#the box in the top bubble is a reference to a manga panel! the one where he first uses fuga :D

[obsidian-vineyard84]

Been reading the manga recently

Had a lot of thoughts, and talks with @emotionallyglued about my fics storyline

[depressed-avocado]

||SAKUATSU AND THE JAPANESE MEDIA||

have you all noticed how we have an abundance of sakuatsu fics, fanart and stans in the western media but very few and rare doujins served by the japanese side of the fandom?

even the sporadic content we see has a very different take on sakuatsu than we do..

now, take myself as a referance. i entered the fandom with a vengeance against all but suga, avoided sakuatsu and kagehina like it was the COVID epicenter itself but a year and a half later ended up reading one teeny fanfic on ao3 out of dire curiousity and ended up with sakuatsu as my adopted babies.

there was a lot of discussion on this ship on twt, tumblr and the like, but when i searched up for doujins to satisfy my horny hunger, i found none?

the very few and far between were actually AtsuSaku (top atsumu, still not much common with the english speaking world) and SakuOsa (poor atsumu 🤣) and featured sakusa as a very grumpy, tsundere, devil-may-care lover whom atsumu had to ask permission just to kiss. compare THAT to how the western fandom potrays him as the blunt jerk who is nefariously down bad for atsumu, but is still kinda loveable and chaotic in his own steed.

the thing is, sakuatsu is a rare ship. there are hardly 5 panels on interaction for them in the manga, and still quite less info on sakusa available, which gives the people the opportunity to mould him into any shape they want. atsumu has more chemistry with hinata, aran, kita, suna, hell you'd even find more miyacest content in japan than sakuatsu. it all started out as a crack ship, something similar to matsuhana, and exploded exponentially in a span of few weeks like it was set on fire. honestly, covid-19 would be jealous.

in the year 2020, the world recieved so many beautiful fanfics, maybe some of the best in the fandom. the same teenagers once raving after kagehina and iwaoi were now adults and have had enough of bubbly, tooth rotting fluff and circumstancal angst.

iwaoi's biggest potential for angst is them seperating for college, same as bokuaka and kuroken. maybe an external factor causing a rift in the couple. very basic.

they wanted something dynamic, something real, something which allows your creativity to leap out the box and sprint several kilometres ahead.

the salient answer was sakuatsu.

only in sakuatsu, the angst potential come from the characters themselves. sakusa and atsumu are insufferable, totally unlikeable people (though i have met a lot of people like atsumu and they get on with their day just fine). they have no chill, no qualms, no redeeming feature other than volleyball and their looks and maybe this could work out?

two jerks, aint afraid to talk shit, bringing out the best (or worst?) in each other. maybe they could find love afterall? huh.

what's this? a chance for ao3 authors to expand their creative writing skills to new horizons and take artistic liberties indulgently but still have a locus to ground themselves to so that they don't go all hocus-focus?

you bet they'd take this chance.

famous fics like 'a liar's truth', 'hand study', 'burden of blame' were released and it was the explosive and beautifully belligerent start of a ship no one saw coming. riding on the highs and lows of a relationship, depicting exactly how toxic yet fulfilling realistic dating can be, its upto you how you'd end up. these fics depicted the shimmering tension, the passionate abhor and the disastrous clashes.

there was no way a huge chunk of japanese fans, enough to catalyse its popularity, would be able to reach these fics and fanarts, which were usually just characteristics fleshed out in the author's mind. ooc, if you will.

sakuatsu is literally whatever you want it to be. a murder mystery or a romcom, you decide. it is ever changing, ephemeral, dangerous. you need to keep up with every step to find its beauty.

its a pity that the japanese fandom wasn't able to catch onto this sakuatsu fever and create some god-tier content like they usually do with other notorious ships like kageoi or kitaatsu.

also, osaatsu/atsuosa, kitaatsu and atsuhina are already selling there a lot (which makes a lot of sense in hindsight than this sakuatsu, no offence) and view atsumu as a TOP.

also, also the japanese part of the fandom have no qualms with shipping komosaku and ushisaku and do it graciously, so well both characters are satisifed fully with the japanese seperately as far as they are concerned.

well, if the movies come out, there is a good chance that the sakuatsu car ride would be just around the corner again and maybe this time, the japanese fandom can hop on a ride? and show atsumu riding on sakusa too pls i need to see thier bful art ahaha

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 287: Family Reunion

Previously on BnHA: The Tomura For One VS Deku And Pals clusterfuck reached new levels of clustfuckery as AFO possessed Tomura’s body and stabbed Kacchan and Endeavor. Shouto was all “good thing I leveled up offscreen so as to be able to fly around whilst carrying 400lbs worth of people”, and did just that and it was like, damn, son. Meanwhile Deku’s rage went Mach 100, and he kicked Tomura’s ass for almost two whole seconds, but in the process he apparently forgot that IF TOMURA TOUCHES HIM THAT IS VERY BAD, and so he stupidly let Tomura touch him and Tomura was all “GAME, SET.” Fortunately for Deku, his quirk plays by its own rules, and so the chapter ended with us cutting to the METAPHYSICAL OFA/AFO PARANORMAL DREAMSCAPE OF MYSTICAL BULLSHIT, where AFO!Vestige was all “lol Tomura y u mad”, and Nana!Vestige was all “SUP DEKU, YOU’RE JUST IN TIME, LOOKS LIKE IT’S ASSKICKING O’CLOCK.” I’m paraphrasing a bit, but that’s more or less the gist of it.

Today on BnHA: AFO is all “well if it isn’t Tomura’s grandmother who I murdered that one time”, and Deku is all “?”, and AFO is all “fucking vestiges, man, wild”, and Deku is all “??”, and AFO is all “ANYWAYS GETTIM TOMURA”, and OFA is all “NOT SO FAST”, and Deku is all “???”, and really, same. AFO then goes off on some wild tangent about how Deku is unworthy because he couldn’t protect everyone and needed help from OFA and got mad about his friends being stabbed, which is such a cold take it gave me hypothermia, but it ends up not mattering since Deku and Tomura both wake up seconds later with OFA still in the possession of its rightful owner, HOW ABOUT THAT. The chapter ends with the LoV approaching on Gigantomachia’s back with Dabi practically salivating at the mouth, and Toga trying to reignite an old fandom blood feud. Toga why would you do this to me. Toga.

YESSSSSSSSSSSSS

[CROWD LOSING THEIR MINDS] FINALLY THE NANA HAS COME BACK TO BNHA!! IF YA SMELLLLL WHAT THE NANA IS COOKIN!!!!! [RINGSIDE BELL CHIMING WILDLY] [LOUD AIRHORN NOISES]

“chapter 287: mistake” omg. yeah I’ll say you made a mistake, AFO. I HOPE YOU ENJOY THESE FLEETING LAST MOMENTS OF YOUR SHITTY EVIL LIFE

(ETA: so in all seriousness this must be referring to AFO’s belief that All Might/OFA made a mistake in choosing Deku, right? “I can’t believe you went and chose this shounen manga protagonist as your champion, what were you thinking.” I’ll just put this out there: however many comic books AFO read as a child, it clearly was not enough.)

wow Deku how slow are you

yes you’re inside OFA you dimbulb, did you think your clothes suddenly vanished out of the blue and the ghost of Nana just randomly appeared in the real world by some freak coincidence?? can you believe this kid. breaks his arms a measly 10-15 times in a row and all of a sudden he can’t think straight, get it together Deku

but also brb having a moment at the fact that his thoughts immediately run back to Kacchan, even with all of this nonsense going on and Nana about to lay the beatdown on AFO’s potato-lookin’ ass. forget that noise, all he wants to know is whether or not Kacchan is all right. fuckin’ geez. AM I OVERREACTING HERE A BIT. probably

(ETA: ALSO!! the way he just trails off!! “Kacchan is...” and then he can’t bring himself to complete the thought. oh my god my heart.)

HOLY SHIT

okay,

damn but this man sure knows how to ruffle my feathers. as eminently detestable as ever!!

could it be any clearer here that AFO is not on Tomura’s side?? for a moment I thought he had actually grabbed him by the back of the head in order to get him to look. but nope, he’s just resting his pointing hand on top of his head instead while he’s all “HEY TOMURA LOL IT’S THE GHOST OF YOUR DEAD PATHETIC GRANDMA”

for those keeping track at home, this would be the first time that Deku has heard this information -- that Tomura is Nana’s grandson -- and possibly the first time Vestige!Nana has heard it as well. Nana died when Kotarou was still a child, so for all we know the Vestige!Nana didn’t even know she had a grandson, lol. TODAY ON “MAKESTE RANTS AT LENGTH ABOUT THINGS THAT WILL PROBABLY BE ADDRESSED WITHIN THE NEXT THREE PANELS”, anyway moving on

lmao for the record I fucking LOLed at this giant question mark immediately bubbling up over Deku’s head

no idea what AFO is about to ramble on about now, haven’t read that far yet. but let the record show that Deku’s immediate reaction to hearing “BTW NANA IS YOUR ARCHNEMESIS’S GRANDMA LULZ” is everything I could have hoped for

(ETA: fandom nailed the shit out of this one with the confused Mr. Krabs meme lmao.)

okay so now AFO is monologuing at length about how he would sometimes have “riveting dreams” about the previous owners of all the quirks he stole. but once he gave the quirks away they stopped bothering him?? holy moly let me just take all the notes

okay so he’s saying that Vestiges are created whenever someone has their quirk stolen by AFO. but if they then disappear when he gives the quirks away, does that also mean that whoever receives the quirks also gets the original owner’s Vestige bundled in every time?? that would be wild okay hold up let me read the rest of this

so he’s saying that the Vestiges are actually the “consciousnesses” of the original quirk owners, which have become embedded in their dna or something. SOUNDS INCREDIBLY DUBIOUS TO ME LOL but on the other hand this is a world where children can be born with airplane heads, so my disbelief can hardly afford to pick and choose what it’s gonna be suspended at! anyways though, how does he know he’s the only one who was able to converse with them? did you conduct detailed six-month follow-up interviews with everyone you gave quirks to or what

and if it really is the case that this ability was formerly exclusive to him, isn’t that more evidence than ever that OFA and AFO are actually THE EXACT SAME QUIRK oh whoops am I getting ahead of myself again, sorry

MEANWHILE TOMURA IS ALL, “GRANDMA?”

“WHY AM I HERE, WELL LET ME TELL YOU A STORY, GRANDSON. YOU SEE THAT MAN GROWING OUT OF YOUR RIBCAGE THERE? WELL IT’S JUST THE FUNNIEST THING, ACTUALLY”

WAIT SO IS HE SAYING THEY’RE SOULS OR NOT??

this makes it sound like they won’t ever get to rest, which sure sounds like a soul thing to me. well whatever, soul, consciousness, I guess it’s just semantics at the end of the day

anyways though, so this asshole is finally done talking (I’m sure that won’t last), so now we can finally have the heartwarming reunion we’ve all been waiting for

sigh

-- actually, no, not “sigh”!! you know what!! because Tomura says “whatever the reason”, but that’s only because he doesn’t actually have a fucking clue about the reason. like, I don’t know if the knowledge that AFO killed Nana would be enough to give him pause, but if he knew the whole story and knew that AFO was behind not only Nana’s death, but the rest of his family’s deaths as well... now that would be a whole different thing

anyway. but at least it’s becoming clearer now why AFO spent all that time raising Tomura up as his heir and brainwashing him even though he seems to have been planning this body takeover the whole time. it’s all because he loves making people miserable! yaaaaay

btw HAS NANA HAD THE EXACT SAME MOLE ON HER CHIN AS TOMURA THIS ENTIRE TIME WTF. am I just the least observant person who ever lived lmao

lol wtf

ground: [randomly starts exploding]

Deku: “ONE FOR ALL IS BEING ERODED!!!” LOL IS THAT WHAT’S HAPPENING HERE, OKAY THEN. I’ll take your word for it

y’all I cannot fucking get over this “AFO growing out of Tomura’s hip socket like a fucked-up ventriloquist dummy” shit though

you do realize that absolutely no one can take you seriously right now, right?? it’s important to me that you know this

WHAT’S THIS NOW

seems like SOMEONE has had it up to here with a certain SOMEONE ELSE’S bullshit lmaooo bye Felicia

I SAID GOOD DAY!!

you guys why is he not dying!!

-- OH DAMN

love how Deku is just lying there like “YOU KNOW THOSE DAYS WHERE YOU’RE LIKE, THIS MIGHT AS WELL HAPPEN.” poor Deku

(ETA: where in god’s name is OFA Prime standing. why are my thoughts fully consumed by this lmao.)

are Nana and OFA Prime even doing anything?? why are they sticking their arms out like that. wait hold up is this all a big metaphor for the back-and-forth going on between Tomura trying to steal OFA and OFA being all “actually no you can’t, please enter your password and click on all the boxes with bicycles in them to prove you’re a human first”?

OH SNAP OFA PRIME SAID NO THANKS

“SORRY BRO WE’VE ALREADY MADE OURSELVES AT HOME HERE”

I have only just noticed that metaphysical!Deku has the same scars as actual!Deku. and yet his arms are not currently broken! that doesn’t really seem consistent to me but whatever!! maybe he saved right before the boss battle, that would be smart of him

anyway, that’s great and all that OFA Prime is here helping out, but I really wanted to see Nana fight AFO in a one on one though so I’m a bit disappointed. also why is it only the two of them?? where are Banjou and the others. of all the times to be sleeping on the job

FOR FUCK’S SAKE, THIS MAN

WOULD YOU STOP. WOULD YOU JUST QUIT IT ALREADY

oh shit hold up

doesn’t this confirm that the reason he wanted to transfer his power to Tomura is because he believed it would make him strong enough to finally take OFA because of Quirk Singularity? jesus christ. and here he was so sure of himself. but it turns out he doesn’t actually know shit! you can’t just fucking take OFA like that ya dingdong that’s not how it works

(ETA: SO, A THOUGHT -- is there any sort of subtle hinting here in the way that he words this? “if your strength is combined with mine”, as opposed to “if my strength is combined with yours”? no idea if the admittedly-so-small-as-to-be-almost-inconsequential distinction between those two sentences exists in the original Japanese or not, but I find it very interesting that the English wording implies that he’s the one adding Tomura’s strength to his own, rather than vice versa.)

now he’s insulting Deku!!

excuse me sir WHO ASKED YOU anyway. and never mind that being consumed by an, AND I QUOTE, “unquenchable” rage is your protege’s whole THING, and that he also needed your help to avoid being burned to a crisp a short while ago. where do you get off I swear

(ETA: also just want to point out that in the panel before this one he says that he’s been “watching through Tomura”, which pretty much confirms that his consciousness or whatever is alive inside of him all the time. Tomura is definitely not getting rid of this guy any time soon.)

WOW

first he calls Kacchan useless, then he calls Deku a simpleton, and don’t even get me started with Nana. just, you guys. this man is just... a very, very rude man

NOW OFA IS ALL “THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT MAKES HIM SUCH A GOOD PROTAGNIST YOU BUTTMUNCH” AND OMG PREACH

“DESPITE HIS COMMON SENSE” sdfkllk my man he already has one brother roasting him, take it easy guy

AHH WHAT

IS THIS BACK IN THE REAL WORLD

YEP

hahaha nice try Tomura

so Deku’s all “I didn’t lose my power! BUT” and I assume the “but” is the part where his arms are still broken and shit, and meanwhile Tomura’s body is almost healed up now finally

they’re both wiped out and now AFO is again petitioning Tomura to let him take over goddammit

“you won’t lose your mind” yep, he sure won’t! scout’s honor!! pinky swear!!

meanwhile Deku is getting fucking desperate flkjl;k my baby. and Machia is going to show up any second now too, probably. what else can fucking go wrong at this point

oh shit I shouldn’t have asked

get ready to rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrruuuumble, probably

OH MY GOD

WELL AT LEAST SOMEONE HERE IS HAVING A GOOD TIME. jesus

so as soon as he heard Endeavor was there he got all, “TIME FOR THE BIG REVEAL”, is that right? WELL JOKE’S ON YOU TOUYA, YOUR DAD DOESN’T SEEM ALL THAT CONSCIOUS AT THE MOMENT, SO THAT’S GOING TO DRAIN A LOT OF THE TENSION FROM THE SCENE WHEN YOU GO ALL REVERSE DARTH VADER ON HIM AND HE’S ALL “ZZZZZZZZ”

meanwhile Toga is having unsettlingly quiet angst

jesus christ Toga this is all we need right now

“WAS JIN-KUN NOT A PERSON” sdkfjlk Horikoshi I swear. please have mercy on this fandom. this is the debate that refuses to die!!

but seriously ffs, the issue isn’t that Jin deserved to die, it’s that the countless people whom Jin would have either directly or indirectly killed didn’t deserve to die either. people don’t only become people when you attach names and faces to them! we all loved Jin because we’d gotten to know him, but that doesn’t mean his life was inherently worth more than the lives of all the people he would have killed. sometimes there’s just no good answer

like, it’s just crazy to me that because the heroes are all “we want to protect everyone!” but then aren’t always able to do so because that’s literally impossible, whereas the villains are all “we don’t care about anyone other than the select few people that we actually like!”, the villains somehow wind up getting the better PR. it just so happens that it’s infinitely easier to be loyal to the interests of a few people as opposed to ALL THE PEOPLE. like, no shit, it’s easier to stick to your moral code when you barely have a moral code. and so the villains can kill thousands and no one bats an eye, but if a hero fails to save even one person they’re hypocritical moral failures. like what the hell

BUT ANYWAY, sorry to go off on a tangent there lol, it’s not really a big deal. I’m just preemptively trying to stave off more discourse about it lol but who am I even kidding

anyways lol, but of course they won’t kill you unless they have no choice, Toga. but when it comes to catch-22 situations, it’s a bit much to infer that the heroes don’t consider the villains people just because they opt for the choice that spares more innocent lives. I sure as hell don’t want my babies out here killing people, but to say that they can’t no matter what or else they’re no different from the villains is just...

anyway so the chapter has now just ENDED, just like that!! on a shot of Ochako’s face!

I SENSE ANOTHER THROWDOWN COMING. and it had better not be a total letdown like the last one! NANA BARELY DID ANYTHING HORIKOSHI, WHAT THE FUCK. I started out with such high hopes lol

but I will settle for Toga VS Ochako, and Deku VS Tomura: The Sequel: Shouto’s Revenge! SPEAKING OF HEROES WHO HAVE NO QUALMS ABOUT MURDERING PEOPLE lmao

[reimenaashelyee]

Yay! Thank you! Yeah, experimentation comes into play hugely. I’d think 60% of the process is just “Step 2: ???”. But I can show you a bit of how I make the choices that end in the final aesthetic.

So The Carpet Merchant looks like this:

It’s a blend of several influences; bande dessinee meets art history meets me. But The Carpet Merchant aesthetic is meant to be the comics-version of Ottoman Miniature (minyatur), and that has been the “gimmick”, as I would call it, that drove the art direction of the story.

So much of the work in designing these layouts (before doing the thumbnails, and while drawing the actual pages themselves) is doing the research. Which means finding the correct references and making a mood board, but also understanding the rules, elements and philosophy behind the art itself. So that you’ll know which rules to break, stretch, fuse, adapt, yet still keep the essence of the thing.

Here are some of the references from my folder: (no sources attached as I’m feeling lazy rn lol sorry)

You’ll see it’s not just the minyatur itself I’m referencing. I’m bringing in the whole gang (architecture, textile, fashion and more) into the art direction, since artists never create in a vacuum, so it’s super important to find out what sort of artistic influence they may have been immersed in at the time. (You can’t always get an accurate impression, you’ve to aim for close enough...which is the moral of the story)

Anyway looking at the minyaturs, you can observe where and how they have influenced the layouts of TCM, and how TCM responds as a modern interpretation and usage of the style. TCM doesn’t look like the references 100%, it’s not meant to be because COMICS. But you can see how the old and the new link together. Look again at the image with the two people running across the house.

What the heck!! It’s madness. Each part of the house can be a comics panel by itself, if the original artist decided to stretch the idea. Then you see how there are captions that narrate the scene, above, below and within. Hello friends, you got yourself a comics page.

Two panels of a scene! Slap some speech bubbles on top of it. Boom. Comic.

There’s a lot more to see of this once you go into the Research Hell phase, but even with these two alone you can see how the “gimmick” came about. It’s a natural, logical extension of the original. But how does that influence the design of the layouts? This is where the rules come into play.

So I gather up as many references as possible (and making sure most of them are identified as Ottoman, though I’ll allow the occasional Mughal or Persian), and analyse the heck out of everything. Here’s my understanding of the rules:

Colour: Pastel yet bright. Blue, yellow and red are standard.

Framing: Figures are contained in a frame, always. Whether it’s a simple box, an archway, or a building (that becomes a big panel containing tinier panels, as seen earlier).

Embellishments: lots of pretty details and patterns, arabesques and florals. None of them clutter the illustration, and all of them function to draw your eye to the central figures, and harmonise the composition.

Usage of space: despite how sparse the outside of a minyatur appears, it actually uses THE ENTIRE PAGE as part of its storytelling. You can see it in the earlier minyatur with the tree growing out of the framing. Sometimes the background is painted and contains scenes of wildlife, more florals, and marbling/speckling.

Adapting all these rules to TCM:

Colour: No change. My colouring style is already pastel yet bright. I can go on and on about how the colours in TCM are used to tell the story but that’s another big post entirely.

Framing: still pretty true to form (I hope). Except it morphs and changes, depending on the needs of each part of the story.

Embellishments: people always notice this about TCM! I’ve to point out that it’s more than just pretty. Many of the embellishments are actually my way of incorporating carpets into the story, without necessarily having to show the carpets themselves. (and if you notice in the original, you can see the parallel with carpets too, see below)

Usage of space: This translates into using gutters (the empty spaces between and around panels) as part of the storytelling. Effectively turning the gutters into comic panels and framings themselves. It’s a lot easier to figure out how to use gutters if you’ve experience in doing illustration and thinking like an illustrator. But it’s all up to how creative you want to be.

The stars and moon on the left set the night time scene, as do the colours of the background. The branching florals guide your eye to the green panel, as well as framing it, and they also represent Zeynel’s blooming into his new life.

Zeynel is on the verge of a breakdown, struggling to curb his vampiric hunger and losing his grip on his identity as a not-vampire person. The red panel pays homage to the wildlife backgrounds in minyatur, but they take on an active rather than decorative role to represent his mental state.

Taken together:

Some of the layouts are simple. I usually reserve simplicity for highly emotional scenes, since I want the emotion to be the focus. These are the more conventional style layouts.

Then there’s the middle ground.

And finally, there are the WILD ones. The ones where I had fun bending and twisting the rules. How comic can an Ottoman minyatur go, and vice versa?

There’s a lot of experimentation. Most of the time I can’t really explain how I translate the script/dialogue to what you see on the page, since the process from thumbnails to colours is evolving, though the basic composition remains. I do have the rules though, and I tend to follow them. And I try to make each layout as unique as possible, though I don’t pressure myself. It all depends on the story. It’s learning to trust your intuition and going with it.

If you want to do your comics this way...for each comic you create, there will be different rules you’ve to discover yourself. For TCM, it’s this. For Seance Tea Party, it’s something else. And for Alexander, it’s another thing.

(this is my excuse for saying I AM SORRY I CAN’T GIVE GENERALISED INFO!! If you ask me to do a version of this post with Seance Tea Party it’ll look super different)

You just do what you got to do. Sometimes your comic tells you it wants to be a black and white minimalist manga, and THAT’S COOL! Let your story guide you to how it wants to look, and remember to always have FUN!

[diabolikgrimreaper]

Grim Reapers: Headcannons/Theories (TRIGGER WARNING)

First, I should say that my headcannons come from the part of the manga where Sacha and Ludger reveal that reapers need to kill themsleve in order to be reapers. I, personally, believe that all of the boxes we see of different suicide methods is a diferent reaper.

Grell: Based on her near obsession with blood, and the color red in general. I believe that her suicide had something to do with her stabbing and/or cutting herself. Grell does not seem to be the type to self-harm, however, she definitely is unstable, and she was mostly unstable when she was human, as well. She may have been curious on what shade of red her blood was. Now, I think that she truly killed herself because she was born a man, or people perceived her as a man when she is actually a woman (she said so herself multiple times). She may have killed herself under the pressure of being transgender and a flamboyant (pan)sexual (it is my headcannon that she is either pan/bi, there is no evidence but idk). I think that she cut herself because if you look at the bottom right of the part of the manga where Sacha says that reapers has killed themseves, the nails are painted, and look manicured.

Sascha: (Sascha’s gender is unknown lol). Since them and Ludger were the first to mention that reapers commit suicide to become reapers, there is an unmistakable silhouette with her bang outline. The silhouette has a noose around it’s neck. Which leads me to believe, they classically hung themselves. As for her motives, I have two theories. The first one, being that they refer to themselves being a reaper as their calling or her “vocation”.

Meaning, that they were meant to do it, as fate. So, perhaps, they were a human who found out the secrets of the reapers, and then they decided to kill herself because it was appealing and fascinating, to watch the souls of the deceased for a living. That also makes me theorize that they have a secret sadistic side that we have not seen yet, almost like a sociopath.

My second theory as to why they killed themselves, the more plausible theory, is that she had always been a nerd, into science and math, which, especially in 1800’s England/Germany, was unusual for a woman (I think they are female but other people think they are male, and for this theory, I’m just going to refer to her as a female). Now, as a reaper, she was more appreciated as a bright woman, which is why she called it her “vocation”. Woman aren’t common in the reaper dispatch from what we have seen. So, she is no-longer being bullied for being a smart woman, she is being treated as an equal, which is something she has never had before!

Ronald Knox: He, is interesting, as I couldn’t really find any *evidence* as to how/why he killed himself. So, I have concluded that he most likely either drank until he died or he hung himself. I say that he drank until he died, because I believe that he didn’t have a father and that his mother was abusive, so he never knew how to treat women. Thus, he ended up growing up trying to seduce and buy women drinks. Obviously, this life style of never truly being loved drove him over the top, and one day, he couldn’t stop drinking. He was conscious, and he KNEW, that if he didn’t stop, he would die, which makes it a suicide. Also, he could have combined other drugs with his alcohol, like anti-depressants and anxiety medications to give a deeper and faster effect. He was quite possibility an alcoholic before he died.

However, with Ronald Knox, I am torn between him jumping off of the roof and him popping pills. For, the box in the top middle resemble’s Ronald’s shoes. It’s either Grell’s or Ronald’s since with both characters, we send to see their shoes, or below their waist, before we see their faces in scenes (this is more commonly seen with Grell).

William T. Spears: Will is a very difficult character to read, he is very strict and rarely shows his emotions. This leads me to believe that he grew up in a household where emotions were not allowed, he may have been emotionally abused and manipulated by his mother and/or father. Due to his lack of being able to release his emotions, the lament built up in his inner core, and he finally decided to kill himself. Now, this begs the question, how did he kill himself? We don’t have much information on Will and his life, like Ronald Knox. So, I have to do some thinking. For starters, Will does not have an “bad” habbits, like drinking. However, it appears that he could have shot himself. One of William’s key character traits is that he dislikes when things take up time, so his suicide was most likely quick, which eliminates hanging, over-dose and burning to death. The quickest method of suicide is jumping in front of a moving vehicle or shooting oneself. I, for one, believe that William may have indeed put the barrel of a gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. If you revert back to the panel that I have been referencing, you can see a silhouette with the gun in (his) mouth. This method is quick, though messy, and he probably knew that at the time.

I, also, think it is plausible that he jumped off of a high place. Since he is usually shown on buildings, and generally higher places. He is rarely seen on the ground for long. Usually, he does his watching/staring on a building close to the edge, abnormally close to the edge. I can’t take credit for noticing this, I read other theories for why he killed himself, and other people noticed this. Not me.

Undertaker: Oh Lordy lord! I have no clue where to start with him. However, I believe that the imagine of him killing him self is covered by a voice bubble. If you look at the top right, left of the building and right of the fire, there is an imagine in the background which appears to be air bubbles. Perhaps, Undertaker drowned himself. I say this because, to me, there appears to be black, shiny nails. Who else has black nails (besides Sebas-chan)? Undertaker. Purghaps, he had black nails while he was alive and decided to keep it when he became a reaper. Also, this would explain why he chose to do his bizarre doll beta experiment on a ship. The other theories I read on this believe that he was scared when the water started flooding the Campania because of the way he died, wel, I disagree. The reason he freaked out was because he lost the locket with Claudia Phantomhives hair. The reason he chose a ship to do his expirment was because he is (headcannon) a hopeless romantic, and drowning, whether it be suicide or on a ship, are tragic and honorable ways to die. Undertaker doesn’t seem to be a man of honor at first, but the more his character gets developed in chapters 140 - 150, it is seen that he is a man who will protect his name and the Phantomhive name (for unknown reasons).

Now, I know that this is disappointing, but I gueninuly have no idea on how Ludger, Eric or Allen died. Eric’s was probably something violent. While Ludgar has a neutral death on the violent scale. Allen probably had a softer death, like jumping off something high or shooting himself. Since we have no manga/anime to back this up or to give evidence, and only the play, I cannot say for sure how I believe that they died. If you have evidence that shows how any one of these three committed suicide, message/send an ask request in.