#this story got way darker than I initially intended

[arlequinelunaire]

Danganronpa Showa: Prologue Part 2

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At least I got to see that Genpachi, that eagle, and I weren't the only ones around. Standing here inspecting the cavern were four others our age, the one who first approached us being a prim and proper boy with stark white hair beneath a cap, remarkably bushy brows, and wearing a black Nehru jacket with gold epaulettes. 

"Greetings, it's good to see the rest of us gathering," he smiled and gave a sharp bow, "I am Ishimaru Toranosuke, and it's a pleasure to make your acquaintances. I have been called a great many things, a political genius, an effortless leader, but at Hope's Peak I am enrolled as the Ultimate Manager. My dream is no less to become Prime Minister of our fair Japan, so all of us may embark on the road to recovery".

"I smell narc," Genpachi muttered under his breath to me.

"T-that's Sakamoto Genpachi, Ultimate Jazzman. And I'm- I'm Enoshima Tsubasa, I'm the, well, Ultimate Pilot," I said, before I sighed, "Guess that's not much of a talent though, given we're all trapped underground like this".

"Relax, bub. There's no way anyone can keep me, the Ultimate Jailbreaker, down here, so you'll be up and flying in no time," smirked the next student, a man so hulking I could've mistaken him for a teacher. Stubble forming on his chin, the rest of his face was hidden by a black balaclava and beanie, though his smile showed braces that looked like barbed wire. The balaclava combined with his striped shirt made think of a raccoon. He had several keychains around his belt, a set of knives and spoons clutched between his fingers on his right hand, and a... cookbook in his left. I saw there was even still a ball-and-chain attached to his leg, which he was a bit too playfully swinging around.

"Alcatraz, Cowra, Hachijo, Hashima, no chains can contain me. Oh yeah, you can call me Katsu Yudai".

"I assure you, no such breakout will be necessary," Toranosuke spoke up, shooting a glare up at Katsu, "Hope's Peak Academy had to be relocated underground for safety during the war. Spreading wild accusations of imprisonment will only cause panic among our student population.

Anyway, to return to our initial subject," the Manager coughed for emphasis and turned back to look at me, "So, you say you are from the Enoshimas? Ah yes, a well-respected military family with a storied background, delightful to have you here. As for our 'Ultimate Jazzman' though," Toranosuke furrowed his brow, before he shrugged and said, "Well, if it's what Hope's Peak has permitted..."

"Wise man once said 'Nothing is true. Everything is permitted'," came Genpachi's response, which Toranosuke just brushed off.

I tried to be more courteous. "T-thank you for your welcome, Ishimaru. Um, unusual a welcome as this is, it's really an honour for me to be here," I said, bowing in return.

"Likewise," said a girl with a wavy pink bob, a darker shade than mine, who was wearing headphones, not a sight I saw often other than on officers. She had on a beige jacket over a ruffled blouse with a rose pinned on it, and an also beige ankle-length skirt patterned with tiny white dots. "My, I don't intend to be presumptuous, but... I assume you'd be familiar with me. Most of Japan is after all, at least with my voice," she then asked.

I was left scrambling to think of where I could possibly know this girl from, until I remembered that broadcast I'd heard last night (at least, I guessed it was last night).

"Oh, I know, you're the Ultimate Radio Broadcaster! I-I think I listen to your radio show, you were talking about Hope's Peak and how you'd be there, a-and you also mentioned Ishimaru," I staggered back as I said, unable to believe I was meeting a national radio presenter.

"What's the big deal? I've got better tunes than her on rotation 24/7," Genpachi had to remark.

She politely laughed, hand up to her mouth. She then said, choosing to focus on me, "Why thank you, I'm always grateful to meet a fan. I can understand why you took a while to recognise my voice, even someone like can forget how people sound different on air than in person. Well, as we're all going to be schoolmates, um, I believe you are entitled to my proper name. Please, call me Benibara Momoka".

Wait, oh no, as Benibara was the Ultimate Broadcaster, then was there a chance of-? I'd have to ask that Voice, that 'Ultimate Mission Control', about her in private... if they'd even give an answer.

As I was still uncomfortable with the thought of brining the Voice up in public, I tried to breach the topic a little by saying, "Wow, they can sure do some amazing things with radio these days, huh? Like, even send waves straight into a person's head, um, I'd imagine anyway".

Benibara had to tilt her head at me, but she then said, "Ah, I see you've been tuning into our Science Fiction broadcast". Well, that got me nowhere.

That left one person here, a girl with round, rimless glasses framed by bronze-blonde hair ending in curls, wearing a dark blue dress with a white cravat over a lime green labcoat. Multiple test-tubes were stuffed into her pocket protector, a scribble-covered notepad poked out of her burgundy purse and had on a wristwatch fitted with far more counters than just the time.

"Guten tag," she said, bowing and smiling, before she twitched and stepped back a little. "Um, guess it is no surprise I am from Germany, ah ha. Um, if I may make a request?" she then asked.

"Sure, ask away," I said, trying to break the ice.

She sighed out. "It does feel a little spoilt of me, given how open everyone here has been with their talents. But, well, I would prefer to keep my Talent a secret, confidential as per request, for now. Do not worry, it is indeed listed on the Academy records, I shall happily reveal it in due time, once we're all.... comfortable," she fidgeted.

Toranosuke had to fold his arms and remark "Secrets are not ideal for group cohesion, but... I do suppose there is nothing in Hope's Peak Rules about obfuscating one's Talent, at least to other students. By all means then, if you must".

"Oh, thank you thank you, that helps me a lot," she perked up right away, before she gulped and said, "Eh, okay, I will of course give you my name. Hildegard Schulz, pleasure to meet you."

Looking around the underground, I could see that the second floors and higher of both Hope's Peak buildings were cut off by the cavern roof. I figured this left any passage upwards either within the buildings themselves, had their upper floors not become encased in stone, or through one of the many tunnels that at present had been blocked off by cooled magma. Speaking of magma, the strong sulfuric smell and ashen taste within this cave made me flinch as I tried heading forwards in it, though looking around it seemed like Momoka and I were the only ones having trouble, as the rest proceeded onto the North Building. Momoka then turned and looked and me a little funny. She said, "Huh, it's strange. I've mostly spent my time cooped up in radio stations, but you said you were a pilot, right?" before she then stepped back, "Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude, ah, i-if I came off that way". "You mean used to like the ashes and smoke of the warfield, right?" I said back to her, and also tried to tell her, "Hey look, I don't think you were imposing at all. But yeah, I was only really in the air force around the end of the War, so I only saw so many battles. I mean, I'm here as a Pilot, not like the Ultimate Dogfighter". Momoka however then added, "Then again, with all the bombings, I guess most of Japan has gotten used to ash and sulfur, more so than any volcano could make us". I bit my lip as she brought that up. "Yeah, my bad, I shouldn't have forgotten that" I mumbled. "Ahem, time is a wasting," Toranosuke then said as he walked back up to us. He then grabbed my arm to drag me further along, though granted I wasn't exactly moving at that fast a pace, while Momoka stumbled as she raced to keep up.

[thewickedbohemian]

Another poll related to my project ideas (please DO NOT STEAL)

Some clarification because the poll options had a word limit

the girl reporter lead in my queer Twelve Dancing Princesses is intended to be inspired by Katherine from Broadway's version of Newsies (and this movie would take place around that same historical era) and I thought it'd just be better to have a girl reporter lead initially after the story (and who can blend in better with the twelve princesses) who then ends up falling for one of the princesses than how the original story has a guy after princess-as-prize-to-be-won

the Tiger Lily thing is because not only have I felt Disney should deserve a shot at redemption for how the original Peter Pan ended up but (unless it was explained and I just don't know) it's always fascinated me what the hell Native Americans were doing in Neverland in the first place so I thought (if it wouldn't be offensive to write about a fictional tribe that doesn't exist in reality) it'd be a cool sort of prequel to write (albeit with Native cultural consultants or w/e) about a tribe escaping white settlers to a land always thought to be mythical perhaps mainly due to a badass princess leading the way. I apologize if any of this would end up being insensitive, I won't make it if it's too disliked and it wasn't meant to be.

what I mean by modernized-a-la-Tangled is my version of The Marvelous Land Of Oz would be tweaked-somewhat for modern sensibilities the way Tangled did to the original Rapunzel story (e.g. getting rid of the scene where this book's particular wicked witch gets scared off via talking mice because women are afraid of mice right) but it'd keep more of the core story than Tangled did

yeah I know the story of Purim goes to some R-rated places but those would be toned down (e.g. offscreen implied-violence or the sexual elements getting dialed back to around the level something like Aladdin could get away with) and while this would still be on the thematically-darker side of Disney movies if it was indeed made one (like The Hunchback Of Notre Dame or even Coco) I think it still has the potential for a cool story with some relevant themes (like inner beauty or the importance of speaking out) and it'd give us a Jewish Disney Princess that's more than just what Elena Of Avalor gave us with Princess Rebecca and do so without mentioning God (as the story of Purim is one of the only "Jewish holiday backstories" if not the only one that doesn't involve god at all)

[edream93]

I’m Hooked On All These Feelings (Harry of Auradon AU) Part 9

Hey everyone! Sorry that I haven’t updated since October. It was a combination of being stuck and just having a lot of different stuff going on in my life. I’m honestly not 100% satisfied with this chapter but let me know what you all think. This is also posted on on AO3 or FF.net. Here’s the link for Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3, Part 4, Part 5,  Part 6 ,  Part 7, and Part 8 of the story so far.

TRIGGER WARNING: There are some abusive elements in this chapter. Nothing too detailed but if you’re uncomfortable with that but still want a basic summary so that you can continue on with the story, just message me or shoot me an ask.

She was laughing at her.

She. Was. Laughing. At. Her.

She was laughing at her.

(Why was she laughing at her? Didn’t she care? Didn’t she knew what it did to have someone who was so integrated into your soul to laugh at you?)

The mocking laughter followed the half-fae as she slipped down the wharf, arms frantically pinwheeling as if the air would become solid, providing something that would halt her slippery path.

Disbelief quickly turned into anger once she was able to grab a railing along the side of the wharf, keeping her out of the shark infested waters. The laughing that had followed her suddenly turned into worried shouts colored with concern but that still didn’t cool her fiery ire.

No one was supposed to be laughing at her.

She wasn’t supposed to be laughing at her.

“You give her too much freedom,” her mother had mentioned offhandedly once or maybe a hundred times before. “She doesn’t know her place. The hierarchy of life. That she is untouchable only because she is yours.”

And Uma was Mal’s, claimed from the very first time they met.

Mal swung herself silently back onto the wharf, just behind Uma’s frantic form searching over the side of the wharf, ready to jump into the shark infested waters. When Uma’s voice was tinged with worry, with fear, Mal preened at Uma’s concern (“For me. Only for me,” she thought.) before reaching out and tapping the teal haired girl on the shoulder.

The look of relief on Uma’s face was addicting and on this wharf surrounded by the dregs of the Isle, Mal found it too precious to share with anyone else. So she poured a bucket of shrimp on her best friend and laughed at her as she had just been laughed at.

Fair is fair after all.

By the end of the day, everyone had heard of Uma’s new nickname either through the spreading gossip or by the smell alone.

“Shrimpy,” everyone, even Ursula, called her. Because “Uma” was something that Mal wanted to hoard all to herself, in name...and in person.

Uma was Mal’s.

It was never said but everyone knew it.

A week after the incident at the wharf, Mal watched as the Gaston twins shoved Uma to the ground, doing it again when she tried to get up. They laughed as mud and other Isle filth covered the girl, mingling in with the shrimpy scent that still lingered. They taunted her with crude and horrible words, punctuated every so often with their fists.

“Seriously, Mal? Again?” Jay sighed from the wooden crate he sat on with a practiced tone of boredom, despite the tension in his body. He tossed a knife he had pocketed earlier off of one of Shan Yu’s men into the air, catching it’s hilt it with little effort. “Why let Dumb and Dumber mess with your claim?”

Mal rolled her eyes. She thought he would get it. That he would understand the need to keep what was his close and under control. After all, though he denied having anything to do with it, there was a reason why Cruella’s sniveling little runt never got anything more than a little rough housing at school from anyone other than herself or Jay after the thief had seen a beating taken too far nearly kill the boy.

“Because she needs to be reminded of how things are run so she doesn’t forget her place,” Mal casually leaned against the crate. Somewhere deep inside her she purred that her Uma bit back each scream and groan she was inflicted.

“I still don’t get it,” Jay mumbled irritatedly. “Wasn’t that the hole point of dumping shrimp on her? She’s weak. Why not just move on and forget about her?”

She fumed. “You don’t need to get it,” Mal crossed her arms. If he didn’t get it, then it wasn’t her job to explain the rules of the game, the hierarchy of the Isle that was her birthright as Maleficent’s heir, how a part deep deep within her craved both for Uma’s affection and pain.

Jay let out  frustrated sigh, glancing over as one of the Gaston twins, shoved the small teal hair girl into the side of the building, a loud crack heard even from their distance.

“They’re going to break her,” Jay tossed the knife deftly back and forth between his hands. A nervous tick, Mal noticed.

“Get rid of them,” she ordered and for once, Jay didn’t fight her. He merely hopped down from the crate on quick silent feet, scooped up several large pieces of rocks, and tossed them with easy aim at the twins. The two boy’s thick necks swiveled towards his direction, scowling as he gave them a one finger salute.

Mal didn’t even watch as Jay took off laughing as the Gaston twins forgot their prey, chasing after the quick footed thief and his taunts. Instead, she made her way towards what was hers until she was crouching in front of the crumbled semi-conscious form of her favorite plaything.

Uma’s left eye and cheek was swollen and angry looking, her bottom lip split, and if the shallow breathing indicated anything, her ribs may have also been bruised as well.

Despite the beating, despite the taunts and cruel names, her dark brown eyes looked at Mal fiercely, never wavering.

“J-just...kill me.”

“Don’t worry,” Mal said taking Uma’s chin in her hand, her face softening. “That isn’t what I want at all. You’re mine after all. No one will take you from my side. No one,” she promised just as the other girl fell unconscious.

  ---

“Do not give me that greedy little look of yours,” Maleficent closed her eyes exasperatedly, pinching the bridge of her nose. She had to remind herself that her tadpole of a daughter was just a limo ride away from getting her off this damn Isle. She couldn’t kill her...yet... “I have already told you, Mal. You cannot bring your little pet with you to Auradon.”

“Then I guess I’m just not going.”

The entire room went silent, and if it wasn’t for the fact that there was no magic on the Isle, Mal would have sworn that the crack of thunder that shook the decrepit remains of the Bargain Castle was her mother’s doing.

“Mal,” her mother purred with so much sweetness in her voice that the hairs on the back of Mal’s neck stood to attention at the hidden danger.

The Mistress of Darkness pushed herself from the makeshift throne she had regally sprawled herself on, sweeping across the room, all patch worked cloak and squeaking floor boards towards her only spawn. Mal held her breath, jaw clenched as her mother’s twig like fingers grasped bruisingly her jaw. Jay, Evie, Carlos, and their parents were long gone, off to go pack and plunder and cause some last minute mischief before the royal limo arrived for them.

It was just Mal and her mother.

No one was there to witness the dark fairy’s hand move from her daughter’s jaw down to her neck with inhuman speed and strength. Mal choked, tears already beginning to burn against her glowing eyes, chipped black nails digging futilely into her mother’s unrelenting grip.

“Now you listen up, naughty girl of mine,” Maleficent smiled cruelly, bringing Mal close to her face. “Everything you have is because of me. You live because, at the moment, I wish it so.” A pale bony finger traced down Mal’s cheek, a poor counterfeit of affection. “Not one little tangled purple hair on your hornless head has been touched by the filthy vermin that scurry around this Isle because of me.”

Without warning, she dropped Mal with a push, turning around as if she couldn’t bare the sight of the girl struggling to fill her lungs with air.

“I don’t do it out of love, but as a reminder. Do not cross me, girl. There are worse things than death, and I am one of them.”

Mal glared at her mother’s back. Outlined by the dim light that managed to get through the dust coated windows, Maleficent looked like shadows breathed with life and the essence of all the nightmares that plagued Mal every nightmare.

(Scratch that. Her mother made her nightmares look like blissful dreams.)

“Bring your pet and its...toy,” Maleficent finally conceded

Mal bit the inside of her cheek as she got up to her feet. Before the smirk could grow on her face and she could sneak out of the castle, Maleficent called out to her.

“Remember, heir of mine,” she sighed over her shoulder, as if she found the task of talking to her own flesh and blood tedious and beneath her. “If you fail in getting me the wand, you are replaceable, as tiresome as that would be to cultivate a new heir.” Her glowing green eyes connected with Mal’s. “Don’t forget that, my dear.”

Mal’s teeth ground against themselves but she didn’t say anything else, knowing that she was dismissed. She slipped out of her mother’s castle, tugging the collar of her jacket up high to hide blooming hand shaped bruise on her neck. Keeping to the shadows, she took alleys and cut through nearly abandoned buildings until the smell of rotten fish, rum, and seaweed hit her like a wall.

Ignoring the leering gazes of the drunken pirates, Mal plowed through anyone who was in her way as she stalked through the Isle’s usual scowling crowd. She didn’t even pause when she came to the entrance of a building that looked like it was one weak wind of being blown away. Instead, she pushed through the set of swinging doors. The rowdy noise of the shady establishment instantly silenced at her grand entrance. All eyes were on Mal.

The sounds of pans and canisters dropping on the floor along with Uma’s curses and Gil’s bumbling apologies were heard from the beyond the kitchen doors before the object of Mal’s search came stomping out, scowl set deep on her lips as she tossed a tray of undoubtedly half rotten food in front of a customer.

Mal smirked internally when Uma freezed in her presence, catching the minute way the other girl seemed to shrink at the sight of the half-fae. Mal preened at her attention.

“Pack your things, Shrimpy. We’re heading to Auradon to steal a wand.” Her green eyes narrowed at Gil’s much larger form standing dutifully as always behind Uma. “Your idiot too, I guess,” she snorted before leaving, not even waiting for a response.

Uma would come. Afterall, she was Mal’s. And no one would be able to take her from Mal’s side. No one…

...except for a young sailor with eyes as deep as the sea.

---

“I hope you understand the difficult position recent circumstances have put us in.”

Mal tilted her head to the side. Her face scrunched up in confusion as she looked at Fairy Godmother. “I-I don’t understand, ma’am,” she frowned, worrying her bottom lip.

Fairy Godmother cleared her throat. “I am referring to the disappearances of Uma and Gil and their apparent connection to Harry Jones’s unfortunate magical induced visit to the school’s infirmary. We have still yet to find them and have no way of knowing whether they’ve attempted to go back to the Isle or not. All we have to go on is the evidence from Harry’s room when he was found and Prince Ben remembering you offering him a cookie,” the headmistress said pulling out a plastic bag with a half eaten cookie in it. “A cookie that we found, upon further inspection, to be laced with a love potion.”

“I- We had nothing to do with that!” Mal exclaimed, leaning forward in her seat. “I mean- I mean…” she paused,hands covering her face before a choked sob escaped her lips as she brought her legs up to her chest. Her hands moved from her face to clutching her hair tightly in trembling fists.

Fairy Godmother gasped, startled by the girl’s sudden tears.

“She was my best friend. Uma was my best friend and she...she...lied to me!”

“Oh dear heart,” Fairy Godmother got from her seat, moving around her desk to place a calming hand on Mal’s shoulder. She was startled when Mal suddenly clutched onto her, sobs growing stronger. For a moment, the woman didn’t know what to do, seconds seeming to drag before she put a hesitant but reassuring hand on top of the girl’s purple head before her maternal instincts took over and began stroking Mal’s head soothingly.

After a few moments, Mal’s sobbing began to settle down a bit tas she clutched onto the older fairy’s powder blue suit. “I had told Uma-,” she sniffed. “I had told her that I thought Prince Ben was cute. I mean, he’s so kind and-and good!” Mal laughed wetly, pulling away slightly to wipe at her nose with the back of her sleeve. “Ben’s...so, so good. There’s no one like him on the Isle. I couldn’t help but fall for him. Uma saw that. S-she said I should make cookies and give them to Ben. That she would help. I-I get so f-flustered around Ben sometimes that she said it would be a good idea to have an icebreaker. We made the cookies together but I didn’t know she put a love spell on them. I would never do that to Prince Ben. Never. I want- I want to be good. I-”

“Shh-shh, dear heart,” Fairy Godmother pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, wiping the remainder of Mal’s tears. “Obviously Uma and Gil have deceived us all. I’m so sorry you had to go through something like that. To have put your trust in the wrong person.”

Mal nods, giving the woman a shaky smile. “Thank you.”

Fairy Godmother spent a few more minutes doting on the girl before letting her leave the office. Mal gives the woman a wave and a small smile as she leaves before turning back into the hallway where Evie, Jay, and Carlos are waiting for her.

Her smile melts away into a sneer once the doors are closed and it’s only the four of them in the hall.

“Idiot old fairy,” Mal spits before tossing Jay a used menthol stick that he had swiped from one of the theatre kids that had trouble crying on cue.

Mal didn’t even look to see if the others were following her as she stomped through the halls of Auradon, hands twitching at her side, green sparks dancing dangerously at her fingertips at the thought of Uma and what she would do once she got her hands on her.

Her mother had been right. Uma had never understood the hierarchy of life and her place below even the very bottom in it. 

But that was Mal’s fault, she acknowledged. She had been too soft. Had bruised Ursula’s spawn but never really broken her. It was a mistake that she would be sure to never make again.

After all, there are worse things than death, and Mal would make sure that for Uma and her little sailor, she would be one of them.

[ketchup-chup]

Isekai that don’t completely suck pt 3

Didn’t think I would be making more since I feel it’s so mainstream now everyone has probably read all of these but just in case you haven’t here are a few isekai stories I’m enjoying.

 Some of these also go by different names sometimes due to translation differences or having been officially licensed and renamed so apologies about that.

I Became the Hero’s Mom 

Summary: After passing away and being reincarnated into her favourite book, Aisha couldn’t ask for anything more than to fangirl and fawn over her favourite character Abel, until suddenly she finds herself engaged to his father. 

There are a lot of stories like this one where the main character isekai’s and finds themselves the stepmom of their favourite character or just some cute kid they adore and they can get a bit cringy with how much the main character fangirls for the kid but this one just hit different. It still has it’s moments of intense secondhand embarrassment however, I find both the child and the male lead in this one more tolerable and the plot is actually very intriguing once it gets going.

The Tyrant’s Only Perfumer 

Summary: A young woman passes away to wake up in the body of Ariel Winston, the antagonist in the book she was reading. A perfumist who had forced the protagonist of the novel into dating her by blackmailing him with a perfume that calms his bloodlust that only she can create.

I love villainess manhwa’s where the main character has a special talent of some kind and a perfumer is certainly a new one! Not to mention the art for this one is very pleasing to look at so that’s a plus too!

The Way to Protect The Female Lead’s Older Brother 

Summary: Waking up in the body of Roxana Agriche, the daughter of the man who had kidnapped the heroine’s older brother, she must do avoid her death and the heroine's future vengeance by taking the initiative to save the heroin’s brother

OKay this one is darker than the rest, and I didn’t add it to the description but the main character wakes in a world of a 18+ novel. While it’s not extremely graphic or anything it can still be a bit suggestive and sorta violent so skip this one if you don’t like that sorta thing.

That being said the main character is extremely different than the normal kinds we see and even in her everyday life the stakes actually seem high. It’s a bit of a breath of fresh air. Fairing warning though while he’s not the male lead (I hope?) she gets very… friendly with one of her brothers. 

Death is the Only Ending for the Villainess

Summary: Waking up in the world of an otome game set on hard mode, our protagonist wakes up in the body of Penelope Eckhart, a villainess who seems destined to die at every turn

The concept and execution (no pun intended) of this one is very unique as the main character is able to see how well the male lead’s like her (like an affection meter) as well other having other popup windows telling her of her overall popularity and of events that are about to happen. I know there are a few others with this concept too but the way this one presents these things is very well done.

Living as the Tyrant's Older Sister

Summary: Alicia finds herself reborn into the world of a fantasy novel where she plays the role of the older sister to a tyrant who will inevitably be the cause of her beheading! To avoid this fate Alicia seduces the male lead’s friend to hopefully leave the country with him only to find she had seduced the wrong man

The art for this one is very distinct but definitely not in a bad way especially in it’s comedic moments. The protagonist, Alicia, is very funny and charming and her relationship with her brother is very realistic in that they are always at each other’s throats lol

This list is a little shorter than the rests just because I find that after I recommend a series it’ll keep updating (as ongoing series tend to do) and I’ll just not like them very much anymore, whether it’s because they got boring or just got plain bad. So this time I was a bit more picky and I pray that these series don’t fail me. 

[stardancerluv]

Is There Love When Dating the King of Gotham?

Part 2 of 2

Summary: Roman worries about you.

Warning: Language, angst, implied smut

Note: Some gifs are from Halston (Ewan is amazing in it!)

When Victor formally and finally interacts with the girl he grows to love. (It’s rough...I want to edit it some...but you get the idea!)

Roman was confused. You had been so happy earlier. Maybe the marks, he mused. Well he did get enthusiastic but then again, this had been the longest he’d been away from you.

Looking around he saw no one noticed your little act or at least they pretended they didn’t. He was going to talk to you.

Sliding free of the table, he got up and made his way over to the elevator.

“Boss?” Zsasz stopped him halfway.

He slid his eyes over. “What?”

“Y/N is upset.”

He swallowed, he blinked looking at the scared man. “I noticed. Do you know why?”

He scratched the back of his head. “No.”

“All right. Is there anything else?” His annoyance continued to grow.

“Falcone is here early.”

“Really? Fuck.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “It’s my first night back. He can fucking wait.” He straightened one of his cuffs.

“His assassin is with him.”

His brow furrowed. “Then go and talk to him. Tell Falcone my other meeting is running late.” Roman looked over at Zsasz and saw something was over his face. Was that a fucking sheepish look? He couldn’t believe it. “And why can’t you talk to him?”

“She’s a girl.”

“So?” He took a mental step back. “Compare your exploits!”

“But she is beautiful.”

“Yeah, Zsasz, are you fucking serious.”

“Yeah. I can’t chat her up.”

“You can. You both kill people. Start there.”

Zsasz’s eyes grew for a moment before darkening and narrowing again.

“Look, it’s true. You both,” Roman rolled his eyes. “You keep us respectively safe. Start there. I’m sure she’d love some of your stories.” He grinned thinking of some of lessons Zsasz had helped him send to his enemies. Times called for certain actions and Zsasz had helped greatly.

A smug razor thin smile spread across Zsasz’s face. “Really?” His features even brightened. “Seriously?”

He could not believe, he’d ever have to give his right hand man a pep talk. “Yeah. Now go over and charm her.”

His mouth twitched upward, before settling back down. “All right.”

*****

Roman was still shaking his head when the elevator announced its arrival at the penthouse.

The penthouse was dark walking further into it, he could only hear the sound of his steps as he walked.

Meeting the apex between the living and the business part of his penthouse, he paused. Seeing a glow of light coming from under the door of your studio, his heart lifted. Maybe you had a deadline and decided to work. Sometimes you worked too hard. Those clients of yours didn’t deserve you.

He slowly turned the knob and walked in. He stopped, his breath caught in his throat at the sight of you looking crumbled in the middle of your studio. Feeling like this was new to him. Usually it was just him or his power and his club. Seeing you like this, he wanted to sweep you off your feet and into his arms. He wanted you to feel better. Taking a breath, he went over to you.

He knelt down and wrapped an arm around you. “Baby.” His voice came out as a purr, showing his concern for you wasn’t as hard as he thought it would be. “What’s the matter?”

You pulled away from him. “What are you doing here?” You spat out.

“I was worried about you.” His voice came out darker than he intended but he wasn’t about to apologize.

“Worried the little bitch will run away while you are allowed to stray?”

Confusion mixed with his earlier annoyance. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Tears fell from your eyes. “You keep me like a kept bitch, while you’re the top dog. You do what you please, while you keep me close to keep an eye on me. Showering me with extravagant gifts, and you give me a good fucking so I don’t care when you see the next cute piece of ass.”

“Where the fuck is this coming from, is it because I marked you earlier?”

He did enjoy giving you expensive gifts. What else should he do with his fucking money besides getting a new suit or car. Or using it to maintain his power. And he’d be lying if he didn’t admit you were an amazing fuck, the best he’d ever had. But what the hell had gotten into you.

He thought you loved being his. Had you seen him talking with that new fucking singer, he wondered.

He really hating his actions being questioned. He was tempted to let you have your little fit and just go down to his meeting with Falcone. But he was also still tired from his trip, he did not need this. Especially from you.

“Roman.” Your voice cracked, and suddenly you pushed him. He slipped but didn’t lose his footing, his anger finally poured out of him.

He grabbed you then, he heard and saw you wince. “You fucking tell me what’s the matter or I’m going back downstairs, I didn’t come up here for you to scream at me.” He shook you a little. He didn’t like being rough like this with you. After being a punching bag, he didn’t like this. “I’d fuck you but I don’t want you to think I’m bribing you. So out with it.”

“I love you.” You finally spoke, your voice had grown scratchy. “Don’t you love me?”

His grip on your arms loosened. “Of course I do.” He swallowed.

“You’ve never said it. You leave notes to me with... With your initials.”

He pressed his lips together. “Baby, I spoil you.”

“I told you I don’t need any of those presents.”

“I’ve... well ki-”His voice trailed off. “I’ve corrected problems for you and people have paid for wronging you.”

“Yeah but...”

“My silly little girl,” He shook his head. The thought made his stomach churn. He had never really felt this way. He loved himself, so this churning felt good but it was new to him. “I love you. You’re the only one.” He exhaled, and he smiled. That had felt good, he smiled even broader when he saw the glow and flush come back to your face.

“Oh, Roman.”

He rose an eyebrow. “Is that where all this is coming from?”

You nodded.

He shook his head and sighed. “Look, you know me. I’m not sentimental. I’m actually quite a cold bastard. Not with you.” He grew serious. “Now, I won’t say it often but know that I do. Now, get rid of those fucking kept bitch thoughts, you are my girl...my baby...” He searched for an even better word. “You’re my princess.” He smiled. “That’s why I enjoy spoiling you so much.”

“Oh Roman, I just needed to know.” You threw your arms around him After a few breaths, he wrapped his arms around you. Damn, he never thought you could be as temperamental as him. He liked that you had a spark to you and he certainly loved all of you.

******

As Falcone droned on about territory and you quietly sipped at your drink, you placed a hand on Roman’s thigh. Idly, you had been enjoying the random brushing of Roman’s gloved fingertips on your shoulder as his arm rested above you on the cushion.

You were so glad that he had not walked away. You were bubbly finally knowing he did in fact love you. You squeezed his thigh at the thought.

You eyed Falcone, he was a large man, up and down. His right-hand woman of sorts who sat beside him, she barely had room. You could swear she had glanced at Zsasz a few times as he stood close beside Roman while the meeting went on. But who would make eyes at him. He was shut off with no sense of humor. You resisted the urge to roll your eyes at the thought.

From how Roman shifted beside you, it was evident he was growing bored. You glanced his way when he pulled the last olive off the cocktail pick. It clanked against the glass when he tossed it into the empty glass.

A smile blossomed from you while sipping your drink when his gloved hand went over yours. His eyes met yours briefly as he continued to nibble on the olive before looking back at Falcone.

*****

“Could Falcone be any more boring?” You asked as you felt Roman’s fingers drift near around the necklace.

He had helped you fasten it on before the two of you went back downstairs. Now with it the only thing on your body and you still felt clothed. Though now it meant so much more.

“Yes, I’ve had to sit alone with him.” A deep chuckle came from him, as he looked down at you.

“I suppose that could be rough.” You smiled at him, from where your head rested on his chest.

“I was imagining all the things I could do to you while you just wear this; entertained me for the last part of the meeting.” A smirk played on his lips.

“Oh really? Do you feel like sharing some of those ideas?”

A happy squeal came from you as he managed to pull you even closer to him. “We have a few hours before dawn, I suppose we could do a few of them.”

@spn-obsessed-dean @vintagemichelle91 @xxxeatyourh3artoutxxx @ewanfuckingmcgregor @zodiyack @angel98624 @frenchgirlinlondon @emyliabernstein @thepeachreads @nebulastarr @itsknife2meetu @omghappilyuniquebouquetlove @poe-kadot26 @babydoll97-blog1 @hazel-nuss @vcat55 @feelthemadnessinside @johallzy @foreverhockeytrash @frostypenguinoz @professionalclown @chogisss @shantellorraine @xxinvisiblexx @blondekel77 @saphic-stories @drarrylov3r @i-cant-hear-you16 @deadlymistress24 @yesqueenofthelight @generallj @thebeckyjolene @blackmasque @mrskenobi19 @bdffkierenwalker

[chyrstis]

WIP Friday!

I’ve had some tags throughout the week, so I’m going to cash them all in here, since Friday’s the day and I might’ve been hoping to get this posted last night too, whoops! And I want to thank you all for tagging me even if I don’t always respond quickly! <3 I definitely intend to, but there’s never enough time in a day or a week, is there? 

Tagged by @redroci @tommymillers @jackiesarch @ma-sulevin and @amistrio and @adelaidedrubman !

Tagging: @writerofblocks @twistedsinews @painterofhorizons @hunnybadgerv @cobb-vanthss @shallow-gravy @nightwingshero @ma-sulevin @shellibisshe @jackalopestride @unlikelynick @geronimo-11 @fluttyseed @fadedjacket @weekend-writer @starsandskies @faithchel @belorage @tomexraider @consumedkings @vasiktomis @chazz-anova @aceghosts @ofravensandgenesis @scarlettkat86 (and if you’re already posted WIPs, don’t mind me one bit! no obligation or pressure’s ever intended)

First, a snippet from Lighting the Fuse’s Ch. 2 which I’d love to edit up and post this weekend, so here’s hoping I can kick myself in the butt hard enough to pull it off? *crosses fingers*

---

“Not tonight, hon. Not tonight.” Propping herself back up on her elbows, she gave him a smile. “You’re here now, though. So…how about it?”

“How about what?”

“You ask,” she replied, giving him a lazy smile. “Since I’m clearly on the cusp of benching you if you don’t.”

Sharky clapped his mouth shut. Stood there, rooted to the ground and didn’t let out a single peep. 

That boggled her completely. “Seriously, hon? Nothing?”

It was dark, but Hana could almost swear he was a shade of red darker than her hair right now. “You uh…. See I didn’t think it was-maybe you being asleep kinda threw off my groove a bit.”

Hana blinked at him. Watched a crooked smile settle onto his face as he let a nervous chuckle out.

“Like, like I mean I was gonna-was thinking of maybe doing this sorta-” His words trailed off as he clenched his teeth, swallowed hard, and let out a long exhale.  “Okay, so maybe this shit isn’t exactly-”

A loud sigh came from her left directly from the radio, and the sound filled the entire room.

“…Wait, what the fuck?” Sharky asked, his eyes darting everywhere as he tried to pinpoint where it was coming from. “You hear that?”

Clenching her fists, Hana slowly let her hands relax as she let the tension out. “Unfortunately.”

“Deputy, Deputy, Deputy. I know you’re listening. But I’m starting to think you’re doing this on purpose. I thought you wanted my attention. Would’ve been glad to finally have it undivided, and yet you deny me the pleasure of hearing a single response in turn. How…cruel.”

---

And a bit more of the Hana/Sharky one-shot I’ve been chipping away at, that’s actually getting really close to being finished too. I just need to jot down a few more moments for it and see if these two can actually clam up long enough to let me finish

---

“Yo, it’s not like I’ve been there any longer than a few days at a time, and half of the shit they’ve dragged me down to the jail for’s legal, just not in any of the spots I ended up doing it.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah, which is just fucking stupid seeing as lighting a fire by my house’s fine, but if it gets out to the street and catches on the trees ‘cause it’s extra dry out and the wind’s blowing, suddenly I gotta go in ‘cause I’m negligent or some shit. Then the po-po’s claiming I gotta have a permit to burn in the drier seasons, but it rains fucking plenty here.”

He’d draped his arm over her shoulders by this point, the motion coming so easily from him she hadn’t even noticed at first. Just nestled right into that warmth almost on reflex as Sharky kept on talking, and didn’t want to budge an inch if she could help it.

“Man, it’ll be the driest stretch of the year, and the sky’ll just open up and drop a bucket-load on us ‘cause it’s feeling it, but even if it don’t, anything I start’ll get put out. Just ‘cause I’m around doesn’t mean shit’s gonna go down, or nothing. ‘Cause then phone calls are made, people start looking at me funny, and I’m getting pulled out of my car for jack and shit when maybe I just wanted to take a breather there. Maybe get in a few Zs, take five to ten to jerk it, and they don’t gotta watch that too closely if I’m doing it either.”

She’d been nodding along with him, then stopped. Let that statement sink in as her eyebrows drew together before they rose high on her face.

“…Hon, that’s not legal.”

“Aw, come on, Dep! Don’t tell me there’s some kinda permit for parking out-“

“No, not that. You’d probably get slapped with a ticket or fine, sure, but it’s more about the fact that you were  beating it there.”

“It’s indoors.”

That response came quick enough for her to tilt her head back to look at him. To side-eye him heavily as he shrugged, and damn. She’d curled up to him a lot closer than she’d initially thought. Close enough to-

She cleared her throat.

---

And a little more of the No Cult AU, maybe? ...I may have watched Speed again last night entirely due to this. and it might also be up to almost 8K in length as well, pre-edits, so... Help 

---

But that didn’t solve the other problem. Towing it.

A truck would’ve been their best bet, but with him already there it didn’t make sense to try and scrape together cash for a tow truck, or to fire off a call to anyone down at the compound. His car had been used to drag Sr’s truck out of more than a few ditches without tearing the frame up, so this wasn’t a stretch to consider, and leaving them hanging now would’ve just been a shit thing to do when they didn’t even have a working phone or forty bucks between them. 

And while he’d never been able to get a tow bar to last more than a few months max, he had a few solid workarounds that could still get the job done. One of which he’d seen in a commercial a while back. 

He knew it almost by heart at this point, and cool as it’d be to fix their problem by just whipping his pants off and tying their vehicles together with them to help tow them to the compound, he’d gone down that road before. Hell, not just once, but twice now, and considering he’d been left between getting pepper sprayed and arrested, or having a busted set of jeans and his ass hanging out for the rest of the day, he wasn’t sure he liked where that left him on round number three.

Besides these were a well-worn pair, and they seriously didn’t make them like they used to. Long as he tried not to get too creative with them, they had more than a few good years in them yet. So after some sifting and digging through the trunk of his car, Sharky kept his fingers crossed that he’d find an actual tow strap back there. He and Hurk had been through this dance enough times before that he knew he had one, and crossed his fingers that he hadn’t left it over at Sr.’s place. 

Sure enough, there it was. Fucking majestic, and almost crumpled in the back, Sharky withdrew one perfect tow strap and broke out a few moves to celebrate it before hitching the two together. 

Once it was secure, he told them all to hop in, and while trying to cram one extra person into his car was tough three other people might’ve been pushing it. John regularly had the best seat in the house and still hardly made it more than a few miles before fussing at him, and here they were double - and triple stacking themselves in any spare space in order to take a seat. Man, he was already thinking up ways to relay this story to Hurk later on, but with them semi-settled and packed safe as they could be, he fired the engine up and got them all back on the road. 

It wasn’t a far drive out to Joseph’s but he took his time with it. Drove the slowest he’d ever attempted short of being twelve and behind the wheel for the first time, trying to be extra gentle with it all as the van lumbered behind them.

If he went too fast, they’d tear the back of his car off and lose it. If they hit the brakes too hard, they’d get rammed, so he needed to nail that sweet spot. Keep from tipping from one end over into the other as he played his very own version of Speed out on this stretch of road, watching that needle dance back and forth over that perfect point as he started to sweat a little under his cap.

But he had this. Pressed his foot down on the gas and let up when he needed to, exercising the kind of control that even John would give a silent nod of approval to - which would almost make him the Keanu to his Sandra, except John wasn’t there and currently trying to crawl under any of this shit to keep a bomb from going off - but whatever, it was close enough.

So he watched the mile markers fly by as they got closer and closer to the island, and by the time they rolled through the gate and came to a stop, Sharky let out whatever breath he’d started holding, and didn’t even care when the van nearly smashed into them on the home stretch anyway.  

[morganas-pendragons]

Light | Wrecker

This is #1 of at least half a dozen or more fics I am gifting my Twitter kids for Christmas! I wanted to give back this year, and so I decided to write some things for characters I haven’t really tried anything for yet. Regardless of that, I hope you enjoy! 

I played around with the clones ages for this considering we don’t know how old The Bad Batch is - like with Rex physically looking like he’s in his twenties but not actually being so. 

This reader is a mom to the clones and uses she/her pronouns - exactly like the type in my headcanons - and she happens to have a favorite... 

***

This was supposed to be a no strings attached type of job. The Kaminoans had recruited you, a simple human, to be a caretaker - of sorts - for the hundreds of babies that occupied their nurseries within the cloning facilities. 

  “There’s no point in forming attachments, Miss. Soon enough they’ll be handed a gun and told to go play war.” 

Yeah. Well. You intend to give these children as much love as you are physically able, and that all starts with the first gaze you set upon one of the clones in the back of the nursery with the mutation. 

He’s among 3 others who are specifically mutated for purposes you are not privy to know as a civilian. That doesn't matter. You pass through lines of cradles and approach the four in the back, peering over the side to gaze into the wide and vulnerable eyes of the largest baby. 

  “Hello, sweet boy.” You murmur, grinning as he coos happily at your voice and lifts his arms upward for you to sweep him upward and into your warm embrace. “You’re stunning. I bet you’re going to be such a big, strong boy!” 

The baby’s response - despite only being old enough to hold himself upright in your lap - is only to clap joyfully and pound his tiny hands against your legs. 

Big, strong boy. You’re gonna change the world. I just know it. 

Wrecker, Age Four 

His brothers named him Wrecker. It’s fitting, given how much larger he became then the other clones, but you’re too attached to the boy to leave Tipoca City at the time that the Kaminoans have asked you to.

  “Buir!” You’ve been moved to the rooms in which they house the clones who are toddlers, and the first thing you see upon waking from your nap is a child sprinting as fast as he’s able to launch himself into your lap. “You’re awake!” 

You beam and press a kiss to his forehead. “Hi ad,” You whisper, peering over his shoulder as he wraps his arms around your neck and buries his face in your shoulder. “Something you need to tell me? I gotta go take care of your brothers.” 

  “They gave me a name today!” He says, and your eyes widen as you gaze at his three brothers who stand before you. 

  “Only because he nearly broke Viper’s nose!” 

You raise an eyebrow and gently pry Wrecker away from your chest. He’s definitely larger then the other clones despite how young he is, but he’d never use his size and strength for violence. Never. Your son is soft, innocent. He’s good. 

  “Wrecker, what’s-” Your gaze snaps back to the clone with the darker hair who then replies to your query with Hunter. It’s a fitting name. “Hunter, talking about?” 

That’s the same day you learn that the clones who will eventually make up the spec-ops team known as The Bad Batch are fiercely protective of each other. They must have learned it from the person who protected them. 

Little to the knowledge of most people, you took these four clones - the special ones, the ones who got the stares, the ones who got picked on and bullied by their brothers - under your wing. You saved them. 

And in turn they save each other. 

You are so proud to be Wrecker’s mother in that moment as he hastily recants a story of how he almost broke Viper’s nose simply because he was bullying Crosshair. 

  “Ad,” You ruffle his hair and beam with pride as you wind your arms around his body. “I am so proud of you.” 

When Wrecker climbs into bed that night, the words he never hears from his trainers and superiors rings in his mind as he burrows under the thin blanket the Kaminoans have given him and his vode. 

  “I am so proud of you.” 

As he falls into sleep, he dreams of his mother. A home, a family, and a mother standing in the kitchen unit - who gives him real food, real food he likes and he’s allowed to eat that tastes salty and sweet and sour and he’s so excited to have it - who treats her son as if he’s the whole world. The whole galaxy. 

Wrecker, Age 10 

The day he returns from a training mission with the rest of Clone Force 99 is the same day you have your first real battle with panic. According to what Crosshair and Tech tell you upon return, Wrecker was injured in a way that leaves him partially blind and with significant scarring. 

You’re terrified. He and the rest of the Batch have already had a difficult time integrating themselves in with their brothers to the point where they’ve taken to calling the non-mutated clones regs and now only associate with each other. You don’t particularly care much about that anymore. As long as they’re looking out for each other. 

When Wrecker is released from the medbay, you search the cloning facility for your son until you find him in the quietest room - the nursery - with his back against the wall and his chin resting on his knees. His face is scarred. His eye is cybernetic. 

Maker, you love him. 

  “Wrecker,” Hunter had warned you about approaching him - claiming he’d become hard of hearing with the explosion that had injured him - and had brought up a fantastic idea with Tech’s help that you were going to initiate as soon as he was ready. “Ad.”

Your son lifts his eyes to meet yours. 

  “Buir,” He replies softly, always so careful to not disturb the babies who lay in their cradles around him. “Did you need something?” 

You tilt your head and sit in front of him, parting your legs and resting your elbows against your knees. Wrecker watches you intently as you do so. He’s always been perceptive - not as much as Hunter, but enough - and with the lack of his sight, he’s having to rely more on his limited senses. 

  “Do you see this?” You take your fingers, press them all together, and rest them against the bottom of your chin before moving your hand forward. “This is sign language. It means thank you. It’ll be an easier way to talk to your vode when you can’t hear them so well. Is that something you’d be willing to learn?” 

He nodded and frowned. “I’m gonna miss blowing stuff up.” 

You reach outward, brush what remains of his hair away from his eyes, and repeat the sign for thank you and you’re welcome. He watches your hands mimic the movements before repeating them for you to see. Wrecker does them perfectly. 

  “Don’t worry.” You murmur. “You’re gonna get to blow stuff up again. I promise.” 

Your only response is his smile. It’s more than enough. 

Wrecker, Age 12  (Set during S7) 

'Сause you are loved You are loved more than you know I hereby pledge all of my days To prove it so

After a while, the Kaminoans have had their uses for you. Your services are no longer required and so you are sent back to the boring home world that you have barely stepped foot on since being sent to Kamino to be the caretaker to infant clones. 

Your experience with the formed Grand Army of the Republic is what gets you into the military, has you trained, and eventually what lands you on Anaxes. 

Though your heart is far too young to realize The unimaginable light you hold inside

  “Ma’am,” Cody’s voice rings out from behind you as you stand in the hangar bay, arms crossed over your chest with your eyes on the horizon as if waiting for the arrival of a ship. “I’ve cleaned your blasters. Just how you like them.” 

You turn to acknowledge the Marshal Commander and smile softly at him. While you spent much of your time with The Bad Batch on Kamino, the greater majority of the Commander Batch and the younger clones have considered you one of them for quite some time. 

  “Thank you Kote.” You murmur. He nods his acknowledgement and before he turns back to Kenobi, lays a hand on your shoulder and says something about the arrival of Clone Force 99 for a mission they’re assigned to do with Rex. “What?” 

The less then graceful landing of the ship known as the Havoc Marauder signals their arrival. You don’t dare move. It’s been too long since you’ve seen them, seen him, and you want to value the moment while you can. 

I'll give you everything I have I'll teach you everything I know

They had never really known the lengths you went to in order to protect them - to protect him - and give him the life, the childhood, you felt he deserved. The Bad Batch had still had it rough, but your gentle nature upon meeting them had impacted them significantly. 

  “The Calvary has arrived!” 

The first thing you see is the personalized armor. You are not the slightest bit surprised they threw in all their effort into ensuring their armor - out of the entire army - was the most notorious. Not to mention that as someone who watched them all grow up, you can see each of their personalities within the way they’ve painted it. 

Then you see him. It’s unmistakeable that it’s Wrecker considering how much taller and broader he is then the rest of The Bad Batch, but it’s not him that notices your presence first. 

It’s Tech. Ever the perceptive, constantly absorbing as much information as able, constantly recording everything, who sees you standing in the hangar and nudges his brother in the midst of speaking to Rex and Cody to point you out. 

  “Mom?” Cody asks skeptically, followed by a gasped “Buir? That’s the buir I never got to meet?!” 

Kix is laughing hysterically at the way Jesse guffaws upon realizing that you are the infamous mother to the clones, but only these four and specifically Wrecker, but the way your heart swells when Wrecker notices you standing there far outweighs the reactions of all the other vode around you. 

Instead of a greeting, Wrecker does one thing. He sees you, beams like the sun lives deep within him, and very promptly tosses you upward to sit on his shoulders. He looms over all his brothers. That doesn’t stop him. 

Oh... oh, that boy has not and will never change. 

With every heart beat I have left

I will defend your every breath

Bonus: 

  “I get to blow it up? The whole stinking thing?” Wrecker asks, to which he then looks to you with wide eyes. “You made a promise!” 

You smirk and pat Anakin’s shoulder as you pass him. “Oh, I know I did.” You reply. “Anakin is keeping up on my promise for me.” When Wrecker begins to take the detonator, you turn to the Jedi and meet his gaze. I’ve been promising him this since he was old enough to know how to blow things up.” You coax him into fully handing over the detonator to your son. “Go on. Make his year.” 

Admiral Trench’s cruiser explodes in a cloud of sparks behind The Havoc Marauder. 

[three--rings]

Colorism in Word of Honor?

So the topic of colorism as it potentially relates to Zhou Zi Shu’s disguise in Word of Honor/Shen He Ling has been raised.

And to be honest, I had the thought myself that it was a little...hmm...that part of his “ugly” disguise is a seemingly darker skin tone.  Now he’s also playing the part of and living as a beggar, so he’s meant to be dirty and living outdoors, which may be part of the reason for his makeup.

But I also noticed that some gifs I was seeing made his skin look a LOT darker than it did when I was actually watching the episodes.  So I went back to look for myself, and ended up taking a lot of comparison screen-shots and here we are.

FTR, I’m not intending this post to be giving any definitive answer about whether this is or is not colorism or objectionable or anything.  I think you can probably make cases in both directions that wouldn’t be unreasonable, and it’s really not my call. 

First of all, it’s important to note that skin tone as it appears on screen depends HUGELY on lighting.  One person can be lit in ways that completely changes how their skin appears in the final product.  And I think that’s happening a lot in this show, as well as the make-up not being always applied the same.  Sometimes ZZS is supposed to look cleaner or dirtier and I think the cleaner times are when he’s got less bronzer on. 

So first of all, what does he look like out of disguise?

(All pictures are DIRECT, unedited screenshots from my computer, off Youku Youtube. They aren’t the highest possible quality, because...I’m too lazy. )

Keeping in mind both of those still involve make-up, so it’s not necessarily his “natural” skintone.

Then as a beggar, in full sun. 

Same location, slightly later in the same scene, different episode, different lighting.  You can see all the dirt smudges on his neck in particular.

In a cave.  This shows off the Extreme Contouring look of his make-up and the way it’s sorta blotchy, like on his nose and neck.  Is that meant to look like dirt?  It’s not really all-over dark, but definitely trying to make him look gaunt and with dark under-eye circles.  Also comparison to WKX’s skintone in the bottom one.

This is after he’s had a bath and changed clothes.  Not nearly as harsh in the contours at all.  This is a very different make-up job, honestly.

And this is the end of ep 4, in semi-natural light, about as “presentable” as he’s gotten. 

So, that’s a side by side.  I think it’s clear the make-up has changed over these first episodes, from a very harsh initial “beggar” look, to something a lot less extreme, as the character’s situation has changed.  I don’t think it’s as simple as the show intentionally making his skin dark to make him ugly, so much as them trying to tell a story visually.

But how successful it’s been is up for debate, certainly.  Taking an actor and trying to make him look like a different person is hard, especially on a limited budget.  Certainly you might not LIKE the end result of the make-up and that’s totally valid.  I just don’t think it’s always as extreme a contrast as some clips and/or gifs or stills might make it appear.

[awake-my-oceans]

Days 8 and 9

So I said I’d do this every day and then promptly skipped a day. Whoops. In all fairness, I did write out my response and planned to post it later, but then I got sucked into the black hole of a very well-executed, very stressful fanfic until 1:30 and then promptly passed out. Anyways, my responses to both days are under the cut. (Some people in this challenge put NFSW stuff under the cut. None of my stuff is NSFW, but it’s under a cut anyways since it’s longer than normal.)

What is your favorite trope to write and/or read? And is there a difference between reading and writing the trope?

Found family found family found—

I used to think my favorite trope was angst and/or whump. But then I realized that the darker parts were an unhealthy outlet for various mental health stuff, and the healthy stuff was essentially “character A is legitimately suffering, but then found family makes it better. It doesn’t necessarily fix the situation, but it makes things possible where they were not before.”

So, like. Found family that’s not afraid of angst but doesn’t intend to go in circles with the angst, either.

If I write it, I like the specific brand of trope/characterization/etc more than usual. Whether it’s because it takes stronger-than-normal like to get me writing, or because writing makes me like it more, is anyone’s guess. Probably both, tbh.

This is on full display in my current wip. I could easily and accurately summarize it as “therapy ain’t happening, lol, so throw found family and a few much-needed breakdowns into the pot for a home brew version.” (Admittedly, two protagonists are cousins, but, like. They basically have to decide whether to let that family claim matter to them, and they way they do it is essentially by found family-ing each other so, like? Classify that as you will.)

Tell us about ideas you have floating around. Worldbuilding snippets, or ideas for new stories. Just a few bullet points.

Underneath Kid and Conan (friendly rivals) is thief and detective (legally opponents). But underneath that is Kaito and Shinichi (lonely, the both of them, and worldshakingly kind).

Kaito is soft, around his doves, in ways the masks of Kuroba and KID otherwise don’t allow.

Toichi taught Kaito a whole lot about acting, but the thing that really drilled it into Kaito’s bones was the days, weeks, months, and years after Toichi died. His father was dead, his mother was emotionally and perhaps physically absent, and Kaito was a wreck. Adults, and Aoko, were understandably concerned. And Kaito, oh so kind underneath it all, was upset because his behavior was making people sad and worried, and he didn’t like it. So he fiddled around with how he presented himself until he discovered that “quiet, silly kid and occasional class clown” made people think he was bouncing back. He wasn’t, but after a while, only Aoko really suspected it. KID is a weirdly honest way for him to express how behind the easy humor is grief and skill and steel self-control.

Akako’s magic can make anyone besotted with her—except for the people she genuinely does or will love. Her journey to accepting this is complicated.

Kaito initially started being KID for the opportunity to connect with his father and for the thrill, in that order. But after only a few heists, he starts realizing that while those things have value, it’s not worth the damage it will do to his future—legally, mental-health-wise, and with Aoko. If he hadn’t found out the details of his father’s murder via his father’s murderers, he would have kept an ear to the ground because of Jii saying his father was murdered, but he otherwise would have dropped KID within a few weeks.

When he moves back into his own house, Shinichi is a little disgruntled and a little mad and a little wistful to discover that he sleeps easier when someone else is in the room snoring, now.

[marshmallowprotection]

Do you still like V after the events of Saeran's after end? Do you think he's horribly OOC in there or do think he's in character?

I hear so many V stans say he's out of character but I dont think so. It you consider what he's done in the Christmas DLC, in Another Story, and in the main routes of Deep/Casual story he's always been obsessed with Rika and always keeps making bad decisions (or keeps procrastinating making a decision) because he's unwiling to priortitize the RFA over Rika. Ray's after end is just a timeline where he decides to stop hesitating and fully commit to his obsession with Rika. Its him making the worst decisions possible.

If anything, its V's own route that feels OOC because I feel like there's too little chance he would stop obsessing over Rika and fall in love with someone else. But those are just my own thoughts and opinions. I'm curious to hear yours.

Personally, I said this when I was going through my initial reaction to Saeran’s AE so you could read that series if you haven’t already because I put it down in a lot more blatant detail. I’ll leave this free from this tag, though, don’t want to add dislike over there when I know a lot of people are hurt and upset. So, let me just say, SPOILERS AHEAD.

I have to say that I don’t think he was out of character. I sincerely don’t. I think was the game showing us truly how far V is willing to go for Rika and how far he had already gone for Rika. Listen, V’s not my favorite person in the world but I’d say that he went through a lot in his life and he has such a specific personality type that we can’t disregard. Both he and Rika were wrong in their relationship with each other. They both did wrong things. 

V is a victim of Rika’s abuse, that is for sure, but V did say and push Rika to lean more into her more violent thoughts. It had a lot to do with his warped sensibility and what he was dealing with on his own, from his mother, to how his personal understanding of love was twisted and fractured. He said it himself in his route that he was obsessed with Rika and that he would do anything for Rika because that love was an infatuation stronger than any drug. 

The Secret Ending, for example. He was willing to come and get everyone from the cabin. I don’t know what he thought was going to happen when he did that or if anyone would trust him. He’s got such a martyr complex that it pains me and I wish he valued himself more and admitted that he needed to stop this and just talk about what help he needed. I understand that it’s fucked up, and all of this is complicated because the boys cannot be found by the government. 

But, he could have told Jumin. 

He could have done a lot of things but he hesitated and got scared and tried to blame himself and do it on his own. He doesn’t want Rika to die. He doesn’t want Rika to go to prison. He doesn’t want Rika to suffer. Yet, he’s seeing how she’s hurting others and hurting herself and spiraling, and... sometimes it’s hard for me to understand why he lied. He doesn’t know about Mika, the AE said that as a fact, and I don’t know when he found out about Mint Eye. 

But, he lies to cover Rika’s tracks? Is it for Saeran, V? Or, is it for Rika? I’m really concerned that I don’t know the answer here. I know that he tries to help save Saeran and get him out, he really does, but he always hesitates and he always reaches and fails, and I don’t know if that’s because he’s doing it to himself by self-sabotaging or because he legitimately doesn’t know how to get him out. 

V’s greatest struggle in life is how indecisive and unsure he is. He frustrates me a lot. I see where he could find himself and where he could open up and be a good person and be happy. I see it. But, he won’t let himself let go and Rika and he keeps burning as Icarus does as he reaches out for the sun. 

In this timeline, we see how deeply V can go if he lets himself commit to that state with Rika. In Ray’s Route, Jihyun saw us commit ourselves to Saeran and believe in him, and forgive him, and forgive Ray for what happened. However, it was our choice to forgive them... and you know the difference between what went down with Saeran and what goes down with Rika? Saeran was willing to say that he fucked up and that he needed to stop, that he needed to grow, and that he needed to change. 

He apologized and he said that if you gave him a chance, he would love you and protect you. You accept that, but he’s still going to be working on that for a long time in his heart because he knows what he did. His willingness and capacity to grow and admit fault make him mature and respectable. Rika is never willing to admit her wrongdoings. 

You saw that play out in Saeran’s AE from minute one and you can’t ignore that fact. When Jihyun went back to Rika. And, you know what I personally thought was going to happen? I thought he was going to take Rika, leave the country, and fucking run and never look back. I thought that he was going to take all of her sufferings and place it upon himself so nobody would ever be hurt again sans himself because he “thinks he deserves to be punished by her hand for what he did.” 

However, no. 

V did not do that. 

V decided that he would fully immerse himself in Rika. He decided that the best thing to do was to take the wrong lesson from what he saw with Saeran and the MC. He stood by Rika thinking that if he pushed or tried hard enough to let her be himself instead of forcing her to be something else, maybe she would have a breakthrough like Saeran did. However, he couldn’t do that and let her go to jail, could he? Nope. So he had to make a deal with the devil. For Rika’s freedom and happiness, he had to hurt everyone. 

He himself says in one of the floating space thoughts that he needed to research how to commit himself to that. V admits that he knows that he’s wrong to go this far with Rika, both of them admit that they know they’re wrong and that they knew it was wrong from the start. 

We can see him on Day 3 with moments where he is... showing this guilt again and showing us that side of him that we saw before he cracked and committed to his fate with Rika. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like they’re dating or anything here, he’s merely giving Rika what she wants because he thinks it will help her and right what went wrong. It doesn’t. They’re both living in her fantasy for her sake. Rika’s selfish wish is a family where they pretend nobody was hurt and if she gets that... well, that’s one of the BEs. 

V has been enabling a lot of her darker thoughts from the start, and for a while, he realized that he had to do something and he tried to do something by trying to go and remove Saeran from that place, but in the end, he felt like there was nothing left for him to do but commit to Rika and suffer in that selfish wish. V is willing to do anything for Rika, even hurt others when it comes down to it. He hurt the RFA and he betrayed them for RIka. 

This is the worst-case scenario for the kind of person that V can become, and I don’t think it was out of character, I think it was just an aggressive reminder of how far you can fall if you let yourself give up and decide to burn all of the bridges that you have for someone that isn’t good for you. I think what I never expected was the fact that V was there when Mother Choi was killed. I never thought he was there. 

I thought he either suspected it or learned well beyond the fact. But, no, he was there, he helped her move the body. He lied and covered her tracks and that was the moment that Rika herself said that she gave up on everything and fully committed to what she and Mika were planning on doing. 

So, from when V started to enable her in the wrong ways by telling her revel in a devil, to the murder (even though it was a self-defense case, it was still traumatic to blackout and cut someone to save your own life), to Mika and the plans for the cult. It was a recipe for disaster. I never thought that V was there when it happened. That just... 

That revelation to me, his willingness to drug Saeyoung, his willingness to let the brothers suffer for Rika’s happiness... this is revealing how far V could go for the person that we all know as Rika. The situation doesn’t always call for V to go and do something to this degree, but there’s no denying that V is a complicated character with a lot of weight on his shoulders. 

He was never my favorite but... I can’t disregard what has been written and that I don’t feel like it was OOC. I just think it was showing us a reality where he could go too far. I realize that not many people are going to agree with me on this front and that’s okay. I don’t hate V. V fucked up a lot and there’s no denying that, I just wish that he never went back to Rika and he came to us for help in the first place. 

I guess this is a bit more lengthy than I intended, haha. This isn’t to be mean to anyone that thinks differently than me. I really don’t want to get into arguments or anything over this. So, please, no discourse over this. 

TLDR; This is just a reality where V went over the edge, and it’s just a possible timeline where he could lose himself to what he long tried to push back against but he ultimately gave up on himself and let himself be fully committed to Rika’s selfish wish. You can see the guilt and exhaustion in his eyes but he just lets himself become the villain because it’s the only way to protect Rika from suffering and the only way to “kind of” protect the boys. 

[chaos-monkeyy]

26, 27, 34 😊

26. Is there anything you’ve wanted to write, but you’ve been too scared to try?

This ask beat you to it, I’m afraid 🙈💙

27. What’s the nicest comment you’ve ever received?

Ack impossible question 🤣

I seriously could not pick one, I’m lucky to get so many amazing comments from so many lovely people, so instead of the ‘nicest’ one, I’ll share one of the earliest comments I got on my very first fic I ever wrote ever: 

WELL

I

CHRIST

SO HOT

and so tender, and so loving, and so in character, and oh damn you are doing an absolutely fabulous job of providing this fandom with glorious, glorious, much needed smut

This is definitely one of my all-time favourite fics <3 <3 <3

This person’s comments in general just made me feel so goddamn good about my first, nervous foray into writing fic and working on what ended up being a way longer and complex OT3 story than I’d intended when I started, and it was just... Being welcomed like that, and supported (by them and others as well) I think really really set the stage for my entire experience and feelings towards fanfic and fandom as a whole. 

34. Copy and paste an excerpt you’re particularly fond of.

From Curious Creatures: 

Thrawn was unendingly, endearingly curious. He never seemed to run out of questions about humans and why they did any number of things, from wearing clothes and sleeping in houses to burning wood, cooking meals, and boiling water. He didn’t answer all of Eli’s return questions about faeries, though he did answer some; and Eli had quickly realized— and just as quickly accepted— that he would never truly understand the way the tiny creatures saw the world, no matter how many questions Thrawn answered. He didn’t mind, though, growing increasingly, deeply fond of the little faerie as the days went by.

But then, one day, Thrawn stopped coming.

Eli hadn’t thought anything of it initially. It wasn’t unusual for a day or two to pass without a sign of the faerie. But after a week came and went without a single nighttime visit from Thrawn, with even the dish on the hearth left completely untouched, Eli started to worry. The first frost had finally come, dusting the world in twinkling sparkles of chill white one day— the same day that Thrawn had first failed to appear, he later realized with a twinge of unease— and the promise of approaching winter was a faint but sharp bite on the air.

--

Time passed, and the days grew shorter while the air quickly grew colder, the once-vibrant leaves falling from their trees to lie dull and lifeless on the ground.

Eli finished preparing for winter, preserving and bartering and storing all the supplies he would need for the coming months, and still there was no sign of Thrawn. He finally had to shutter his windows, sealing them against the cold and wind and rain, although he left one window free for as long as the weather permitted it. But by the time the winter snows began and Thrawn still hadn’t returned, Eli started to truly fear he would never see the little faerie again. He kept up his habit of leaving out nightly offerings, just in case, but he no longer expected to find them gone in the morning. And they never were.

The lonely evenings grew longer, darker, colder; and he couldn’t help wondering sadly, staring into the dancing tongues of flame in the hearth, whether Thrawn had moved on and forgotten all about him, or if something had happened to him out there in the forest, or… he realized with a sudden, sharp pang of loss that he had never thought to ask how long faeries lived.

Perhaps, like the bright blossoms of spring and summer, they lived only a brief time before succumbing to the harsh cold of winter.

Eli tried not to think about that, preferring instead the bittersweet image of his little faerie flitting silently, happily, through warm, moonlit woods in some distant place; far, far away from the bitter winds and snow that had settled into the forest.

That stupid passage has made me tear up every time I’ve read it, which made it really hard to edit 😂 But it’s like... a whole self-contained mini story within the bigger story, almost, and for some reason I just really like the tone I hit with it.

💙💙💙

(The fanfic writers ask list!)

[okamirayne]

Hi Rayne!! Just finished (yet another) re-read of BtB, and I don't think I've cried this hard in a long, long time - it was very cathartic. But, feels aside, I was wondering if you could tell us a bit more about Karibi? She's fascinating and I'm just dying to know more! (Sorry if this has been asked before!!)

Hi there, my lovely Anon!

Apologies for the delayed response. Aw, luv.  Always so, so chuffed to learn someone has revisited the series and even more touched to know it hits you in the feels <3.

But, feels aside, I was wondering if you could tell us a bit more about Karibi? She's fascinating and I'm just dying to know more! (Sorry if this has been asked before!!)

Karibi! <3 Firstly, no, this hasn’t been asked before, so imagine my excitement regarding an OC ASK -- can you picture it? TREBLE IT. XD 

Another dear Anon asked about Naoki in a previous ASK and I thank you for your expressed interest in Karibi! It’s a funny one because I have two Karibi OCs -- the edited version I inserted into BtB and the original, original version. Given that we’re talking about BtB Karibi...let me rewire my character brain a moment and firmly draw a line or two...or twelve....

Right! A Third War orphan, Karibi grew up in the orphanage outside of Konoha and proved to be quite a handful over the years given her feisty nature, constant escape-attempts, insistence on dressing and behaving like a boy (for which she earned consistent bullying and beatings), and her rough-housing free-for-all scraps with other kids -- as well as her routine habit of stealing food from the kitchens to give to a stray dog who constantly hung around the outskirts of the orphanage. It was easier for her to attach herself this dog than other kids who came and went, just like the voluntary care-givers. Her mischief-making, stealthy tactics, “never stay down” stubbornness and streetwise attitude soon caught the attention of a retired Konoha ANBU veteran (a patron of the orphanage) who interrupted a violent fight between Karibi and a group of local boys who’d stoned the dog to death. Observing how fiercely she fought (always getting up when knocked down) despite being outnumbered and beaten, the ANBU veteran recognized her potential, promptly adopted her, and trained her in ninjutsu, genjutsu and chakra control.

Their relationship was close, until it wasn’t.

Advancing quickly through the academy and ranks – winning zero friends along the way – she was soon put forward for ANBU by her adopted father, who immediately cut his ties to her, damaging an already tentative trust. Intended as a solo agent, she was immediately assigned to a 3-team ANBU unit named Team Yokai consisting of herself, Genma, and Naoki (Captain).

Enter in, bonding.

It was here, after a lot of boundary testing and testosterone busting, that she finally formed some hard-won emotional attachments after beating Genma and Naoki bloody in taijutsu combat – taunting them constantly to get up (“seven times down, eight times up”). While she was promptly one-upped by both in ninjutsu, her genjutsu prowess brought her right back onto an even keel with them both. Perfectly balanced, respect began to form between them – then friendship – which later led to a lover’s trine between the three of them. This was intense but short-lived; Karibi soon recognised that though she loved them both, she preferred women and also realised Genma and Naoki’s feelings for each other went a hell of a lot deeper than ‘close friends with benefits’. She knew they’d fallen for each other before either admitted it to themselves, let alone each other.

The three of them were inseparably close.

They were more than her friends or comrades – they were her family.

They kept each other going.

Karibi allowed Naoki to establish a permanent telepathic link with her whereas Genma only allowed it during missions and in the bedroom. Karibi kept her mind open to Naoki always, though he never intruded until years later after being listed as Killed In Action.

His death blew a hole in their world.

Their team was dismantled.

They would not accept another Captain.

To make matters worse, due to the unbroken telepathic link and the resulting ghost of Naoki’s presence in her head, Karibi never truly believed Naoki had died and her adamant ‘denial’ of this ‘fact’ created a heart-breaking rift between her and Genma.

This rift between them grew darker and wider as Genma turned to solo deep-cover missions and Karibi turned to drink when she wasn’t neck-deep in assassinations and a failed “could’ve been” relationship. And then one day the edge of all the smashed glass bottles in her life looked very, very tempting.

Genma found her, just in time – the first time at least.

Treated and cleared of suicide risk, Karibi was soon diagnosed as schizophrenic given the “voice” of her dead Captain in her head and this threatened her position in the ANBU – but her brokenness caught Danzō’s interest.

After a failed attempt to recover her relationship with her civilian lover and unable to mend the rift between herself and Genma, she signed on for a ROOT initiation mission – which sadly finished what she’d started with the bottle – though it was an impulsive and sudden decision rather than a deeply pre-meditated one. She disobeyed orders when sent into a child-trafficking operation being run out of an orphanage. This was a trigger for her. Rather than complete the ROOT mission of kidnapping a couple of kids for ROOT grooming, she murdered her ROOT partner and slaughtered the “nuns” who were supposed to be taking care of the children rather than indenturing them into the sex-trade to raise funds. When the ninja traffickers showed up, she lit the building on fire, and while the children escaped she made damned sure not one “piece of trash” running the trafficking ring got out alive.

She went down fighting in flames.

Her death was the final crippling blow to Genma. He went to Mizugumo immediately after that. Then he went to his own personal hell before Kakashi met him there in ANBU’s gutter and helped drag him out of it years later, saving him from the same fate as Karibi when he almost identically mirrored the blaze of glory tragedy with his suicide attempt in Tanzaku years later.

Random Trivia:

Karibi loved dogs and often kept an eye out for Inuzuka women looking for a bit of rough and tumble.

She dealt with a lot of possessive shit from Naoki. He was very possessive of his family/lovers and was only just about able to accept Karibi being intimate with others, even after he’d stopped sleeping with her. Genma always joked that Naoki only accepted her activities because her preference was for women, not men.

Karibi, like Naoki, felt strongly about the abuse of children, given certain illicit incidents she’d witnessed at the orphanage -- she and Genma understood Naoki’s childhood trauma and were the only ones who could handle him when he flew into a rare rage

Her favourite catchphrase was “seven times down, eight times up” (“Nana korobi, ya oki” which means “Fall down seven times, stand up eight.” It means choosing to never give up hope, and to always strive for more.)

While her ANBU step-parent/mentor abandoned her in the end, she retained the green knit scarf he gifted her (the only gift she’d ever received from him other than her training and removal from the orphanage)

She began to fall for a civilian woman -- the scariest thing for her, other than losing her teammates.

Karibi’s top value was “resilience” and never giving up – which made her suicide attempt so painful for Genma to accept

She turned to Naoki for help retrieving memories about her parents – this enabled him to perfect his own kinjutsu to reverse memory erasure

She had a plethora of ear piercings and a tattoo Naoki inked on her hip

She loved various green teas

She had a crush on Kurenai – round about the same time Genma did, which made for an interesting competition between them….and a somewhat unfair irritation towards Asuma.

She was a bit of magpie in the ANBU and stole items on missions, donating them privately to the orphanage

She loved berry-picking and was very well-versed with poisons

Genma gave her chickenpox and she gave him hell for it

She almost managed to shove a spinning top up Genma’s ass – almost.

Genma accidentally broke her baby finger playing “thumb wars” and it never set properly on the joint, causing her to have a crooked little finger

Most of her illusion/genjutsu techniques focus around folklore creatures and light, which came in handy on missions dealing with highly suspicious village folk

Her dream goal was to one day be Goei Shotai to a female Hokage – a dream Genma later lived out for her when Tsunade came into power

Naoki was with her telepahtically when she died, as Genma was with Naoki when he died -- in that way, Karibi was not as alone in death as Genma always feared.

Wow, that was LONG.  Sorry, Anon! I absolutely love character-writing and development....I get carried away even if most of their story never makes it into the actual written piece. Thank you for asking about Karibi, I hope this insight gives you some answers! <3

[hs-devote]

2. S T A R T E R

Moodboard // Content // Masterlist

Disclaimer:

All characters and situation in this story are fictitious. Resemblance to any person living or dead is only God knows.

Previous chapter :

In less than 30 seconds, the door bursted open revealing a man with fancy clothes, curly blonde hair, hands in his pants. Y/N never seen him in this company before. Harry sighed in disbelief, dialling Madeleine's extension immediately.

“Don't you know what function of the phone or fucking intercom is on your desk?! I didn't say I'd be available for another guests.” He hissed.

That blonde guy looking at surrounding, until his blazing blue eyes caught Y/N busy figure on the couch. He taking closer step to her, tilting his head. “I've never seen you before.” He spoke lowly. Y/N just offered a small smile.

“Hey, Harry. Is this your new birdie? You didn't tell me you got a new beau.”

2. STARTER

His words made Y/N face reddened, trying to ignore it.

“You almost never let a female to sit on your couch, always sitting formally.. in there.” He's teasing again, while pointing at regular seat. Y/N squinted her eyes, while Harry massage his temple. She knows this guy irritated him so much. “How many times to I have to tell you, you can't go straight into my office without warning. We never know if I'm busy-”

“Busy shagging this girl? Woah I think office is off a limi-”

“LUCAS!”

“Excuse me?!” Y/N screamed along with Harry. The man –who called Lucas by Harry– just giggling like a fool, but in one second the look on his face turned serious. “With your reaction like THAT, I believe even more.”

“Just.. just don't listen to him, Y/N. This is my cousin, Lucas. And Lucas, this Y/N, my assistant.” Harry was lost in his words, didn’t want to make the situation being uncomfortable. Meanwhile, Y/N muttered a nice to meet you – even Y/N didn’t like his first impression, she had to be polite by forcing a small smile.

“What do you want?” Harry's voice stern, glaring at his cousin – trying to balance his emotions. Lucas smiled wryly, “Firstly, I want to apologise to you and your lady. Secondly, did you check your phone? I didn't come to joking around. Except for earlier.”

“No, I was busy. Why?”

“Commonwealth decided to review the projects and there's possibility that we might.. lose the bid.” He asserted.

Another crumbling day for Harry.

Harry stared at his cousin in disbelief, then snickering. “You've gotta be kidding me.”

“If the worst scenario really happens, you should find substitute.”

“How much the bid worth?”

“Around £850,000.”

“Fucking hell.” He muttered, while rubbing his face. “Keep an eye to this. I'll think of another plan.”

Lucas nods, getting up from the seat. “I'll keep you updated. Get enough rest, you're overworked. Try to have fun for a while.” He tapped Harry's shoulder – winking at Y/N, then excused himself.

“Dear lord please get easy on me.”

Y/N heard Harry mumbling, she couldn't imagine how upset he is at the moment. Finishing the paperwork, she put it on his desk “I made a few points, there are something we can fix. The rest, we have to change the agreements in total.”

Harry was silent, no words came out. Until suddenly his head snapped, “Have you grab lunch? I need to clear my mind.” He asked, change the subject.

.

.

.

. Lunch break taking place at an Italian restaurant not far from the office. While Harry ordered pasta, Y/N was more interested in salads. London cool breeze this afternoon and vacant booths in the restaurant are something that she enjoyed for a moment. If she was alone to take a lunch, she didn't dare to eat in a fancy restaurant like this. She would go for Shake Shack, The Athenian, or Thunderbird – sometimes she likes to bring her own homemade food.

“I want to apologise for Lucas behaviour earlier. Sometimes he doesn't have control over his mouth –or whatever came out from his mouth.” Harry sighed, putting down his cutlery. “Meanwhile, he's one of the trusted people in Erskine. The most loyal employee I've ever seen.”

“It's okay.” Y/N mumbled, “I thought he was your friend. Never seen him before, not expecting a cousin or employee either.”

“Indeed,” Harry sipped his drink. “He's not having duty in here. He heads a branch in Manchester, but every two weeks he'll definitely come here.”

“Mr. Styles, can I ask you something?” Y/N ask quitely. Harry glanced briefly, smirking. “It's Harry when we aren't in office.”

She blushed, “Right.” Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, “I do not intend to ruin your mood, regarding the two agreements that you asked me to correct. There are a lot of weird things, if you want to change them, I'm not sure they would want to because.. If I could say, the agreements was favourable on their side.”

He just stared at her, bitting his lip. “Have you finished them?”

“If we can persuade them, our losses can be minimized. Everything will be okay if we do it right.”

“I hope so.” Sighing, he leaned in his seat. “Arrange the meetings, we have to talk to them as soon as possible.”

After finishing lunch, they both in rush to getting back at the office. When Y/N wanted to pay her meal, Harry beat her first. She refused, but he was insisted – he said it was small treat because he hasn't found her mistake during her work with him. Y/N thanked him when leaving the restaurant, promising to treat him a lunch the other day.

Canary Wharf that noon filled with people, some dressed up in their business attire, or common people who just want to grab lunch. It took a couple meters walking to the restaurant, so Harry didn’t use his car when he took Y/N out for lunch.

Harry was talkative person with meaningful conversation. From him, Y/N knew that Erskine actually has a sister company, but he didn't take care of it anymore since it had been sold by his father's friend.  Right now, Erskine is kind of arguably hostile to that company. His father was furious, but he couldn't do anything because it was his own fault after all.

“The name is Machtig, if you want to know.”

Having a good chat, a joke here and there, until someone hit Y/N from behind. She was stumbling a bit, but Harry was quick to hold her arm. It was a man, wearing a thick, worn-out jacket and black beanie. At first Y/N didn't really bother, but after realising she was no longer holding her purse. It hit her that man was running on her, most likely the robber.

“Hey!” Shouting, her legs start running after him. Hoping he didn't disappear in a sea of people. Harry was confused, chasing her slowly without knowing the reason.

“What's wrong?”

“That man stole my purse. I need to find him.” Y/N ran back, hoping to find that man. A little grateful for remembering his appearance, makes it easy for her. Having no care with some people curious eyes, Y/N kept run following her instinct –left Harry somewhere.

Her head snapped, seeing Harry was pulling the collar of the man she was looking for. Y/N walked to him, being able to hear what Harry say to him.

“It's not yours, mate. Give it back to me.” The robber was stubborn, not wanting to return it back. He still holding her purse tightly. Y/N took the initiative to pull his jacket, so she could take it, but luck was not on her side that day. As fast as lightning, he pulled out the pocket knife, leaving a small scratch on her arm. Blood was splotching from the cut, not much -but still hurts.

Seeing Y/N in pain, Harry pinned the man's hand down in his back, taking away her purse from him. Saving it securely behind his suit jacket. The robber managed to free his hand and giving Harry a  punch below his jaw. Y/N flinched, as Harry stumbling –while the man ready to give another attack, she quickly stand on his way. Ignoring her wound.

“No! Please stop! We just want my purse back!” Y/N shouted.  Taking a step closer, she could smell alcohol from his awful breath.

“Get out of my way!” Before he could reach her, Harry pulled her behind his back and this time give that man a good punch right in his face until he fall backwards, holding his seems broken nose. Harry's fist was tight with the veins popped up.

Something strange, despite his bruised jaw, Y/N felt that someone standing in front of her is not like regular Harry. Yes it’s Harry, but he was dark, more intimidating. When he look back – staring at her, she could clearly see his irises get darker than usual, his pupils dilated. Without warning, Harry pulled the man's collar and beat him up, everywhere. Face, jaw, chest, stomach. No matter he was bleeding blood and his action gathering more crowd.

“Harry, please!”

No response, still punching.

“Harry, stop! He's slowly dying!”

Again, still punching, no mercy.

“Harry!” Y/N grabbed his waist, holding him back so he couldn’t punch his opponent again. As if he didn’t hear her, he tried to let go of her hand, but she got faster by cupping his face. Forcing him look at her, “Harry, please stop. I'm okay. We're okay. He's dying, you could get him killed.”

He averted his gaze around, seeing people seemed to be talking about him. Y/N quickly turned his head, to look at her again. Comforting smile was drew on her face, “It's okay. We'll go, okay?”

When she turned around, she saw the man lying unconscious, silently praying Harry didn't kill him. Four policemen appeared before they both could go from the scene. The two of them lifting the man up with the help of paramedics who had just arrive, while the rest of policemen came to them.

“Excuse me ma'am?”

Y/N gave him small smile, “Yes, sir?”

They begin to ask about the scene that concerns them both and asking for information. Feel enough to hear her confirmation, they ask for Y/N phone number if they need to call her upon the accident later, and excuse themselves. She glance at Harry, because he hadn’t said anything. His stare was blank, still with darker irises and dilated pupils. It took her a moment to realised his hands were covered with blood, but the police never asked anything about it. Looks like they didn't notice, same as her who was unaware, the blood from her wound still dripping.

Harry suddenly wrap her wound with handkerchief, tighten it to keep the blood from flowing. Taking her hand in his, he asked her to leave. “Let's go.”

Arriving the Erskine building, they took another lift, direct to his office, not wanting employees to see his state. When they both passed Madeleine's desk, Y/N was one hundred percent sure she was looking at them both in utter shock, not daring say anything. All she knew, Harry's hand was still holding Y/N's, not knowing that her two colleagues were bleeding.

Y/N got a first aid kit and start helping Harry's wound first. But again, he beat her first, taking over the kit.

“Hey, let me help with your wound.” She said. He just silent, taking the kit out.

“Yours worse.” That's all he said. Y/N endured the pain while he help her, thankful that the wound wasn't that deep so it didn't need hospital stitches. During he bandaged her wound, she was looking at him carefully. His chocolate tousled curly hair, soft curls that fell on his forehead. Eyebrows, eyelashes, those eyes, and then nose, thin lips, cheekbones, jawline, and his small ears. This man was so pretty, so beautiful. Despite his rough act earlier, he was so delicate.

When his eyes flickered at hers, Y/N avert her gaze. He bandaged her wound neatly, she muttering a small thank you, appreciating his help. He refused her help when she took his hand.

“Let me help you, Ha-”

“I said, no! Don't you understand? Are you deaf?” He growled, voice heavier than usual. The earlier aura still dangling around him. Irises still dark meanwhile his pupils back to normal. To be honest she felt a slight pang in her heart, do not understand what's happening. He got up, leaving her alone with a loud bang when exited his office.

.

.

.

. From what happened a few days ago, Y/N still doesn't dare to interact much with Harry. Just talking and meeting him if necessary. He also didn't talk about that scene. Since the accident, it seemed his mood was still bad, he was more often issued a higher pitch than usual.

Sun shining blindly that noon. Upon her return from lunch break, some employees gathered together, seemingly talking about something. When Y/N passed by, she felt their attention follow her every step she take. She didn’t bother, thinking they're gossiping about unnecessary things.

“So, your wound because of that huh?” Madeleine, with the last name Brown –well, she just know recently– pointing at Y/N's bandage.

“That what?” Y/N didn't want to jump into conclusion that she know what happened, Madeleine might has another assumption.

“You were robbed while walking back to here, weren't you? The news with headlines – Harry Styles, the man of Erskine, got into huge fight – spread massively today. Some medias showing your pictures that day.”

She stare at Madeleine dumbfounded, didn’t know about this. Did Harry know? Her minds rolling on the few people she met in the corridor, it most likely they were indeed gossiping about her. About that accident. Y/N just shrugged, “I don't know if that accident will spreading everywhere.”

“I was surprised, it's rare for a robber hanging around in that area. As well as the pictures, how the hell the journalist got the pictures” She mumbled. “How's your wound anyway?”

“It's getting better, I think it can be removed in a few days.” Looking at her bandage, a small sign that always reminds her of the accident. Madeleine just nod, “I think the scene really getting into him, you know? I mean, he's more irritable lately. Did you know he fired three employees on the 6th floor yesterday? He even threw a journal right in front of them.”

She bulging her eyes, shocked. “I didn't..”

“Well, he was furious. But it was undeniable hot.”

“Get to work!”

They both flinched when someone barking behind them.

Speaking of the devil, it’s Harry Styles himself.

Madeleine nodded, walking back to her desk. He didn’t stop in front of them, continued to walk towards his office. Y/N stare at his back, then down to his hands. His bruised fist still look angry, although it seems already taken care of.

The time keep ticking until clockwise shows 7.00 pm. Y/N tasks today was awfully pile up, every single one of them were screaming wanted to get it done. Dead silent in her office increase her desire to  finished them quickly. She realise the office was getting dark, contrast with her view of London night sky that twinkles from buildings lights out there. Y/N was getting ready to go home until she realise the office next to her, Harry's office, is still blinding light.

Thanks to the sheer curtain, she still able to see Harry's figure still on his desk, hands holding his head tightly. For a slight moment, Y/N can see him gripping his head, veins poking, sometimes hitting his head with his fist. Worried about him, Y/N taking initiative to dialling his extension, keeping her eyes still on him. He didn't budge, letting his phone ringing. She tried to call his personal number, Harry had looked at his phone screen but didn't answer it. Lifting her bag, she headed to his office.

“Mr. Styles?”

No answer.

“Harry?”

Dead silent.

This time, she knocked his door. Still, no answer. Slowly, Y/N scanned her access card, the door opened successfully. Slowly, very carefully, she walks to Harry.

“Harry?” She call his name, in friendly way. She hopes he will soften a bit if she call him not with Mr. Styles

“What do you want?”His venom voice scared her, but Y/N was determined to getting closer to him. Step by step...

“Are you okay? Are you in pain?”

His head immediately snap to her direction, his face made her fear increase. Y/N swallowed, taking a closer step. In a flicker eyes, he stood up – walking to her, grabbed her hands – right in the wounds. She winced, hands trying to hold his hand away.

“What do you want?!” His boomed voice startled her. Y/N squeaked, while staring into his eyes. His eyes, a pair eyes she didn’t know. She wanted to scream, ask for a help. But there was only Harry and her in here.

“Harry, please. I don't intend any harm.” She whispered, almost crying.

“Harry? Harry you say?”

What?

She didn’t understand. Maybe he meant she should address him Mr. Styles. He opened his mouth again, but it wasn’t an anger, it was a wince. He let go her arm, and moved away. Keeping his distance from Y/N. He screamed again, in agony. Y/N comes near, but his hand prevent her.

“No, please no. Just.. just go home, please. It's getting late. I'll be okay.” His voice is gentle now, like his usual voice. Seeing his assistant didn't move any muscles, Harry's pleading again. “Please, I'm okay. You should go home, Y/N.”

Y/N just stare at him, nodding her head. “Get rest, Harry.” She left Harry alone, headed home. Her muscle feel stiff. She wants to hurry up so she can relax her muscles under the shower.

The following day, until late noon, there are no signs of Harry. His office is still the same as last night, a little bit messy. Y/N asks the cleaner to tidy it up, while trying to contact Harry on her phone.

To: Harry Styles

Good afternoon, Mr. Styles. Are you coming to the office today?

Less than five minutes, her phone buzzing. New message from Harry.

Hi, Y/N. I'm sorry I forgot to let you know I couldn't come today. Is there something important?

When Y/N just wanted to reply his message, her office phone ringing,

628 – Madeleine Brown

“Yes, Madeleine?”

“Hi, do you know if Mr. Styles will come? I have five lines waiting on him.”

“Oh, actually he just text me that he couldn't come. I think he's unwell right now. Tell them they can call back tomorrow, or leave a message. I will tell him later.”

“Alright, thank you.”

She hung up the phone, texting Harry back. Letting he knows that his client wants to meet him tomorrow, but she's not sure, offering to push it back. But Harry, as the hard worker he is, undertakes to meet them tomorrow, asks for her help to prepare, and asks her to send some finished documents to his email.

Lunch break, Y/N decided to take away a chinese food and chose to spend her lunch break in the break room. The queueing is not too long, but standing alone in a queue is quite boring. Y/N wants to take Madeleine with her, but she has disappeared first. While she's waiting her order, the ongoing broadcast news quite distract  her, showing news of the murdered that occurred last night on King's Road - Chelsea. The victim was lying on the side of empty road, with a stab wound in the hip. Unfortunately no sharp objects were found, there was no CCTV either. The Police are having a little trouble investigating it. All they can find out is the victim is a homeless thirty year old man.

Thanking the waiter after her order came, she walking back to office immediately. On the way back, she remembered the accident with Harry the other day, she just realise that she didn't get any call from the police. If they did follow up on that case, her or Harry should have been asked to be willing to be witnesses, right? . 

.

. Unedited. The first few chapter will be sucks.

Feel free to ask me anything here

[mediaevalmusereads]

Daring and the Duke. By Sarah MacLean. New York: Avon, 2020.

Rating: 3/5 stars

Genre: historical romance

Part of a Series? Yes, Bareknuckle Bastards #3

Summary: Grace Condry has spent a lifetime running from her past. Betrayed as a child by her only love and raised on the streets, she now hides in plain sight as queen of London’s darkest corners. Grace has a sharp mind and a powerful right hook and has never met an enemy she could not best, until the man she once loved returns. Single-minded and ruthless, Ewan, Duke of Marwick, has spent a decade searching for the woman he never stopped loving. A long-ago gamble may have lost her forever, but Ewan will go to any lengths to win Grace back… and make her his duchess. Reconciliation is the last thing Grace desires. Unable to forgive the past, she vows to take her revenge. But revenge requires keeping Ewan close, and soon her enemy seems to be something else altogether—something she can’t resist, even as he threatens the world she's built, the life she's claimed…and the heart she swore he'd never steal again.

***Full review under the cut.***

Content Warnings: explicit sexual content, violence, blood, references to child abuse and maiming

Overview: There was only one book left in the Bareknuckle Bastards series so I thought “why not?” I was curious as to how MacLean would redeem the main antagonist of the first two books, and I rather liked Grace every time she showed up on the page. While there were some things I enjoyed, I would put this finale closer in quality to Brazen and the Beast than Wicked and the Wallflower. There wasn’t much to bind the two leads together aside from their past, in my opinion, and while MacLean attempts to tell a darker, angstier story, much of the plot felt empty and repetitive. Still, there were some nice nods to feminism and consent was always at the forefront, so I’m giving this book 3 stars.

Writing: MacLean’s prose isn’t radically different in Daring than it was in Brazen. It might be a little more serious, as the subject matter is definitely darker, but overall, it’s easy to get through and conveys MacLean’s ideas clearly. My only major complaint is that Daring felt more slow-paced than its prequels, perhaps because we got a lot of filler and repetition of the same scene but from different perspectives. Granted, some of this happens in the previous books, but because Daring isn’t largely focused on something external (like a business rivalry or a power play with an antagonist), everything just seemed to drag.

Also like Brazen, I don’t think MacLean used her themes to the fullest extent. There were some interesting attempts, such as the story about Apollo and the recurring mask motif, but there were also some duds, like the commentary about people being mad that Victoria was queen because she was a woman (Victoria was not a good symbol of “girl power,” in my opinion). While any one of these could have worked, they didn’t have as heavy of an impact as the themes in Wicked.

I also think MacLean held back on giving her characters unique quirks that served as metaphors; while Grace does have a tattoo that has some significance, it didn’t have sustained presence like Felicity’s lockpicking or Whit’s two watches. As a result, Daring felt the most thematically flat of the three books, and I wish as much care was put into both Brazen and Daring as was in Wicked.

Plot: Aside from the romance, most of the plot of this book revolves around Ewan’s redemption and a subtle concern over the increased frequency of raids on houses of ill repute. To be honest, I think this book started out rather well; Grace rescues Ewan from the explosion that happed at the end of Brazen, and their initial reunion and confrontation was fairly angsty. From there, though, I felt like the plot started to get repetitive and had no shape. Devil and Whit would threaten to beat up Ewan, Ewan would make some grand gesture (like hosting a ball or ask to help Covent Garden in a way), Grace would be attracted to that gesture, they’d have some intimate moment, Grace would then get nervous and run, only for the cycle to start over. While I did like the ways in which Ewan tried to earn forgiveness by helping Covent Garden, there wasn’t a whole lot of tension in these scenes aside from the threat of a brawl. I also didn’t feel like the subplot about Grace’s bordello was prominent enough or thematically related enough to have an impact; the bordello raids seemed to be a commentary about women and power, but it fell flat for me because Ewan didn’t really have to struggle with seeing Grace as an equal or as someone with power in her own right. He’s mostly already there, so the commentary felt rather hollow.

I think I would have much rather seen a plot with stronger parallels to the romance or one with more dramatic references to the characters’ pasts. Maybe Ewan’s secret could have been at risk throughout the book, and Grace has to decide what to do (which could have made for an interesting final showdown, if Ewan’s true identity had been discovered). Getting out of that pickle seems like a much more interesting plot than the empty gestures towards women in power that we got.

Characters: I liked Grace in Wicked, so I was happy that she got her own story in Daring. She’s a smart businesswoman with an intelligence network of almost all women, and I love the pleasure she takes in roaming the rooftops and dressing in bold colors. I also really love the friendships she has with her lieutenants at the bordello, and the sibling banter between her and Devil and Whit. However, my admiration from her cooled whenever she would engage in her back-ad-forth with Ewan. She never seemed to know what she wanted and was fairly flighty, which is understandable to an extent but irritating when there isn’t a strong plot or clear emotional progression to back it up. I always felt like Grace was stagnating and never really evolving, and her main character flaw was just to get over her past and hesitation about Ewan’s title. I wanted her to have something more, like an insecurity that Ewan could help her with.

Ewan, for his part, is somewhat interesting in that he was a villain in previous books. I liked the angst he brought to the story as well as the heartbreak when we finally learn why he made certain choices in his past, but other than that, he didn’t really have an exciting emotional arc. After the first scene, Ewan leaves London for a year to make himself a better man worthy of Grace, and when he returns, he seems to have finished growing and only needs the people around him to see it. I feel like we were cheated of seeing that growth happen on-page.

Side characters were fine and served their purpose. Devil and Whit were at their best when teasing Grace, but at their worst when talking about Ewan. I felt like they were always threatening to beat Ewan up but they never acted, which meant that their words felt hollow and their confrontations were useless. It would have been more interesting, in my opinion, if they had had more honest conversations with Ewan about their pasts so the angst was not just between Ewan and Grace but between the brothers as well. I wanted the brothers to struggle more with their emotions, rather than just think about punching one another.

Grace’s lieutenants, Veronique and Zeva, were fun when they were teasing Grace, but it also felt like they were there to relay information about the raids, which weren’t all that interesting. I liked that Grace was shown to have female friendships, and I liked that the lieutenants showed women in positions of power outside of a domestic setting, but ultimately, the raids just weren’t exciting enough to me to think of the lieutenants as much more than filler.

Romance: Based on the events from the previous two books, some readers may not find Ewan redeemable, so the quality of this romance will largely depend on what your personal threshold is. Personally, I was willing to give MacLean a shot, and while I do think she did everything she could to show that Ewan was trying to atone, I also don’t think she did enough to make the romance exciting. Grace and Ewan seemed to be mainly bound by their pasts, and though Ewan says he loves Grace for her boldness and power, it seemed all tell and no show. Part of the romance requires Ewan and Grace to learn who the other is now rather than try to recapture their childhoods, and I felt like not much of that happened outside of Grace just giving Ewan a tour of her bordello and telling stories about what happened to her after she fled with her brothers. I would have much rather had moments where the two bonded over some shared values - the laundry scene in Covent Garden kind of did that, but it was so dragged out and nothing was really built upon it, so I don’t think it had the intended effect.

I also don’t feel like Ewan and Grace grew within the romance very much, and by that I mean they didn’t help each other overcome some kind of character flaw. Ewan’s character development happened off-page, so most of his arc was about getting others to see that he had changed rather than changing before our eyes. Grace’s main barrier to the relationship was her past and her inability to trust, which would have been fine if all her reservations didn’t go out the window the moment she noticed Ewan’s muscles. It was somewhat exhausting to see her have an intimate moment with Ewan, insist that it was just this one time, then flee because they couldn’t be together (due to his title and her emotional hang-ups). The cycle would repeat, and it didn’t feel like each encounter built on the previous one. I think I would have liked to see a continuous evolution where the two learned who the other had become in the 20 years they were apart, uncovering truths along the way and building back trust rather than this back-and-forth of “we can’t be together” and “well, we can bang this one time but NO MORE after tonight.”

TL;DR: Despite including some delicious angst, Daring and the Duke ultimately relies on a cyclical romance and a lackluster plot, making this book a middling finale to the Bareknuckle Bastards series.

[chouetteffraie]

Why do you think skk is so popular 🤔🤔

This is a loaded question, dear nonnie! Coming right out of the gates with a toughie huh?

Soukoku is a behemoth of a ship. Getting initiated into the fandom, it’s probably one of the first ships you’ll see. With soukoku fanart popping up in the bungou stray dogs tag all the time and, out of 13144 bsd fics on ao3, 5655 of them including soukoku, it’d be hard not to see the immense fanbase it has. So, we come to your question nonnie: what makes soukoku so popular?

Please note: this comes from the perspective of a relative nonshipper, and I only speak for my own opinions and observations. I’d love to hear anything you have to add!

under a read more because it got a little wordy!

1. Foe Yay

Foe yay is a term used by TV Tropes to define the shipping of two characters who are enemies, whether it’s because the operate on opposite sides of the law or they just don’t like each other. Overall it boils down to this: the hostile tension between them can be easily read as romantic or even sexual if you choose to read it as such.

Media is up to interpretation, so where one person sees bitter enemies, another sees a viscous round if flirtation. Neither are wrong interpretations, even in regards to the canon legitimacy of a ship- I hold this viewpoint because I believe canon can be anything you want it to be; it’s an open field to sow the seeds for creativity. So, in any situation where they are together, there’s automatically a possibility for that moment to be regarded as a ship.

2. Their history

Let’s be real: people love a story where two characters know each other like the back of their hand. While that may not be the case, it’s a pretty solid fact that of every character in the series (that’s still alive- sorry, oda), Chuuya is the one who knows Dazai best. Everyone in the ADA may (or may not have) heard about his time in the mafia, they may have heard him talk about his darker days, and they can see what he’s capable of, but they weren’t there with him. Chuuya was.

Chuuya is the only one that’s still around who, through being partnered with Dazai in the past, knows that darker side of him the best. Akutagawa, as his subordinate, only knows the version he saw as an underling. Chuuya saw more of the real him as an (almost?) equal. Dazai isn’t very open with his personal details; he never was. But there are certain things Chuuya doesn’t need told like others might because he was there, and that sets the foundation for a nice potential ship.

3. Their partnership

I don’t remember the exact phrasing, but soukoku was and is described as an ultimate powerhouse, an unstoppable duo. In order to be part of a team that rises to such infamy, there has to be a certain bond, one where the members can work together and trust that the half of the job that isn’t theirs will get done efficiently. 

Not only do they have that certain bond, one where they can trust the other’s strengths and play off them to emphasize their own, it’s almost like the two characters were made for each other - in a way. In terms of their abilities, Chuuya’s could legitimately kill him when he uses it, and he has no way to stop it. The only way it can be stopped is through Dazai- he’s dependent on Dazai if he wants to perform to the best of his abilities (slight pun intended). Dazai, however, would be incomplete in the team without Chuuya; where he’s tactics and intimidation, Chuuya’s more the powerhouse and action guy he needs. While capable independently, the two are better together. They allow the other to perform just a little better than they would alone.

4. Their trust

Because of this partnership, the two of them trust each other. Chuuya has literally admitted this to Dazai (yeah I see you “I used Corruption because I trusted you” squad) They know what the other is capable of- Chuuya is especially aware of Dazai’s darker habits he tries to hide- and Dazai knows how Chuuya will respond and trusts him to be loyal and dependable as he’s always been.

5. Their current bond

William Shakespeare once said (something along the lines of), 

“Love me or hate me, both are in my favor. If you love me, I’ll always be in your heart…If you hate me, I’ll always be in your mind.” 

What that means is that any strong emotions, whether positive or negative, towards a person will put them in the forefront of your mind. When you have a crush, you often think about them all the time, are reminded constantly of them, and have strong reactions when they are mentioned. When you hate someone, you tend to think about them all the time, are reminded constantly of them, and have strong reactions when they are mentioned. Thank you copy and paste.

Love and hate have very similar “symptoms,” so it’s easy to see why enemies could be viewed as lovers in denial. Let’s be real, denial is a sexy, sexy concept to play around with in fanfic. Who doesn’t love a good slowburn and some classic mutual pining?

Even now, in the current timeline, Dazai lives to pester Chuuya constantly, who is the perfect target with his temper and confrontational attitude towards Dazai. You know what that is? Chemistry. I’m not talking strictly romantic, either. As two characters, they go well together: they interact and bounce off each other in an entertaining and believable way.

-

Overall, soukoku is what I see as the most fundamental ship in any fandom. For Durarara, it was shizaya, for Voltron, it was klance- the whole “rivalry” thing seems to attract shippers, and for good reason. Soukoku has a few unique spins to it to help shippers make their point, and I know I’ve missed a lot of them in this quick little ask. Still, I hope this gives you an idea as to why I think it’s so popular!

[lumilasi]

UPDATE: Bio revamp. Also I should probs draw him an outfit he wears when he goes into more “darker” route, I.E ends up being a “Villain” Jackrabbit.

Maybe there is a Vigilante bio sheet thing somewhere, I was too lazy to search for it hence I’m using the villain template and just editing it where necessary...

The character in the photo on the upper left is @glitchedskull‘s Naosu btw, who’s Saname’s BF

Rest of the bio below;

Age: around 13-14 when he first meets Ryuu and Kain.

Sexuality: pan 

SANAME’S QUIRK EXPLAINED  (Pros in normal, cons in bold)

Quirk name: Acid-palm

He can burn and melt anything he touches at will with ease as if his hands were coated in acid. Saname can also control how slow or fast things corrode, and even what direction the corrosion heads very precisely.

He doesn’t have to keep touching the object to corrode it; after touching the effect will continue as he pre-planned it. He can also change the effect’s speed and direction after removing his hand as long as he has visual to it.

He can do anything from creating a tiny hole to melting away large walls fairly quickly. 

Ironically, Saname is mostly immune to other acidic quirks and substances, just not his own.

If not careful, Saname can end up burning himself as sometimes a highly agitated state can cause his quirk to activate accidentally, and he’s not immune to his own touch. (hence the scars on his neck and over his eye)

Blocking his line of sight from what he’s touched makes him unable to change the way the corrosion happens if needed.

The effect of his acidic touch tends to weaken and move slower in colder weathers

FEW MORE FACTS

- Wasabi is good with melee-weapons like a staff or a pipe, and usually carries around one.

- He loves rabbits more than anything because his only toy as a child was a bunny plushie, one he still carries around and has a strong attachment to

- Ryuu is his favorite and he likes to stalk him around a lot each time Ryuu is around, this has led to problems too where he ends up in danger and the two have to save him. He finds Ryuu’s weird chilly crystal powers cool. (pun not intended)

- he has a slight phobia about collapsing buildings and fires due to what he went through as a child, having a flame hero - while fighting a villain - destroy his original home of sorts.

- Saname’s visible eye (the one with the palmprint scar) is discolored and lighter due to the injury he caused accidentally with his quirk when it first activated; he can still see with it thankfully, but it tends to get irritated easier than the other one. His “normal” eye is pure black and yellow. (I seem to have habit of drawing him in a way where you almost never see his uninjured eye heh.....)

- Saname as an adult mostly minds his own business, but due to the influence from his mothers and Ryuu and Kain) he tends to just act without thinking and doing what he thinks is right, even if its illegal. He never actively chose to be a vigilante like his other mum, its just kind of how he ended up due to his nature.

- His knee-pads in his Vigilante outfit are his lion mama Kei’s old ones from her outfit. His utility belt is also similar to her old one, just dark grey instead of brown.

PERSONALITY

As a child, Wasabi was very curious and easily excitable, getting in trouble a lot as a result. He had difficulty controlling his emotions due to his early childhood however, and was often aggressive, where he could snap from friendly to will-whack-you-with-a-stick in less than a second. 

As a young adult, he’s much more chill and well-mannered, but still has bit of a childish goofiness to him which can lead to silly situations and generally makes people think he’s the “class-clown” or “airhead” type. He’s also learned to be more mindful of people’s boundaries, when as a kid he tended to easily get into people’s faces so to say, making things awkward and uncomfortable.

 He can still get viciously mad in certain situations, but he no longer throws an uncontrollable fit; rather, he channels his anger in doing what he wants to do. During these times people can actually find this normally relaxed and happy-go-lucky (and a bit oblivious) chill dude really scary. 

He can be distracted pretty easily, except when he’s in a fight; thanks to training from both his mum Kei, and an unconventional family friend of sorts Ryuu Katagiri, Saname tends to be laser focused during those, which makes him a dangerous opponent. He tends to shut out everything else then and focus on defeating whoever he is fighting.

BG STORY SUMMARY

Saname grew up in an orphanage initially on a more poor area of the city; he can’t really remember anything about his original parents, perhaps due to trauma of some sort; given his aversion to fire people suspect he might’ve been in a fire that killed his parents.

 He was often bullied by other children and called weird because of his eyes, (he was the only one in that orphanage with “atypical” human eyes) difficult, easily triggered temper, and quirk that he struggled to control as a kid. (resulting in the scarring he has)

The orphanage gave him his name “Saname Wasabi,” because of his green hair and quirk. (and temper)

Then, the orphanage got destroyed accidentally in a fight in-between a hero (Endeavor) and a villain, with some of the staff and kids actually getting hurt in the process. Saname ended up running away amidst the chaos, frightened by the battle as the flames triggered his past unknown trauma.

Wandering around the city lost and scared, he eventually ran into a young woman named Rankure Hanekijo, who due to personal reasons decides to take the boy under her wing. Unfortunately, she had some bad people after her, forcing the two to flee outside the city, eventually ending up in a rural town where a local coffee-shop owner Kei Reidou - who turned out to have once been a vigilante - takes them in out of pity.

He ends up being unofficially adopted by the two women, who home-school him and he was even taught how to fight and better handle his quirk by Reidou. (This later led him to becoming a vigilante) 

Later on, Wasabi meets an old acquaintance of his new mum, a young man named Kain, who has supposedly become a villain and is friends with a known one. Because the pair helps preventing his mothers from getting arrested by some government agents by distracting them and basically making them think the lead about a woman named Akiko Hinoteki (Kei’s original name and identity) was a false alarm, Wasabi deems the pair okay. He ends up developing a big brother - little brother like relationship with Ryuu, who grows fond of the boy despite initial grouchiness, even teaching him some fight moves.

While doing his vigilante things, probably due to Kain and Ryuu’s influence, Saname ended up occasionally going further than what probably would be necessary, in some cases full blown killing the criminal if he deemed them bad enough, or just beating people up worse than needed. This ended up creating a rumor of an evil doppleganger for his vigilante persona, perhaps especially because occasionally when he did this, he wasn’t wearing his vigilante garments. 

Ref sheet base (C) Yourultraarchive

Character (C) Me