#they need to all get together by the end tho

[gothicflowers]

damn why did Kyle’s ass block us tho

Continuing this Gaz blurb

*4 months later*

Gaz still felt guilty, and even worse… he couldn’t get off without recalling the way your body moved and voice sounded that night. Gaz was ruined. The innocent pictures he had of you when you two went to the beach once were like a playboy magazine to him. He tried a few hookups from shitty pubs but none compared to how you made him feel. Loved, warm, safe… happy.

He tried going on a few dates… one he accidentally called her your name as they were making out in his car. The other looked like you but lacked personality. Needless to say karma was biting Kyle in the ass.

“So you blocked her, after you took her to the fanciest steakhouse, wine back at her place while sharing secrets… and had the best shag of your life” soap says from the other side of the aircraft. “And let’s not forget all the cute couple shit you two had been doing”

“Who we talking about” ghost questions.

“Lass that Gaz was seeing months ago, and bloody blew it after a quick shag from the sound of it” soap snickers.

“I thought you were still seeing her” ghost questions.

“I didn’t think I’d actually sleep with her, that wasn’t my goal. And no, it’s been a while” gaz defensively replied.

Soap pinches the bridge of his nose “so your original plan was essentially a break off date”.

Gaz shrugs “I didn’t want her last memory of me to be me saying see you later after our usual Sunday walk. Plus we were never technically together”.

Prices eyebrows raised “So you just strung her along for a month and you were going to ghost her regardless of how the night ended”.

“Well… yeah and it was actually more like five months” gaz sheepishly replied.

The men went silent as they gathered their thoughts. Price being the first to speak up after a painful awkward silence “five months, you bastard she probably was falling in love with you, then you decided to pull the shittiest move a man can make”

“I panicked” Gaz shrugs and diverts his eyes from his captains burning gaze.

Ghost chuckles “wrong, you premeditated disappearing from her life. Sounds like you got a fear of commitment”.

Gaz defensive responds “I do not, it’s just with what we do it’s not worth the risk. I mean what if something happens”

“Sounds exactly like something a person with commitment issues would say” ghost quickly replied.

Soap decides to add fuel to the fire “Aye didn’t you do the same thing with the last gal you liked. Maybe it’s the chase you like. Love ‘em and leave ‘em“.

“Fuck off soap” Gaz responds trying to control his irritation.

Price sighs “I didn’t realize how much of my life I wasted having that mentality when I was your age. Had some fun one night stands but the loneliness catches up real quick. Granted things are turning up for me but boy do I feel like I missed out on that young love”.

Gaz starts to think about what price said. After a plane ride home in deep thought he asks price one last question before departing base “So what should I do to get her back”

Prices brows furrowed “You want something optimistic or something realistic”

“Fuck, realistic I guess” gaz leans against the doorframe of prices base office.

Price stands next to a filing cabinet and shakes his head “Honestly I’ll be amazed if she gives you as much as a moment to explain. But if she’s does let you, be honest about why you left and apologize. No point in lying when you have everything to gain and you can’t lose what you’ve already lost Sargent” price gives him a sincere look “regardless of how it turns out you need to let this be a teaching moment. Because maybe she doesn’t take you back, maybe life sends someone else your way. But if you get that lucky you know better than to fuck it up like this ever again”.

Gaz nods “Would flowers be a nice addition to the apology”.

Price smirks “I don’t think flowers will help your cause much, but maybe it’s sweeten her up”.

Gaz nods “thanks, see you later captain”

Gaz needs a plan to get you back, forever hopefully.

*the next day*

She wasn’t even home. So Gaz decides on waiting to see if you’ll come home anytime soon by sitting on your front door steps for two hours. He has no plans to leave until he sees your pretty face.

Gaz scrolls endlessly on his phone when the sound of heels awaken his senses, only to actually look up when he hears your voice “What are you doing here” you very clearly are not happy to see him.

Gaz stands up with flowers in his hand, clearing his voice he carefully starts his plan “I came to explain, but more importantly apologize”. Gaz sheepishly said.

Your eyes look down at the flowers in his hand, appalled. “No need honestly, I’ve moved on and I think you should to”.

Shit this isn’t going well Gaz thinks. Time to take the soft puppy dog approach. He takes a step forward to you and his eyes fill with hurt “Would you at least let me explain, if you don’t want to hear it I’ll leave now but at least let me be honest as to why I ran off”

You huff defeated, hard to say no when he’s looking at you like that but you can’t give in. “Nothing you can say will change my mind”.

“My job. It’s dangerous and I was worried that it wouldn’t work out because of the demands. And I didn’t plan on sleeping with you. Honestly I just wanted you to have a nice night before I disappeared” gaz trying to reach for your hand, you move back.

“That’s great Kyle. Well my boyfriend just left his office and I’m making dinner, so I really don’t have time for this” you fumble with your keys, as they slip to the ground Gaz picks them up and unlocks to door for you.

“At least let me help carry all this in for you and I’ll be on my way” he politely asked. Praying you’ll let him in.

You sigh a defeated “Fine”. You walk in the door first as Gaz grabs the rest of the bags on the porch. He watches as your hips sway, he can feel the blood in body start to boil. Stay calm, stay fucking calm.

Your home still smells like fresh cotton and lavender. Still perfectly tidy and comfortable. He looks over at that corner sofa where you two made out. He closes the front door and walks to the kitchen and sets the groceries on the counter, he notices a silver watch with a rather large band. Must be a big fella. That’s when he hears the front door open and close. A heavy set of footsteps approaches silently.

“I think you should get going now” you say plainly avoiding Kyle’s burning gaze. He hurt you too much for you to have a moment of doubt.

A deep voice speaks as the footsteps stop at the kitchen “Sargent”.

Gaz turns around to the voice in the room and swallows hard.

“Captain”

Pt.3

[macabrecravings]

Newbies Guide to Degrees of Brutality!

Post inspired by @degrees-of-fuck because of this post :) Here I will list everything I remember about it, but take it with a grain of salt --

Degrees of Brutality was a DOL mod set in the US (instead of the UK) after Nazi Germany won WW2. (US was renamed New Berlin" to show allegiance w/ Germany) However, none of this was stated in the game, it was just what the creator said in the Discord.

DOB was an incredibly repetitive, broken, bare-bones mod (it only had a few builds before its removal and there were only a few character interactions you could have. I remember Whitney, Kylar, Harper, and Bailey.

The concept was interesting to me because it turned DOL into a survival game, instead of what it normally is. You had a thirst meter and a food meter that you had to keep track of.

Instead of living in the orphanage, you live in a house with your catonic parents. You need to make money by the end of the week otherwise your landlord will quite literally bomb/set your house on fire while you're gone. I found this out when I didn't make my payment on time and came home to nothing. Just ash. No house, no parents, and I had to live in the alleyways & sleep in a cardboard box.

Speaking of money, there were 2(?) ways to grt it. 1) Working at the Orphanage as a cleaner and 2) Donating your blood to Harper the doctor.

If you worked at the orphanage, you did not get paid very much but it became clear that Bailey was a murderer who was feeding the orphans human meat. So, if the orphans didn't pay him on time, instead of whoring them out or selling them to Eden... He kills them and feeds them to other orphans.

Selling your blood to Harper gives you a lot more money, but you could only do it a few times because it locks you into a bad end. The more you come in, the more obsessed Harper will get with you. They will ask you if you want to do another experiment and this results in them murdering you. There was a blurb at the end about them getting caught.

At the hospital, there is a chance that you will meet an unstable person in the waiting room. They are holding their arm, bleeding through their shirt due to self-harm. When you leave the hospital, you will be ambushed on the street by this individual and it is impossible to outrun them. This is Kylar :)

Kylar keeps you as a pet. You are given a dog bowl where they feed you soup that reeks of human meat, and they will cut your arms and legs off to keep you from running away. Unlike DOL Hysterial Kylar, DOB Kylar is unstable to a point of delusion and due to the extremely poor writing it was incredibly ... offensive(?)/stereotypical. They will also give you prosthetic limbs that they get from Harper. (The two of them work together a lot.)

Amongst working to get money, you have to eat and drink. This can be done by buying groceries for your house or by digging in the diner's trash and drinking puddles in the alleyway. Let's be honest, no one was making enough money in this game to buy groceries. They wanted you to dig into the dumpster for greasy hamburgers and drink gravelly alley water. It damaged your health, but honestly it was what I liked in the game pfpffjgjgn....

In the alleys, there are cardboard boxes that you can sleep in. But also, Whitney encounters! All they did was force you to smoke / eat cigarettes. If you refused, they'd cut a glasgow smile onto your face.

The encounters on the street from NPCs were so much more frequent than in DOL, and there was NO option to save. Except in your bedroom / sleeping areas. No save-slumming allowed. No saving before encounters, no escaping the frequent REPETITIVE encounters.

If you escaped Kylar, they'd bring you back and the whole thing would happen again and again. Cut your limbs off and have it show on your character model as if they hadn't already done it... Crawl around on your legs even tho they had been removed XD It didn't make a lot of sense.

IIRC, there was a casino. I didn't spend any time there, I don’t think there was much to do.

There was also a bridge that had guards and you had to pay to get across (get out of the slums/ your area). Here there was a shop, alleyways, and a library. This was hypothetically where you could get your skills up (like the grades & get new clothes bc literally 90% of DOB was running around naked). But, yeah. It didn't work too well. Cause it's impossible to make enough money for any of it and not die before then XD

It was the most Grindy Mod EVER and had No rewards for all of that grinding, just disappointment.... This is why I adore when people create their own DOB AUs :) ( @degrees-of-fuck @digenerate-trash ) As a horror/ dark fiction enjoyer I think the concept of "DOL but more brutal" is cool, but the execution was awfullllllll..... It's kind of lost media atp but there wasn’t much media to um... archive even XD

So, this is my archival of it~

[deadchannelradio]

i just think bruce isn't very good at grief. not that it's something anybody can be "good" at it's an emotion and loss is just loss there's no moral good or evil attached to loss but he has built his entire life as a monument to the dead in a way that makes it so he can never really interact with the living. bruce himself is pushing through the veil of the dead to interact with his (living) (sometimes undead) children in essence he does haunt them and because he is incapable of seeing them as anything other than pre-dead individuals they haunt him right back.

in a way this is something of the issue he has with dick when dick is a child- Bruce loves Dick terribly, fiercely, and with his entire heart, which is why he is so brutally controlling and awful to dick. he is terrified of losing him- to other pursuits, to growing up, to death- and so he ends up sabotaging himself over and over by becoming violent in the face of those threats. when you spend all of your time pre-mourning it almost is a relief to actually mourn- kicking Dick out of the manor is easier than experiencing Dick leaving, so he kicks Dick out before Dick can grow out of him.

the issue there- both in the metanarrative and in bruce's life itself, is that batman needs a robin. Robin is in essence Batman's rubber ducky to allow him to verbalize things to the reader, so he's more opaque, and without robin he's just less fun, and Nightwing is making big waves that are almost drowning batman stories out. and in the narrative Bruce is unmoored from his grounding point (robin) and adrift and unsure and misses him terribly, so he finds another little boy and puts him in robin's clothes!

Jason and Bruce have such an. ugh. it's kind of so insane it's so fast paced and so close so rapidly in a way that you only really get from people going through stressful situations together. Bruce does everything in his power to not make the same mistakes he made with dick- he adopts jason immediately he made sure their relationship had no ambiguity he is trying to hold on to jason in the ways he could not hold on to dick and like Yes they loved each other Yes jason was good for bruce and bruce was good for jason Yes it was some of Bruce's best (arguably only) parenting (the first child to call bruce his father!) yes they loved each other fiercely. but it was so mind bogglingly codependent. ive said this before sorry friends but i have to say it again Jason is the only robin who like. did not have friends. did not have a team. did not have A Life Outside Of The Batman. he didn't have peers, who might make him want to change or grow in ways bruce isnt ready for. he just had batman!

and so in this completely insular world when Jason fucks up (you can read how that situation broke down in whatever way you want to- i personally think felipe garzonas jumped tho [shrug]) and Bruce sees a way Jason might change and leave him and freaks and immediately falls back on How He Acted With Dick. but jason and bruce don't have dick and bruce's relationship and jason has nobody else and so it is just like an all out rejection to jason, who immediately starts looking for a new parent.

this is all because of Dick and Bruce's previous relationship with a sidekick! he's haunted by dick. he says over and over he wishes he could go back to those days of batman and robin. those days were Bruces high point as a person if not as a parent and he wants them back so badly he is willing to try and recreate it with someone else- everything Jason is as robin only exists because Dick grayson carved that path in the hillside for him- he's wearing dick's colors and his fucking name, for christssakes. And not only does this attempted redemption/recreation not work (because people are people and cannot be replaced) but it does work in the worst way possible, because now Jason Todd is never going to be able to grow up, just like bruce wanted. worst monkeys paw curl in the world.

Bruce is an extremely reactionary person. All of this ^ is a reaction to loss. everything that comes after is reaction to loss. Bruce has been mourning for so long that he doesn't actually know how to function outside of it- who he is outside of grief does not actually exist. it could! arguably it even does! but bruce does not believe he exists without the dead and his grief, and so he keeps writing his own joy out of existence in his internal narrative, thusly denying himself from actually experiencing it. And he is insistent on dragging everyone else down with him! and in some ways they are dragging themselves down, but Bruce is the only one literally sitting in a dark hole in the ground with some poor baby's clothes on a mannequin with biohazard brain juices all over it. He doesn't want to lose anybody but he knows he will because he believes everything to already be over, and so he reacts to things as though it's already done, and in his mourning of things yet to happen he does not live in the now, and so he loses people. over and over and over again, and without having spent the time with them that he wanted to spend.

its kind of a classic tale. Bruce is just the only man unlucky enough to have to do it over and over again.

so yeah. long rant about basically what you just said. bruce would rather lose exactly 0 children but he has already lost them all in his mind (and in some cases has actually put them in the ground) and all of his relationships with his kids are highly valuable to him, and acting like only one exists or is more important than the others actually shoots your own narrative in its foot because they all dont actually exist without each other. except for dick grayson. who kind of did just Do That. he set the precedent for all this & Bruce is reacting to Dick's ghost in many of his decisions. it's like how when you were a kid and you would do the food web demonstrations in science class and with every string you cut more of the web falls apart way beyond that one string. except dickie g is a keystone species like mosquitos or something and when you get rid of him 80% of the ecosystem dies off because the thing that ate the thing before them that ate the thing before them that ate the thing before them that ate mostly dickie g died due to dickie g being gone

tldr relationships are incredibly complicated and build off of each other and so cutting one out or trying to cheapen it actually ruins the whole thing but you know what you do you booboo [skull] [crylaugh]

i love when people try to make bruce and jason's relationship cuter by making it sound like dick does NOT exist AT ALL like "batman's first son and he loved him" and "he would rather lose everybody than lose jason" like im pretty sure that bruce would prefer to lose neither dick nor jason but you know what you do you 💀😂

[uhhlifeig]

300 Followers Event!!

guys this is insane 😭 ive been on tumblr for like six months??

anygays!! i have a new thingy to celebrate my like... milestone or whatever

so. as yall know (maybe?) i write microfics. (i also sometimes write full fics but shh we dont talk abt my google drive folders-)

but as i was saying, i write microfics. and i also dont have nearly enough fics on ao3. so why not make an event where people send in a word or a prompt or a ship or whatever and make that a collection of work??

great idea, right?

right????

anygays, here we go again!!

EM'S EMPORIUM (v2)

ignoring how i reused the name from last time-

you guys can give me prompts and characters and ships and stuff via asks, and you'll probably get something back. but those are just the instructions :)

(lasts from 2/26 to 5/01 before i post the collection)

(this is also specifically targeted towards the marauders fandom ppl)

FOR FOLLOWERS:

✨ - i come up with fic prompts, ships and stuff included

🥳 - ...and they all lived happily ever after!! (no voldemort)

🥺 - whump

🫶 - getting together

🎵 - song inspired (need name of song)

🫠 - give me a ship and ill kill one of the people and make the other suffer

FOR MOOTS:

💀 - i kill off a character in the most heart-wrenching way i can think of (character needed)

🤑 - any au (just tell me which one)

🥹 - angst with a happy ending

🔪 - horror/thriller/murder is involved somehow??

😍 - soulmate au

🗣️ - you give me a prompt. any prompt. and i will write it into a microfic. (i dont do smut tho im a minor :D)

also moots can do the followers stuff too lmao in case that wasnt already implied 😭

a few tags under the cut:

@antarescamusxo @outromoony @eloose @whydousernamesevenexist @matty-os-blog @thebibutterflyao3@rainystarssx @d3l-official @boba-pearl @n1c0tin3 @m0ssywill0w @wylanlupin

@bralnwashed @madame-marauder @iliveonblandfanfics @sweetest-thing-in-hell @reptilian-rapscallian @criimsonreg @tastelessleather @my-castles-crumbling @therewasnofloorbtw @wyndigos-blog @starkayezer @moonandstarshangoutinbars @amy-harper @reguluskeys @noblehouseofgay @aesthetic-writer18 

@dutifullynervouscreation @equippedtolove @allonsy-moony @thequeen0fhearts @lienspien @abs0l3m @dandelionflowery @ethan-torchios-bitch @julia-lokidottier @estellethewriter @arch-angeless @discoveredreality @anything-for-my-moony-1971 

@tea-blankets-andstars @finntheworm81 @hmyrine @charlie-kelly-variant @wolfstar-love-child @blakelakely @ashstillalive @smuttylyra @almostdecaffeinatedfun @love-hate-love00 @will-you-be-a-satanist-with-me 

@taleofapart-timepoet @ttroubledwaters @aletharaej @lambthebeloathed @lady-stardust-sang @forensic-b1tch-aiden @star-and-moon-shipper @adhara2034 @lover-of-astraeus @corey-writes-stuff @sxmnc @wishiwereheather13 @regulus-cannot-swim @yourlocalbadgerscales @hotteststar @moutainrusing

[poisonkkay]

J — HUMMINGBIRD [cyb77 OC]

Yk what: here's my cyberpunk OC lore cuz I love him lots, anxiety be damned. Most of the 2070 mess comes from my first CybRED campaign, the rest just fitted together like a puzzle the more I kept writing LMAO

— 2070

Netrunner part of a private task force against cyberpsychos (Mar-S), Jay comes from an old nomad clan that fell apart during his teen years. He ended up in NC shortly after that, and there he met his best friend (and doc) Harlow (@plasticsadstick's OC). Before joining the task force in 2070 (together with Harls), he worked for a few years for NCPD and C-SWAT, given his drive to be useful and help others — same drive that made him quit both jobs, given the insane corruption of that system. Already in Mar-S team during the Unification War, he didn't stay there long enough either, quitting after a last, almost-suicidal mission, that damaged him permanently: he ended up with a fucked-up shard in his head that haunts him with not-so-kind voices, almost killed him, and yet he managed to save his teammates and avoid the collapsing of one hell of a breach in the Blackwall of last years — NetWatch had to be involved to solve the shit as well. After that, he just wanted some peace of mind.

— 2071 / 2075

After meeting other runners (including Kiwi, who he has.. things going on) and various mercs, and having lost contact with the whole Mar-S, he starts to work alone and tries to make a name for himself in NC. He doesn't care about fame and glory tho, he is still moved by his strong need for justice: that's why he spends most of the time between 2071 and '74 hunting down many people involved in abuse and SA cases, moved mostly by the discovery of Kiwi's past. This leads to J getting along with the Mox and many dolls around NC. Beside his revenge hunting, he still takes different gigs around town, proving once again his incredible netrunning skills that grant him quite a reputation especially around the Afterlife circles — working also with Rogue.

— 2076 / 2085

After the death of many friends and especially of his beloved Kiwi, it's a fast downfall. He starts digging around the dirt of corporations, killing the wrong people and fucking around with the Blackwall as well, which only gets him the unwanted attentions of both corpos, pigs and NetWatch. He gets tracked down by them around 2080 after many failures, but instead of getting zero'ed, he gets recruited by them — if you can't beat someone, may as well drag 'em by your side. As if shit couldn't get worse, given the death of So Mi of some years prior (King of Cups + Don't Fear the Reaper endings) and the desperate research for a replacement by president Myers herself, in 2082 J ends up forced to work for the government, against his own morals, against all the promises of a new life of years prior — you can leave the corporation, but that life will never leave you, right? — all to protect someone, the only person he still cares about in the City.

That year Jay Welles disappeared without a trace from NC, believed dead. And that year the NUSA gained a new, deadly puppet to use.

// guess I'll meet him again in my next 2085 campaign, yikes? Also the cyberware placements do not follow the cyb77 rules and limits but the RED ones, which allowed more insanity LMAO — I doubt anyone will read this far but any question is welcome <3

[nixon-stars]

ooooooh you wanna yap about Clara so badddddd (please yap about her please please please please please)

HI YES I REALLY DO

I dunno how much I'll talk but I'm putting in the lil read more antway

HIIIIIII SO

For those not in the know, Clara is my sweet evil baby girl also the main antagonist for my oc world and story, rn going under the name 'Pakshapuram' (definitely going to change it tho, also 'paksha' coming from Sanskrit for wing and puram being a common suffix for towns in south india, like Kanchipuram)

She was born and raised in Pakshapuram, a city town thing that is one of a few cities around the area (this area is pretty isolated the only people that come through were born and raised or shifty guys working through black market sort of trades).

She was born the only child to Amara, who with no partner and no other kids and a big expectations on her, put everything into raising Clara. She's a pretty typical Indian mum though, rarely giving affection or praise, but it works, and Clara knows she's well loved.

She is also a bharatanatyam dancer!! Which doesn't help with the pressure but whatever, Clara's life is good, she has her mum, lots of friends, people all around her that want to help, and most importantly she has Xavier.

Xavier, I could talk about him forever, but what you need to know is that he and Clara are CLOSE. Always together, never separated, all the aunties look on and call them "heart and soul" (ഹൃദയവും ആത്മാവും) they don't leave each other's side right

But there's no good character without a touch 🤏 of trauma so, yayyyy

While dancers learn bharatanatyam, after they learn everything and stuff they get this big ceremony debut into their official career, it's called an Arangetram, and it's a bigggg deal okay?

Also like a year before this, Amara find out she's expecting!!!! Gives birth to a baby boy!!!! Very healthy!!!! Nothing will happen to him promise!!!!!!

Anyway on the day of Clara's Arangetram, she goes to her aunty's house to get dressed quickly in her saree (if you've ever tried to put on a saree you KNOW this isn't quick in the slightest)

She comes back and 😱😱😱 her mum is a statue wthhh?????

And her baby brother is gone?????? (It has nothing to do with amara's old wlw situationship that ended terribly and sourly and left a lot of unanswered questions and lingering feelings whattt)

She's confused af obviously and angry and WHO TF TURNED MY MUM INTO A STATUE y'know very justified, and she overhears some people talking about how Dragons???? might be responsible????

You need to know that dragons are heavily venerated in Pakshapuram, the religion of the city revolves around how important dragons are too the world right and how they shouldn't be touched or anything yeah

An old guy came up and said that he had known about a prophecy that something like this could happen and blah blah blah Clara's in charge now

But like she's sixteen so that's alottttt of pressure to put on a literal child you would think? NOPE they said make her queen now

So now Clara's in charge and also A GRIEVING TEENAGER and she is stressed

And woahhhjj perfect timing famine through the land!!!!!!!

Every one is really hungry and Xavier, who is now general, asked her what she wanted to do about it and maybe just maybe let's use the food we had stored just in case something like this happened????

Clara goes "no girl im using that"

And Xavier's like "what why we don't need to use those???"

And Clara like "yeah we do thats what I'm referring the troops I sent to go find a dragon for me to kill to get revenge for killing my mum"

And Xavier's like "you crazy bitch people are starving can you be insane later"

Clara throws a temper tantrum and exiles him woooooop #girlboss

Years pass and Xavier's making a under ground resistance against Clara because she has moved on from killing people with her ignorance to just killing them if they disagree with her which isn't cool

Clara goes very insane with the grief and stress and everything she's soooo unhappy and very evil about it she's talking to the statue of her mum and she's not doing well

And here's about where the main story starts, and I haven't even talked about the protagonists

Anyway I wonder what happened to that baby brother????? 🤔🤔🤔 I guess we'll never knowwwwww

[thehozziest]

Need a red notice au with Odysseus, Diomedes, and Penelope

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

Imagine you kiss the girl of your dreams and she reacts like that 😭 anyway I've been thinking a lot about. Nhnmgmh amphibia role swap AU and the unrequited sashannarcy love wheel.

The love wheel in question:

[blighted-lights]

i think it'd be rlly funny if ravage and minimus hated each other btw. the only reason they get along is bc of their mutual connection to megatron. and even that isn't enough sometimes lmao

[vice-like]

just saw this one in the main tag and it got me thinking... "wanting to do the right thing but having your actions distort your goals" is obviously about natori, he even reflects upon it directly more than once during the chapters BUT even tho world unbent is from natori's pov, i always thought it wasn't just about him but also about matoba and the exorcist world. for me it was clear that midorikawa wanted to expand upon the exorcists and thought natsume's pov wouldn't have been enough for this case (i also think she always wanted to expand upon natori's and matoba's younger days as well)

so with that in mind i tried thinking if that could apply to matoba too and it might be a stretch but i think it does, but in the sense that "the right thing" for matoba and natori are two different things and matoba might not even think abt doing it along those lines

like, from what we've seen, i interpret that matoba genuinely thinks the matoba clan has a responsibility to protect ppl, regardless if they can see yokai or not and he takes that very seriously, most recent example being what he said abt a previous matoba head being unable to protect the miharu; also to achieve this the clan must be powerful above all others and for that he needs to do anything and if he has a limit we haven't seen it yet. we see that during world unbent ("i won't let us fall"), but most recently during homura arc when he was willing to bet his own life just to be able to control a powerful vessel (being shortsighted enough abt the possibility that natsume had to snap him out of it), he's power hungry, but weirdly enough he's like that because it's "the right thing to do" or what he must/needs to do, the matoba must be powerful to be able to protect anyone and anything ("you can't protect anything if you're not powerful, shuuichi-san")

so "having your actions distort your goals", how does that apply to matoba in a world unbent? midorikawa was merciful enough to let us know his initial goal (or what he wants ppl to think his goal is?): "i'm looking for allies i can use" and at first he was definitely testing if natori could be that, but by the second part (that tellingly starts with a companion matoba artwork to natori's in the first part) i think he wanted to work with natori so badly simply bc he was a peer his age, probably the first and only in the exorcist world and for this interpretation i have no evidence just vibes lol besides this part in midorikawa's afterword from homura arc

anyways, for me this conversation during the second part of world unbent is the best example of matoba's actions distorting his goal:

in my interpretation matoba's goal here was to be picked by natori to be that person, to be his peer, to be the one that teaches him and works with him and "he's better" bc he's more powerful than takuma-san and that's a fact (also idt he wanted to be his "mentor" per se, i think he wanted to be closer than that but that's my bias lol). as i see it, matoba was not trying to bad mouth takuma (and i think natori understood that too), but simply stating what's most important: power, which is ultimately very different from the things that natori puts first, even tho he's also seeking to be a more powerful exorcist

another thing that is also funny about these two understanding but mostly misunderstanding each other is that natori wants to become powerful so he could be needed, so he can protect ppl, "do the right thing", which is the same but also different from the reason why matoba seeks power and the kind of power they seek is also different but the same in one aspect, natori wants spiritual power but also "power" to better himself, to be a better person, while the power matoba seeks is spiritual but also a power that will make the matoba clan unbeatable which can be power over ppl

the way his actions distort his goal here is this: natori focuses on the fact that matoba values spiritual power and the power one can have over another more than someone's character and what natori wishes to learn from ppl like takuma is how to be better as a person so he can carve his own path or at least finally find what his path even is and how to set himself in it. this blinds him to anything else, him and matoba are fundamentally different, end of story. and so from his pov he can not see what matoba is offering which was actually matoba's main goal in this conversation: "I can teach you, I can work with you, I can protect you, I can help you become more powerful, I can protect ppl, so you should stick with me, you sould use me instead of him" and matoba's shocked reaction is proof he was misunderstood and natori's reaction to this conversation was unexpected to him, if my interpretation of what he meant is right or not is up to debate tho

so if natori realises and reflects upon his "actions distorting his goal" does matoba do the same? and that's what intrigues me a lot here, because honestly i don't know, we are not shown that ever. does matoba realise how his actions can hinder his goals? does he care enough to reflect on it? does he care abt how he's perceived? does he care about how natori perceives him specifically? and honeslty the way he gets "worse" abt this in the present timeline (being an unsettling little shit especially towards natsume) makes the interpretation that he doesn't care enough to change and so doesn't reflect upon it seem plausible but when it comes to matoba maybe it's simpler that that:

from afterword for chapters 52-54

he's just like that, he is who he is, the matoba clan head but also matoba seiji and he's not afraid of his mistakes, he'll face them head on even if they distort his goals. most interesting tho, while i do think he's like that partially bc he's a little shit and likes having fun ruffling ppl's feathers, i think it's interesting how there's a possibility of him seeing that habit as a mistake, idk if that interpretation is right but matoba is a character that is difficult to interpret especially bc we dont get his pov, he's a confusing character and the fact we never get into his head makes him even more multifaceted. now that we're getting more into matoba clan drama maybe someday we'll get his pov, but until then ig it souldn't be too hard to think a person notices and reflects upon their mistakes right? well, unless the person is matoba seiji, then i dont know.

there's other things i want to talk abt here, especially the fact that natori wants to be needed and current timeline matoba might actually need him, but does natori know that? you think the "a burden can be shared" bs might be an indication that he does, but i don't think he actually does lol also the fact matoba was seeking someone to use but ended up wanting to be used instead to this day (and is ecstatic abt it during homura, one of the many reasons why he looks like he's having the time of his life during those chapters imo), idk just the fact natori recoils at the wording of "someone to use" but wants to be useful himself and matoba ends up wanting to be used by him so badly it's funny (and also a little sad). just these two always wanting the same thing but mostly not and understanding but mostly misunderstanding each other more than anyone ever could for one another, how they could go together seamlessly but mostly don't yet i dont have the capacity to expand upon those right now, midorikawa gotta give me more so, anyways

[mohntilyet]

Personal headcanon about the "you picked the wrong dellamorte" line, I don't think illario actually likes rook outside the context of them being someone close to lucanis. Like rook on their own isn't much to him, but when they meet it's yet another person talking about his cousin (why isn't he good enough for whatever job they're hiring for?) and on top of that they somehow bring him back from the dead (another whole can of worms for illario). Now he starts turning on the charm, but whether he's actually interested or this is just one more thing his cousin has that he doesn't and it gets under his skin, who knows. Either way, rook ignores illario, the guy who lives off his charm, and is instead interested in the guy who's never even dated before and thinks giving someone a knife is how to flirt. Infuriating

NO THANK YOU !! i am genuinely sorry if i have ever implied illario is into rook like i see some takes about it and unless it like ties into your rook's personal backstory i don't seriously think he's romantically jealous. at all. my enjoyment of that line stems from illario's pathological need to make it about himself and not see his strengths but what lucanis has, and therefore what he doesn't. he's annoyed enough to try and goad you in the middle of a fight about the 'wrong' dellamorte and completely blind to the fact that the venatori are at best, a stupid fucking alliance, and at worst, a cult that will devour the crows from the inside out and illario would have been the one to give them the keys. he sees lucanis make allies, needs his own, and instead of charming the other talons/houses as he should, he (probably spitefully) picks the venatori. or maybe he just thought it would be easier. ugh he makes me want to telekenetically throw him around

[lloydfrontera]

In my opinion, the reason the reunion scene was skipped was because the author couldn’t figure out a way to write it non-romantically and gave up after a while

honestly. i kinda agree with you nonnie.

it just. the set up to the scene is sooooo romantic. you have lloyd being absolutely devastated at the thought he's not going to see any of his loved ones ever again and that he's been dropped back into his terrible life, to the place he admitted he'd rather die than go back to,,, and then someone knocks at the door and when he opens it this is the sight that greets him:

his best friend, the person he's closest to, the one he's spent years with, the one he promised a peaceful life at his side, the one he wanted to grow old with, the one he sacrificed everything for, the one he effectively gave his life to save, the one he thought he'd never see again, standing at his door, having crossed literal dimensional barriers to get to him, a soft and teary smile on his face as he tells him "i missed you"

like. c'mon.

i'm all for platonic interpretations, i'm aroace, i love me a good best friendship as much as the next guy, but,,,, isn't this,,, like,,, really fucking romantic??? extremely so??? am i??? reading too much into it?? because it feels really, really romantic to me.

and like you say. where do you go from there. what response could lloyd give that doesn't involve throwing himself at javier and clinging to him with all of his strength. what conversation could these two have that doesn't involve them seeing how truly devoted they are to each other. what resolution does their arc together have that isn't them spending the rest of their lives together, at each other's side, like they so dearly wanted to.

but. alas. that wasn't the story bk moon wanted to tell. and that's very much his right. i just think that if he didn't want me to assume there's no in-character and narratively satisfying version of that conversation that doesn't end with them kissing he should've at least tried to give us something. and not completely skipped it lol

but that's just my opinion too :]

[moogghost]

did more cassette beasts doodles, mostly of my oc buuuut i wanted to try drawing a few canon characters in my style too :3

[nenoname]

me: oh i totally get it if some folks dont jive with same coin theory, plus it's strange to conceptualise at first--

me when i see people call it lame:

[citree]

Could you draw five having a siamese (I just see him with a Siamese cat-)

Totally :D

Here’s five and the cat he Didn’t Want (but the cat he ended up with anyway🤭)

[akkivee]

i was watching the bonus video that comes with buying all the fan meetings and got to fp’s part and like!!!!! shiraimu’s nails were painted with his teammates’ colours the day of the live omg 🥺🥺🥺