#the dynamic has CHANGED SO MUCH

[hyperfixatinator]

ROTTMNT Theory: Donatello's Hidden Role

After rewatching ROTTMNT (shorts and movie included), I realized something about Donnie's character that I've hardly seen anyone mention, and I'm going to talk about it in depth here.

I'll assume you've already watched the series and dive right in, but spoiler warning under the cut in case you care about that.

Let me start with something seemingly off topic. Raph is the oldest of the four brothers, which landed him the responsibility of keeping his younger siblings safe when their father was unavailable. (Not trying to bash Splinter. He's gradually grown to be a better parent later on, but you can't deny he was fairly neglectful in the beginning of the series)

The constant pressure Raph went through was brought up in the episode "Anatawa Hitorijanai", and then the movie showed he still struggles with it now.

He's constantly shouldering the burden of being their family's sole protector, but is this the truth? What if I told you there are actually two protectors in the family? And that the other one was Donnie all along?

When you look closely, Donnie is surprisingly protective of his loved ones. I did a tally of how often each brother exhibits what could be protective behavior, and Donnie was in second place (29) after Raph (35). Some of these choices are debatable, but here's a bunch of examples as pictures.

Would you believe me if I told you I still have a couple smaller examples I had to leave out due to the picture limit? And that's not even including the few moments where Donnie and Raph ever-so-subtly parallel each other.

All things considered, Donnie and Raph aren't so different. Raph is the primary protector who faces the threats head-on with his physical strength, while Donnie is the secondary protector who tends to use more distant methods with his tech and wit. However, when push comes to shove, Donnie will also step up to take direct action when he deems it necessary.

They may be the brains and the brawn, but they both use their respective skills to defend and support their family.

[twst-mer]

leona & jamil

[ikemenomegas]

Omega!Gojo Satoru x Alpha!Reader

I believe we are fated to do the things we choose anyway*

gege akutami is the kind of mangaka who makes fun of almost all their characters. with utmost affection, gojo deserves to be bullied a bit. we love that he's a little heartless, a little frivolous, that he's powerful as a fact, that he cares a little bit strangely, so doing him a bit of justice, here's the mirror to Getou's youth story

tw: canon character death, spoilers for the manga, gojo's emotional constipation and egotism

Toji Zenin cut so many threads the day he arrived on the Tokyo school grounds, but the one between you and Satoru survived. It's already a miracle that Riko was the only one who died that day. The miracle of surviving should have been enough, but now you've lived long enough to find out how much you could love someone too. You get to see how afraid someone is of loving you. Gojo Satoru had one friend. Gojo Satoru had one mate. That was it, that was all he could let himself have.

Springtime Tokyo is still cold. Not as cold as up north in the mountains, but the winter uniforms are blessedly warm. An assistant manager drops you off at Tokyo Jujutsu Technical School on a milky March morning where you are met by Yaga-sensei, the first year teacher.

This teacher has some kind of idea about building community, which is why he's clustered the four of you first-years in the same building, around a loud blue-eyed boy who barely takes one look at you, squinting around a pair of blackout sunglasses, at your purposeful non-expression, before he is grinning, far too wide and it feels like he gets even louder, movements expansive to pull you into the range of an argument he's having with a tall slim boy with long hair tied at the back of his head.

Yaga-sensei just shakes his head and introduces you to Ieri Shoko, who is physically leaning away from the noise as if to escape some blast radius and has the most distant smile you've ever seen in your life on her face.

It's unsettling is what it is. The dark haired boy is just rolling his eyes at the one who had somehow both dismissed you and pulled you into his orbit. The automatic response is to try and get that attention back, but you have at least a little more self respect than that. You climb the stairs to take a room on the same floor to Shoko-san's and leave them to their snipping. You don't see Gojo fall silent for half a second before carrying on bickering, Yaga now stepping in to separate them.

School hasn't quite started yet. It's a boarding school so everyone is just around, getting the lay of the school, setting up their rooms, exploring Tokyo, running into one another and trying to figure out how their pieces fit together.

Satoru has already sorted you all into neat little piles of adjectives

Polite: the boy with the long dark hair, Getou Suguru, although this doesn't necessarily mean nice he notes gleefully. Self righteous and reactive, as in he can be baited into a no holds barred fight, which is new for him. He hasn't been able to fight someone who could hold their ground for more than a minute since he was thirteen. Subversively irreverent.

Morbid: the shortie with the short hair, Shoko Ieri. She discovered her abilities somewhere and even Satoru has to admit some of the diagrams she pulls up are admirably disgusting. Neutral. Satoru has never met someone else who sticks so close to their own whims before but she isn't like anything he expected, dismissive, meandering, goading. And she can't explain how she does what she does, which is aggravating because he can't do it.

And you, the new one. The last to arrive. Fresh meat. Quiet, wary.

You catch him not following you, but showing up near where you are a little too frequently to feel coincidental while you're making a point to meet the upperclassmen. He adds opportunistic and watchful to the list when he notices you do this, but some of the older students seem to find it vaguely endearing - the clan ones like a small animal they can toss treats, the recruited students who aren't trying to suck up to the clan kids with the cautious familiarity of greeting another outsider.

He tries tossing you a treat, granting you some offhanded attention in the common space of what is now the first years' block. Suguru laughs at him when you mostly look confused and apologetically tell him you've never seen either of the movies he wants to debate before refilling your water bottle and wandering back out onto the school grounds with your umbrella.

School starts regardless with some tentative unspoken agreement between the four of you to try and be friends, or at least classmates. There is after all, no one else to be friends with.

Class is boring, so Satoru watches his classmates. Where Shoko is passive and watchful and Satoru is staring into the air, you're openly attentive and Suguru more casually mirrors your attention. Which makes him want to call you another boring small-town bumpkin

Except you are in the same the advanced mechanics elective he is, and you and Shoko become animated discussing the curse anatomy lectures. Yaga takes you away to practice hand-to-hand with his dolls while he lets Satoru and Suguru pummel each other, which makes him think you must be too fragile to handle the two of them. Most people are, so he doesn't think much on it.

Satoru sometimes goes out alone to train when he can't sleep. He lashes out at the wooden dummies on the practice field, ducking under wooden arms and lashing out to see sections of it spin faster. On one of these nights, a week or two into the first year, he sees you standing outside the track, leaning on a railing, face buried in a thick scarf. He's aware of your vague attention, watching him without any particular interest, like how one might watch water sliding under a bridge, but when he sneaks a glance around the practice dummy, you're just as often more fixated on the sky. The moon is full and you're watching the clouds chase across the deep blue expanse, listening to Gojo Satoru's knuckles impacting on wood. And then at some point, he looks over and you're gone, your weird cursed energy signature fading in the dark.

Satoru only sees your technique the first time a substitute makes you spar with everyone else during training while Yaga is away. Apparently the teacher is someone you know because you get into the first argument he's ever seen before you send a spear flying so fast it hits the center of a target and topples it over.

The same teacher makes you fight Satoru, to already defeated attempts at appalled refusal. He'd usually help you push back just on principle, but he hasn't gotten to go on a mission with you yet and his sometimes oppressive curiosity has settled on whether you actually can keep up with him after all.

You can't, but this is Gojo Satoru at fifteen, not fully realized, and the first time he fights you he amends how he feels about "opportunistic". He flies right at your face and swears he makes contact, but you step back at the last minute and he feels an impending impact from his left that is almost the same strength as his own attack. He tries again and you twist out of the way much faster than he had expected. He tries to throw you and you end up descending slowly to the ground, trying to get the teacher to end the bout. Eventually Satoru overwhelms you and breaks your arm when you try to block too many hits in rapid succession. Shoko fixes it, and you wince with gritted teeth and tears in your eyes but don't cry or sob or glare at him with the kind of face that is calling him names you can't say out loud. The demonstration has him, fortunately or unfortunately, folding you into the energy of your little first year group like you'd been there all along.

He's a shaman clan kid, so it's interesting to see you now as not necessarily opportunistic but curious about the other sorcerers, about other people. What a novelty, to be inconsequentially curious. If he'd been too curious as a child he would be either lectured on responsibility or nearly drowned in related gifts meant to appease his moods

You don't appease his moods and the attention of him, one of the strongest sorcerer of the generation, doesn't appease you.

Satoru tries to bait you and things go right over your head. He tries to disrupt your silent, invisible schedule and you let him drag you away with minimal fussing, especially when Shoko or Suguru is involved, but will wander to the side on outings and either find some accidental trouble or something that makes him a little surprised at the intensity of your focus.

He forces you into a combat-determined wager that demands you stop using honorifics with his name and Suguru's name and Shoko's name (without asking the other two) and there's no way for you to get out of it or win so that forces some artificial closeness that becomes real. Language is very important for creating distance, for creating hierarchy and Satoru somehow isn't interested in a hierarchy between you.

He is however far more self conscious of his omega status than Suguru is. He won't say it, but it's a relief when none of you make a big deal out of it when you find out and also a surprising comfort when you and Shoko who don't have to suffer through the literal additional headache of heats try and make them comfortable

For Satoru this involves distracting him by playing video games with him, watching movies, or tossing balls of paper at him while he tries to stop it with his technique. Mostly he's with Suguru, especially if they sync up, but Satoru doesn't have the same heat symptoms as him. During first year even though he sleeps more than he does as an adult, it's typically less than the rest of you might want. Where Suguru gets tired, Satoru will get cranky and mean because he's bored and feverish and Suguru is too tired to entertain him. His family also was never very comforting during his heats so he knows what to do as far as nesting, but having people around is new for him.

He likes to call and text you if you're on missions during these times, which is typical given his clan's sensitivity to him being around alphas at these times.

So even when you're on campus, you and Shoko only spend a few hours with him at a time. Sometimes you play games and the heat makes him almost slow enough to beat on a DS link game. Sometimes he makes you do his homework. Sometimes he likes to throw throwing things at you to see how you use your technique to deal with it.

He adds "sentimental" to the list of adjectives when he realizes he can so easily pressure you in these times into revealing more of yourself to him than you usually do. He's bored and there's only so many things to talk about before you start telling him about an encounter with one of the rare cats that will tolerate living around the cursed energy of the campus, when you grimace and tell him about a terrible noodle stand in Yamanashi province that you still crave somehow, when you tell him about saving fallen leaves in a heavy dictionary you use for that purpose, or the one time you reveal that you've kept every pair of shoes your parents bought you to wear on the first day of school. You tell him these things and it makes him feel like maybe, someday, he might want to tell you things too.

It's not soft but there's a softness to it. A genuineness in the four of you together, in Satoru's and Suguru's growing strength and self surety. Satoru tries to make himself the center of the world, because it's fact that is where he has been all along. But he's not so easily the center of your world. You didn't come from his world.

Satoru doesn't fall. He doesn't think hard about why it becomes so. He barely thinks about it all. He just knows at some point that you're one of his. You're one of his and he wants you to pay him the attention he' accustomed to as center of the world (except he doesn't maybe. He'll be able to say it one day that what he loved was you treating him like he was as human as he could be)

He's terrible at acknowledging whether this possessiveness is anything in particular. After a sparring session, you watch Shoko patch a cut on Suguru's arm with so much longing and a pang of something worms its way in Satoru's chest. He crowds in next to Suguru before Shoko's done, draping over Suguru's shoulders. You don't see the way Satoru's eyes flicker from Shoko's steady hands to your wide-eyed gaze.

He's jealous the way a child is jealous of a favorite toy, hooking his arm around your neck if any omegas outside of school talk to you in the street. If you brush him off when he's trying to use you as a tool for self-affirmation, he sulks around until you acknowledge him in some other way and he will not admit to a single soul why it matters. When he's forced to go home for holidays like oban and returns in a terrible pique, you may fight with him if he lashes out in the worst, most personal ways. You push back and talk to instead of around him or through him and you also don't realize that is why he backs off.

He realizes slowly that he has to be careful with you. He forgets sometimes that you're more fragile that Suguru, that you need help Shoko doesn't need. On what you call the "worst school trip in existence" and Shoko calls "lucky we didn't all die" and Suguru smiles and calls "well we all made it out in the end", even Satoru got injured, yet he feels invincible, like he caught a bullet and threw it back.

When Toji nearly kills him and everyone he ever cared about, he awakens with the power to keep it from happening ever again. He thinks he can carry the world for all of you, for everyone, reveling in his power. He doesn't realize that his presence, the gravity well he made in the monster class's lives, doesn't exist the same way while he's not there because he has a tendency to think everything will be easy for him to fit back into when he returns, or not to think on the fact things could change at all.

Then Suguru leaves and the center of Satoru's world, his reference point, collapses

You're there in Shinjuku the day it happens. It's getting cold again. You're there to meet Shoko. Suguru has gone missing, Satoru is... away. Again. Still. He's been absent whenever he is around anyway. The jujutsu world doesn't have the resources to devote to hunting curse users in particular so the effort to find Suguru has been halfhearted at best and even if he's on your minds, you have jobs to do still.

You're there in Shinjuku and when you don't find the person you're looking for, you find someone else, It shouldn't happen, but it does. You run into Satoru, mind reeling at Suguru's betrayal. You nearly don't see him and he nearly doesn't see you except he sees everything and he's been walking around the district like a ghost.

He appears like a ghost too, tall and pale and ridiculous eyes. You'd tried to see if the world reflected in them once, but now it's more obvious to you than ever that it's just him, nothing more and nothing less.

"Let's go back," he says, and for the first time in months, you return to the college, side by side on the train, feeling like there should be more people in the near-empty car. You get as far as you can before you get to a station that's closed where you can no longer transfer and then you get out and walk in silence.

You walk like there's another person jostling for space between you. When you get to the school, Shoko meets you at the red tori gates. When you get to the mostly empty dormitory building, now a little emptier, Satoru looks at you. And looks and looks and looks. This time, he feels like you might disappear in the pre-dawn light casting your faces in blue.

Maybe it's because he's already lost one precious thing long before he noticed it was gone that he grips your shoulders tight, so tight you almost wince, but turn into it instead, tilting your head as though, were you less careful people, you might brush your cheek against his hand. Just for a little bit of comfort, for a little familiarity.

Then Shoko makes a noise at the top of the stairs, the scuff of her foot, the tap of her palm on the banister. What a terrible day it must be if Shoko is interfering. And you step away.

Satoru doesn't go to bed. For the first time in his life he feels like he doesn't know who he is. He watches your light come on and then go off. He doesn't see you stand at the mouth of the hall leading to Suguru's room with a blanket around your shoulders until eventually you turn away and fall asleep on one of the common room couches, near to where a year of his body in the same spot had left an indent. He doesn't think about the world where you aren't here, where he never sees you again, because he can't quite fathom it.

Because even when he was gone, he never felt like he had let any of you go

It makes him feel sick to his stomach, the closeness of someone else, but it feels worse to push you away so you sit shoulder to shoulder with him some time in the morning. He pretends not to see the new dark shadows in your eyes. You sit and watch the mist burn off and pretend his warmth can hide how the world is a little colder.

*I didn't fall in love with you. I walked into love with you, with my eyes wide open, choosing to take every step along the way. I do believe in fate and destiny, but I also believe we are only fated to do the things that we'd choose anyway. And I'd choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I'd find you and I'd choose you ― Kiersten White, The Chaos of Stars

[quotidianish]

super normal about them

[sketchingtons]

The more things change, the more they stay the same huh?

[tunemyart]

When Liz Donnelly told Alex Cabot, “You want to be a crusader for victim’s rights, go work for social services. Your job is to prosecute crime.”

In season three.

[sysig]

Hey! For requestober, would you please draw something cute with Jake and Scriabin (once Scri gets his own body)? Maybe in a Wish Fulfilment kind of AU where Jake sticks around for Edgar/Scri? I just love the idea of a setting where they get to really meet and have it go well, esp after reading Scri's reaction to Jake in Convalescence. <3 If Edgar was involved in the piece too, that would be lovely, but I'd really appreciate it with just the two, as well. Thanks so much!

Day 1 - Satisfaction

[gardeninggraves]

watching a reaction video for encanto and immediately exiting out of it when they dont understand isabela as a character and tear her down the entire time during her song is self care

[ochomachuu]

one of my favourite things about s3: tsukkomi jyushimatsus

[valhallgreg]

so TomTord seems to be making a comeback and I never thought I’d say it but actually it’s pretty fucking based

[sollucets]

clover @bicyclepainting told me show wip and i actually! have some! so i present two wildly different things

one: ocean eyes future chapter as previously posted

and….

two, as promised, something completely different. i doubt there is crowd interest for this topic here (lol) i’m just appending it to this post to let you know that if i end up stalled on oe again its because i have unrelated brainworms that no one on this acct knows or cares abt (win between us (2022) h/c agenda)

[peachpitmp3]

as a society i think we need to talk less about eddie munson

[akkivee]

i miss being obsessed with this pic lol

[achirding]

WIPtober 3: Adjectivizing Thee pt. 2

Summary: Sonic is impatient. Caliburn is annoyed. Lancelot is sleepy. They could do without all of these things. Actually, Lancelot is a lot more open and honest when he’s sleepy, so that can stay. Even if he is a little snootier because of it, heh. Rating: General! 

Note: This is a snippet! Or possibly a deleted scene! I like it a lot but it is hard to make it fit. Maybe. IDK what i’m doing with this tbh. :C

--------------

“Sir Lancelot!”

Lancelot startles at the sound of his name like he hasn’t been listening, pulling away from the tree to sit up straighter. His visor is pulled over his face, obscuring his expression again, and Sonic wonders if he had been spacing out. Or dozing?

Caliburn either does not notice or chooses not to notice, “Would you please remind Sir Sonic why we are here.”

“Gladly, Kingmaker,” Lancelot answers, voice slightly husky like maybe he had been on the verge of falling asleep, turning his face in Sonic’s direction, “My lady mother and the royal magician, through use of the reflection pool and other ancient magicks, ascertained this was the crossroad of the Lady of Rings.”

Lancelot does not immediately continue, even though Sonic and Caliburn are waiting for him to elaborate. He’s really not much of a conversationalist, huh?

“Cool, good for her,” Sonic says at length, moving his hand in impatient circles, “And why are we here?”

“The Lady of Rings is a powerful seer, rumored to have trained under Merlin himself,” There’s a weird intonation to the way Lancelot says Merlin, something negative, but it’s very subtle. Maybe Sonic just imagined it. “Upon winning her favor, she will tell you how to return to your homeland.”

This time, Caliburn jumps in where Lancelot leaves off, preemptively answering the unasked question, “The Lady of Rings is said to polish her rings at this crossroad on the day the sun blazes the hottest. It is said her eyes are so weak, she needs the brightest light to see if there are any imperfections on her rings.”

“Can’t think of how this day could get hotter!” Sonic agrees with a sigh, rolling onto his stomach and kicking his feet in the air. Not super comfortable, but it gives him something to do, at least, “You two sound pretty confident. Has she helped you before?”

“No,” Lancelot answers simply, leaning back against the tree.

“....That’s weird,” Sonic says, arching a brow at him, “Caliburn, I get- he’s swayed by titles and reputations and junk-“

“Epithets and reputations must be earned!” Caliburn interjects, hopping in place with outrage, “You would do well to remember that, Knave the Hedgehog!”

“Nope, no take backs!” Sonic was just going to ignore Caliburn, but that sword really knew what buttons to push, “My new ‘epithet’ that you gave me is ‘Sir Sonic, Knight of the Wind!’ And don’t you forget it!”

Caliburn looks like he is going to keep arguing, but let’s out an amused sound and smiles instead, “Indeed.”

Uh. Okay. “Cool,” Sonic wasn’t expecting his sword to agree with him so easily, and he isn’t sure what to say... so he turns back to Lancelot.

“Lance!”

Lancelot startles, again, turning his face in his direction, “Sir.”

“You don’t seem like the kind of guy who gives his trust out so easily,” Sonic rests his chin on his hands, still kicking his feet restlessly, “Why are you vouching for this lady?”

“You misunderstand,” Lancelot scoffs with a shake of his head, “I am not. I have never met her. I have no desire to vouch for her, her temperament, or her abilities.”

“...Okay,” Sonic answers after a moment, trying to figure out what Lancelot is trying to say. He’s getting better at it, but this one’s tricky, “Then... what’s got you so sure this lady is the real deal?”

“I trust my lady mother’s judgment and magicks,” Lancelot pointedly does not mention Merlina, obviously still a sore spot, “I trust my swordsmanship and instincts. I trust you and Caliburn to keep out of my way.”

Lancelot settles back against the tree with a shrug, still looking rather sleepy. He must have been just as bored, “I don’t know if she will be able to help you- but I will ensure you come back from this adventure hale and hearty. That is all I can promise.”

Aha, Sonic knew it! Nothing to do with this Lady of Rings or Sonic’s quest to go home, and everything to do with Lancelot’s combat abilities and skill. The black and red hedgehog certainly spoke down to him when they first met, so it’s good to see this side of him again. Not Lancelot’s most endearing trait, for sure, but much better than his more recent quiet and stiff formality.

Especially in the company of his fellow knights, it feels too much like Lancelot is on his best behavior around Sonic. Not fake, per say, but definitely not normal. Like he’s visiting his grandma or meeting with a dignitary. This? This is a lot more casual and honest.

Caliburn’s mouth quirks into a disapproving frown, obviously not pleased, but he doesn’t say anything. Weird.

“Heh,” Sonic chuckles, amused and pleased despite himself, “If you say so, Lance.”

[raayllum]

me checking the raydia tag to see if there’s going to be deeper consideration given to their interrelated trauma, their subsequently amplified hatred towards each other, notions of the path it would realistically take for them to be on good terms, and their foil relationship: no just more ‘uwu’ lesbian content yet again :/

[icharchivist]

i’m still not talking about the game i’m playing and obsessing over (sorry, one look at the fandom means it’s typically the type of games i don’t want to connect with people over unless they’re people i already trust) but i’m laughing so hard 

because, there’s one chara i was obsessing over so hard that when i found his figurine in the manga store i somewhat bought it right away while i was still very early in the game, and i knew people hates this chara because of something he did later in game (i’m calling, betrayal and murders) and i had vague spoilers about what his deal was about but i couldn’t completely put those spoilers back in context

so there was a moment of fear of, was buying the figurine a good idea? would i finish the game thinking his crimes are too much for me to bear? (i mean i do have figurines for characters i don’t really like so i doubt i would really resent the buy since it’s a pretty figurine, but yaknow?)

But now i’m at a point where, they didn’t reveal what his deal is yet, but i have most of the pieces to know more or less what his crime is, and most of all, he’s currently lying extremely blatantly to everyone while going very 😇 about it (lies i only can totally figure out because of the spoilers i know), and i’m absolutely hysterical because it actually makes him even more my type than he was at the start of the game where he just seemed cheeky yaknow?

i was told everywhere this character’s twist is enough to have people hate him and instead the more i’m building to the twist the more i’m absolutely hysterical because he’s taking all the steps to be an Ultimate Fav Of Mine by checking all the boxes for my dubious fav character type (Sweet Talker, Criminal, and Massive Hypocrite Liar). I’m living.