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polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup · 1 year ago

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i love you expanding on the zenin’s & megumi’s dynamic because like — there had to be so much more than gojo just getting megumi. it had to involve more politics, more manipulation, etc & you added to that.

( i always like that detail about gojo teaching megumi everything from the gojo playbook. like it made me realize that megumi was more gojo than zenin, which probably pissed off the zenin )

what made you expand on the great custody battle between gojo & the zenins for megumi? like the visitation rights? did gojo know how badly megumi was going to be treated? also how would you describe megumi dynamic with each prominent zenin clan member (ex. naoya, mai, naobito, maki.)

I am sooo convinced there’s an entire child custody battle political drama lurking beneath canon but gege denies me

Visitation rights:

The decision that the Zenin clan briefly got visitation rights was a combination of where Gojo was at that point in life and what a sheer, unmitigated shitshow adopting Megumi must have caused.

The thing is that the Zenin and the Gojo clan are established in canon as rivals at best and enemies at worst. Gojo swanning in like "I have discovered the Magic of teenaged fatherhood and want to teach this spunky, angry little dude how to Throw A Baseball. Btw he's zenin and the clan already sort of “”””””purchased”””””” him, meaning they already consider him property even more than they usually do with their kids. i will be keeping him tho. xoxoxoxoxo" must have been insulting to the Zenin. It must have been even more insulting that he could legitmately do that and overpower their entire clan without having to even try. It's bad even if megumi is just like, the run of the mill sorcerer. But he had the most powerful techinque in their bloodline. I legitimately think that Gojo almost started a war when he decided that his boyfriend had dumped him and he needed to immediately adopt a child about it.

The thing is that I think gojo really must have been committing the ultimate taboo for a society he was raised within. Older, traditional mindsets tend to think of children as property, and the clans are established to be almost exclusively self governed. Gojo making a Zenin boy his business would stomp right over that standard. Add in the complication of inherited techniques being viewed as almost a highly treasured clan heirloom within the invidual families, and you have a perfect recipe for the entire world being very very angry at Gojo for doing this.

And the thing is that present-day Gojo would have absolutely told everyone to get fucked, he does what he wants.

But this isn't present-day Gojo. This is seventeen year old Gojo. And he's just coming off three of the biggest failures of his life: 1) Riko's death, 2) Haibara's death and 3) Geto's defection.

Gojo has always been extremely self-assured as a character, but teenagers tend to be a little bit more uncertain and vulnerable than their adult counterparts, and Gojo, again, had just been hit by failure after failure. If there was ever a time in his life where he would have been looking for outside guidance, it was this one.

And the number one most likely candidate to guide him in this was Yaga.

I've talked in other posts about how Principal Yaga's dynamic with Gojo suggests he's not in the inner circle of trust the way that Nanami, Shoko, or even Ijichi is. I've also discussed how I think he compromises too much with the higher ups, why that works with his character but ultimately comes to the detriment of the students, and how he ultimately fails to protect the students in his charge.

The thing is that if Yaga was making the decision, he absolutely would have compromised with the Zenin.

Yaga very consistently is shown to care about the students, but to not protect them. It's also established that the most likely cause of that is the fact that he panders to the higher ups, even if he is more progressively minded than someone like Gakuganji.

In the past arc, geto and gojo have a throwaway line in a conversation about how Yaga's busy campaigning to be principal with the higher ups. we also have him 1) excluded from the people who know about Yuuji's survival, which 2) he later punishes Gojo for, albeit partially because of the disrespect towards Gakuganji and for hiding his survival.

That being said, if I was the principal of a school where my sister school's principal set up my entire first year class to die, i would not be punishing a teacher for disrespecting that man. I would be too busy beating him to death with my bare hands. Good luck trying some shit with my fucking students again you dead fuck.

i would simply not make it as an educator in this world.

Gojo would have had the entire world up in arms at him when he took megumi and refused to give him back. The Zenin, for obvious reasons--but also the higher ups trying to preserve the status quo and the other clans, who want to maintain their ability to rear and keep their children without outside interference. He would have most likely said to give Megumi back entirely, but I don't think Gojo would go for that complete of a surrender of him, especially after Megumi asked him to keep him with Tsumiki and to keep them in a place she could be happy.

But very limited visitation would 1) at least somewhat soothe ruffled feathers, even if they are still furious, 2) give megumi access to information on his technique that he could not possibly get otherwise, and 3) supposedly cause minimal damage, since they only get him for a few days a month and are supposed to love him more than anyone. It's the sort of compromise I could see Yaga pitching in the best possible faith--and it's the sort of compromise that I see blowing up spectacularly, because the Zenin are fucking insane.

When I'm dealing with past versions of characters with very defined personalities, I sort of like to trace in the roots of their present-day selves in any backstory i make for them. Gojo of the present day is completely uncompromising when it comes to protecting his students and their youth. He is not afraid to butt heads with the higher ups and ruffle feathers to do it. So i decided to make that because he compromised when he was seventeen and doing his best, and Megumi paid the price, and he is so, so goddamn sorry for that. He doesn't let Yaga into the inner circle by the time we make it to canon because he was in the inner circle, and taking his advice directly resulted in Gojo's absolute biggest regret, which was letting the Zenin have unsupervised access to Megumi.

I think Gojo as a character is someone who refuses to repeat old mistakes, and what happened when Megumi was a child is something that he won't ever forgive or forget. A part of him still blames Yaga for convincing him to compromise with the Zenin and iced him out by the time we hit canon as a result.

Gojo and Megumi's treatment:

He had absolutely no idea how bad it would be for Megumi.

The thing is that Gojo approached it with the severely biased mindset of someone who thought he knew exactly how Megumi would be treated when he was with the clan, because it was supposed to be how he was treated growing up. The Six Eyes/Limitless user and the Ten Shadows were supposed to be corollaries. Megumi was meant to be to the Zenin what Gojo was to his clan, and if anything, the issue with his clan was that they treasured him too much. Gojo get up as this much beloved, much revered godling who was put on a pedestal and had all the distance of it.

In my mind, the issue with his childhood was that he was indulged to the point of being deprived of actual human connection or intimacy that he didn't truly get until Geto and Shoko.

In Gojo's mind, the biggest danger was that Megumi would be treated with too much reverence and distance, but he was spending the vast majority of the month with his big sister and the teen parenting trio. He would get plenty of normal interaction and intimacy from them. He thought that there would be no one in the Zenin clan who would dare raise a finger against him, because no one would have ever done that to him as a child. He never imagined that the Zenin would be legitimately dangerous to Megumi, and there were a lot of red flags he overlooked when the worst of it was going on because he assumed he already knew what was happening. When this was happening, he was completely burnt out, overwhelmed, mourning more than one friend, and struggling to meet the burden of being the strongest alone. He thought Megumi was acting out because 1) megumi already was getting in fights at school, and he made the mistake of thinking that Megumi was just a stubborn kid going through a sort of angry phase and 2) that Megumi hated them so much because visitation days meant he couldn’t stay with his sister. He didn’t realize that Megumi was fighting so hard to not go on visits because he was legitimately afraid of what the Zenin clan would do to him when he got there. For a lot of reasons that I won’t get into now, Megumi thought that putting up with the abuse was the cost of getting to keep his sister. He asked for help, told them that he didn’t like it at the Zenin compound and didn’t want to go, but he didn’t have the words to really explain what they were doing to him and gojo didn’t understand how bad it was. Megumi read this as “knowing and not caring” and thought the teen parenting trio knew how bad it was and that he just had to suffer through it or they’d take his sister away from him. By the time they realized what was really going on, it had escalated beyond the point of repair. Gojo has a lot of regrets.

Megumi's dynamic:

Naobito: Disturbed.

Naobito was the one who initially purchased Megumi from his father. And if Gojo hadn't had intervened, he would have personally taken Megumi into his household and raised him as the Zenin clan heir. He didn't really give a shit about Megumi until he realized he was the Ten Shadows, and after that, he felt completely entitled to him.

I think Naobito was always sort of insulted by Gojo's existence. He predated Gojo, is the thing, and he's the most powerful character that we know of in the pre-Gojo era other than Yuki Tsukomo, who wasn't an active fighter for the higher ups. As far as we know, he was the strongest until Gojo and Geto came along. Gojo potentially represented an immediate and violent shift of power from the Zenin clan to the Gojo, and it definitely would sting to be upstaged by a literal child.

The Ten Shadows returning to the clan represented a chance to correct that balance again.

If we accept that the Ten Shadows is a technique that can rival the Six Eyes/Limitless user, as well as the idea that the universe introduces “balances” to the birth of beings of power, then we at least have an environment where the Zenin may believe that whoever is next born with the Ten Shadows would be Gojo Satoru’s equal. Considering they value strength above all else, that gives them major incentive to desire the assimilation of whoever has the ten shadows technique into the clan.

But this was made a lot worse by the fact that the last ten shadows died.

The timeline in this is generally:

Second to last ten shadows: the one who got in the duel with the six eyes that gojo discussed in canon (~500 years ago)

Last ten shadows: child that was killed within months of discovering his technique (~200-300 years ago)

Current ten shadows: Megumi.

So they had just come off an overwhelmingly powerful Ten Shadows user, only to hurtle into the shame and humiliation of not being able to protect the next one. I like the idea that the six eyes and the ten shadows tend to pop up at the same time, so that means that the last six eyes got to grow and gain power while the Zenin were still licking their wounds from their heir being offed at a very young age. It’s insult to injury.

In the modern age, Naobito is coming off the humiliation of having been replaced by a literal child as the strongest sorcerer. He’s still harboring the ancestral humiliation of having lost the last ten shadows. And then gojo hits the humiliation of taking the new one right out from under his nose. Naobito bears that humiliation personally, because he’s the clan leader who should have brought Megumi into the fold and didn’t.

As a result, he’s just about obsessed with Megumi. He absolutely refuses to give up on bringing him back into the clan and grooming him to be the perfect, promised heir whose idea he’s been clinging to since before Megumi was even born.

There’s just something about how, in canon, Naobito had a clause in his will locked and loaded to make Megumi heir if anything happened to take gojo out of commission. I think that losing Megumi to gojo was personal to him, and that he’s almost fixated on Megumi as a result.

For his part, Megumi hates him and is a little afraid of him, though he’d never admit it. All of his interactions with the Zenin clan are skewed through the lens of “he was fucking six and just thought they were crazy motherfuckers who were weird about blood.” Megumi legitimately does not understand how important his technique is to them—he thinks they’d be possessive with any inherited technique, and he has sort of explained away any weirdness particular to him as it being because of what went down with gojo.

The Zenin view what they do to him as love. He’s the inheritor of their most treasured technique, and the only good thing toji did was name him blessing. It’s like Maki said—any resistance he has to them is attributed to Gojo’s influence, and they’re banking on overcoming it one day and returning him to the clan. Things like wearing the kimono and being called the ten shadows is a sign of genuine honor for them.

Megumi views it as a constant, persistent humiliation that’s probably just meant to spite gojo. They bought him because they’d buy any kid who inherited a technique, and then gojo saved him, which embarrassed the clan, so they’ve been getting back at him for it ever since. They can’t actually hurt gojo, so they hurt the kid he saved.

He’s dressed up like a doll in the kimono to mock him. Being called the ten shadows isn’t an honor to him—it’s dehumanizing. He has a name and they refuse to call him anything but his technique, which is why they bought him to begin with. From his perspective, it’d be like if you were hired for being Microsoft proficient and your boss refused to call you anything but “excel spreadsheet” because that’s all you were to them.

Naobito is the one who had “custody” of him as a kid in the clan, and he’s the one who called a lot of the shots with how he was treated. Megumi remembers him as the source of some of his most painful moments in childhood, and it’s undercut with this growing fear that Naobito won’t let him go. He’s sort of picked up on how obsessed Naobito is with him, and it scares him even if he doesn’t want to admit it.

Naoya: about as bad as can be.

Megumi really hits all of naoya’s inferiority/superiority complex hard. The thing is that Naoya kind of is sour he didn’t get the ten shadows. He was born right after gojo satoru, to the heir of the clan. He wants to be strong more than anything, and the ten shadows is supposed to be one of the strongest things in the world. Megumi is toji’s son, who he’s got that weird obsession with. And everyone sort of presumes Megumi would be heir if gojo hadn’t stolen him, which is a position Naoya would kill for.

In my mind, Naoya was one of megumis biggest abusers as a child. It made him feel strong to be able to hurt him. It made him feel strong to be able to make Megumi feel weak. His father was obsessed with Megumi, but Naoya was just cruel to him.

Megumi is legitimately terrified of Naoya. There was a time in his life where he genuinely thought Naoya would kill him one day.

Mai: A missed opportunity.

Megumi does remember Maki and Mai. Playing with them was the only good memory he has from that part of his life. He thinks of them as fondly as he can think of anything that happened in that place, and occasionally hopes they're okay, but he doesn’t really think of having a relationship with her ever. That would require going back to the Zenin, and he won’t ever willingly do that.

I’ve talked about how Mai thinks of Megumi in other posts, but he really does occupy a slightly less bitter version of the space Maki occupies in her mind. He was kind to her when no one else was, and it really was something that meant the world to her. There was a time in her life where she wished desperately he would come back and be her friend again. He was the ten shadows and the presumed heir to the clan, and he didn’t let anyone hurt her or Maki and agreed that they could all be friends. He sort of fueled her hope that things would get better one day, and when he went no contact, it sort of crashed her into a realization that it never would.

Maki: potential for growth

Maki turned her back on her entire family so she wouldn’t be crushed down, and that’s not something that didn’t hurt her. She convinced herself she would be absolutely alone for the rest of her life, but it would be fine because she would be strong enough to stand alone. It wouldn’t hurt.

(It did hurt.)

The other first years actually started to pull her back from that. It’s that moment after her talk with Yuuta, where she tells herself that she shouldn’t fall for it and go thinking she’s actually been accepted. She thought she would be alone and suddenly, for the first time, she’s not.

Megumi was a half remembered child she played with one time growing up. He didn’t mean the same to her that he did to Mai, because she didn't consider him a source of hope that things would get better the way that Mai did.

At the beginning of the fic, he was a bit of a sore spot, but not because of anything about him. I tried to very lightly hint that she had a bit of a sore spot around the Ten Shadows because there was a time in her life that people used to think that maybe she'd get it.

From birth, people knew Gojo would be the six eyes and limitless user. I like to think the Ten Shadows is the antithesis of the Six Eyes in almost every possible way, so in my mind, the ten shadows is notoriously hard to spot.

And i think that there is some canon to suggest this. Namely, the fact that they didn't know Megumi would have the ten shadows (or they wouldn't have been waiting to see what technique he had), the fact that megumi's cursed energy aura canonically changes with the shikigami summoned (re: his entire cursed energy output changing when he summoned mahoraga for the first time), and the fact that a huge part of his technique is stealth. With Gojo, you feel him from the other side of the block, but Megumi can be hiding in your own goddamn shadow and you don't know it.

I also like the idea that the Six Eyes and Ten Shadows tend to show up within the same lifetime. So from the second that Gojo Satoru was born, the zenin had an eye on the ten shadows finally returning to the clan once more.

Maki is from a branch of the clan that appears to be pretty high in the zenin clan hierarchy. By the time that she would have been developing a technique, if any, Naoya would have been confirmed as having not gotten it. Maki and Mai were the only other kids in that upper hierarchy that we know of. Canonically, it's implied you don't see curses from birth (if i have the right translation, Gojo at one point asks Megumi if he's started to see them, implying it doesn't happen right away, and when the Zenin buy megumi, they talk about how they think he has potential, implying there's an uncertain period where you don't know if a kid will be able to see curses). The clan probably had a lot of hope for them.

At one point, Kamo mentions that it would have been better if maki or mai had inherited Megumi's techinque, and I like to think that was a shared sentiment. Gojo was seventeen and had already usurped their clan as the strongest. They were getting desperate for the ten shadows to return, and a lot of people looked to maki and Mai for potentially inheriting it. And out of the two of them, Maki is the one that came off as having power (because she did--it was just a heavenly pact). Maki was certain, and confident, and moved like someone strong. People really, really wanted it to be her for a while. When she talks about how her dad used to take her to see the kimono a lot, it's because he was hoping she would wear it one day.

Maki was never jealous of Megumi. She's better off without her family anyway, and she's confident in who she is. But at the start, he was a little bit of a reminder of the sort of fall she had from the Zenin clan's greatest hope to their biggest disappointment. She never held any of it against him, but he reminded her of bad memories and set her on edge.

That turned on a dime while talking with Tsumiki in chapter 5, when she started piecing everything together. And megumi sort of became this chance to heal from old regrets.

Megumi will never be what Mai was to her, but a part of Maki still hasn't healed from leaving mai behind and losing her. Her sister hates her, and probably always will, and maki doesn't regret what she did but she does regret that it blew back on mai. She couldn't stay for mai, but she doesn't have to stay to help Megumi. She's sort of been ushered into a perfect opportunity to protect him from her family the way she could never protect mai, and he already means more to her than she really wants to admit out loud. She genuinely wants to protect him from her family, and a bit part of that is so that way she can finally protect someone from them, instead of just... failing and losing them.

For megumi's part, it's the same as mai--he barely remembers Maki, but he did think of her as the source of the only good memory he had in the clan.

He ran off with Mai, and Maki tracked them both down. He stomped his stupid clan clothes into the mud, and they didn't hurt him for it, not even a little bit. They played together, and playing is something he never had time to do anymore. Mai was the damsel, and Maki was the brave warrior coming to save her, and megumi's dogs played the part of the terrible monsters who had stolen mai away. Maki bullied Megumi into carrying her "swords" for her, and megumi honestly didn't mind, because all people did was make him fight at that stupid compound, and he just was relieved no one was hitting him for once. it was one of the greatest days he can remember from that phase of his life, and Maki has since been one of the only two zenin he missed. He hasn't thought of her in a while. He'd be glad to hear she got out.

#i have this entire prequel lore thing about megumis childhood with the Zenin but I don’t know how much I want to get into just because #I sort of want to write it but also probably don’t have the time #I will say what made them go no contact is what pushed Nanami over the edge and made him leave the jujutsu world entirely #he had been on the brink for ages and that was what broke him #Nanami had the line talking about how he promised Megumi he’d never have to go back to the Zenin compound again because he was the one who #first found out about what the Zenin had done to him and just couldn’t forgive himself after #all he could see was haibara #all of the teen parenting trio were messes when tsumiki and Megumi were young but Nanami really truly loved them so much and he has never #ever forgiven himself for not finding out and putting a stop to it sooner #sea glass gardens

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wispscribbles · 2 years ago

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hehe, just wrote a ghostsoap one-shot and it’s maybe my fav one yet

#wanted to write a short prequel to nrftw and ended up going ham #will be posting soon but maybe tomorrow after rereading it with fresh eyes #this one is sappy and angsty and so full of love #my tenth fic ever so it feels right

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emdotcom · 2 months ago

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Tbh, can't believe I'm cutting ties with Fnaf before Batim.

#em.txt #negative #all thr fnaf stuff that's come outta my rbs since the anniversary have just been queued. my queue is huge it takes a bit #anyways #bendy has given me pounds of grief & a lot of it is my fault for like. falling in love with a proof lf concept #& not waiting for the game to come out in full & rushing in to each chapter looking for hints #to a conclusion i made up in my mind & was never ever coming. the ending to game one is quite trash #& while the sequel tries to make the ending in 1 worthwhile it's too little too late #because while a sequel can recontectualize its prequel it cannot erase how it was when it first was released #yeah so like. i figured between how shit the studio heads were & how I didn't like the first game ot the second game #or really the spinoff which i played i am like the only bendy fan i know that played that thing #& I'm not like. super stoked for any of the 3 games they teased in secrets of the machine #which i think is fine btw secrets of the machine is okay but i refuse to judge it as a game because it's an advertisement #i think some of the secrets in that game like the poster one are stupid but most of it is fine kinda cool. glad they got to reuse #all those assets from previous games & also cameo the car from the mobile game #ANYWAYS i figured all this would pile up to mean i would cut off batim. but I haven't. when the next games come out i will #probably at least check out a playthrough maybe play them myself if they seem interesting #meanwhile. like. the fnaf 10th anniversary happened #they dropped a sequel to help wanted. they dropped 2 more fnaf games. & I don't give a shiiiiittt #i woke up the day after the anniversary & realized like. I don't like the games. I don't give a fuck about the books.#the movie has practical effects & was cute but nothing i will think about deeply. the lore is a industrial sized dumpster fire #I don't like the community i only play ONE fan game & i just don't care about this series that used to eat my brain whole on the daily #so i gave it a month. maybe this was just a depressive spike. but no it seems like something shifted in my brain permanently #I don't like fnaf anymore which sucks #but what sucks more is i still like this other piece of shit that has easily given me worse times

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hag-lad · 6 months ago

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Imma keep it real with you chief. I can’t even imagine still liking or caring about star wars in the year of our lord 2024.

#it’s just so oversaturated and soulless now #the Disney star wars products really have done the impossible:#they ruined even the original trilogy for me #not REALLY cuz I do still love those movies and they’ll always be important to me #but I literally never want to talk about them ever again #and I could probably quite happily go the rest of my life never watching them again #and that’s the THREE GOOD ONES #as for the six hundred thousand billion trillion shite ones?! lmao burn in hell #that goes for the damn prequel trilogy too omg I can’t stand the apologia for those turds just cuz the sequels suck more #they’re all bad! it’s okay. they can all be bad!

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tennessoui · 2 years ago

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Ganymede au got me like 🥺🥺🥺

I loved the eye colour switch because it shows an irreversible change, and part of me wonders if Anakin settles down and enjoys his new role after only a few days because he's fundamentally not human anymore. He's changed and his human ties can't survive it however much they meant to him. God Anakin is happy but human Anakin may have wept.

I like to believe Padme ended up making Anakin a cult figure by building statues and temples to her lost love. Obi-Wan might have made him immortal but Padme makes him a figure of worship. But anytime she tries to put herself next to him in images or statue her image doesn't survive for some reason, and she can't even be with him in representation. Anakins story might be remembered but the woman who made sure he was remembered might not be...

(the ganymede ficlet)

ah this is some top tier analysis on anakin's humanity--i feel like he takes to godhood super well because of the sort of life he led while human. he was brutal and violent and known to take no prisoners. his loyalty was to the gods first and then to his almost wife, and he cared for few besides his innermost circle.

(and i think obi-wan king of the gods really really liked that about him, enough that he couldn't watch him give his loyalty away. he needed it all.)

so i think that all relates to how easily anakin settles into godhood and his new life. i think when he's upset, he's selfishly upset about obi-wan's actions. he doesn't remember to be concerned with his almost-wife or anyone else for a bit and then when he does...i love what you said, that he's not human anymore so it's harder for him to care. but i think there were parts of him who were never that human, so the transition is that much easier.

also i like the idea that everything feels different as a god. sex with padmé as a human may have been good, but sex with the king of the gods just blows everything else out of the water. being so horny and satisfied, never cold or hungry, relaxing under the heavy, overwhelming attention from kenobi himself....it's an easy existence to get used to

#asks #ganymede au #obikin #i do think the thing that would make anakin the most furious #would be when he discovers that obi-wan snatched him away one random battle #he wasn't supposed to die or anything #he was just taken #that would make anakin so mad because he'd want to know how much more he could have done #who he could have won against #he can't believe he was just made to surrender #but he eventually gets over that as well #as for padmé i imagine it's an unhappy end for them #anakin can't care for her and obi-wan and obi-wan has his loyalty heart eternal devotion #so if they were ever to meet again anakin wouldn't react as if he loved her #he doesn't #i literally cant ship anything but obikin in the prequels lol #perhaps my worst trait perhaps my best idk

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reneesbooks · 9 months ago

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snippet saturday

still not a thing but this is my blog and i make the rules and i'm THINKING about birdie and fabin. i swear i'll get back to jack and arthur in a second just let me scream about birdie and fabin for a minute

Emilia tucks her wings against her back, settling in the grass next to Birdie. “When do you think we’ll have to return to Morbhard?”

Birdie stares out over the fields, her pulse quickening. Emilia senses that she’s asked a question that Birdie doesn’t want to answer. Birdie lets out a long breath. “I’m not sure.”

A lie, but Emilia doesn’t question it.

Birdie glances at the sky. “The sun will go down soon. I should make preparations. It’s the full silver moon tonight.”

Emilia shrinks into her human form and sets her hand on Birdie’s shoulder. “I can make the tea if you’d like.”

Birdie smiles. “Thank you. That would be nice.”

Emilia returns to the cottage and puts the kettle on the fire, digging her toe into the floor as she mixes the herbs. As much as she trusts them, as much as they’ve all grown closer over the weeks and months at the cottage, Birdie is still hiding things.

The kettle finally starts to whistle and Emilia pours a cup of tea. She heads back out to the garden. Birdie is standing next to Fabin, clearly just arrived from the forest, smiling up at him as he complains that the deer are getting better at hiding. Her laughter dies abruptly as the silver moon’s light hits her, her preparations forgotten in the grass a few steps away.

Fabin backs away as Birdie’s silver light explodes outward, a pulse of magic flattening the grass in a circle around her. Her tripled voice shrieks, her hair lifting off her shoulders. The entire whites of her eyes burn silver.

Blood starts to run from her nose. Fabin shrinks and tries to step closer, shouting her name. Emilia grabs a washcloth and grips it tightly behind her back, the fabric straining as she twists it nervously.

Birdie’s eyes begin to bleed as well, silver light pulsing from her. Fabin grits his teeth and takes three more shaking steps through the waves to reach Birdie. He grabs her shoulders and Emilia hears him shout her name.

Blood is streaming from her eyes and ears now, the third recitation barely begun. Fabin winces as silver magic lashes out at him, cuts opening on his cheeks. He keeps hold of Birdie, shaking her shoulders, trying to wake her up.

The silver light fades and Birdie’s eyes roll back. She collapses and Fabin catches her, lowering her slowly to the grass.

“Shit.” Jack and Arthur freeze in the doorway of the cottage. “Is she okay?”

“Does she fucking look okay?” Fabin growls, glaring at them. He snatches Birdie’s handkerchief from where she’d left it in the grass and starts to gently wipe the blood from her face. Emilia picks up the cup of tea again and moves cautiously. Birdie’s eyelids are fluttering, though she is limp in Fabin’s arms.

“The tea for her throat,” Emilia says quietly, when Fabin looks up at her with another growl. “I’ll look at those cuts.”

“I’m fine.” He holds the teacup to Birdie’s lips and Emilia flinches at the audibly painful gulps. “Birdie, can you hear me?”

Her silver eyes flick up to his face before fluttering closed again. She tucks her face into his chest.

Fabin leans down to murmur something to her that Emilia doesn’t hear. He presses his cheek to the side of Birdie’s head and Emilia stifles a gasp, averting her eyes.

Fabin stands with Birdie in his arms. “She needs to rest,” he says, not looking at any of them. He winces as he adjust his hold on her and Emilia wonders what other damage Birdie’s backlash did.

He says nothing else as he carries her into the house. Emilia bites her lip as Jack and Arthur turn to her with wide eyes. “I’ll make some more tea.”

#idk who to tag in this i just wanted y'all to know about Them #yeah last time most of you saw birdie she was like seven. now she's 19 and she's a monsterfucker. fabin is the monster obv.#and her godlike power is killing her btw. every time she puts off figuring out the prophecy her trances get worse. if u cared #writeblr #writeblr community #dark fantasy #fantasy novel #original fiction #i'm gonna finally post that wip intro for the raedoran cycle and then i'm just going to start posting out of context snippets #i don't work on this monster linearly. y'all got spoiled w lacuna #the rest of the RC? a hot mess. still deciding on the ending. lacuna went so smoothly bc i already knew what was going to happen #bc it was supposed to be a prequel short story!! curse u muse!!#anyway i'm SO normal about birdie and fabin. this is the least unhinged you will ever see me about them. just wait until he meets maura :))#fabin the most unfriendly motherfucker in the world is soft for one (1) person. will rip your throat out if you even look at her wrong #not like keelan tho. keelan has attack dog vibes but he can be controlled. nobody controls fabin #what are his goals? :)))))))#rb original #the witch #the raedoran cycle #birdie #fabin #emilia #jack #arthur

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lacewise · 1 year ago

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We don’t talk enough about how good the lace adorning Amidala’s wedding outfit was. Like… that’s good lace (each type conveying something different), and the way it was used completely succeeds in instantly scrambling my “when/where is that from” radar, as intended.

#I have read several articles on it #BUT I NEED MORE #it is so infinitely cool!!!#and well-made!!!#it’s one of the best lace costume designs I’ve ever seen #plus real needle lace!!!#in a movie #that was repurposed!#from antiques!!!! sooooo coool #I want to see it in person so I can drool over it better #the entire ensemble is magical #and the prequel costumes were all really good and interesting #I look at them all the time #despite not being a huge star wars fan

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ibijau · 1 year ago

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regrettably, my library doesn't have any of the riders of pern books, which is really too bad since I'm reaching the end of the darkover books I had borrowed and I wanted something else to read

They do have the locked tomb books (in french) so that was tempting, but I am just not sure I'm emotionally ready to either get into this or find out I don't like it and start being annoyed at 15% of my tumblr dashboard

I guess I need to check what other old school fantasy/sf books they have

#I realise that as much as I love fantasy I mostly just read what my dad had lying around #and our tastes didn't always align #I distinctly remember reading the entire Lyonesse trilogy by Jack Vance just because it was there and hating 85% of it with burning passion #(though the other 15% I really really loved a lot)#(unlike Darkover I absolutely refuse to subject myself to Lyonesse ever again and I doubt Ill want to read anything else of Jack Vance ever #I also have vague memory of other books I'd picked up and dropped #one I think was about those d&d novel dark elves with the spider cult?#another about a prince with a cursed sword that has super powers but pushes him to kill #and one prequel of like a mouse-themed clever guy and his big brawn buddy?#at the times I found these boring but I was young and also I skip fight scenes in novels so that didn't help lol #jau rants #and boy did I rant in the tags this time lol

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anjumstar · 1 year ago

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behind the scenes preview

I just wanna share a scene that I wrote in November 2021. The fic is years away, if it ever comes, but I like this scene a lot, so its worth posting even if the fic never comes to be.

Straight ahead: bkdk, fluff, rated g, talk of babies, an unexpected ship.

***

Twenty-eight was too young to have a baby.

Maybe the rest of society didn’t agree with that, but Katsuki could feel its truth in the way his heart thrummed against the plexiglass, the way his palms were sweating straight through his cotton sweatpants pockets. It was slick and slippery around the ring he pressed into his skin with his thumb. But Round Face had done it. Round Face and fucking Shitty Hair, of all people. And now a baby with the chubbiest cheeks Katsuki had ever seen was sleeping in the little well-baby nursery in the hospital. Cheeks for weeks, that kid had.

The new parents were resting, had been for nearly an hour now. Uraraka by doctor’s request, Kirishima by accident, though Katsuki supposed they’d both earned it. One more than the other, of course.

All their other idiot friends—the ones who’d been able to get off work, at least—were there, milling about the hospital as they were whenever any member of their gang landed themselves in there. Most had planted themselves in the same hallway as Katsuki, cooing at both the new Kirishima baby as well as all the other freshly baked spawn, sleeping or gazing unfocused up at the world with their innocent, googly eyes. This occasion, however, did go against precedent, as it was the first time someone was in the hospital for a good reason.

A good reason. Katsuki’s eyes tracked again to the chunkiest cheeks in the room. Thin wisps of black hair did little to cover his soft little skull, and, from what Katsuki had seen earlier, his eyes were still murky, not yet decided between brown or red or another color altogether. Still sleeping, so calm while all the occupants on Katsuki’s side of the plexiglass would be back to patrolling the streets in five to thirteen hours.

Izuku’s hair had been nearly black one time as a kid. Auntie Inko had been a little overly enthusiastic with the scissors and left most of Izuku’s green curls on the kitchen floor. For the next couple weeks, he’d been all eyes, eyes that were too big for his face without that ridiculously untamable hair. Not so different from the babies, whose eyes were glimmering with artificial light, trying to blink some understanding into it.

Katsuki’s mother had cut Izuku’s hair in the years after. His hair had remained green, green, green.

There was a baby in the corner, many bassinets over from Uraraka’s and Kirishima’s with yellow-green hair. Not the dew-soaked grass green of Izuku’s, but the overgrown grass of a dry field. A rice farm gone long without flooding. Green with an overtone of blond.

The thumping in his chest grew, he felt it all the way down to his clenched fists. Twenty-eight was so young for a hero. Still in their prime. No one from their class had retired yet, none, nor in Class B. What a ridiculous step it was for a hero to take. Truly, truly crazy—Katsuki had always known that Kirishima had hair for brains.

A rude word came to Katsuki’s tongue. An unnecessary announcement that he was out of there, that he was going to go for a damn walk, or something. But no one’s attention was on him. Why would it be, at a time like this? So, quietly, he backed away from the glass, and through the unfamiliar wing of the hospital.

It was Katsuki’s first time in the maternity ward, but he’d been in other wings of the hospital enough to have a general compass in him, guiding his feet in the vague directions of out and away.

He made it to a lounge that had a hanging TV that was muted with chunky subtitles taking up half of the screen. Beyond it was a large set of windows with a view of the city. Calm, as far as Katsuki could see—which wasn’t far, what with all the buildings. But there was no sign of agitation, anything a hero should be taking care of. He cracked his knuckles and kept his hands at chest level as he continued to eye the pedestrians from his vantage a couple floors above

“It’s a lot, isn’t it?”

Katsuki didn’t bother looking away from the cityscape. He’d know that voice ears plugged and body thrown underwater—but a phantasmic reflection of him was barely visible in the glass anyway. He should have known that there was always someone whose attention was on him.

Izuku took Katsuki’s left hand and spread his fingers, giving the wedding band a little twist. “Hmm, from the way you were fiddling with it, I thought there was something wrong with it.”

It was a stupid fucking habit, was what it was. The ring was finally starting to lose some of its newlywed shine after five years of marriage. Almost five. And half of that tarnish was from Katsuki twisting and tugging it like a cliché housewife, waiting for her husband to return from war. But his husband was right here, for once very much not at war or in battle of any kind.

He then stepped further into Katsuki’s line of sight, a big smile on his face behind the disposable mask. Different from his hero smile, mostly in the raise of his eyebrows, and not just because that was the part that Katsuki could see. There was mirth and teasing, an effort to draw a smile out of Katsuki. He didn’t, but he did twist his wrist so that Izuku’s hand was now in his, both falling by their sides.

“It’s fucking weird is what it is,” Katsuki said, his voice quiet enough that it wouldn’t reach any of the other people who’d been drawn to this place for whatever unfortunate reason. “Heroes don’t have kids.”

“Some do,” Izuku replied immediately, even after all these years, wholly unable to hold back precise hero knowledge. “Remember babysitting Rock Lock’s son?”

Did Katsuki ever. After Toogota’s class graduated, the newly minted 2-A had become the go-to class for brat corralling, what with Eri continuing to hang off of Aizawa’s remaining leg like a goddamn insect baby. The kid’s quirk had just manifested and was freezing anything he touched in place. Apparently it was a good opportunity for the heroes-in-training to work on basic quirk counseling, another tool needed in their metaphorical toolkit.

It hadn’t been fun. The critter was so needy and so bad at saying what he needed and using his goddamn words. Nothing Katsuki could imagine anyone in their right mind ever choosing. But here someone from their group finally had, two someones.

“It was hyperbole, dumbass.”

Izuku’s hand wrapped tighter around Katsuki’s, their wrists twisting so there was contact all the way up their arms. “Talk to me, Kacchan. Are you worried for them?”

Finally, Katsuki looked at his husband. His eyes took up less of his face now, despite the fact that his cheeks had slimmed down over the years. But when Katsuki blinked, he could still see a boy of all ages beneath Izuku’s civvies.

“They’ll be fine,” Katsuki said gruffly, turning back to the window again.

For a moment, there was silence, Izuku waiting, giving Katsuki the chance to say more. Katsuki never used to feel any pressure to fill silences, pointed or otherwise, but he didn’t like keeping things from Izuku. Never had, not really. Of all their problems, that had never been a root one.

Finally, quietly: “Is it something you think about?”

Izuku’s eyes were still on Katsuki—they were bright and shiny in his periphery. “Babies?”

“Children.”

“Hmm,” Izuku hummed, looking out the window with Katsuki. Their shoulders, though, drew ever closer, knocking deltoid against meaty deltoid. “I’m not sure. Maybe not so much. Just kind of vaguely. I don’t know, it seemed unlikely. Do you, Kacchan?”

“No,” he said, curt, clipped. “Maybe. Maybe now. I don’t know.”

“Together?”

Izuku’s voice was nearly a whisper, a sound he’d taken years to learn. Not his usual loud pronouncements or accidental mutterings, but a purposeful bit of privacy. Like all of their other forms of intimacy, it had grown over time.

Katsuki’s lip twitched and he hissed out a puff of air. “Dumbass.”

“There are ways people like us can do that now,” he murmured. “If that’s something we would want?”

Yes, they could, but should they? Already, at twenty-eight, Izuku was the most sought-out hero in Japan, and Katsuki was just behind him—they came as a matching set most of the time anyway. Their schedules didn’t always fit in sleep as it was and Katsuki had experienced nine months already of Kirishima fretting over every little thing that could go wrong with a hero having a child. The danger that a kid could be in just for that. Or the kind of parent a hero could turn out to be. Katsuki didn’t have to look farther than Endeavor or Shimura Nana for a front row seat to that shit show.

The signs pointed very clearly toward the logical answer, the empirically correct answer.

But Katsuki and Izuku had home videos of the two of them as soft little toddlers at their house. Katsuki had flipped through Auntie Inko’s photo albums and had the image of Izuku as a baby no bigger than Kouda’s pet rabbits emblazoned in his mind. The image of the brief period of Izuku holding Uraraka’s baby was fresh and squishable in his mind, tactile with how real that moment had been.

No one had more love in their heart than Izuku, and he would make the best dad. Katsuki wanted to see that, wanted the magic want to wave to make that happen.

Not now, God, not now. Not when it had only just begun to occur to him.

“Kacchan?”

Katsuki was clenching Izuku’s hands. Izuku was clenching right back.

“Yes,” he said, quietly, like it was barely true. But growing every second. “It is.”

#anjum writes #bkdk #honestly after writing all the way home i'm not sure i can write another bkdk baby fic #it was so hard to write since i really don't think they'd go for having kids #even in a fic where i made it their choice and sought after i don't think i'd buy it #but i'm so in love with the fic idea?#luckily them having kids wouldn't be till the sequel #so maybe i could still write the prequel #literally y'all if this fic ever comes out its YEARS away hahahaha #so maybe y'all can convince me that they'd want kids before that. please.#i already know that there are things in this scene that are wrong #there IS 1 class a student who's retired. guess who?#and the ages are super wrong lol bkdk have been married for a year-ish #but the rest...hopefully we'll find out one day 😅

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