding battle against the Forces of Evil. Does the World Greatest Hitman have what it takes to guide the mysterious masked Rider towards his true strength? Stay tuned to find out! Drabbles, Prompt Fill - Posted
17.11.           When the Nightingale Sings: Sky Flames are Dragons, and when a Sky is Sealed they turn into True Dragons once said Seal breaks. Tsuna has the Best Treasures Ever. Reborn is confused but willing to roll with it. Hayato needs to do all the research. Drabbles, Prompt Fill - Posted
17.12.           Where the Sky Meets the Sea: Crossover with OP – The ASL Trio are reborn as Sawada Tsunayoshi’s younger brothers, and the Will of D means they remember everything. Sawada Iemitsu might once have been Akagami no Shanks and despite lacking his memories knows better than to keep secrets from his wife. (Iemitsu does keep a lot of secrets from Nono, such as the fact that he has more than one son.) Iemitsu redirects Xanxus’ attention to the Family traitors, Nono never meets Tsuna, and nobody gets sealed. Then Reborn shows up, and everything is now on fire. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted
17.13.            
18. KYOU KARA MAOU
18.1.              The Needs Of Our Natures: Wolfram decides to prove exactly how much his mother’s son he really is and seduces Yuuri. Wolfram seduces Yuuri like it’s his job. (Yuuri likes it.) WIP - Unposted
19. MARVEL
19.1.               An Assemblage of Ice and Fire: Crossover with GOT – Team Iron Man focus, since Tony is reincarnated as Ned Stark. Starks are made of Iron, and Winter is coming. Tony’s genius intellect, knowledge of politics and economics, experience with magic and alternate realities, and the fact that Extremis carried over through his reincarnation and adapted to work with First Man magic means that the Stark siblings who go to the Tourney of Harrenhal are nothing like the canon versions. Rhaegar gets his Stark bride, and he proceeds to regret it for the rest of his life. Meta
19.2.               Iron Laced: Crossover with TMNT – Maria Carbonell was actually Oroku Karai in disguise because she was on vacation from being a member of the Council of Shadows. Karai and all the Turtles accessed magic ninja dragon powers when they took over the Council and Karai-as-Maria passed that down to Tony. So Tony is actually a dragon and an encounter with the Enchantress leaves him locked in his dragon form. WIP - Unposted
19.3.               Miles To Go: Post-MCU Civil War almost-Time Travel where Tony grieves so hard he sends an Extremis injector capsule to the year before the Winter Soldier murdered his parents. Said capsule lands in front of a wasted 15-year-old Tony in the aftermath of a frat party. Cue the face hugger scene. Tony gets an Extremis upgrade about 30 years ahead of schedule and it’s the only reason he survives the memory download without his brain turning into mush. WIP - Unposted
19.4.               Perception: Instead of killing Scott in X3, Dark Phoenix instead fixes the brain damage that prevented him from controlling his optic blasts and then shunts him trough time an space. Scott wakes up 18-years-old in Stryker’s lab and proceeds to hijack Wolverine’s rampage so that they can both escape. James Howlett is impressed, and Cyclops hates everything but especially time travel because it ruins all his fallback plans. Chaptered, WIP - Posted
20. NARUTO
20.1.               A Feather’s Weight: Crossover with FFVII – Kakashi and Obito, along with their respective subordinates, are reincarnated in Wutai, and are thus in position to undermine a lot of Hojo’s plans simply by being themselves. Wutai still loses, but by a much smaller margin, and SHIN-RA realizes much too late that Wutai’s “concession” was a trap. Kakashi is a big shiny distraction for Sephiroth, the SOLDIERS revolt, and nobody knows who assassinated President Shinra. WIP - Unposted
20.2.               A Space Between Ice and Fire: Crossover with GOT – The Konoha Founders and their siblings are reincarnated as Starks and Baratheons and manage to save the Realms of Men while resolving their many and varied issues with one another. Meta
20.3.               A Widening Gyre: Rin survives the Chidori and her existence is now an S-class secret. Said S-class secret distracts Obito on his way to ambush Kushina’s labour and several different chase scenes take place. They all end up in the ROOT base made from one of Tobirama’s old labs and instead of Kyuubi getting loose Team Ro, the Fourth Hokage’s team of bodyguards, Obito, Anko, and all of ROOT plus Danzo himself get dumped into the Warring Clans Era. Obito kills Danzo in a panic when he realizes that taking the Bijuu means killing Rin, Kakashi sacrifices himself again, and there is a lot more running around. Kakashi suborns ROOT en masse, Obito is stupidly overpowered and homicidal but it’s okay because Kakashi is playing damsel in distress and distracting him. The Senju and the Uchiha are all really confused by these kids, there are far too many mistaken identities, and Konoha gets founded much earlier than in canon. Meta
20.4.               According to Custom: Hashirama and Madara should not be left unsupervised (that’s why Mito and Touka tend to lurk nearby when they have tea together) because it causes them to get Brilliant Ideas. This time they decide to make friends with one another’s little brothers. How Madara went from being “nice” to Tobirama to courting the oblivious younger Senju is still something of a mystery, but there are several bets riding on when Tobirama is going to realize what’s going on. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted
20.5.               Around the River Bend: Tobirama feels Itama die and runs to the river to mourn. Quite predictably he meets Madara there, and the course of History changes. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted
20.6.               Colours and Promises: Set a decade after the Evil has been defeated and life returned to normal, Tobirama (once the magical superhero Dragon) is still living with the side effects of sacrificing everything to save the world while he was still a teenager. Notes on a piano, and a familiar voice singing a familiar song. Tobirama finds Madara (once the magical superhero Phoenix) and finally gets to enjoy his victory. Love can be killed, but it never dies, only ever taking on new shapes as we move on with our lives. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted
20.7.               Dare Not Speak Its Name: Madara is Demi as all get out aka Madara’s a virgin with a shy dick. Also known as the AU where Madara proposes marriage to Tobirama for the sake of peace and the children. The only reason Izuna approves is because the thought of Tobirama suffering a lifetime of blueballs is hilarious to him. Meta
20.8.               Heavy as the Mountain: Team 7 is losing the fight against Kaguya, but Obito and Kakashi perform a last-minute sacrifice that means the kids survive. It also causes them all to be de-aged by over a decade and thrown back in time to the Warring Clans Era. Kakashi and Obito die, Team 7 gets adopted by presumably-Hatake Kanna, then a few years later they run into Uchiha Izuna and it all descends into chaos. (Team 7 takes total advantage of everything to get their revenge on Zetsu and maybe fix some of Konoha’s longstanding issues at the same time.)  Oneshot, Prompt Fill – Posted
20.8.1. Crumble To The Sea: The adventures of time travelling Team 7 as they get adopted by the Uchiha Clan, arrange to make Izuna’s life miserable until he proves worthy of courting their An-chan, and get aggressively mother-henned by Uchiha Madara. (The last one came as a bit of a surprise.) Kurama ends up adopting the Uchiha Clan because he likes frustrating Zetsu, and Team 7 appreciates the extra time to grow taller before they need to go weed whacking. Concept
20.9.               In Konoha We Dance: The Uchiha Clan has a tradition of belly dancing and it fixes everything that was wrong with Konoha in canon. Series
20.9.1. O-Bon Appetite: Thanks to his dance training Izuna manages the core control to dodge Tobirama’s sword enough to avoid a fatal wound and Konoha starts off on more equal footing. Tobirama then walks into a traditional Uchiha celebration and his brain shuts off. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted
20.9.2. Hot Like Burning: Kushina drags Minato to the Uchiha Police Office Party so she can make time with Mikoto and there is so much skin, Minato was not emotionally prepared for this. Fugaku takes advantage of the Yondaime’s weakness as only an Uchiha can and the glorious ‘ship FuMiKuMi sets sail. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted
20.9.3. Got This Fire Burning: Overnight shifts at the Mission Desk gets boring. Konoha ninja like to dance, because dancing isn’t boring. Kakashi shows them all how it’s done when a member of Team 7 hits it. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted
20.10.           Karma, and the Repercussions Thereof: Crossover with KHR – Legendary Ninja from the Elemental Countries get reincarnated into KHR and proceed to adopt all the Magic Rainbow Fire Children. Nono and Iemitsu suffer. Series - WIP
20.10.1.                Karmic Balance: Kakashi and Obito are ninja married from the very start because of metaphysical bonding and some minor haunting during their last lives. Between Ninshu Shinobi needing to be in Clans and Flame Actives needing to be in Harmonies it does not take long before the child stealing begins. Gokudera Kakashi is the best wife and Dokuro Obito repents, repeatedly and often, while also having the time of his second life. Tsuna loves his Kakashi-sensei and wants to be just like him when he grows up. WIP, Chaptered - Posted
20.10.2.                Karmic Justice: Madara and his brothers are reborn as Fon’s nephews and do not take kindly to the Arcobaleno curse being put on one of their relatives. The Hibari Clan proceeds to start hunting for the Man in the Iron Man en mass. Madara and his brothers hit Namimori during Nono’s visit and witness the sealing of Tsunayoshi. They don’t take well to this either. Things go worse for Tsuna than they do in canon and Madara hunts down Tobirama because he needs the resurrection to be done perfectly. Tsuna loves his Madara-shishou and wants to be just like him when he grows up. Oneshot - Posted
20.10.2.1.  Karmic Justice – Hubris: Madara comes across Xanxus in the ice while investigating the Vongola and despite Xanxus being a bit older than the usual target for child stealing decides to steal him anyway. After resurrecting Tsuna, Madara and Tobirama’s next project is defrosting Xanxus. Concept
20.10.2.2.  Karmic Justice – Providence: Madara finds Xanxus on the streets while hunting in Italy for the Man in the Iron Mask. Wrath Flame calls to Wrath Flame and Madara instantly adopts the delightfully savage little boy. Then Namimori happens, and Tsuna’s seal gets him temporarily killed, and Xanxus reaches 100-year-Xanatos-Gambit-vengance-plot levels of overprotective big brother. WIP - Unposted
20.11.           Look the Innocent Flower: Orochimaru gets the Hat instead of Minato because instead of working for Danzo he creates his Baby-no-Jutsu (the same one that produced Rogu and Mitsuki) and that’s how Orochimaru accidently turns Tenzo into the Orochimaru-and-Tsunade lovechild while field testing some gene-splicing adoption techniques. Sarutobi is so delighted by all the babies he names Orochimaru his successor without any further debate. Konoha proceeds to become a somewhat androgynous, gender-fluid utopia full off affectionate, friendly people who only want you for your body. Orochimaru refuses to allow hypocrisy in his Konoha and loyalty to ones comrades is not only encouraged, it’s enforced. Meta
20.12.           Negotiation is an Artform: Remix of The Art of Negotiation by Kage88 – Konoha’s Founders take a trip to Uzushio and the Uzumaki are annoyingly persistent in their attentions, even when said attentions are unwanted. Tobirama’s political savvy is not to be underestimated, and Tobirama’s just as ridiculously overprotective of his loved ones as his relatives are of him. Bitchy pining resolves into dating, and the only reason Tobirama lets Hashirama get away with betting on his love life is because Hashirama was the only one who had faith in Tobirama making the first move. Oneshot, Fandom Exchange Fill - Complete
20.13.           No Evil Abolishing Resentment System: Post Kaguya’s return, Madara gets bound by a System determined to help Madara turn all his Resentment Level into Love Points via a quick transmigration plot. Transmigrator!Madara gets to kiss-kiss fall in love with Reincarnator!Tobirama 55 times in a row. I promise that all the gratuitous makeout sessions are plot relevant. Meta
20.14.           Only Fools Rush In: Also known as the Uchiha Get Catnipped AU – the scene of Rin’s suicide is a few seconds off from canon and this not only results in Rin remaining alive, but Obito is also welcomed back to life so enthusiastically by his teammates that his Makengyou spontaneously manifests. A year or so later, Danzo attempts to use an experimental drug to weaken the Uchiha Clan enough for ROOT to have an easy time killing them and/or an excuse for eradicating the entire Clan. Only the drug is a happy-making drug that has every single member of the Clan manifest the Makengyou and immediately run off to snuggle their friends, family, and sundry other precious people. Meta
20.15.           Red in Hand and Claw: Madara has Raptor Summons. This fact is significantly more terrifying than anyone outside of the Uchiha Clan is really aware of. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted
20.16.           Roads Diverged: Kakashi from a Darker-Than-Canon AU ends his fight with Obito with mutual destruction, and as they both lay dying Kakashi confesses to having always loved Obito. Obito being Obito and therefore unholy levels of Extra even for an Uchiha, proceeds to use Edo Tensai on Team 7 in order to heal Kakashi and then fling him through dimensions until he lands in a Lighter-Than-Canon AU where Kakashi sees Rin in time to avoid hitting her with the Chidori. Things spiral from there. Chaptered, WIP - Posted
20.17.           Spite And Fury: A crossover with the “Original Goods” Proud Immortal Demon Way from Scum Villains Self-Saving System – Uchiha Madara and Shen Jiu get combined into a single person and Cang Qiong is not ready for this much concentrated asshole. Too bad for them, the new-and-improved Shen Qingqui is here to stay. Meta
20.18.           That We Answer to Our Stars: Crossover with SW – Kaguya’s reality warp has some strange side effects to the point of ridiculousness. All the Uchiha to ever exist are resurrected and then dumped wholesale onto an alien deathworld that is essentially what Training Ground 44 would be if it was allowed to cover an entire planet. The Uchiha proceed to seduce the Jedi and foil all of Palpatine’s plans for galactic domination. Meta, Chaptered WIP - Posted
20.19.           The Memory Remains: Canon divergence via the reincarnation of Uchiha Izuna, his wife Kanna, and Senju Touka as Uchiha Obito, Hatake Kakashi, and Nohara Rin. Yes, they retained all their memories. Yes, Konoha is going to suffer for its sins against the children. Yes, this is going to end in a Team Minato threesome. Meta
20.20.           The Thin Line: Kakashi loses patience with the Sandaime when no appreciable action is taken to remove Danzo from power even after Kakashi literally reports to Sarutobi’s face that he was ordered by Danzo to assassinate the Third Hokage. So Kakashi crashes an Uchiha Clan meeting and asks them to run away with him and his cute little brothers to a lovely tropical Island. Cue the Uchiha Exodus That Fucks Over Canon. Kakashi and the Uchiha Clan proceed to re-found Uzushio and collect a few S-class missing nin along the way. Meta, WIP - Unposted
20.21.           The Waters and the Wild: The Senju are High Court Fae, and the Uchiha are Wild Hunt Shapeshifters. Tobirama attempts to interrupt Hashirama and Madara during their riverside meeting, only it backfires when he realizes that Madara is his Soulmate. Also the Uchiha are “clothing optional” and Tobirama was not emotionally prepared for this. Oneshot, Prompt Fill – Posted
20.22.           To Linger In Dreams: After Kaguya takes over his body Madara gets yeeted out of reality into the Void. An eldritch Void god takes an interest in Madara and chucks Madara into a Magic Fantasy AU and Madara is even more not-Human than he was before. Also known as that really fucked up AU with cursed ABO dynamics. Meta
20.23.           Truth in Hyperbole: Shinobi are what happen when Aliens and Humans have kids, Bloodline Talents are what happens when Kami and Youkai ancestry gets added to the pot. Most of the time Shinobi stay mostly Human. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they really don’t. Series - WIP
20.23.1.                Blood Price: Tobirama wakes up after being killed and proceeds to resurrect his little brothers and Madara’s little brothers. Tobirama would resurrect Madara too but Madara had already managed to resurrect himself. Oneshot, Comm. Fill - Posted
20.23.2.                Still Waters Run: The Sage of Six Paths gets his ass kicked by his ex-wife, his daughter-in-law, and Tobirama’s mother. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted
20.23.3.                A Thing With Feathers: Madara’s side of the story of their transformation into minor kami. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted
20.23.4.                Come Away: Zetsu is targeting Obito in another attempt to create the Rinnegan. Kakashi has his first “near death” experience and Obito is not amused at all. Neither is Rin. Team 7 is overprotective and codependent regardless of the generation in question. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted
20.23.5.                Quoth the Raven: Danzo’s schemes got him chased out of Konoha to escape execution, and he invades during the Chunin Exams in order to get his revenge. Summoning Tobirama using the Edo Tensai was probably not the best plan. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted
20.24.           Tsukumogami No Kankurou: While he is still very young, Kankurou signs a Summons contract with the Tsukumogami (aka the Muppet Theater Troupe) and then proceeds to interrupt Yashamaru’s “attack” on Gaara while simultaneously wreaking havoc across the entirety of Sunagakure. All of this is done to get back at Rasa for not letting Kankurou play with his baby brother. The Middle Child Syndrome is strong in this one. Never underestimate the power of petty spite. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted
20.25.           Twice is Happenstance: As a side effect of the battle against Kaguya breaking through dimensions, the ghosts of the Uchiha Clan send their memories as far back as possible. On the eve of his younger brother’s assassinations, Uchiha Madara wakes up with memories of being Indra and Sasuke. All the Uchiha have memories of their past and future lives combining with their current selves, and it causes something of a fracas while it gets sorted out. Cue the Uchiha Exodus That Fucks Over Canon. Oneshot - Posted
20.25.1.                Enemy Action: The building of Uchihatlantis, the knockback effects of remembering more than one lifetime, and what happens when the Uchiha start to go back out into the world in order to hunt down their spouses and mess up Zetsu’s plans. Meta
20.26.           Two Steps Back: Retired Rokudaime Hatake Kakashi accidently has his first vacation ever interrupted when he visits the Uzushiogakure ruins and gets slingshot back an incarnation or two due to triggering a derelict seal. Kakashi being Kakashi, he proceeds to continue with his vacation until he has a drunken bar hookup with Uchiha Izuna and now the beloved younger brother of Uchiha “I-can-fight-five-armies-and-win” Madara is stalking Kakashi in order to recite (hilariously awful) poetry about the beauty of Kakashi’s kenjutsu. This is not the retirement Kakashi signed up for. Drabbles, Prompt Fills – Posted
20.26.1.     TSB – And a Jump To The Left: The epic courtship confusion which descends upon the Land of Fire when the Time-Travelling King of Trolls and an Angry Weasel Brat attempt to out-romance each other. Meta
20.27.           Two Truths and a Lie: Mikoto and Kushina have been fake!dating for years to keep the more annoying Uchiha relatives from trying to get her married off. It’s a brilliant plan, and it works perfectly. But times change, and Kushina’s eyes are very pretty. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted
20.28.           Wills of Fire and Conquest: Crossover with OP – Kakashi is Rouge’s little brother and ends up raising the ASL trio while also searching for other reincarnated shinobi. Obito and the rest of Akatsuki become the Red Dawn Pirates and Kakashi eventually founds a new Uzushiogakure on the Red Line. Ace decides he wants to be the Nidaime Uzukage, and Whitebeard accidently insults Ace’s mother so badly during the “recruitment” debacle that Ace spends 100 days trying to beat an apology out of the arrogant old goat. Shinobi-versus-pirate culture clash is frequent and hilarious. WIP - Unposted
20.29.           Worth of a Thousand Words: Political Hostage!Tobirama gets caught by the Uchiha just before he manages to use Hiraishin in battle for the first time. The Uchiha are all sensors that use Ninshu techniques otherwise since lost to time to communicate among themselves. This results in a much more united Uchiha Clan who are perfectly willing to let Madara push for a peace treaty with the Senju now that Tobirama’s capture has given them the leverage to do so. Meta
21. NURARIHYON NO MAGO
21.1.               1001 Demonic Nights: An AU Rikuo who was dragged into Yomi along with his Hakkai Yakko during the battle against the Nue manages to escape from hell by jumping into an alternate reality where his mother Wakana had a threesome with Rihan and Otome. Wakana left to take over her family shrine without telling her lovers that she was pregnant. The Rikuo who was born as a result died as an infant from the Nue’s curse on Nurarihyon’s bloodline. Both Rikuo and Otome’s daughter were conceived on the same night and are both half-demons due to Rihan shifting forms for kinky species-play. WIP - Unposted
22. ONE PIECE
22.1.               Burning Salt Water: Crossover with KHR – Xanxus gets dumped onto the Oro Jackson during the Pirate King’s last voyage when Nono’s Zero Point goes sideways and he ends up adopted by Rouge and Roger while he heals. After the execution Xanxus ends up raising the ASL trio to take over the Pirate Throne and Ace sets the Moby Dick on fire when Whitebeard kidnaps him. WIP – Unposted
22.2.               How Far I’ll Go: Roger had other lovers before he met Rouge and one of them was a Fishwife that he met at a Peacemoot. Their daughter was a mermaid and thus needed to remain on Fishman Island for her own safety. The World Government is so Human-centric that they don’t bother looking into any of Roger’s lady friends from the other races. Gol D Ann gives no shits about anybodies prejudices and when her mixed up genetics mean her feet come in about 20 years early she immediately takes off to track down her baby brother. Goldfish is Luffy’s favourite sibling and Ann is delighted to find three baby brothers for the price of one. WIP - Unposted
22.3.               Rumour, Slander, Hearsay: Garp is even worse at interpersonal communication than in canon and now the entire Marine fleet thinks that Monkey D Dragon is an oversexed degenerate who keep dumping his illegitimate spawn on his poor heroic father’s doorstep. Otherwise known as Dragon adopts ASL and they seek a glorious Revolution. Meta
22.4.               Those Who Favour Fire: Ace survives Marineford, even if only in spirit, because the Goddess of the Sea answered the prayer of another version of Ace. Waking up in the place of his 17-year-old murdered doppelganger, Ace now has to deal with raising a 7-year-old Luffy and escaping the notice of the Marines. Oh, and his murdered younger self is hanging around as a ghost, all the younger versions of Luffy’s crewmates keep showing up on Ace’s boat, and Ace keeps getting tripped up over how much more horrible this world is compared to the one he came from. Chaptered WIP - Posted
22.5.               Where the Sky Meets the Sea: Crossover with KHR – The ASL Trio are reborn as Sawada Tsunayoshi’s younger brothers, and the Will of D means they remember everything. Sawada Iemitsu might once have been Akagami no Shanks and despite lacking his memories knows better than to keep secrets from his wife. (Iemitsu does keep a lot of secrets from Nono, such as the fact that he has more than one son.) Iemitsu redirects Xanxus’ attention to the Family traitors, Nono never meets Tsuna, and nobody gets sealed. Then Reborn shows up, and everything is now on fire. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted
22.6.               Wildfire Hearts: Ace goes back in time from his death to the Grey Terminal Fire, figures out how to use natural fire to heal himself, saves child!Ace and child!Luffy, changes his name to Portgas D Riot, runs away to the Grand Line with his baby brothers, puts together a new pirate crew, and hits on Marco so hard the Phoenix forgets how to complete his sentences. Everything works out for the better. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted
22.6.1. WH – Heave A Sigh And A Wish For Me: SI-Clearfin Lionfish Mermaid named Occhio D Vittoria gets tapped in by the Ocean Goddess to help Riot et al from Wildfire Hearts succeed in their adventures.Oneshot, Prompt Fill – Posted
22.6.2. WH – Today Is The Day Of Reckoning: Riot is gathering up his new crew, forming the Anarchy Pirates, dealing with Garp, seducing Marco the Pheonix, and discovering that Sabo survived when his little brothers gatecrash a Revolutionary Army mission. Meta
22.7.               Wills of Fire and Conquest: Crossover with Naruto – Kakashi is Rouge’s little brother and ends up raising the ASL trio while also searching for other reincarnated shinobi. Obito and the rest of Akatsuki become the Red Dawn Pirates and Kakashi eventually founds a new Uzushio on the Red Line. Ace decides he wants to be the Nidaime Uzukage, and Whitebeard accidently insults Ace’s mother so badly during the “recruitment” debacle that Ace spends 100 days trying to beat an apology out of the arrogant old goat. Shinobi-versus-pirate culture clash is frequent and hilarious. WIP - Unposted
23. PETSHOP OF HORRORS
23.1.               Event Horizons: Leon isn’t human, and that changes things in the aftermath of the confrontation with Papa D. Count D wants to unravel the mystery of his favourite Detective, and Leon is starting to wake up. Hopefully they both find the knowledge they’re looking for before it’s too late and their enemy finds them. Chaptered WIP – Posted (Under Revision)
24. POKÉMON
24.1.              The Hero Of His Own Story: When Green Oak is replaced as the Kanto Champion less than a full 24 hours after winning the title, he runs. Right into a Celebi that was looking for an assistant. Green Oak gets over his bullshit really fast because oh shit that’s an Angry Legendary. Green is also supremely unimpressedwith Red’s bullshit when he learns that Red was supposed to be dealing with all the world-saving events but is instead hiding in a depression cave. Meta
25. SAILOR MOON
25.1.               From Olympus to Mu: The Senshi go to college and Mamoru reunites with the Shitennou. Basis of headcanons and characterization for any further post-canon SM fic. WIP - Unposted
25.2.               Music of the Spheres: Crossover with KHR – Post Stars Usagi and Post Vongola Inheritance Tsuna are cousins who meet for the first time ever only after the Vongola’s enemies kidnap Ikkuko and Shingo. Usagi gets taken into protective custody by her Mafia relatives without being given the chance to say she doesn’t need it. Usagi then proceeds to seduce all the women, charm all the men, and accidently throw Iemitsu out the nearest window every time he’s in the same room she is. Chaptered WIP - Posted
25.2.1. MotS – Celestial Chorus – MotS Spinoff AU: Chibiusa’s arrival has Usagi dragging her family to Namimori to prove that Chibiusa isn’t their cousin and things get wildly out of hand. Meta
25.2.2. MotS – Sing In Exaltation: The Shingo from The Sharp Knife Of A Short Life hears the name of his ‘cousin in Namimori’ and immediately begins to meddle. Meta
25.3.               The Sharp Knife Of A Short Life: SI is reborn as Tsukino Shingo under the aegis of the Roman God Janus and then proceeds to merrily say ‘screw canon, my sister gets to be happy or else’. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted
26. SCUM VILLAINS SELF-SAVING SYSTEM
26.1.               Spite And Fury: A crossover with Naruto and the “Original Goods” Proud Immortal Demon Way from Scum Villains Self-Saving System – Uchiha Madara and Shen Jiu get combined into a single person and Cang Qiong is not ready for this much concentrated asshole. Too bad for them, the new-and-improved Shen Qingqui is here to stay. Meta
27. SLAYERS
27.1.           ��   Infinite Blue: Zelgadis starts paying more attention to the deeper practices of Shamanism and gets in touch with his demonic side while achieving deeper harmony in himself. Xellos approves and it all results in magic explosions and very strange demonic courtship rituals. WIP - Unposted
28. SONIC THE HEDGEHOG
28.1.               Skipped Tracks: The triplets from Underground end up transmigrating into the recently deceased bodies of their counterparts in a SatAM reality and proceed to rock out and confuse everyone. WIP - Unposted
29. STAR WARS
29.1.               A Balance of Ice and Fire: Crossover with GOT – Qui-Gon Jinn’s three Padawan Learners and Padme (who got taken in Anakin’s place) are reincarnated as the Tyrell siblings. They proceed to follow the Will of the Force and prepare the Seven Kingdoms to win against the Long Night. Meta
29.2.               A Robe of Stars: Crossover with TMNT – The turtles and Karai help Obi-wan save the Initiates and babies in the Jedi crèche before the Temple gets razed. Once the children are safe, Obi-wan and his new allies turn their attention to saving the Vode. WIP – Unposted
29.3.               That We Answer to Our Stars: Crossover with Naruto – Kaguya’s reality warp has some strange side effects to the point of ridiculousness. All the Uchiha to ever exist are resurrected and then dumped wholesale onto an alien deathworld that is essentially what Training Ground 44 would be if it hadn’t been fenced in. The Uchiha proceed to seduce the Jedi and foil all of Palpatine’s plans for galactic domination. Meta, Chaptered WIP – Posted
30. TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES
30.1.               A Robe of Stars: Crossover with SW – The turtles and Karai help Obi-wan save the Initiates and babies in the Jedi crèche before the Temple gets razed. Once the children are safe, Obi-wan and his new allies turn their attention to saving the Vode. WIP - Unposted
30.2.               A Velvet Glove: Crossover with FOZ – Leonardo gets summoned to be Louise’s Familiar. Since all of his brothers are dead, Leo sees no reason not to make the most of this “lifelong bond of magic and spirit” and adopts Louise as his little sister. Halgenkia is not prepared for a Louise Francois le Blanc de la Valliere with ninja training. Henrietta is probably far too gleeful over making her best friend her Spymaster, but it’s not like anyone knows enough about what they’re doing to stop her. Reconquista gets exposed and smashed, and Wardes really should have respected his fiancée more. Chaptered, WIP - Posted
30.3.               Iron Laced: Crossover with TMNT – Maria Carbonell was actually Oroku Karai in disguise because she was on vacation from being a member of the Council of Shadows. Karai and all the Turtles accessed magic ninja dragon powers when they took over the Council and Karai-as-Maria passed that down to Tony. So Tony is actually a dragon and an encounter with the Enchantress leaves him locked in his dragon form. WIP - Unposted
30.4.               Paper Flowers: Leonardo and Michelangelo reconnect after years of separation and deal with some leftover issues from their childhood while they prepare to welcome the next generation of Ninja Turtles into the world. WIP - Unposted
30.5.               Patching the Trousers: Starting from the end of the Fast Forward arc, Leonardo gets lost in the multiverse and proceeds to adopt all the secondary turtles. All of them. Leonardo is the Mom Friend, only he’s not a friend he’s just a Mom. Chaptered, WIP - Posted
30.6.               Stained Bandages: Realistic resolution to the most common dark!Splinter tropes. Leo doesn’t really care about himself, but if you touch his brothers he will kill you. Splinter touches Raphael. Karai is gifted with Splinter’s decapitated head in a box. Oneshot- Posted
30.7.               Unraveled Sleeves: After First Contact and Splinter’s death from old age, the Turtles scattered to live their lives. Leonardo is the only one who stayed in the Lair. Making peace with the Karai was only the first step towards healing, and Leo makes peace with himself as he takes on students and his family grows again. Chaptered, WIP - Posted
31. TRANSFORMERS
31.1.               A Transformation of Ice and Fire: Crossover with GOT – Most of the Cybertronians who died during Unicron’s Awakening end up reincarnated as dragons (Seekers) and Direwolves (Autobots). The sapience of the animals causes significant changes to outcome of several key canon events. Meta
31.2.              Action Equals Reaction: There is a time and a place for everything. Even things like learning that your Air Commander is pregnant, and his parents are wingnuts. The middle of battle is neither the time nor the place. Oneshot - Posted
31.3.               Compromising Positions: Bay’verse Shattered Glass – Megatron knows that there’s something wrong with his brother, but nobody will listen to him. Oneshot - Posted
31.4.               High Stakes Wagers: Decepticon Romantic Gestures at their finest. Series
31.4.1. The Bet: Soundwave saves Starscream’s life after he gets blasted away from Unicron and they proceed to have wild, kinky spark-bonding and that’s it that’s the plot. Oneshot - Posted
31.4.2. The Rebirth: Starscream and Soundwave head off Galvatron and Zarak’s attempt to destroy Cybertron (and Earth, but that’s really secondary to them) and earn their just rewards for being on the winning side. Oneshot - Posted
31.5.               Nine Rings of Vos: The Epic Seeker Saga where Starscream is the uncontested leader of the Seekers and he’s using the Great War as a cover to renew his people’s population numbers, add some variety to their core coding, and also destroy the Cybertronian Government because they liked to make Seekers into their slaves. Seven-part Series, Chaptered, WIP - Posted
31.5.1. Before Dawn: A Rings spin-off where the Seekers are actually all sparklings who disguised themselves as their parents in order to survive the Great War. Crash-landing on Earth precipitates the Big Reveal and also the actual adult Seekers get woken from Government sanctioned stasis thanks to the energy surges caused by resource shipments coming in from Earth. Chaptered, WIP - Posted
31.6.               No Evil: Starscream is a scientist who wants to stay a scientist but he’s so damn good at being Air Commander that he gets promoted anyway. Also, his best friend/roommate from the War Academy is the closest thing to a therapist that the Decepticons have and that means Starscream stays mostly sane. Concept, WIP - Unposted
31.7.               Thundercracker’s So Crazy in Love: Seekers Go Into Heat and that will put the War on pause for a bit because of the crazy. Series
31.7.1. Always the Quiet Ones: Thundercracker terrorizes the Decepticon forces on Earth while displaying for his Wingmates and accidently kills Megatron. Oneshot - Posted
31.7.2. Decepticon Service Announcement: Thundercracker is the new Supreme Leader of the Decepticons and he’s decided that they’re in a good position to negotiate peace terms with the Autobots now. Oneshot - Posted
32. YU-GI-OH
32.1.               Old Game, New Rules: Sentinels and Guides are a built in part of society and a certain playing card game ties into that a bit more than most people would expect. There’s a lot of gratuitous soul-bonding smut, worldbuilding runs rampant, and there’s a lot of social commentary on the futility of stereotyping any portion of the population based on a single point of commonality. Chaptered WIP – Unposted
32.2.               The Future of the Past: Jounouchi’s past life left a surprise in their soul that the trip to memory world triggers and now Katsuya is living through all of Jono’s memories. Chaptered WIP – Posted (Under Revision)
33. YU YU HAKUSHO
33.1.              Bonds: Koenma and Yusuke are soulmates and Enma Daioh interferes because one his brat son is properly wedded and bedded Enma can take a long overdue vacation. Oneshot – Posted
33.1.1.                  Ties That Bind: Koenma and Yusuke are just starting to get used to being bonded mates when a new/old-and-forgotten enemy shows up to complicate things. WIP – Unposted (Under Revision)
33.2.              What Happens on Vacation: Crossover with Bleach – turns out that Kurosaki Misaki was a senior ferry girl on sabbatical (which translates as living a mortal life unaware of her true nature) and she was late returning to work due to being trapped in Grand Fishers gut. Ichigo and Uryuu are very confused when their “cousin” Kazuma shows up to introduce his new bride to the family. Koenma is just really pissed off by all the paperwork he needs to deal with while cleaning up his father’s mismanaged pet project. Chaptered WIP - Unposted
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murdereraisuha · 3 years
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I have this AU idea that I’m going to call a Pair Swap AU. Basically, characters are grouped into pairs, then the relationship dynamics between all the pairs are swapped around. Then, it turns into a challenge to figure out how the new dynamic would work for each pair and what the resulting changes in backstory/personality/story would be. To make sure the characters aren’t completely warped, the rules are that neither their base personalities nor their unique magic should drastically change.
For example, for the main cast of TWST, a possible arrangement of pairs and dynamics:
Riddle & Trey = Childhood Friends
Ace & Deuce = Bickering 1st Years
Leona & Ruggie = Boss and Henchman
Jade & Floyd = Twins
Kalim & Jamil = Master and Servant
Vil & Epel = Mentor and Rebellious Mentee
Ortho & Idia = Android and Creator
Lilia & Malleus = Experienced and Inexperienced Immortals
Silver & Sebek = Knights in service to the same person
Then, after rearranging them, I have:
Riddle & Trey = Master and Servant
Ace & Deuce = Knights in service to the same person
Leona & Ruggie = Childhood Friends
Jade & Floyd = Android and Creator
Kalim & Jamil = Twins
Vil & Epel = Bickering 1st Years
Ortho & Idia = Experienced and Inexperienced Immortals
Lilia & Malleus = Mentor and Rebellious Mentee
Silver & Sebek = Boss and Henchman
To start with, I’ll explore how the new dynamics for Kalim & Jamil and Jade & Floyd might work under the cut. If anyone’s interested in this, I’ll make more posts.
First off, just want to note that I am not going to try and fit the new story to the Disney movies, it is going to be based solely on how the backstory/personality changes might impact the original plot.
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For Kalim and Jamil to be twins, one needs to be transferred to the other’s family, so we’ll turn Jamil into Jamil Al-Asim. Furthermore, in canon, Jade and Floyd’s twin dynamic specifically has them be equals without any concept of an older or younger brother, so for this AU Jamil and Kalim are also treated as equals. They are both considered the heirs of the family, and when they grow up it is expected that they either inherit the family business together or just choose 1 of them to inherit it.
Since Jamil isn’t forced to hold back for Kalim’s sake now, he can freely flaunt his talents. He consistently surpasses Kalim, which could lead to something like Farena & Leona’s situation where everyone fawns over Jamil but dismisses Kalim. However, given Jamil’s unique magic and his more abrasive behavior in canon post-chap4, maybe the servants + family become split, with some backing Jamil and his greater talent while others back Kalim and his greater approachability. Then we get a situation where they’re both subconsciously or consciously envious of the other, creating tension in their relationship beneath the surface level impression they give off of being twin brothers on good terms with each other.
At NRC, I think it could go either way on who’s the dorm leader and who’s the vice dorm leader depending on the previous guy’s criteria for choosing his replacement, but I think it’s more likely Jamil would get the top position even with Kalim putting more effort into improving his skills. For the new chapter 4, this could just turn into a role-swapped version of the canon one, but I’m digging the equality thing I have going on so I think it would be fun to have an even split in the dorm, the same as back home, where some people are just fine with Jamil being the dorm leader while other people think that Jamil is too unrelatable/scary and they want Kalim in the lead instead. This then leads to conflict between the twins, and around overblot time they both finally let loose their frustrations and how inferior the other has made them feel. The ending lesson/revelation is that they don’t have to let others drive a wedge between them and they don’t need to fight, so the aftermath is them beginning to work through all those years of conflict.
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I wanted this arrangement of pairs + dynamics to be interesting but not overly hard to figure out, which is why Jade & Floyd as Android & Creator was the very first one I thought of. Since Floyd is canonically a genius and very fast learner, it’s not too much of a stretch for him to get good at robotics. Then, Jade’s butler-like behavior and skills translate well into him being an android created to handle stuff that Floyd doesn’t want to deal with.
In this AU, Floyd is now an only child (though maybe that wasn’t always the case ouo). I feel like he might have befriended Azul earlier and/or developed a more cautious/melancholy attitude due to the absence of his responsible partner in crime. When they go on land to attend NRC, electronics catch Floyd’s eye, and before he reaches winter break of their 1st year, Jade has come into existence. 
I don’t have the details fleshed out for Immortal Ortho & Idia, but I think I’ll keep Ortho as a kid, so Jade is also going to retain his 17 year old appearance. I feel like Jade would look less obviously robotic than Ortho, cause why make an android based on yourself if you’re not going to go all the way and give them the ability to completely impersonate you. Like canon Ortho, Jade isn’t registered as a student, so he can attend classes in place of Floyd without having his own classes/grades to maintain. He also can’t be vice dorm leader, so Floyd officially gets that position now. Jade is basically the honorary vice dorm leader though. 
I think they would still kind of be the same as in canon regarding working with Azul and stuff at Mostro Lounge, but there’s going to be subtle differences. For example, if Floyd is not basing Jade off of a dead brother, he might be more dismissive of Jade’s wants and feelings since Jade was made solely to serve him. On the other hand, if Jade IS Floyd’s dead brother, it’ll definitely be less straightforward. Floyd's existing chaotic nature + any additional temperamentalness due to lingering grief makes him difficult to predict. Would he be more awkward, not sure what to do now that he has Jade again? But it isn’t really Jade, is it. Unlike Idia who may have had a way to convert Ortho’s brain to digital data or something so the android Ortho is really his brother Ortho, the best Floyd can probably do is make an AI based on his fleeting memories of Jade. So, is this Jade? Can he even call this android by the name Jade? Is he forcing this completely new person to be someone who’s long dead?
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I’m kind of torn on how the new story chapters are going to work. Characters are still in the same dorms as before, so do I keep the 1 dorm per chapter and focus on the dorm leader? Do I keep the 1 dorm per chapter but shift focus to the paired characters so I neglect Azul but show off the Leechs? Or do I completely mess around with the story, so chapter “3″ is still on Azul but I put in a new chapter somewhere for the Leechs? Idk. Anyone who has ideas to add onto this, feel free to add ‘em
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[CN] S2 Victor- Setting Sail On A Journey (Eng Translation)
⌚ Warning: This post contains detailed spoilers for a company project that is yet to be released in the global server! ⌚
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✧ NOTE ✧
This post features S2 Victor and MC, but doesn’t contain any spoiler regarding the S2 storyline!
This company project is the continuation of “Right Now Is The Time.” So remember to read that first! (◍•ᴗ•◍)
[ SECTION 1 ]
MC: Goldman has broken his foot?
Didn’t he even excitedly post several mountain climbing videos in his moments two days ago, saying that he has bravely climbed to peak of the mountain? How did he suddenly break his foot?
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Victor: He requested for two-week leave of absence. It’s a good time to look for an intern from your show to come at the summit.
Early this morning, I received a call from Victor, saying that there is something he wants to discuss with me. So it actually turns out to be this matter....
When the fifth episode of “Right Now is The Time” is broadcast, the filming of the show will enter its final stage as well.
But in contrast to the huge attention the show is receiving now, the pre-planned filming of the show was clearly a little tame.
If an intern can be allowed to carry out Goldman’s post for filming at the summit, it will indeed be a good content to attract the mass attention.
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MC: However, this position is very important. If you let the interns who are shooting in the show to come at the summit, it’d be more or less suspected as a publicity stunt....
MC: Wouldn’t it be harmful for LFG’s professionalism?
Victor is currently taking out a small box of coffee beans from the cupboard. Hearing what I’ve said, he lifts his eyes slightly to glance at me.
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Victor: There is no need to think in such complicated ways.
Victor: Whether LFG is professional or not, it’s never reflected through these minor details.
Victor: I’m not worried about the issue at all, so naturally, you don’t need to be worried. What you need to think over is, as far as this design is considered, whether it’s going to be beneficial for the show or not.
Almost as soon as the words leave Victor’s mouth, I immediately step forward, and nod at him vigorously.
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MC: It’s beneficial, too beneficial. It’s settled then. I’ll have him arrive on-site immediately!
MC: Oh, by the way, he is that intern who bought medicine for you before. His name is Liu Cheng.
But.... as I finish speaking in one breath, my heart is once again somewhat unable of deciding what to do. Seeing the look of wanting to say something but hesitating on my face, Victor naturally tosses in the question.
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Victor: What’s wrong now?
MC: ....He’s been a little out of form lately, and I don’t know if he’d be competent for this job.
MC: His performance has always been very outstanding before.
MC: Whether it’s the proposals, making PPTs or reports, organizing documents or dealing with the suppliers– they are all more professional than the other interns.
MC: But these past two days I’ve observed him, and as long as the camera is pointed at him, his state of nervousness is visible to the unaided eye.
I actually know the reason clearly too: He shone so outstandingly that, he became the most popular intern after the show was broadcast.
Whether it’s a chance encounter with a passer-by on the street, or a breaking out on the new tidbits, he is always being pushed into the trending topics. With the huge attention sweeping over him, an imbalance in mentality is inevitable.
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Victor: Any matter is a situation with two sides to it, especially the matter of being in the limelight. You know that best.
Victor: If you’re worried that he won’t be up for the task, you could substitute to someone else.
I subconsciously reject this proposal in my heart.
MC: But in terms of effects of the show, and the degree of professional compatibility, he is the most fitting....
MC: Even if it can’t be as satisfactory as people’s expectations in the end, it will still display the most real effects of the show.
Victor puts down the coffee bean grinder, and nods at me.
Victor: In a while, I’ll get someone to go and work with him.
Victor: At this present stage, he only needs to handle the simple itinerary issues. Many projects involve commercial confidentiality, and it isn’t the time for him yet to get on board. So there is nothing to be worried about.
I give Victor a beaming smile.
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MC: Thank you CEO Victor for your support and attention to this show. At the celebration banquet, you’re sitting at the main table~
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Victor can’t help but let out a laugh, and then sweeps his eyes on me again.
Victor: Aren’t you going to inform your intern to come over and report?
I stretch out my left hand, glance at my bare wrist, and pretend as though I’m looking at my wrist watch, lightly coughing at Victor in a deadpan tone.
MC: CEO Victor, there is still half an hour left before the LFG employees have to officially get to work....
I wink at him, my gaze falling on his coffee bean grinder.
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MC: Not having a cup of coffee together?
◇──◆──◇──◆──◇──◆──
[ SECTION 2 ]
Today is the third day of Liu Cheng’s assignment in his new post, and it’s also an important day for the meeting of the new project.
Aside from Victor, several executives who have their hands in the project are all here.
At this moment, the seats in the conference room are already packed with people. But Liu Cheng, the person in charge for conducting the process, is late.
As I keep waiting at the door for a while, I catch the sight of him trotting all the way over here, and he starts bowing to me even before he reaches in front of me.
Liu Cheng: I’m sorry, I’m sorry sister MC.... I’m late.
Liu Cheng: Is CEO Victor here already? Is he angry?
I pat him on the shoulder, and let him go directly into the conference room.
Although the people sitting inside are executives, but they all have the mutual relationship of co-workers with each other. From the moment they enter through the door it’s all– you’d say one word and I’d say another one. The atmosphere is far from heavy.
But Liu Cheng is clearly intimidated, and he walks straight up to the front burying his head. I can see his face turning blue and pale, and all his limbs appear very stiff and overcautious too.
....He is obviously feeling guilty.
This eye-catching white colored suit and white sneakers of his truly form a stark contrast with the meticulous style inside LFG’s conference room.
Victor is sitting in the first seat on the left side of the conference table. He turns his head to glance towards everyone sitting at the back row, and the sound of chatter that has still been rising and falling just now, promptly dies down.
Everyone sits up straight, loosens the buttons of their suits, and places their hands on the table, preparing to listen seriously.
He turns to look at Liu Cheng again, and motions at him lightly, his face still showing no expression.
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Victor: Let’s begin.
Liu Cheng hurriedly nods his head, and begins to explain the first item on the agenda to everyone according the original flow of the meeting.
After the end of the three-hour meeting, I creep up to Victor, and leave the room along with him, following into the corridor while gesturing for the cameraman to catch up.
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MC: Isn’t CEO Victor going to evaluate Liu Cheng’s today’s performance?
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Seeing that I’ve intentionally brought the cameraman dangling in front of him, Victor casts a helpless expression of “If you want to say something, say it directly.”
MC: The thing is, he actually had a reason for being late today, but it doesn’t really have reasonable grounds.
MC: There is an advertising company who came to our doors, and invited them to shoot a short film for an educational organization.
MC: Liu Cheng has the best appearance, and he’s also the most popular. The client designated him to take on a lot of filming materials alone.
MC: Time was too tight. He was in a hurry to leave, so he didn’t have the time to change his clothes.
While we are talking, Liu Cheng has already caught up to us on large strides, only to stand back and not daring to approach, standing a few steps away from us in a silly daze.
As Victor turns his head to glance at him, he hurriedly runs forward, bowing solemnly at Victor.
Liu Cheng: I’m sorry CEO Victor. I was late for an important meeting, and my outfit wasn’t standard either.
Liu Cheng: I don’t know if the company has a corresponding punishment system. I’m willing to accept it all.... I’ve failed to live up to CEO Victor and sister MC’s trust. I’m very sorry.
Victor remains expressionless as before, seemingly he really hasn’t taken this matter to the heart.
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Victor: It’s indeed wrong to be late. Don’t do it another time.
Victor: Remember to send the summary of today’s meeting to my email before getting off work.
Hearing the first sentence “It’s indeed wrong to be late,” Liu Cheng even stifles, face turning red. But upon hearing the next sentence of being asked to do the summary of the meeting, a pleasant surprise immediately spreads across his whole face.
Liu Cheng: Y-y-yes, okay! I’ll go do it at once!
This kind of narrative direction is a very “prominent feature” in variety shows. As such, I give Victor an expression of expectation.
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MC: CEO Victor.... mind if I do a very short, very brief, really very short, tiny interview of you?
Victor doesn’t refuse.
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[ SECTION 3 ]
I place Victor onto the sofa in the CEO’s office, and toss the questions directly without any script.
MC: Regarding the topic of Liu Cheng being late today because of an advertisement filming....
MC: CEO Victor, don’t you think it’s a very serious mistake for an intern employee to be late?
MC: Speaking from the point of view of work ethics or from the perspective of time management.
Victor gives the answer almost without thinking.
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Victor: He was wrong. Then he recognized that, and I’ve also told him already that it’s not right to be late.
With that said, he points towards the camera again.
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Victor: Each one of Liu Cheng’s actions, each one of his words has already been recorded on camera. His strengths will be magnified, and so will be his shortcomings in the same way.
Victor: He knows that he will be facing the criticisms of many people when the show is broadcast, and that also includes the people who now place high hopes on him, and give him unconditional support.
Victor: In my opinion, he has already undertaken all the psychological burdens he ought to be bearing in advance.
Victor: There is no need to say anything more.
When Victor says these words, I can’t help but think of the scene when I’ve discussed this topic with him before.
Carrying the title of CEO of LFG on his head, no matter what he says or what he does, everything will constantly be followed closely by the media, magnifying the views therein infinitely.
Regardless of what decision he makes, someone is bound to find mistakes in the minor details, someone is bound to wait to see him fall on his face, and make a fool of himself.
He simply never cared about these. So much so that, when I am the one feeling grievances on his behalf or taking the initiative on his behalf, he straightforwardly tells me too that I don’t need to. But—
But anyone understands the truth. He is able to put himself in Liu Cheng’s shoes, and consider the time he undertakes the heavy weight of public opinions. What if actually at a certain stage....
Even if it was for a certain moment, a certain instant, he had once also felt the similar feelings?
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MC: Victor, do you think that this genre of shows for young people like Liu Cheng who are just out of school, aren’t actually meant to be very good?
Putting them in an environment where they are considered as entertainments, scrutinized, evaluated, supervised and urged on to complete a task under the publics’ gaze– perhaps it’s a consumption for them.
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MC: They are still too young after all.
Victor leans forward towards me, and his purposefully slowed down voice seems to be encouraging me about something.
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Victor: You’ll have to find the answer to this question for yourself.
Victor: However, according to what I’ve learnt about them in this period of time, they are among the most outstanding of youngsters— Don’t underestimate them.
He stands up and walks forward, but he still meets my gaze out of the corner of his eyes.
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Victor: Still having coffee today?
I shift in front of him, and point to the clock on the wall.
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MC: It will be the time to get off work in a while. Is CEO Victor going to work overtime to make coffee for me?
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MC: How about we owe the coffee in advance, and head straight to dinner, okay?
Victor lowers his eyes to size me up, carrying an expression of whether he may be laughing or not.
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Victor: Up to you.
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[ SECTION 4 ]
The following two days, Victor’s schedule is about being a guest at an industry summit forum.
As it goes without saying, every time he attends an event, he is bound to gain a great amount of attention. Nowadays, he even brings the regular on trending topics, Liu Cheng, along with him. Naturally, reporters from all walks of life flock there.
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Victor gets out of the car with the usual– strangers do not approach– written on his face, and is invited into the venue, sitting down at the first row of VIP seats. Liu Cheng, however, is stopped by the security guards, and is asked to enter through the audience passageway.
Seeing that Liu Cheng is alone, bunch of young reporters surrounding outside the venue immediately seize the opportunity to ask him all sorts of questions.
Reporter: W-wow! Liu Cheng, you are even more handsome in person compared to the show, and your today’s suit looks very good on you!
Reporter: Is your show still being filmed? Is the filming about to be finished? Are you planning to continue staying at LFG or go straight into the entertainment industry? You can act with that face!
Reporter: Is CEO Victor usually ominous or not? Have you ever been intimidated by him?
Liu Cheng is surrounded by them, and being unable of answering anything either, he busies in casting embarrassing smiles towards me. I hurriedly go over, pull him out of the crowd, and bring him to the venue.
Liu Cheng: ....Thank you sister MC. If I had known earlier.... and were a bit quick-witted, I could have avoided them.
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MC: Once you get the hang of it, you will be experienced the next time.
Liu Cheng: Haha, I’m not a celebrity anyway. I won’t be using this kind of experience in the future....
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Not long after we sit down, the host comes up on stage, and I see the lights setting off in Liu Cheng’s eyes. The individual presiding over the conference is a very famous, self-media in the finance sector.
Victor deserves to be reckoned as Victor. In the following sessions, regardless of whether it’s a core business magazine, media professionals or industrial scholars– after coming up on stage, they all can’t help but ask—
Does CEO Victor have any view on this topic?
There are several hundreds of audiences off the stage, and the entrepreneurs with the name Victor– you can’t finish counting them all on ten fingers. But when someone calls out “Mr. Victor,” the host knows that he has to give the microphone to Victor.
[ Note: Here, MC actually uses Victor’s family name in Chinese “李” (Li). What she says actually says is— “....entrepreneurs with the surname Li.... But when someone calls out ‘Mr. Li,’ the host knows that he has to give the microphone to Li Zeyan (李泽言).” The same goes for the part where MC says “Victor deserves to be reckoned as Victor” where it’s obviously hinted at the meaning of “Li Zeyan (李泽言).” In case, you are interested, here is an explanation of the meaning: ♡♡ , translated by @wedreamedlove ]
Each time as he waits for Victor to finish speaking, Liu Cheng will applaud frantically, only to clap as his both hands get red through and through. Not only him, but these hundreds of people at the infield will applaud, and the sound is akin to thunder rolls.
Halfway through the conference, Liu Cheng suddenly leans over.
Liu Cheng: Sister MC, the meeting with the advertising company is the day after tomorrow.... I’d rather not go.
He suddenly approaches with such a sentence without head or tail, which makes me react after a long time.
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MC: Okay.
Liu Cheng: I’ve though about it. Also work is more important.... and now I’m working together with CEO Victor, not everyone can have this kind of opportunity.
Liu Cheng: Besides— studying business is much more interesting than filming advertisements.
Liu Cheng: I’m still more fond of business.
As he says this, Victor once again picks up the microphone to speak, and everyone all around rises to concentrate their attention, especially Liu Cheng.
I feel that the expression in his eyes as he looks at Victor, is brimmed with unprecedented resoluteness.
Perhaps it’s only me being upset over nothing, that’s all. Victor is right. They shouldn’t be underestimated.
This answer is just right.
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[ SECTION 5 ]
After the filming of the last episode of the show, the photography team withdraws from LFG.
As the master moves the last box of equipment in the car, I turn around and buy two cups of coffee from the coffee shop, and bring them upstairs to Victor.
MC: I’ve been freeloading your coffee for quite a while. Today it’s on me.
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Victor: After freeloading for over ten days, giving back just one cup?
MC: ....You’re the CEO. Don’t haggle over every ounce like this.
MC: Oh, by the way, Liu Cheng filmed the last part of the interview today. Wanna know what he said?
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Seeing that I’m impatiently wanting to show something, Victor picks up a stack of documents as he sips his coffee.
Victor: I can watch it when the show airs.
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MC: He said....
I know he is doing it deliberately. As such, I simply bring a video of the segment in front him– which I’ve recorded, directly facing the center of his line of sight.
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MC: “Receiving attention is only an outward appearance. But the reason you’re receiving the attention for is what’s more important.”
MC: “I hope that one day people will be paying attention to me because I’ve made contributions to some extent in my field, and have become a benchmark in the industry.”
MC: “When the moment comes, I will be able to let these attentions display an even bigger impact.”
MC: “And lead these attentions towards more significant fields or focus on more significant products....”
The condition of the audio recording of the video isn’t good, so I read out these words of Liu Cheng to Victor in their original form.
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MC: Victor.... you are really great. You haven’t taught him any major principles, but you have made him realize these on his own with your every word and action.
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Victor: I didn’t do anything. He was the smart one.
Although Victor only says these words lightly, but his gaze has been resting on the video in my phone all along. I read-out a little bit of gratification and affirmation from this expression of his.
Victor: You’ve filmed the show pretty good this time.
With that said, he hands a folder to me. I open it and take a look at it. It’s an approval from the HR department, which contains all the jobs these interns are about to be assigned to.
Each one of them has received a formal offer, and they are on the verge of taking a step forward, exhibiting their talents within this tremendous business empire of LFG.
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Victor: Liu Cheng is the only school student enrollment of the Investment Banking Department this year.
Victor: Everyone speaks very highly of him. You have a pretty good eye in choosing people too.
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MC: Of course— This is the best that I’ve tracked down and selected very carefully from thousands of excellent students. It was easy on you!
I put down the folder, and slowly lean closer to Victor.
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MC: CEO Victor, I’ve recommended eight people to you at one-time, and all of them are on board. Shouldn’t we settle this “headhunting fee?”
Victor ponders for a while, and then nods to my surprise. He turns on his phone, and I don’t know what he fiddles with– I instantly receive a new email.
— A notification of project approval being granted?
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Victor: Your approval has been granted. You can start to prepare for the new project.
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MC: ....
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Victor: Not worth being happy about?
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, and being left with no better option– I nod at him heavily.
MC: Worth it.... very much worth it. Thanks CEO Victor for your affirmation. As always, I will be troubling you with the next show as well!
Victor laughs as he turns off the computer, and then he gets up to pick up his suit jacket.
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Victor: Let’s go, luminous and sparkling gold medal producer.
Victor: It’s time for dinner.
Having returned to my senses, I find that the curtain of night has long since fallen, the french window reflecting the silhouettes of Victor and I.
And outside the window, the white lights of countless office buildings intersect as they echo each other, embellishing the night sky, and gazing into the distant vast sky full of stars accompanying each other.
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MC: Mm, let’s go.
◇──◆──◇──
[ EXTRA TIDBITS- Spoiler Warning: ]
On the “coffee” being a running topic in this company project—
Even though it’s a normal happening for the characters in the game to have coffee together, but in Victor’s case— it holds a special meaning. In CH 37 of S1, in the farewell with Victor, MC told him that she will bring him a cup of coffee when she returns.
In S2, CH 1: We have Victor saying it himself that MC always brings him coffee. And we also see how seriously MC takes this gesture (despite the Victor she brings the coffee to, not remembering it now) when she makes a detour only to buy him a cup of coffee.
In the R&S “Seaming the words and thoughts:” [ translated by @ey8508​ ] We see that this has turned into  a very terrible habit.
In CH 10: We see that this habit is still very much thriving.
....Just me casually dropping some angst. :'(
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