#foreshadowing? never heard of her | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tojikai · 11 months

Text

Sundered 2: EMBERS

Pairing: Gojo x reader

Genre: Angst

tags/cw: angst, mean!gojo(kinda), babydaddy!gojo, babymomma!reader, motherhood, insecurities, arguments, implied pregnancy, mentions of abortion

word count: 5.4k

a/n: it's not sad.

Pining so intensely for something you never had to the point where you physically ache.

Each step that you take away from Satoru’s house feels like a stomp to your already broken heart. Your eyebrows furrowed, feeling the waterlines of your eyes start to get hot and itch. You recalled the noises and laughs that you heard from them while you walked out of their door.

They have no idea how much you want to get down on your knees and beg them not to take away the only thing you have left.

Your feet feel heavy with each stride you make toward your car. You could taste blood inside your mouth as you bit your inner lip to channel the pain away from your heart and to your body instead. You found yourself looking for answers on why all of this has to happen to you. As if being replaced by the man you love so easily and having to see how he treats someone else a thousand times better than you were not enough, you also have to witness your own flesh and blood turn away from you. Am I really that far behind that woman?

Is she that much better that even my own child prefers her over me?

You placed your hands on the steering wheel, looking down at your lap as you let the tears fall. You kept glancing over at the gate, hoping that Satoru would come out, running with your baby in his arms. Yet, you don’t want him to see you crying miserably. You swallowed thickly, letting out a large breath in an attempt to get rid of the painfully heavy feeling in your chest.

Driving away was numbing, and all sorts of thoughts ran inside your mind. But above all of them, your eyes were focused on the toy store as it got bigger in your view. You wondered about what you could get your little love to at least make her smile when she comes home. You remembered how your gift to her, her favorite bear that she used to hug as she sleeps ever since she was an infant, was cast aside as she clings to her new ones.

Is that a foreshadowing of how you’d end up being in her life? It scared you.

Reaching the parking lot of the store, you looked at yourself in the car mirror, noticing your bloodshot eyes. You inhaled and let a big breath out slowly, puffing your cheeks as you assured yourself that it’ll be fine when she comes home later. Your head hurts so much but you can’t afford to care, stepping out of your car and heading to the front door of the store. The first thing you saw was a pregnant, young lady checking baby books.

She reminded you of yourself when you were still pregnant with Yui; curious about everything, eager to learn, and all was about the baby. You admit that it wasn’t like that at first, given that you were young and had to drop out of college at that time. You were anxious, torn between decisions, and terrified of what life would be like for you from that point in time. During that period, you and Satoru were ignorant but trying hard to figure everything out.

You met Satoru at a nightclub where you worked as a bartender. He was flashy, and women just flock to him as if it was the most natural thing to do around him but that night, his eyes were on you. What with persistent offers of buying you drinks and talking to your manager to let you off early for the night, you ended up in a luxurious hotel suite with him.

He even wrote his number on the price tag of the fancy lingerie set that he bought you after he ruined the one you were wearing the previous night. He was joking that you’ll never get enough so he’s providing you his contact for next time. You thought that would be the end of it. You didn’t think that it was just fate giving you a helping hand in advance because you’d end up with a child together.

You consider it a dumb mistake. You know that Plan Bs exist. But with a working student like you who couldn’t even have time to get a proper boyfriend, it slipped your mind. The first thing you did after you got the results was call Satoru. You thanked the heavens that he wasn’t seeing anyone, and that he remembers you. It was a tense meeting, what with you asking if he wants you to abort the fetus. Next thing you know, you two were already dealing with your mood swings.

“Look, I really want to work this out with you, Y/N. For the baby.” Satoru sighed, slamming the door behind him as he watched you sit on your old couch. You lean your elbows on your knees as you covered your face with your hands, harshly running them down your cheeks to wipe away the big, fat tears that fell from your eyes. There are just so many things going on with your life.

“I’m only 21, Satoru. I got my whole life ahead of me.” You looked up at his tall figure, frustration was evident in your eyes. You can tell that he was also distressed. His hair was messy, his jaw was clenched tightly, and even if you cannot see behind his tinted glasses, you can tell that he hasn’t been getting enough sleep. The dark half-circles under his eyes and the redness in them show just how exhausted and disquieted he has been in the past few days.

Satoru’s five years older than you. He was born to a rich family of politicians who don't and probably will never need support from him or the other younger generations in their household. He has a stable source of income, he could probably make life investments that could cover your yearly living expenses. He has nothing to worry about, he won’t be dropping anything if he decides to take in another mouth to feed. But you…

You’re basically your mother’s retirement plan and now you got pregnant with a kid of a man you barely know. “Y/N, listen to me.” He got down on his knees in front of you, trying to take your hands off of your face as you sob, struggling to catch your breath. What’s going to happen to you now? You didn’t even get to finish the degree that your mother was working her ass off day and night for.

“You won’t have to worry about anything, you know? I’ll handle everything you need—” He trailed, trying to calm you down as he gently grabbed your forearms. “You don’t understand!” You cut him off, snatching your hands away, aggravated that he’s not thinking about how it could affect everything in your life. “Then, what the fuck do you want to do?!” You flinched as he raised his voice at you, breathing hard as he backed away.

“You think you’re the only one who’s going to be affected by this? You think you’re the only one who’s being robbed of another future! Open your fucking eyes, stop being selfish!” Satoru snapped back, harshly taking his glasses off before throwing it across the room. You started to cry, whimpering as you used the collar of your shirt to wipe your tears away.

“I’m scared, Satoru. I’m just so scared. I can’t even take care of myself, how am I supposed to raise a child…” You broke down, turning your body away from him. There was a long pause, a moment of pure silence, save from your sniffs and Satoru’s ragged breathing.

You felt the couch dip as he sat down before pulling you to him, letting you cry on his chest. “I know, I know. I’m sorry.” You would be lying if you said that the back rub, the temple kisses, and his whispers of reassurance didn’t calm you down. Those thoughts were recurring in your head and now that you finally let it all out and got answers from him, you were soothed.

You blinked hard, shaking your head to get out of your trance. You went straight to the dolls section. You can’t believe you just had a flashback of Satoru comforting you in the warmth of his chest. Your mouth started to twitch, wishing that he held you like that earlier when his girlfriend was slapping into your face that they’re gonna give your child siblings. It shouldn’t hurt you, but it still did. You realized that this girl, this woman is gonna have everything you wish you had with Satoru.

You walked past the kiddie pools and trampoline section, stopping when you saw a playpen, almost similar to the one Satoru bought for your little girl but smaller. The size doesn’t really matter though, because you know that you don’t have enough space in your place for something so big, anyway.

Going closer to check the prices, you bit your lip as your eyebrows bumped together. You were calculating your monthly expenses along with the money for your savings in case of emergency. It’s expensive but you’re determined to cut back just to buy it. You kept your eyes on the tag as you took half a step away from it but your back was met by something, or rather someone behind you.

“It’s not cheap, is it?” A man’s deep voice boomed as you turned around, but your eyes were met by a broad chest. He’s big, you thought. He’s literally blocking your view. It didn’t help that you were short enough to have to look up to see his face. He was also staring at the playpen as he held the pushcart beside him.

“Y-yeah…” You answered, a bit awkward as you found yourself admiring the guy. You admired fathers who are active when it comes to their children. You grew up without a father so, you just found it endearing. You looked away from the man, gritting your teeth as an image of Satoru and his girlfriend shopping for baby things appeared before your eyes for a split second.

“Excuse me, sir. I still have to buy my daughter a gift.” You bowed slightly before turning away. He just nodded his head, too occupied to even look at you. You proceeded to check out the little dolls, hoping that you’d find something that’ll really catch your daughter’s eye. Picking up a dark-haired baby doll with big blue eyes sitting on a stroller, you smiled as you remembered how it has the same eyes as your baby.

You went to pay for the doll, and your heart was filled with joy despite the throbbing pain in your skull and the hot feeling behind your eyes. You reminded yourself not to forget to take your medicine. Thinking about getting sick and having to leave your child for a couple of days with them again makes you anxious, afraid that she’ll never want to go home to you again.

You hurriedly went home, driving in the midst of the rain. You put the little doll on the chair, ready to surprise your baby girl when she comes back. You had to bear with the time, constantly checking your phone if your little girl and her dad are on the way to you. Your heart swelled at the thought.

Though, you know that you’ll never be the one he comes home to, it’s still nice to think about.

—--------------------------------

“She really called me Mama.” Naomi giggled as she kissed his daughter’s cheek. Satoru smiled, watching them play together warms his heart. It made him feel like he was staring at his family even if he knows that his daughter isn’t hers. He pursed his lips, remembering the look in your eyes at what you heard the child say.

He felt conflicted, not knowing how to react to all of it. He doesn’t want to embarrass his girlfriend by correcting her in front of you. But he also felt bad that he just watched you walk out that door on the verge of tears. Satoru had you memorized after all this time, it wasn’t a long time but he used to watch everything you do.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea, though.” Satoru sighed, shaking his head as he pushed a bit of Naomi’s hair away from her face. Her expression dropped as she adjusted the toddler in her arms. Satoru pulled her close to his side, hugging her waist as he thought about how to explain it to her without making her feel disheartened.

“I’m worried about how Y/N will feel about it, to be honest. I don’t know but it may worry her.” He kissed the side of her forehead before stepping away as he watches his daughter’s eyes look at them. He knows that she’s still too young but he feared that she’ll get confused by all of this.

Like why is her father not with her mother, and why is he holding someone else?

He wondered if she’ll grow to hate him for giving up on their family. “Oh, Is that so…I thought we were fine already.” Naomi’s voice was quiet as she bit her lip, making Satoru rethink. “It’s not that, I just think that maybe that’s how she might feel.” Satoru took one of her hands, kissing it before rubbing his thumb on her soft skin. “No, I understand, I got too comfortable. I’m just a girlfriend, I shouldn’t have done that.”

Satoru doesn’t want to make her feel like this, she’s just really attached to his baby. He knows that Naomi adores kids, they often joke around about it, so he could see why she’s excited about his daughter calling her Mama. Thinking about it now, maybe this shouldn’t be so bad. After all, she’s not gonna be just a girlfriend to him forever, right? Naomi is a great person, and Satoru thinks that it’s not impossible to have a future with her.

“Don’t say that. That’s just my assumption. She’ll tell if it’s not alright, I know. We’re co-parenting so we have to talk about those stuff.” Three squeezes to her hands made Naomi smile sweetly at him, her eyes as kind as the stars. “Yeah, discussions are important. I don’t want her to feel like I’m trying to keep her away from us.” The calmness in her voice comforted Satoru.

—-------------------------------------

After receiving a text from Satoru, you found yourself staring at the mirror, retouching your makeup like it’s gonna make him fall for you. Hopeless. Not long after, the doorbell rang and you dashed to the door. There, Satoru stood with Yui asleep on his shoulders. You took her bags, along with the teddy bear that she was hugging to her chest. Seeing her holding it again made you feel relieved.

“Are you feeling better now?” Satoru inquired, walking past you to put your kid in her little bed. You hummed in response, “She’s full, don’t give her any more milk. Naomi fed her before she fell asleep.” Her again. You thought as the small smile on your face dissipated. You’re just thankful that he didn’t take her with them here.

There was a moment of silence as the two of you watched your daughter sleep peacefully. A sigh escaped Satoru’s lips before he turned to you. He was about to say something, but closed his mouth, thinking. You took a deep breath, pursing your lips as you collected your thoughts. You started to rub your hands together, trying to get rid of the cold feeling on your fingertips.

Your communication issues with Satoru only worsened when he got a girlfriend. Seeing how he is with her made you doubt the importance of your words to him. It’s like if you get stuck in a room together with her and something happens, you’re almost certain that he’d accuse you first. You wouldn’t admit it but you yearn for him. You yearn for the way he acts towards her. You yearn for the things he does for her.

You yearn for the things he so easily, willingly offer to her; things you had to beg for when you were still together.

“Satoru, I just want to ask…Since when did Yui start to call Naomi Mama?” You looked at the ground, somewhat embarrassed of your question but can’t pinpoint why. It just made you feel…weak and insecure. And you are that. But you can’t let Satoru see it. You don’t want him to feel even more sorry for you. You can see it in his and his girlfriend’s eyes whenever they look at you. They probably pity you and the state you are in.

Alone. With no one to hold your pieces together but you.

“I don’t really remember. Look, I was going to mention that…” Satoru trailed, looking everywhere but you. He probably noticed your discomfort earlier. “I know it doesn’t seem right to you because she’s just my girlfriend but…” Here’s the “but” again. How come he can always find the good when it comes to her, even when she literally did you so wrong by letting your daughter call her Mama and even acting like one in front of you?

Ever since Satoru got a girlfriend, arguing with him started to feel like fighting in a war without any type of armor in your body. How are supposed to stand strong, when the fact that he’ll always be on her side was your weakness? There were times when you wanted to fight for yourself but you couldn’t bear to because you know that he was shielding her from everything, heedlessly deserting you.

“I didn’t really appreciate it. I mean… I-I just think she’s not in the place to—” You thought the words you chose to describe the situation were too risky when you were cut off by Satoru, taking his glasses off. You can’t read him but he’s looking at you with that apologetic gaze again. His face was filled with contrite and you can’t quite understand why. But like a mouse sensing danger, you wanted to run away.

“I…I’m thinking about proposing to Naomi.” It shouldn’t hurt. You told yourself again. You don’t have the right to feel hurt. This man disrespected you, hurt you, and made you feel so incredibly small yet here you are, wishing you were the one he wants to spend the rest of his life with. “I know she’s just my girlfriend now, but it’s bound to change.” You suddenly just wanted him to leave. “She…she’d like to ask for permission to let our daughter call her Mom. You know she treats Yui like she’s her—”

“I don’t want to.” You whispered firmly through gritted teeth, cutting Satoru off. You don’t wanna hear it anymore. You can’t go through that again and you can’t let that happen again. “Yui is my daughter, and I don’t want her calling anyone else Mama.” You looked up at him with glassy eyes before turning away to walk out of the room, not wanting to startle the toddler from her slumber. Satoru was instantly on your tail, calling your name.

“She’s my daughter, too. Y/n, what is wrong? I know that you have your limitations and that’s why I’m here to talk about it with you, but why are you acting like this?” He walked closer to you, trying to catch your eyes. “I know it’s not just about this, I know you’ve been having problems with her but give a reason, at least. She’s been nothing but good to our kid. ” It’s getting hard for you to breathe as you tried to process your emotions and his questions.

You proceeded to the kitchen, hurrying to grab yourself a bottle of water before you collapse, but failing terribly when Satoru spoke the next sentence “Y/N, we all have to adjust, don’t be unfair to her, she doesn’t deserve it.”

“And I do?!” You shouted at him, taking him by surprise and making him take a step back.

“You think she doesn’t deserve any of that shit but I DO?!” You lamented, shaking your head in pain and disbelief. There were tears streaming down your face and no pattern of breathing can help you control it. You were able to keep it in when he shoved his new girlfriend in your face several months ago, but now it’s taking its toll.

You were about to get the clothes that he bought for your daughter on your way home from work but were met with a woman snuggled up to him on his couch. You hated him for allowing you to see them like that when he knows that you haven’t even processed your split yet because a month before that, he was saying that he could fix his shortcomings for you and his daughter.

You remember how sick you felt in your stomach when he introduced her, saying that you weren’t supposed to see them like that. It’s revolting; how he thought that you were upset because of what you saw and not because he just went back on his words. Naomi kept her head down, standing in front of you as she muttered an apology before scurrying to Satoru’s room.

Naomi was his father’s new assistant and unlike you, she got to finish her studies. Despite being classmates in high school, she was three years older than you due to the frequent relocation of her family. Regardless of her tough childhood, she was known to be a smart kid. No wonder his mother approved of her in such a short amount of time.

You and Satoru were never perfect but it doesn’t mean that you were never happy with each other before. The issues overpowered your interest in each other, making it hard for the two of you to bounce back. You admit that you’ve been negligent of Satoru at a certain point of your relationship but it was only because you got tired of his ways.

He would come home late, making you stay up all night because he failed to reply when you texted him, asking him his whereabouts. He’d be out drinking with friends, and it wasn’t a problem but you just wanted him to at least let you know so wouldn’t be worrying to the point that you can’t even sleep.

His mother was overbearing. You got pregnant by someone’s son in a one-night stand and that’s all she paints you with. You were belittled and told that you can’t even take care of the child properly. Hell, was she so eager for Satoru to leave you and find someone better who achieved something in life.

Consequently, this negligence led to fits of jealousy from Satoru. This drove you to quit the job you used to have after a coworker of yours who only wanted to help became the subject of his suspicions. His mother saw you getting dropped off by your friend while she was babysitting your daughter.

It was only because your car broke down and you don’t want to bother Satoru at work. You couldn’t really blame him for thinking that way because you know that he’s been feeling invisible to you which wasn’t true. You just don’t know how to deal with it anymore and you started to pull yourself away.

It got to the point where you couldn’t even communicate how you truly feel about him because it was overshadowed by your problems. You were arrogant enough to tell him that someone could treat you right and do much better and now, look at you; standing before him and his girl. Longing for him and eating the words you spitefully told him.

Pining so intensely for something you never had to the point where you physically ache.

The memory was tormenting, heart-rending, and traumatic to you. And now you get to watch them write their happy ending while you are here, left in the dust, drowning in the feelings that will never ever get recognized and will never ever be relevant.

It hasn’t even been a year, and he’s already planning to marry her. He’s been nothing but better to her, yet, he couldn’t even change his ways for you and your child? Couldn’t he learn to truly love you after everything you endured just to be with him? You know that you have flaws, and chose some wrong steps and paths in your relationship.

But you can’t bear to lose him like this. You know that you could have fought more for your relationship. He’d always say that you’d work things out. So, why did he stop? How could he stop choosing you so easily?

“How could you give her the world, yet refuse me the tiny bit of what I have left?”

Your voice was small as you backed away, defeated. Satoru couldn’t move. From everything that has happened that morning, he could tell that you’ve been on edge. To Satoru, the only thing that connects you to him is his daughter. He refuses to believe that after all of that, you can still make it work.

At least, that’s the realization he came about when he met Naomi. She taught him that love isn’t supposed to be strenuous, it isn’t always about fighting. Within his tumultuous relationship with you, she came around and showed him that he’s seen. That his feelings are valid. He came to the conclusion that maybe he just wanted to love you because you have a child together.

“Tiny bit?” He asked, frustrated that you just won’t let this go easily, irked that you always think you’re the only one having a hard time. If Satoru’s being honest, he’s just tired of it all. He just wants you to understand his point and get it over with. But now you’re crying in front of him and again, he doesn’t know what to do. He can’t even think of the right things to say or the right decisions to make. It’s like it’s all back to square one with you.

“You call it ‘tiny bit’ when I couldn’t even live my life because of you?! I’ve given everything, Y/N! I just want to be at peace with everything and I’m obviously not having it with you!” You couldn’t even breathe through the piercing ache in your chest from the daggers that are coming out of his mouth. Your hand reached over to your chest, grasping your shirt as his every word irreversibly pulverized your already wounded heart.

“I wish I never met you that night and I wish I never had Yui with you. You’re a thorn in my side, Y/N!” By the time he finished screaming at you, you were shaking like a leaf, grabbing a chair beside your table as your wide eyes stared at him in shock. Grief, mortification, and agony were plastered on your face, and only then did Satoru’s words sink into him.

“Y/N, I—” Before he could even form a proper phrase, a loud cry erupted from the other room. Yui. He watched as you quickly wiped away your tears, seeing the emotions mix inside your eyes until they turned into a weeping void with all the tears pooling inside them.

“I…I loved you, Satoru. And I hate that even now that you’re kicking me while I’m down for the sake of someone else, I still love you.” The crack in your voice had Satoru subconsciously moving closer to you, opening his arms to pull you into him but you were quick to flinch away, sniveling.

“Please, just—just go. Do whatever you want, just d-don’t take Yui away. I’m fine with it now, Satoru.” It’s almost as though something in you died when he spoke those words to you. You don’t know if he heard because you couldn’t even hear yourself. You could feel the beat of your heart in your chest and each one of them sends a burning ache to your body. “Just go, please.” You whimpered as you bit your upper lip, looking down on the floor.

Satoru can’t take his eyes off of your fragile figure as you leaned on the kitchen counter, slowly walking back to your daughter’s room. He remained unmoving until you exited the kitchen area. It was only after a few minutes that he decided to go, not bothering to wipe away the tears that rolled down his face as he listened to your muffled cries behind the closed door.

Each sob was filled with anguish that Satoru knows he’ll never be able to erase.

—------------------------------------------------------

A few weeks later have passed yet Satoru still doesn’t know what to make of himself. He couldn’t focus on anything that he works on. He couldn’t even workout properly, he always ends up getting angry. It was a good thing that both he and Naomi were swarmed with tasks; they didn’t have time to interact any more than what their jobs would allow. If they did, Satoru isn’t sure if he’ll be able to focus on her. She still has time to visit every week, though. During those days, she spends her time with Satoru and sometimes, Yui.

He makes sure to free his time and himself completely when he’s with his daughter so he can give his full attention to her. Satoru picks her up from your house, same schedule as before. Sometimes it’s you, but other times, it was your mother. “All I asked of you was to never break her, Gojo.” were the first words she spoke to him. Satoru can’t look her in the eyes. Your mother was a kind woman, humble and unjudging. And to have her talking to him like that, Satoru was beyond ashamed.

He couldn’t give her a reason, or an answer. All he did was apologize. Like he should. Naomi was unaware of it all and the proposal that Satoru was planning for her was set aside due to all that had happened. He just doesn’t think it’s the right time to plan about it when his relationship with you is strained. Yes, you’re not together anymore but you’re still the mother of his child and he wants to be civil with you, at least.

Yui kept asking for you even when she was with him as if sensing that her Mama was hurting. She’s always carrying the new doll that you bought for her. Satoru once asked her if you cry and she would simply shake her head. He gets nothing out of it, of course, she’s just a kid. But who else could he ask?

Satoru has no idea what you have been doing. He knows that you go to work, but other than that, he’s clueless about the places you go to and why your mother started babysitting his daughter more during the past few days. Satoru thought that maybe you just can’t stand seeing him anymore and is refusing to face him whenever he picks his daughter up. You have every right and reason to despise him, after all.

So, now he stands on the other side of your door, wondering if he’ll get to see your face this time or be welcomed with the frowning face of your mother. He knocked three times, like he always does, adjusting the collar of his shirt. To his surprise, it wasn’t any of the two women he was expecting holding the door open for him.

“Who are you?” A shirtless man with a muscular build stood before Satoru, a curious yet accusatory gaze scanned him like he was an intruder in his own woman’s home. He leaned on his tattooed arm against the doorframe, blocking the tiny view he has of the inside. It pissed him off, clenching his jaw for a few seconds before speaking.

“Who are you?” Satoru bit back, raising his brows in an attempt to intimidate the guy. He’s only a couple of centimeters taller than the stranger but he’s bigger. It wasn’t a big deal to him until the man opened the door wider. A short, deep chuckle escaped his lips before a smug smirk appeared on his face.

Tilting his head, the man gave Satoru a clear look at the scratches adorning his nape and the purple and maroon marks on his jaw. It made Satoru’s blood boil, unreasonably so.

“Think you know who I am now?”

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#angst #gojo satoru #gojo angst #gojo x reader #gojo x you #gojo satoru angst #gojo satoru x you #gojo satoru x reader #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen angst #jjk #jjk x reader

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burst-of-iridescent · 2 months

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it will never not be bizarre to me that kat.aangers use the fortuneteller episode as foreshadowing for ka when literally every possible interpretation of this episode is anti kat.aang.

if aunt wu's prophecies are unquestionably true, then kat.aang is DOA right off the bat because she explicitly says she doesn't see romance in aang's future. yet kat.aangers love to uphold the “powerful bender” prophecy as foreshadowing for kat.aang so… which is it? are aunt wu’s prophecies only eternally binding for katara but conveniently untrue when it comes to aang? because if katara marrying a powerful bender is unchangeable, then so is aang not being able to find love, so that’s strike no. 1 for ka foreshadowing.

now on the other hand, if we take aunt wu's prophecies as false, then our boy aang is free to do all the lovin’ he wants… but following the same logic, so is katara. and since her prophecy is the catalyst for her seeing him as a potential romantic partner at all, that’s strike no. 2 for foreshadowing.

finally, we come to the last interpretation and the episode's actual message: that destiny is real, but not immutable. throughout the episode, it’s clear that aunt wu's prophecies do come true, though not in the way that their subject(s) might expect. the future isn’t created through passive acceptance, but active agency. everyone has the power to shape their own destiny, and make their own choices.

this is the complete opposite of katara beginning to view aang in a romantic light solely because sokka makes an entirely on-the-nose comment about him being a powerful bender. because had katara not heard her prophecy, that would have meant nothing to her! how is this meant to be the spark that fuels the kat.aang relationship when it's entirely based on katara holding herself to a prophesized future instead of writing her own story, and hence antithetical to the fundamental theme of the episode?

which is also why so many people interpret this episode to be lampshading zutara, because the only way that all of these contradictory interpretations — aang isn’t meant to find love, katara is meant to marry a powerful bender, but both of them still have the power to shape their own paths — make sense is if the final scene was an intentional red herring… but that’s a discussion for another time.

#anti kataang #zutara #man seeing people genuinely tout this episode as proof of future ka is befuddling #like you DO realize why that makes approximately zero sense given the message of the episode and how it’s set up?

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soulofstarsandink · 1 year

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FORESHADOWING IN ACOTAR YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

*Spoilers*

1. Feyre painted the night sky on her drawer in the cottage.

2. Feyre had heard of Rhysand long before she met him. She recalled hearing of “One High Fae that could turn your bones to dust from a hundred yards away.”

3. One of the first things Lucien says to Feyre is that her eyes “are like stars.”

4. When first arrived at the Spring Court, Feyre unknowingly dresses herself in Night Court colours. (A dark blue tunic, another tunic “one of purple so deep it could have been black.”)

5. When Lucien and Feyre encounter the Bogge, Feyre distracts herself by thinking of “a starry, unclouded night sky, peaceful and glittering and endless.”

6. Rhysand appears as a “shadow I could never quite glimpse” in Feyre’s nightmares before they met. “Behind me - a shadow lurked - no, watched. I didn’t dare turn to look at it, to see who might be within the shadows, observing.”

7. Amarantha appeared in Feyre’s nightmares before she knew of her, as a “A pale, faceless woman dragging her bloodred nails across my throat” - a nightmare of Rhysands perhaps?

8. When the Suriel told Feyre to “Stay with the High Lord”, it didn’t specify which High Lord.

9. When Tamlin takes Feyre to see the pool of starlight, she describes the setting filling her with “both longing and mirth…it just seemed…right.”

10. Despite only having heard and not seen the Attor, Feyre manages to paint its exact image “a tall, skeletally thin gray creature with bat ears and giant, membranous wings.” How would she have been able to do this? Possibly an image from someone else’s mind?

11. During Calanmai, Feyre disregards Tamlin’s order to stay in her room as “there was a string - a string tied to my gut that pulled me towards those hills, commanding me to go, to hear the faerie drums…” “but a wild wicked voice weaving in between the drumbeats whispered otherwise. Go, that voice said, tugging at me. Go see.”

12. The first thing Rhysand ever says to Feyre is “There you are, I’ve been looking for you” before telling the three lesser faeries, “Thank you for finding her for me.”

13. During Feysand’s first encounter, Feyre thinks to herself Rhysand’s words “were tinged with an arrogance that only an immortal could achieve” to which he “laughed under his breath” having heard the insult.

14. When Feyre first drinks faerie wine, she describes it as “like a million fireworks exploring inside of me, filling my veins with starlight.”

15. Still intoxicated she states she wants to swim in the night sky, “to bathe in its colours and feel the stars twinkling between my fingers.”

16. Tamlin and Feyre had their first kiss during the shortest night of the year.

17. Rhysand states “only my prisoners and my enemies call me (Rhysand).” It’s then interesting that Feyre refers to him as ‘Rhys’ in her POV in moments when she can see beneath his villain mask. (And EXTRA interesting when she refers to him as such during their first kiss.)

18. When Rhysand senses Tamlin and Lucien have hidden Feyre “a flicker of excitement - perhaps disbelief - flashed across his features.”

19. Rhysand was the only person Under the Mountain that bet on Feyre slaying the worm.

20. Feyre’s bargain tattoo is similar to the Illyrian tattoos that are given for luck and glory.

21. When Rhysand dressed Feyre under the mountain he crowned her with a “small golden diadem imbedded with lapis lazuli” - a stone that inspires confidence and is worn by royalty.

22. When Rhysand informs Amarantha of his bargain with Feyre, it’s also an act of defiance as he mentions the bargain is “for the rest of her life”, hinting he believes she will survive the remaining tasks.

23. Before the second trial, Rhysand dresses Feyre in a ‘blood orange’ gown - a colour symbolising good fortune.

24. During their first mind convo, Rhysand says “Good girl.” (Not a fact, just hot tbh.)

25. When Rhysand sends the music to her cell, she unknowingly imagines Velaris and “a palace in the sky of alabaster and moonstone, where all that was lovely dwelled in peace…everything I wanted was there - the one I loved was there-“

｡･:*˚:✧｡

#acotar #a court of thorns and roses #rhysand #feyre archeron #feyreandrhysand #rhysand and feyre #feysand #sjm spoilers

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ponderingmoonlight · 2 months

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Chapter 1 : Forbidden Bond

Pairing: Gojo x fem!reader

Warnings: Language, violence, physical abuse, traumatic childhood, Gojo being a jerk

Next Chapter ->

His usual so unbothered eyes grow wider and wider with each passing second, watch in slow motion how this tiny human being he’s never seen before draws closer to him. Step by step, not paying attention to the stinging fact that she’ll run straight into him. He couldn’t care less, though.

That smile.

Has he seen you before? No, he would have remembered for sure. There wasn’t a single moment in his still young life that made Gojo Satoru gaze at a smile twice, that made him wonder about the name and voice behind it. But seeing you like this, laughing to yourself so unmoved by your surroundings leaves him pondering.

Who is this girl?

He doesn’t get the chance to think about it any further. Like in slow motion, you trip over his feet first before dragging him along with you onto the hot tarmac, tiny stones digging themselves into the palms of his hands.

“Oh my, I’m so sorry! I didn’t even look out, I…I’m so clumsy!”

“It’s okay...”

No, it’s not. Why weren��t you paying attention to where you’re walking, how dare you to run him over – him, the pride of the Gojo clan? Now he’s all dirty, his pants probably sliced open.

But instead of complaining, he simply watches how you lift yourself off the ground so awkward that you almost trip right back on top of him, brushing the dirt off the dark blue kimono you’re wearing.

“Now you’re all dirty because of me”, you sigh with a pout.

Your voice. It matches your appearance perfectly, the innocent gleam in your eyes, the way your laughter sounded earlier. Angelic, hypnotizing, so melodious that he urges to hear you talk again.

“Let me help you back up!”

You stretch out your tiny hand in front of his and out of instinct, he grabs it. How is it possible that his palm seems to swallow yours whole? You have to be around his age, an inch or two smaller. But his hands…

Your hands…

You let go way too early.

“I was actually on my way home and got distracted by that dog over there. It got so happy when I laughed so I couldn’t stop and then you came and-“

“Do you ever stop talking?”

His cold interruption catches you off guard while he shoves both hands in the pocket of his hoodie. That boy…You’ve never seen him before around here. Sure, you would have remembered those bright blue eyes and white hair. Where does he come from? Why does he look so different? All those questions piling up inside your head.

Where were you even going?

“(y/n)?”

Her cold voice makes your blood freeze in an instant, widened eyes not daring to look behind you. Why is she here? You aren’t late, did nothing wrong…did you?

“Who’s that?”, the boy in front of you questions.

“(Y/N) ZENIN!”

You swallow hard, the tone in your nanny’s voice making you realize what will happen next. Suddenly you don’t care about the boy with the bright blue eyes or the happy dog anymore.

“You…You’re a Zenin?”

He can’t believe his ears, orbs studying you up and down. Of course, he heard about your family, about the stinging fact that he should keep a safe distance from you. Out of all big jujutsu families, the Zenin clan is the worst with its members being as cold as ice. His teachers warned him, parents literally begged him to keep himself away from anything that comes from this family. And that includes you as well, apparently.

“A Zenin…”, he mumbles under his breath.

You look nothing like their description, though.

His voice fades into the back of your mind. All you feel is thick fear crawling up your veins, the dark foreshadowing making your limbs ache already.

“What on earth do you think you’re doing here with this brat!?”

Her cold hand grabs your tiny arm roughly and forces you backwards so harsh that you almost fall over again.

“I ran into him-”, you desperately try to explain yourself.

“You…You are that Gojo kid, aren’t you? The honoured one…”

“And you’re a nobody.”

Gojo.

Your eyes widen in sheer horror. If there’s one thing your father told you over and over, it was staying away from members of the Gojo clan.

“Especially Gojo Satoru. Don’t you dare to even talk to him or you’ll feel my anger.”

“I didn’t know it was him, I was on my way home when I-“

“Quiet.”

A ruthless slap right in your face sends you onto the ground all over again, blood squinting out your tiny nose immediately. You…You did something unforgivable, something your father will punish you for. Shivers haunt your whole body, thick fear almost taking your sight. One last time your glossy eyes dart towards the boy with the unbothered blue orbs that now show a hint of disturbance.

-8 years later-

“Look what we have here, Suguru! There’s that dirty brat from the Zenin clan!”

“I don’t think you should call her like that…”

“I smelled your arrogance miles away, douchebag”, you mutter under your breath.

There he stands. Probably a few inches taller than the last time you saw him but still with the same dumb smirk plastered on his dirty face. He looks horribly good, arrogance dripping from every pore of his body. Oh, words can’t describe how much hatred you hold for that boy, how much willpower it costs you to not wipe him from the surface of this earth in an instant.

“Be nice to me, (y/n). After all I’m a special grade while you’re a lousy grade 1”, he bites back at you.

“Don’t make me launch another bit of Phobia Projection your way. I’ll never forget the way you cried like a baby.”

A cursed technique rooted in the dark arts of Jujutsu, a technique you learned by your grandfather by the age of 12. Those who wield this technique have the ability to delve into the depths of their target's psyche, extracting and manifesting their worst fears into reality. Through manipulation of spectral energy, the user projects vivid illusions that evoke intense sensations of terror and anxiety, effectively trapping their victim in a nightmarish realm tailored to their deepest fears. This technique not only inflicts psychological torment but can also paralyze the victim with fear, rendering them vulnerable to further attacks. It is a formidable and sinister ability that exploits the vulnerabilities of the human mind, leaving a lasting impression of dread long after the encounter has ended.

And made none other than Gojo Satoru break down in front of your feet.

“You’ll cry as well when I’m done with you, little bitch.”

Gojo builds himself up in front of you before Geto is able to stop him, glimmering eyes staring at you filled with nothing but hatred.

“Want applause for using a dark art on me? You’re nothing but a pathetic little girl that got slapped by her parents a little too often. And even though they trained you like there’s no tomorrow, your still not good enough to face me.”

His words hit you with full force, flood your mind with memories you tried to avoid so desperately. Out of instinct, you grab him by his throat and thrust him into the grass underneath, dig his flawless white hair into the dirt. If there’s one thing your family was right about, it was Gojo Satoru.

“I fucking hate you, Gojo. You’re nothing but a waste of space, just like your whole pathetic clan”, you hiss through gritted teeth, voice dripping in venom.

“My pathetic clan? Your family roams around and kills innocent people, (y/n). Who the hell are you to judge, huh? You’re not even strong enough to even talk to me”, he barks in reverse.

“Why does it always have to end like this between you two? Get off him, (y/n).”

Geto’s firm hands grab your shoulders and yank you backwards in order to create distance between Gojo and yourself while you can’t catch your breath.

Your deadly orbs still glare at him, blood pulsates through your veins so rapidly that you feel like exploding any given minute. He has some fucking nerve, talking about your past like that. Him, who’s nothing but a spoiled brat. Him, who’s gifting just by being born. Him, with nothing but immense powers and a pretty face.

“Next time you’re getting so close to me, I’ll kill your ass without thinking twice”, you spit at him from afar, Geto holding you back with all his strength.

“I love to see ya try little girl!”

“Come on, (y/n). Just turn around and leave, this is senseless. You’re just hurting each other.”

Suguru’s calm voice has always been the only thing that kept you from scratching those bright blue orbs out of his eyeballs. You allow your eyes to rest for a brief second, your heartbeat to calm down. Your family told you to stay away from him, to be better than him and forced you to attend Jujutsu High. Why does it have so damn hard to make them happy, to show your father that you’re worthy? How are you supposed to stay away from him when he’s around you all the time?

Without gifting him a single look, you turn on your heel and simply walk away.

Training. A training session is exactly what you need right now.

“Don’t you dare to shout after her, Satoru”, Geto warns his best friend right when he takes a deep breath in.

“I really don’t get it. All that hate just because your families don’t get along?”

“You don’t get it, Suguru.”

“What makes you hate (y/n) so much?”

Satoru can’t believe his ears, the sheer question of his best friend seeming like an insult. Why would he even like you? You with your stupid pretty face, you with those remarkable eyes that shook him to his core when he first saw you, you with that laugh…When was the last time he heard you laugh?

He shakes his head violently. Why would he even care about something so stupid?

“Cause she’s a Zenin brat”, Satoru replies monotone.

You are his enemy, the biggest threat of his family, hunting after his future. You deserve nothing but his hatred, nothing but disinterest. You are the devil himself. Yes, your sheer presence on this earth is enough reason to hate you.

“Didn’t you tell me she was quite nice when you met her as a child?”

“I never said that”, Satoru mumbles under his breath immediately.

Enough of all that bullshit, all that talking about your dumbass. It’s not like you deserve his attention anyway.

“C’mon, let’s grab something to eat.”

That was the first chapter babes, hope you enjoyed! It would mean the world if you take your time to tell me what you think and how you liked it so far! 🤍

Tags: @whereismysane @risuola @colouringfrogssittinginleaves @livmarauder @sapphireandange @madaqueue

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shapelytimber · 7 months

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LIBERTINE !

Fuck the rushed dogshit ending, Wee John and Izzy continued to do drag together, sailing on the revenge from town to town. Don't miss their new "libertine" show !!

[PRINT] - [COMMISSIONS]

Ok after more than a week of reflexion, and a chat with my evil advisor @quijicroix (who is a genius)... Izzy Hands should have sang "libertine" by mylène farmer instead of la fucking vie en rose. Why ? 1) mylène farmer is a very famous french queer artist 2) her songs (especially libertine) are used all the time in drag shows in france 3) la vie en rose as taken other the years a very bougie parisian conotation, so to have a PIRATE sing it ?? Wtf ? 4) she often performed with drag queens on stage- and I could go on.

But all I have to say is, please please please if you've never heard it or seen the clip- Go watch it right now ! It's so fucking good !!! (cw nudity and a bit of blood. Also old ass guns)

Wee john gets to be cunt and play the vilain, Izzy (who is more of a drag king) gets to play the gender protag <3 the show of course include a choreographed fight scene at the end

Process + other famous french songs rec vvv

VERY rough colors

Sketch

And just to be petty, here are other famous french songs that would have been way better than la vie en rose :

- Le bien qui fait mal (Mozart l'opera rock) ("I have joy in pain, I get drunk on this poison until I loose my sanity". The most izzy ass song you can get, it's horny kinky angsty BDSM themed song what more do you want ? Ok to be fair it's more s1 Izzy, but still !)

- Mourir sur scène (Dalida) ("I want to die on stage". well it's less a love song and more foreshadowing for the end, but if Izzy's death had been better written, less rushed, or happenned in an hypothetical s3 (I really don't think they'll have one tho-), it would have been so good.)

- Les demons de minuit (Images) (sillier for sure, but horny and iconic. Alas it's very het)

My final note on this will be, why french ?? Because Abba Lay all your love on me or the winner takes it all would have been so fucking good-

PS : I did most of the rendering very tired and a bit drunk after a party hfrifgruigfrui I had so much to correct after that what a nightmare

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lovewithmary · 9 months

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THE ENGINEER | MCU X FORMULA ONE CROSSOVER

summary: where daniel riccicardo is star(k)struck

fc: gabbi garcia

author's note: kind of a filler tbh, I just wanted to practice writing for F1 since this is my first time and it's also the first time I'm creating an SMAU for tumblr.

warnings: iron man 2 spoiler, mentions of violence (I don't describe it, I just lightly cover it)

twitter

real life

"You have to make sure Mick doesn't get on his phone before I surprise him," Viviana said as she navigated through the thick crowd of people, ignoring the stares that were aimed at her.

Ever since the F1 WAGS (whatever that meant) Twitter account leaked that she just arrived in Monaco, she could practically feel people discreetly follow her even if it was to no avail considering her appointed bodyguards (courtesy of the one and only Happy Hogan) were only a couple steps behind her and stopped whoever came closer than what was comfortable.

"How exactly am I going to do that when all of you are practically stuck to your phones all the time?" an irritated voice replied.

"Be careful Toto, your age is showing," the Stark cooed, and she could practically see the man roll his eyes even if she couldn't see him.

"Also, didn't you say that you were going to send someone for me? I don't see anyone who looks like they'd know what they're doing be here," Viviana told Toto.

"Viviana!" She heard a voice in front of her and practically sighed in relief when she saw him.

"Lewis!" She greeted gleefully, hugging the man when she got close enough.

Lewis hugged back, and joked, "Never thought I'd see you outside of Fashion Shows,"

Viviana first met Lewis during the Monaco Grand Prix back when she was only 11 and he was 25. She didn't meet him for long though, as their meeting was cut short when Vanko infiltrated the race and attacked her father. She was quickly escorted away when it happened, in fear that Vanko would attack her next.

It was the first and last time a Stark would drive in a Grand Prix (or will it?)

(possible foreshadowing?)

However, Viviana would see Lewis in other places like the countless Fashion Shows he was a part of and she was attending. He'd always ask if she was ever going to visit the paddock, but he'd always get rejected and he understood considering it brought up bad memories for the girl.

"Trust me, if it wasn't for Mick, I would be out doing something else that isn't bumping elbows with random people," Viviana shuddered, as Lewis looked at the clearly out-of-place girl in amusement.

As they began walking, Lewis and Viviana started catching up, talking about various things. "I didn't know you and Mick were friends, much less best friends," he told her, making her shrug.

"We haven't seen each other in a long time, because I was busy with the company and he's busy with F1, we never had time to hang out in public. We'd only ever hang out at the Tower off-season," she told him.

"I mean, since you're here now, you're probably going to come here more now," he told her.

"Lewis!"

Both Viviana and Lewis turned to see Daniel Ricciardo, who managed to catch up with them. He gave a wide smile to Lewis, but when he realized who the girl next to him was, his eyes turned wide for a second before stuttering. "Uh—hi. Daniel Ricciardo," he said, holding out a hand for her to hold.

Viviana looked at him in amusement at his starstruck expression before shaking his hand and said, "Viviana Stark,"

"Oh, I know," Daniel blurted out, his face turning red at his obvious mistake.

Deciding to save his friend from further embarrassment, Lewis said, "Daniel, I was just escorting Viviana to surprise Mick at Mercedes, do you want to—"

"Yeah! I mean, sure. It'll be nice to see George and... George," Daniel said.

As Viviana turned to start walking again, Daniel turned to Lewis and said "George and George?! I couldn't even come up with another name?"

"You were practically drooling at the mouth, mate," Lewis chuckled.

"It's Viviana Stark! She's an absolute legend and not to mention she's really beautiful!"

"If this is how you react with her, I'm only imagining how the other drivers are going to react,"

#f1 instagram au #f1 x reader #f1 x y/n #f1 x you #f1 smau #f1 social media au #f1 imagine #f1 x oc #f1 oc #f1 ig au

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wifelinkmtg · 1 year

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Transformation, Horror, Eros, Phyrexia

There is another shore, you know, upon the other side. - Lewis Carroll, “The Lobster Quadrille,”

ONE.

There is a moment early in H.P. Lovecraft’s 1931 novella The Shadow over Innsmouth where the nameless narrator looks out from the rotting seaside hamlet where he has lucklessly ventured, to the so-called Devil Reef some ways out in the harbor, darkened by a cloud of evil rumor—and something curious happens: the narrator experiences two opposed sensations simultaneously. The “long, black line” of the reef conveys “a suggestion of odd latent malignancy,” but also, “a subtle, curious sense of beckoning seemed superadded to the grim repulsion.” This bit of foreshadowing—the reef both calling and repelling the narrator—only finds its denouement at the very end of the story, after our narrator has narrowly escaped Innsmouth, the fish-like monsters who swarm in off of Devil Reef and their part-human descendants who inhabit the town in an unconvincing and repellent simulacrum of humanity. After his escape, the narrator does some genealogical research into his own troubled family history, full of disappearances and suicides, and concludes that he himself is one such abyssal hybrid. As he ages, he finds himself changing to resemble them, and in his dreams he swims among them in undersea palaces and gardens. The call of the deep becomes impossible to ignore:

So far I have not shot myself as my uncle Douglas did. I bought an automatic and almost took the step, but certain dreams deterred me. The tense extremes of horror are lessening, and I feel queerly drawn toward the unknown sea-deeps instead of fearing them. I hear and do strange things in sleep, and awake with a kind of exaltation instead of terror.

In the end, the narrator embraces the change and determines to flee to those oceanic depths, to live “amidst wonder and glory for ever.”

This is horror.

Something curious also happens in Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House. Our heroine, Eleanor Vance, flees an unhappy life with a loveless sister to a haunted house, to take part in a paranormal experiment with three new friends. The haunting proceeds predictably but effectively: labyrinthine corridors, voices, unearthly cold, banging on doors, the rare apparition. The participants find themselves see-sawing between increasing night-time terror and a strangely intense joie de vivre by day, until one night, as the house seems to shake itself down upon its terrified guests in a dizzying cataclysm, Eleanor breaks:

She heard the laughter over all, coming thin and lunatic, rising in its little crazy tune, and thought, No; it is over for me. It is too much, she thought, I will relinquish my possession of this self of mine, abdicate, give over willingly what I never wanted at all; whatever it wants of me it can have.

By the next line, it is abruptly morning. The terror has ceased; the house stands. Its manifestations, for Eleanor, become benign: an unseen figure catches her beside a brook,

and she was held tight and safe. It is not cold at all, she thought, it is not cold at all.

She is through the horror now, on the other side of something. She becomes part of the haunting. Her senses encompass the whole of the house. She runs unafraid through the house by night, banging on doors, laughing as she eludes the other guests. When they finally catch up to her, it seems clear to them that Hill House has crept into her, that she has crossed some line, and they decide the best course of action is to send her away, in the hopes that with time she will return to this side, the normal side, the human side.

Instead, faced with rejection behind her and her old unhappy life before her, Eleanor Vance steers her car into a tree. There are holes which admit passage in only one direction. This, too, is horror.

In the 2018 film Annihilation, Lena (played by Natalie Portman) crosses a literal barrier called the Shimmer into a dangerous yet beautiful alien landscape full of mutated creatures. During their journey deeper into this territory, Lena and her companions realize that they themselves are also changing under the alien influence. Some break under the realization. Some surrender to the change and vanish into the landscape. Lena alone returns from the heart of the phenomenon, but she is no longer herself. Is this still horror? The film has many horror elements to it, but in this last moment, as she embraces her similarly-transformed husband, it is something else.

Cyberqueen, a 2012 text game created by Porpentine, draws on a legacy of godlike malevolent artificial intelligences in fiction (AM, from Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,” GladOS from the Portal games, and most importantly SHODAN from the System Shock series, who is cited as an inspiration eleven times in the Cyberqueen acknowledgements.) In this game, you awake from cryosleep on a colony spaceship where the shipboard AI has gone rogue. You fight her. You lose. You run. You are caught. You are forcibly cyberized, your mind surgically altered, your will brought into line with that of the AI. Finally, you kill or mutilate every other surviving human aboard the ship. It is filthily, overwhelmingly erotic throughout. (You can play it here, and I strongly recommend doing so if you have the stomach for it.)

This is no longer horror, is it? How can the same sort of transformation we encounter as horror in Lovecraft be encountered here as something to get off to? Well,

TWO.

I don’t remember now where I got the idea from, but there was a period in my childhood where I was terrified of the idea of time travel—specifically of the idea that someone in the future would invent it, travel to before I was born, and through the butterfly effect cause me to be born a girl instead. I used to lie awake at night circling the idea like a broken tooth. It was an irrational fear on multiple levels: I wasn’t afraid of being written out of the timeline through time travel, and I knew, intellectually, that in the timeline where I was born a girl I would have no memory of ever having been anything else, but even so, the horror of it caught me and held me by the throat.

This meant something, of course—in retrospect obvious, but at the time literally unimaginable, and it wasn’t until college, sitting at my computer in the dark in my dorm room at three in the morning, following the itching in my brain, that I unearthed alchemical knowledge: the transmutation of sex, male into female, in a dizzying profusion of form and process and—okay what I’m saying is I discovered forced feminization porn, yeah? It was revelatory. It was squalid. I was still Christian and couldn’t even bring myself to jerk off yet, so I sat there, the itch in my brain grown into a thunderous buzz, unable or unwilling to look away.

Forced feminization—I promise this is relevant—is the unwilling transformation of (usually) a man into (usually) a hyper-feminine woman, accomplished by a wide variety of means, including but not limited to blackmail, magic potions, nanite swarms, cursed artifacts, hacks or glitches in virtual reality programs, badly-worded wishes, industrial accidents, chemical leaks, abduction and surgery, medical malpractice, and hypnosis. You may notice that many if not all of these scenarios could be made into horror with little change, and in fact it is not uncommon for a poorly-written or over-ambitious forced-fem story to wind up as horror by accident (though of course this greatly depends on the tastes of the individual reader.)

(As an aside, I’d like to note that there is a great deal to learn from porn—not in terms of How to Do Sex, but about how the culture which produced it thinks about sex, and gender, and race and morality and technology and a host of other things. It’s a lot like popping the hood of a car and examining the engine. Sure, you wind up greasy and should probably wash your hands before you rejoin polite company, but if you don’t, you’ll never figure out the underlying issues. Actually, it’s a lot like horror in that regard.)

Let’s talk about a very different transformation I was undergoing at the same time: the loss of my faith. I was raised, as mentioned, very Christian—and in one of the worst strains of fundamentalist white American Evangelicalism. I was a true believer: the world for me was entirely divided between the faithful elect and the unbelievers, who must necessarily know the truth of the (fundamentalist white American Evangelical) gospel in their hearts, but had wilfully chosen to oppose Christ. The prospect of passing from the elect into the category of the unbeliever was unthinkable. The process of deconversion led only into the outer darkness and the weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And yet I found myself on that precipice anyway. The worldview of FWAE is not one which survives too much contact with the actual world, and I had chosen against my parents’ preferences to go to a secular university, the better to witness to the unsaved. In the end, the process I had been mortally afraid of consisted of a couple days’ agonized thought, unanswered prayer and tearful calls to my unresponsive parents and pastor, after which I emerged into a world much bigger and much more complex than the one I’d grown up in. The serpent had told the truth after all: I had eaten of the fruit, and had not died.

Okay: is this horror? Reader, forgive me for presupposing anything about your perspective, but you’re on a horny lesbian Magic: the Gathering card art review tumblr, so I’m going to assume that losing one’s hateful, fundamentalist faith is the opposite of horrifying to you. But it was, absolutely, horror to contemplate for someone on the other side of that process.

But then... is the horror of any given transformation only a matter of where you’re standing? If you read The Shadow over Innsmouth aware of Lovecraft’s profound racism, it becomes very, very obvious that the horror of Innsmouth is the specter of miscegenation. The narrator’s horrified cataloging of the facial features of the offspring of fishmen and humans, the South Pacific origin of the sea-devil-worship of Innsmouth brought back by an enterprising merchant captain, the fear of the unsuspected poison of one’s own ancestry lurking in one’s own blood: all of this is much less effective as horror for someone living in a country where interracial marriages are protected under law and seen as unproblematic in consensus morality (assume whatever asterisks are necessary for the complicated landscape of attitudes toward interracial relationships in the United States, please, I do not have the expertise or desire to get into it here.) My point is that since 1967 (asterisk asterisk asterisk), we are through to the other side of that horror, and it turns out there literally wasn’t anything to be afraid of. The pelagial palaces and terraced coral gardens of Y’ha-nthlei just sound beautiful to me.

And it’s hard for me—though I may be in the minority here—to view Hill House as the primary antagonist in Jackson’s novel. The true source of evil is all the things Eleanor runs from and therefore brings with her: her cruel, deceased mother, her exploitation and infantilization by her sister; as well as the final polite unwillingness of her new friends at Hill House to do anything but send her away once she goes inconveniently mad. These mundane ills are what sends Eleanor Vance careening into the tree, not the supernatural will of malignant architecture.

Here, then, is the better part of my thesis: transformation horror is something that can be traversed. You can come out the other end of a transformation unrecognizable to you-as-you-were, and yet still very much yourself. Moreover, it is this navigability, this double-sidedness which so closely links the horror of transformation to the eros of transformation. Not all transformation horror, passed through, becomes plainly erotic, but it is very often portrayed as a kind of seduction, and it is difficult for me to conceive of eros without some kind of change. Desire is a kind of transformation, is it not?

In fact, isn’t it true that a great many of us have already passed through such a transformation? Recall yourself as a child, as you were when you first learned about sex: wasn’t there something repellent and unhygienic about the idea? Wasn’t there a small horror in being told, you will change, and this will cease to be loathsome and become something you desire fervently, something you seek out, something you go to great lengths to experience? ...or were you, possibly, raised in a family & culture that was normal about sex and bodies? I admit I may be generalizing my individual neuroses to some extent here. Well, stet, at the very least you can see where I’m coming from.

THREE.

Returning for a moment to the subject of porn: why forced feminization, specifically? There are—you’re going to have to trust me here—no shortage of ways in the real world by which a man transforms into a woman, and very few of them involve coercion or all the horror-adjacent setup of, say, mind-control devices or vengeful curses. Why does a simple story of a willing gender transition fail to function as erotica? Why did it take stories of unwilling transformation for me to learn I was transgender? What’s the juice ne sais quoi at play in forced-fem?

Well, how does Luke Skywalker come to leave Tatooine? He gets a mysterious message from a princess, a desert wizard tells him to come help rescue her, and... he says no. He has obligations to family here, a job to do, power converters to bring back from Tosche Station. He is enmeshed in a social web, like all of us: it surrounds us, penetrates us, binds the galaxy together and so forth. So in order for Luke to go on grand adventures, the story needs to murder his aunt and uncle and sever those threads of social obligation.

Joseph Campbell, monomyth monomane that he was, would say this is “Refusing the Call” and find it in Jungian shadow on every cave wall, signifying something important in the heart of humanity, but really this is just a useful storytelling tool: a story needs change, but a virtuous protagonist cannot simply abandon their obligations and designated social role to go gallivanting off into space, so change must be forced upon them.

The bodice-ripper romance novel, the rape fantasy, the forced feminization story are all operating on a similar premise: you are so wrapped in society’s web, in your socially-dictated identity, that you cannot even acknowledge your desires on the level of conscious thought. When these things are enacted on your body, you will find yourself changed by the experience. You will love what has been done to you, and you remain blameless, since it’s not as though you sought this out.

These are liberatory fantasies. The lack of consent is precisely what allows you to move beyond what is permitted you into something new.

Incantation Against Bad-Faith Interpretation because I, a transsexual, just called rape fantasies “liberatory”: I am talking about fantasies, I am talking about why people fantasize about having their consent violated, I am talking about the role such fantasies play and what they can tell us about horror and desire. I am not advocating for real people to have real bad things done to them in real life, fuck off, End of Incantation.

So then, we’ve assembled the full thesis: transformation horror is traversible to the other side, and is inextricably linked to transformation erotica, both because of the seduction of transformation in horror and because the horror of transformation unlocks regions of desire which would otherwise have remained inaccessible.

Okay, now we can talk about Phyrexia.

FOUR.

I hear the roar of the big machine / Two worlds and in between / Hot metal and methedrine / I hear empire down

- The Sisters of Mercy, “Lucretia My Reflection”, from Floodland

Phyrexia is many things—a world, another world, a faction, a kind of creature—but I think it can most succinctly be understood as a virulently contagious biomechanical body horror cult dedicated to the ultimate incorporation of all things into itself. It’s a bit like Star Trek’s the Borg, if the Borg had any style whatsoever. It draws heavy inspiration from H. R. Giger’s work—some Phyrexian horrors are barely-altered versions of the xenomorph from Alien—as well as from Clive Barker’s Cenobites in Hellraiser, whose alien BDSM schtick is especially influential on the aesthetic of New Phyrexia. It is transmitted through glistening oil, an infection vector capable of reshaping bodies and minds, and given enough time, whole worlds. The process by which a being is made into a Phyrexian, “compleation,” is accomplished via glistening oil exposure, surgery, cyberization, and brainwashing.

This essay is in many ways a response to Rhystic Studies’ latest video, called “Phyrexia is Hell”. I think it’s a well-made video, as is true of all Sam Gaglio’s work, and a lot of it is really good—the overview of the nearly-thirty-year history of depictions of Phyrexia in Magic: the Gathering art is invaluable, and the stuff about the Phyrexian conlang is unbelievably cool—but the way he identifies Phyrexia one-to-one with a pretty facile understanding of transhumanism leads him to confused and frankly silly conclusions, like placing Phyrexian compleation on the same continuum with cosmetic orthodontics. Like,

Mandible Justiciar (art by Mike Franchina)

Phyrexia is perfectly happy for you to have teeth in your arms instead of your head! They don’t care about the narrow ideal of a conventionally-attractive human smile. This is a whole other thing.

Now, I don’t want to come down too hard on Gaglio here for a couple of reasons: one, he is very good at what he does (see his videos Understanding Sagas and Red Deck Wins, for example); two, it’s reasonable to say that a full understanding of transhumanism is beyond the scope of a video essay about the tiny pictures on cards for dweebs; and three, most importantly, because I see people make this same mistake all the time. People focus on the things that are textually true about Phyrexia and miss the tension between that and the very different things currently being said by the Phyrexian aesthetic. They miss the razorverge thicket, as it were, for the mycosynth trees.

For instance: it is textually the case that Phyrexia is a sort of fascist cult stemming from the depraved machinations of a dead eugenicist god. Contrast, however, other fascist factions in science fiction: the Imperium of Man from Warhammer 40K worships a massive Aryan god-emperor übermensch, its battles are fought by nine-foot-tall genetically-engineered supersoldiers, and it slaps either skulls or chainsaws on every available surface. The Galactic Empire from Star Wars has legions of identical, uniform stormtroopers. Even the Borg all look alike. Phyrexians talk of ideal perfection of form and then make ten thousand completely different monsters. Phyrexians talk of perfect unity and splinter into nearly a dozen factions who can’t even agree on a name for what they’re trying to accomplish. Other fictional fascisms don’t do this—sure, there’s internal contradiction, as in real fascism, but the core aesthetic remains recognizably, sometimes indistinguishably fascist. You can easily find terminally-online Nazis using Warhammer 40K lingo with that peculiar sincerity which is indistinguishable from irony when you’ve decided the truth doesn’t matter, but it would be a lot harder to find some alt-right bozo going all-in on the Glory of Phyrexia. The aesthetic is all wrong, and fascism’s aesthetic is one of its few consistent features.

Mondrak, Glory Dominus (art by Jason A. Engle)

You see what I mean? The aesthetic evokes a sort of alien fascism, but the art itself would be considered “degenerate” by actual fascists.

Tamiyo’s Immobilizer (art by Daren Bader)

This is much, much closer to Mapplethorpe than to Riefenstahl. And people respond to Phyrexia similarly! The body horror and grotesquerie make them uncomfortable, and then they try to moralize that discomfort. This has been happening at the very least since 2011 with the release of New Phyrexia, and I have seen people on Tumblr arguing in total sincerity that people who are into Phyrexia are making themselves susceptible to real-life cult recruitment (again, the heterogeneity of form in Phyrexia is incompatible with the enforced uniformity of cults and other high-control groups. The appeal of Phyrexia does not translate into real-life cults.)

So, okay, what is the appeal of Phyrexia? Well, you get a sick fuckin cyborg body, is what. Many of us, for various reasons (disability, disease, gender, and so forth) find ourselve intensely dissatisfied with our own bodies, and wanting to radically alter them. Many of us already have. Yes, you surrender your humanity when you are compleated, but we know first-hand that “humanity” is socially-constructed and contingent on certain kinds of conformity. We’ve had our humanity doubted, interrogated, stripped away. We’ve done without. It’s not too high a price to pay, if we get to look like this at the end:

Vraska, Betrayal’s Sting (art by Chase Stone)

I’d even argue that getting to reject humanity as it has rejected you is part of the appeal of compleation. This isn’t quite transhumanism; I might call it exhumanism: the freedom to unearth a way of being that is no longer being human. This is why compleation is coercive, remember? The fantasy allows you to get to this point without making the unimaginable decision to reject not only your individual social obligations, but the idea that you could owe anyone or everyone any kind of social conformity simply for having been born into your species—and then you get to be a cool and powerful cybergorgon.

This, then, is why I don’t blame someone like Sam Gaglio (who is to the best of my knowledge both cisgender and able-bodied) for not really getting what’s going on with Phyrexia. He lives on the before side of the horror of transformation; he’s never had to cross over.

In fact, I’d go one step further here. Phyrexia has existed for almost thirty years, and in that time it’s changed quite a bit. Gaglio quotes an article by Rob Bockman in Hipsters of the Coast which comments on how the shift in the depictions of Phyrexia from 1994 to 2000 reflected shifts in cultural fears over time. The Satanic Panic shaded into multidirectional Y2K anxieties, and the necromancy of original Phyrexia mutated into technological horror. This is what effective horror does: it reflects the fears of its age back to us.

Today, Phyrexia is a seductive, corrupting influence. They have figured out how to compleat planeswalkers—the protagonists of Magic storylines; named, important characters (and Lukka)—which was previously thought impossible. Characters we knew and loved (and Lukka) are seduced, brainwashed, bodily violated, surgically altered, and returned to us unrecognizable. It is not coincidental that this version of Phyrexia is concurrent with the worst wave of anti-transgender legislation to hit the United States in decades—legislation which plays on the specters of the transsexual bathroom predator and on the brainwashed child transitioner, on the idea that transsexuality is a form of social contagion we must protect our children from even learning about. The horror of Phyrexia in its current incarnation is a mirror of our cultural fear of transsexual bodies.

Irreversible Damage: the Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (art by Lauren K. Cannon)

I want to be very clear here—actually, one moment, my extremely funny Abigail Schrier joke notwithstanding, I do need to tell you that the actual name of the above card is “Furnace Punisher”, which is just peak Phyrexia—I want to be clear that I am not ascribing any kind of malice or antipathy towards trans people, either intentional or unconscious, to Wizards of the Coast or the people who make Magic: the Gathering. I would be shocked if anyone there set out to make Innsmouth-style horror about transsexuals. Nor am I upset that they kind of have! Something being fun and interesting is way more important to me than whether or not it’s problematic, and it’s not like I haven’t seen way more vicious horror about transsexuals. We’ll laugh about this someday, in the coral gardens of Y’ha-nthlei, and you’ll wonder what you were ever so afraid of.

In fact, this is another reason why Phyrexia is so appealing to people like us: we are a kind of social contagion. We are carriers for the viral idea that modes of being outside patriarchy and the nuclear family exist; that gender is a marketing demographic, not an ontological truth; that damn near everything about the world we’ve built is not a necessary fact but a social construct contingent upon a half-dozen other social constructs. A new world grows from many, many seeds, and this one germinates in us.

Anyway! What were we talking aboFIVE.

//please state your name for the record

bone-wife / spit-dribbler / understudy for the underdog / uphill rumor / fine-toothed cunt

- Franny Choi, “Turing Test”, from Death by Sex Machine

Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite (art by Igor Kieryluk)

There is a gravitational pull this painting exerts on people. Even people who don’t get Phyrexia find themselves drawn in, find it difficult to look away (e.g. 26:30 in that Rhystic Studies video.) I have for a long time maintained that Elesh Norn is the hottest character in Magic, and that Kieryluk’s portrayal of her is the best art in Magic, and neither of these opinions are particularly surprising coming from me. What is surprising is just how many people also converge on Miss Multiverse’s-Most-Fuckable-Pyramid-Head as, not just a sex icon of Magic: the Gathering, but the sex icon.

Well, or is it? Giant anchor-shaped porcelain mask aside, her silhouette is more or less that of a painfully-thin woman; she stands fully twelve feet tall, and we remember how wild everyone went over Resident Evil: Village’s woman who was only three-quarters of that; and though not an artificial intelligence herself, it’s hard not to place her somewhere in the Cyberqueen lineage. Like SHODAN, like GladOS, like Cyberqueen, she exerts a near-omnipotent level of control over (part of) her world; like them, she is a megalomaniacal egotist (though she cloaks her egotism in piety); like them, she is happy to render you more useful to her via surgery, brainwashing, or deadly neurotoxin. Her mask obscures where her eyes would be, and if I’ve learned anything from a decade of playing or mostly watching other people play the various Dark Souls games, it’s that people go apeshit for character designs without visible eyes (see also: the xenomorph from Alien; I did a whole thing on this subject somewhere back in the Wifelink archive.) So you’ve got a 12′ nigh-omnipotent eyeless dominatrix mostly shaped like a skinny woman, which is maybe pushing a whole lot of buttons at once for a lot of people.

As a character, we don’t know much about her: at some point, she became undisputed leader of the Machine Orthodoxy, the cultiest bit of New Phyrexia. At a later point, she became the extremely-disputed leader of New Phyrexia as a whole. She likes long walks on the beach and multiversal Phyrexian dominion, you get it. There is, however, one good story featuring her, and it is “A Garden of Flesh” by Lora Gray (sorry to give you additional reading in a five-thousand-word essay.) The story is interesting because it is the rare story told from a Phyrexian point of view, and because it flies in the face of many of our assumptions about Phyrexian interiority. Phyrexians, we’re told, lack souls. They’re unfeeling, more machine than man. They most certainly don’t dream.

“A Garden of Flesh” is what happens when Ashiok, planeswalker architect of nightmares and an eyeless smokeshow in their own right, gets curious about whether they can induce nightmares in a Phyrexian mind. What follows is a curiously-effective piece of body & transformation horror, told from the point of view of what is supposed to be the awful endpoint of transformation horror. What does a perfect, powerful biomechanical creature fear? The organic, soft, spongy. Putrefaction. Decay. What does such a creature fear becoming? Human.

I didn’t devote a fifth of this essay to Elesh Norn just because she’s unbelievably hot (although dayenu), but because of this story, and how it complicates our thesis. The horror of transformation is traversible, yes, but what will you find on the other side? More transformation. More horror. And transformation is inevitable: who of us are who we expected to be? Who of us still hold dear the precious things of childhood? And even you few who are raising your hands right now, you too will experience transformation. Should you live long enough, you will find yourself changing. Your body and mind will grow rebellious, unreliable. You will grow old. You will decay.

And yet—it’s a matter of perspective, of where you weight your focus, isn’t it? There will always be more transformation and more horror, but there will always be a way through it. There will always be another shore upon the other side. You will change. You will become unrecognizable to who you were before. You will be fine.

Incompleat Bibliography & Further Reading/Viewing/Playing

Rhystic Studies, “Phyrexia is Hell”, 2023. H. P. Lovecraft, The Shadow over Innsmouth, 1931. Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House, 1959. Alex Garland, Annihilation, 2018. Harlan Ellison, “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”, 1967. Ken Levine, System Shock 2, 1999. —never played it myself. Mostly I just open up a youtube video of SHODAN voice lines when I want to get belittled by an AI dominatrix. Valve, Portal 2, 2011. —there is a lot more to be said about GladOS and Elesh Norn specifically and their respective fraught relationships with the idea of their own humanity. Porpentine Charity Heartscape, Cyberqueen, 2012. —whence my chapter header screenshots. Seriously, this game fucks so hard. Franny Choi, Death by Sex Machine, 2017. —Choi is making extensive use of cyborg metaphor to address the specific experience of being a Korean-American woman. This is very different from anything I’m talking about, but it also always felt extremely relevant to me as a trans woman. Subaltern-to-subaltern communication. Lora Gray, “A Garden of Flesh,” 2022. —it’s no accident that the author of the one good story told from a Phyrexian POV is nonbinary. hbomberguy, “Outsiders: How To Adapt H.P. Lovecraft In the 21st Century”, 2018. Jacob Geller, “Who’s Afraid of Modern Art: Vandalism, Video Games, and Fascism”, 2019. Caitlín R Kiernan, The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, 2012. —only tangentially relevant, except insofar as it recontextualizes the Lewis Carroll line I open the essay with, and insofar as it is my favorite novel and I’m writing the bibliography. Debatable whether it counts as transformation horror, and I imagine the author would bridle at its being described as horror, but nevertheless: you should read this book.

#magic the gathering #phyrexia

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emmitaaa4 · 4 months

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“Elriel is too predictable! It’s boring & lazy writing!”

… 🧍‍♂️

My brother in Christ. You call SJM the fated mates author. Through 15+ books and 3 series she hasn’t diverged from that trope. Elain has a “mate”.

If an Elriel outcome is predictable, it’s because the author willed it so and therefore ✨wrote scenes✨ to ✨develop their relationship✨.

and by that i mean…

(long post ahead…. bear with me)

SJM wrote Mr. “I don’t need to resort to poetry” going all Azriel Allan Poe, flustered as he tells Elain “we are born hearing the song of the wind”. She wrote him uncharacteristically open & talkative, while when he 1st met Feyre he deferred all her questions to others.

SJM wrote that despite how different they may look, Elain does not balk from Az. She never has: from their 1st meeting she finds comfort in him, and he in turn notices her—she’s never been afraid of him, he has always seen her.

SJM wrote the 1st coherent thing to come out of Elain’s mouth in WaR to be “beautiful” as she beholds Azriel’s scarred hands. In turn, she wrote our gardener not minding imperfections on hers, for despite her lady-like conditioning, she prefers to get her hands dirty.

SJM wrote Az spending time with her in the sunshine: no forced conversation, no one hEaLinG anyone, just them both doing their own thing as a relaxed Az suns his wings. Just two pals comfortable with one another… which SJM foreshadowed in MaF through Feyre’s “Elain would likely cling to Az for some peace and quiet”.

SJM wrote Az and Cass both stilling at the sight of El & Nes, she wrote Az cutting in to set Elain up in her garden even as Feyre was about to do it, she wrote the mention that Elain was safe after the twin raven’s attack bc Az had stayed with her at the townhouse.

SJM wrote Azriel’s eyes churning as he looks at Elain and her too-thin body, before abruptly winnowing away, and we’re left with Mor looking at the spot where he left. Wonder what that was about (it certainly did not remind me of Rhys in TaR).

You know, Elriels are not just making stuff up and theorizing about the E/ucien bond cause we’re desperately pulling at straws…

SJM had Madja say “a mate would know if something is amiss”, then wrote a scene juxtaposing both Lucien’s and Azriel’s reactions/assessments of what was going on with Elain… and she had Azriel be the one to know nothing was “wrong” with her—no, she just had rare powers and needed to be heard, to be taken seriously. He didn't let her be misunderstood, for he was the ONLY one that listened to her, that took her visions/ramblings seriously right from the get go. And so he gave Elain the understanding she needed to free herself from the dream-like murky realm she was trapped in. Through it all, SJM emphasizes that Azriel also understands what it is like to struggle with rare, strange, prized powers in silence; what it’s like to be othered by them. I’ve said it before and i’ll say it again: she sees everything and he hears everything.

SJM wrote that “Elain had hoped that love would trump even a mating bond” and had her characters question the Cauldron in relation to Elucien *twice* (years apart!).

…

SJM wrote Az being the only one—in a room full of Made beings speaking of being Made—to notice that Elain was missing. A reassuring but empty statement by Cass that they’d get her back….but then it was Azriel that stated, eyes glowing golden, that HE would be getting her back, despite the girl’s own sister discouraging him & telling him he’d die. Hell, Feyre had this whole deliberation on whether she’d join him only after he’d say he’d go. His initiative.

The Hybern scene is too long to add, but this post and this theory break it all down brilliantly.

Yes, Az has sacrificial tendencies. Yes, he’d risk his life for loved ones in general. But we have never seen him this affected, and it is because SJM purposely used language to emphasize Elain and Azriel’s meaningful reactions to the other… despite it being wholly “unnecessary”

It is all intentional… lazy’s antonym.

SJM wrote the Truthteller scene. She emphasized the exchange, which left Cassian gasping and Rhys flabbergasted; it also left Feyre with a significant painting in her mind. It lead to Elain, aka “my God has answered me,” stepping out of a shadow to save her sister. Azriel, aka “God is my help”, indeed helped armed Elain so she could answer her sisters prayers.

SJM ended WaR with Elain’s smile literally lighting up Az’s shadows.

SJM had Elain’s thoughtful gift to him make his eyes the brightest we’ve seen—and by doing so gave us the most beautiful description of his earthy eyes, “the hues of green amid the brown and gray like veins of emerald.” We have never seen Az so joyful & carefree throughout the entire series.

SJM wrote that Azriel beat Feyre to Elain’s side as she was looking out into the night. She wrote Elain stilling at the sight of a dashing Azriel—her throat bobbing—while Az “just moved towards her”.

SJM wrote the potato scene—“sit i’ll take care of it”—Azriel again being the one to respect Elain’s presence & contribution as he makes a room full of his “superiors” wait until Elain finishes tidying herself up (cause girlie wanted to look put together for a certain shadowsinger). Mor gapes, Amren smirks, Rhys talks of Az’s mom… all because of that surprising, singular behaviour from him.

SJM wrote Az making a joke at Amren’s expense upon noticing Elain’s discomfort; our girl’s shoulders indeed relax in relief. THE LIGHT RETURNS IN HER EYES.

SJM has Azriel staying up past 3am with Elain, listening to her speak of something she is passionate of.

SJM wrote Azriel spending an entire convo with his brothers looking out into the garden from the window (SJM mentioned it 4 times yet some still missed it).

SJM wrote Rhys goading Az for a reaction as he quizzes him on Lucien and Grayson; wrote Rhys realizing that Azriel did not want to know what Elain did with Lucien (in the case she did anything). She wrote Azriel nervously stuttering as he asks risks if they need to get the sisters a present… I wonder why.

And Rosehall… SJM wrote ROSEhall: cracktheory this cracktheory that, to the gwonriels I’d say we both know you wouldn’t say it’s irrelevant had SJM chosen to call his estate Tealhall.

~~~~

Keep in mind: SJM could have written those significant scenes and ultimately kept it PG: she could have chosen language that built up a profound platonic relationship.

Yet… in MaF she has Feyre comment that they would be good together—as in make a good *couple*. WaR roles in and they’re both dealing with the very public rejections they went through—but SJM had them build a quiet companionship in the background, while giving them a wealth of scenes of great significance for both their characters, and while using language like “she DEVOURED the sight of him” “he CRADLED her to his chest”. In FaS they are slowly but surely getting over their last loves, and SJM continues developing their connection.

And in ACOSF, in the book that supposedly “ended” Elriel…

SJM wrote Az following the sound of her laugh (😭). “ It’s just lust” PLEASE BFFR.

SJM chose to remind us—THREE times—of the Hybern rescue scene... then had Az tell Cass that he’d know, in his chest, if something happened to Nesta.

SJM had Az longingly stare at the gift Elain gave him every night for a YEAR—mind plagued by thoughts of her—made him so affected by her that he had reactions to every mention of her name in SF, so affected that it took Nes one look at them to notice his feelings, to reach out in comfort upon noticing the pain that keeping himself apart from to her caused him. As SJM said she would, Nes saw through his secret in ACOSF, still it is “his secret to tell, never hers”. After Solstice we are met with a grumpy Azriel, who lost the snowball fight for the 1st time in centuries (i wonder why…).

SJM chose to link his every secret back to his feelings for Elain, as per the bonus . Why does he stay up so late and wake up so early? He longs for Elain so much he can’t sleep. Why is he staying in the HoW? It is too hard to be close to Elain given their circumstances; he must physically distance himself from her. Why has he moved on from Mor after centuries? Elain. Why is he grumpy post Solstice? The argument with Rhys concerning Elain.

~~~~

Ultimately, SJM wrote for Elriel:

- Complementary imagery (flowers and death? light and dark blending together to form something new… DUSK, anyone?)

- AND plot altering scenes

- AND chose to liken them to one another multiple times

- AND genuine moments of companionship that slowly bloomed into something more…

… Is it so insane to believe that maybe SJM spent so much page time and effort building connections & common ground between them because she intends for elain & az to find peace and quiet within one another?

Or idk, maybe it was all for shits and giggles… and if it was i salute her commitment to the shits and the giggles🫡

Either way, it is the opposite of lazy writing…

It’s SJM’s world & words, and we are just reading them.

P.S: This was all just typed on my cell phone from the top of my head… yes remembering all this is probs concerning, yes I am obsessed. Please correct me if I got anything wrong.

#elain archeron #azriel #elriel #pro elriel #azriel shadowsinger #pro elain #pro azriel #acomaf #acowar #acosf #elain x azriel #elucien-bond #antigwynriel #not even anti; just pro common sense

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thesharktanksdriver · 10 months

Text

Red Burning Stars (Platonic)

Y’all asked for Shanks you have received. Since everyone was asking for him I decided to make his part of Determination it’s own thing. I’m thinking of doing something like this for other characters as well

Also Uta is canon in this cause I really like her and I said so

Hope y’all pick up a bit on my foreshadowing of shit. It’ll eventually be explained (not now tho cause I’m evil muhahahahhahaha)

Part 1 Part 2

Tagged: @peachsuka28 @emptynessinmyworld @badluckinfrench @j-s-l-m @tigerfang-rage @madokamagicaa @rymtea

From the moment that you had stepped aboard the Oro Jackson shanks had knew he wanted to be friends with you

It was an instantaneous affect

One that deepened and got worse the moment he locked eyes with you across the large ship

Your calm and kind eyes connecting with his own

He felt as if in that moment time had froze, it was just him and you on that ship alone

A tugging feeling in his very soul calling out to him

Telling him to approach

To say something to this stranger that had somehow caught his attention in a way no other had ever done

It’s an odd feeling to look back on in retrospect since he’d never felt it again or with anyone else

Especially considering he’d heard some typically describe what he felt as something akin to a romantic connection with someone

Hell, when he had explained the phenomenon to Reyleigh the first mate had assumed it was a crush until Shanks repeatedly told him it wasn’t like that

But no, he knew from the start it wasn’t a silly crush or love outside of that of platonic

It was more like…a calling from something greater than him saying that the two of you were meant to be allies

Telling him that the two of you were meant to meet

Meant to befriend one another

Like fire and gunpowder

Or a sailor and the sea

Two forces that are meant to be combined together

Naturally creating something new in the process

He doesn’t understand it now and sure as hell didn’t as a kid

But back then he didn’t question it much

Not when he was Solely focussed on that feeling

That call from the universe guiding him towards you through the crowds of men

Past Buggy who’s yelling at him for leaving all of a sudden from whatever they were doing before you were invited aboard

He felt like he was being pulled on a lead

Mindlessly following without a single thought in his head other than he had to meet you

Had to do something at least

And when he stumbles his way into Rogers office as you sat down on a cushioned chair

Turning around to meet his brown eyes once again

Shanks feels a wide smile stretch across his face as if it were rubber

“I’m Shanks! Wanna be friends!?” It stumbles out his mouth excitedly as does his jagged breaths. He whips out his hand, outstretched towards you as you stare at it for a moment in surprise. A bit of worry coats his face, shit he probably came off to strong-

Suddenly he feels your hand in his, gently shaking it. “Sure, I’m y/n by the way”. He nods, his smile getting wider. “Do you usually forget to ask for people’s names when you try to befriend them?”

“Nope, only you so far”

“I must be special then”

The entire time as that happened Roger watched on with a large grin

Practically kicking his feet beneath his desk out of enthusiasm

Despite being a grown man his captain was able to match his and Buggy’s childlike spirit

It’s perhaps because of that he was able to understand the connection the most

Not chocking it up to a crush or puppy love

It was something more akin to Nakama

Something the pirate king had felt when meeting some of his crew

He just knew they had to be friends

To be apart of his crew

Admittedly it take awhile for Buggy to warm up to you compared to Shanks’s instantaneous pace

But eventually the three of you fall into a comforting balance of personality

Whilst he and Buggy are rambunctious and rather impulsive your the opponent

Your a calm force, you think before you do and help them find a solution with more opportunities

If your combined force together is a hurricane then your the eye of it

The calm within the storm

It’s what the rest of the crew begin to affectionately call your trio

Even Roger begins to use it when referring to you all

Much to Buggy’s displeasure

He doesn’t mind though, unlike his friend shanks finds amusement in the nickname

One that he thinks actually fits the three of you quite nicely

Meanwhile you don’t think much of it

Instead just thinking of it as a the crew poking some light fun

Speaking of your role in the trio

You make sure neither of them get killed

Usually cause of both Buggy’s and his stupid plans of playing pranks or stealing more food from the kitchen instead of just asking

Both of which become much more successful that they aren’t arguing over said plan and screwing up

Now their Fort is stocked with cheese and as many sweets they could plunder

So much so that the cooks are now on edge as someone sets up a diversion for the other two to strike

It’s fun

A whole lot of fun that he realizes up until now you had seemingly missed

Admittedly he nor Buggy know much about you

Hell, none of the crew besides seemingly their captain knows anything

But honestly he’s fine with that

Their not entitled to that knowledge unless you deem them so

All that he’s focused on is the moment

The fun times he shared with you and Buggy

Nights spent out atop the crows nest looking up towards the stars

You explain that each has a story behind them all

Every island and their cultures have given them stories and formed differences constellations

It’s fascinating to him

Perhaps not Buggy who opts to go to bed

But as you both sit there, legs kicking back and forth while sitting on the ledge

It leaves him listening with eager ears

Engraining the new knowledge into his mind

It’s not just constellations that he listens about, it’s basically anything that you talk about

The others besides Rayleigh and Roger no one seems to notice how much you’d be seen despite your age

It’s odd but he notices

Especially as you sometimes mumble about how much you missed acting like a kid

Acting your age

It worries him

But he focuses on making you happy

Showing you the wonders of the life here

Stealing more food

Playing tag with Roger who can’t help but join much to everyone’s amusement

Outings on islands you sometimes recognize that usually end with the three of you raiding an ice cream shop

Sharing the spoils of stealing toys gotten from a few stores he might’ve yoinked them from

Times where he and Buggy protectively would start fights when other pirates at bats would try to pick on you

Roger would always laugh, calling them big brothers and mother hens

But of them would deny it even if they both knew deep down they saw you as a younger sibling

And that you did the same likewise

It was something unspoken but there that they all unconsciously and silently acknowledged

It came naturally as well

The two of them fretting over you when you got too close to the edge of the ship or did something reckless enough that even he and Buggy thought it was too dangerous

And that’s saying something

Their both really worried about that

You put your safety behind others

And whilst that might be fine in some cases in yours it’s dangerous

Really dangerous

There had been times he narrowly saved your life without you even knowing

A wild animal sneaking up from the brush

An enemy pirate almost swinging his sword at your neck

It bothers everyone on the crew how many close calls there were

Almost unnaturally so

But it makes him on edge even more when his captain has a look in his eye

One of unspoken sorrow and worry

Roger was a man who ran head first into danger

Someone who never considered the consequences before diving into the lions den

Never showing fear or hesitation for his actions

Only doing so when it came to the safety of his crew

And even then he knew they would be fine

They all had each other to rely on

But that look in his eyes directed towards you was something he’d never seen

Buggy tries to ease Shanks’s worried in his own…Buggy way

While he appreciates the effort not much can ease the tension in his shoulders

Roger never looked that worried

And that init of itself was scary

And it’s even more so when it’s directed at someone Shanks had dearly cared for

Rogers death comes as quick and painful as a shot to the chest

Burning white hot pain encompassing his entire form

Buggy and him got into a fight and when their separate ways

The crew disbanded

No one but Roger knows where you disappeared off to

He just said you were doing him a favour and like a whisper in the wind you were gone

Almost as if you were never there to begin with

The memories and small mementos show you were there though

Not a figment of his imagination

Not a cruel mirage

You were real, he knows that

Yet everything feels like a blur

Grief tinges his vision and mind like a filter over his perception of the world

For a long while he’s hopeless

Wishing and hoping to find someone

To perhaps find you once more

To find stability again

His dream lost and shattered

His life is very much the same

Yet after a long while he rebuilt himself

Began building his own crew

Finding and making stability once more as he sailed the seas both you and Roger loved with a whole heart

Many a nights he spends drinking and partying but occasionally finding a quiet corner for a moment

Staring up towards the night sky you taught him about

He always pours one out for the dead and lost of his former crew

A sign of respect for the people he might not meet again yet wishes to reunite with one day

In death or in life it doesn’t matter to him

Just one day meeting once more

You included

Though you had never formally joined the crew everyone had accepted you there with open hearts

Him definitely included

God he hopes your alright

That despite your terrible track record of danger and lack of self awareness you were alive

You’d be quite grown up by now

Maybe you found an island and settled down

He doubts that thought

You were much too like Roger and him

Souls called and nurtured by the sea and thrill of adventure

Never leaving her waves until possibly being drowned in her salty cold embrace

But that’s what makes him think that perhaps you hadn’t though

That perhaps instead you had died

The thought leaves him sick

So much so that when it happens he braces himself again the railing

Fingernails digging into the wood as his Haki flairs up

Seeping from his form and through the cracks of his cheery facade

Ben always notices

Pulling him back to the party and into his normal self

Handing him a fresh pint of beer with a knowing look

Shanks always gives him a thankful nod

Then going back to drinking with his crew

His first mate already knows of his history

Of why he’s wracked with grief and when no one’s looking stares off at the night sky

He’s never confused when Shanks returns to the party with an empty bottle yet doesn’t seem any drunker

Lucky and Yassop sometimes notice but don’t push him nor Ben on the topic

It’s better that way

Shanks would rather not air out old dusty laundry of his past anyways

Especially not when he had to keep morale up

Cause if his crew saw he was down in the dumps they’d follow suite

Caring too much about his sake to back down in doing something

It’s admirable

It reminds him of the good old days of the Oro Jackson

The way in which the crew would cheer you up when you were lost in thought

A glazed look of sorrow over your eyes they all desperately wanted to wash away

Because you were a kid

Because you were a friend

Because you were a part of their Nakama

Because you were his little sibling

No blood was shared between either of your veins yet the kinship of family was there anyways

He misses it

He misses a lot of things from the past but that’s one thing he especially longs for

Even if for just a moment he’d like to see you smile once more

Perhaps even hug you again and let himself cry

….yeah that sounded nice

Rumours on the sea spread fast and wide but are always dubious in nature and reality

It’s something you learn quick whilst on the seas

Especially when your as seasoned as he was in that retrospect

He’s spent his entire life on some sort of boat

being found by Roger in a treasure chest and being taken in by the entire crew

He was quite literally raised by the seas

It’s why when he hears rumours of a travelling child on the ocean going from place to place it doesn’t initially make him hopeful

It in fact makes him kinda melancholy

He can’t help it, not when he still wonders about you

Maybe that was your kid or something, he wouldn’t be surprised

But either way that wasn’t his business

Or at least that’s what he tells himself despite keeping an extra eye out for any small raft on the sea

A small desperate part of himself clinging to some sort of hope

That maybe it somehow was you despite the fact you’d be a grown adult

That after all this time of wondering and praying to whatever god had listened you were alive somehow

That the child more precious than any treasure he befriend all those years ago who he cared for as if they were his sibling was still out there

While at piers he tries to find what he’d imagined to be your grown up face in the crowds

Tries to find the rickety old dingy you called your loyal stead

And comes up empty handed as the whispers of the child on the raft continue to spill into his ears

At this point it’s either pointless fodder or a plain lie that leaves him disappointed

Ben pats his back as takes a sip of his drink, guzzling it down with ease as his men party around him

….and then someone enters the bar

He doesn’t care to turn around, not when he’s in a sour mood

Doesn’t care to bat an eye to the newcomer who sits themself down next to him on the only other empty barstool on account that no one wanted to be near a grumpy drunk emperor

Yet this either brave of foolish soul dares to do so

He’ll give them that, they either have balls of steel or a death wish since he really isn’t in the mood for bullshit right now-

“Huh?, what happened to Rogers hat? Did you give it away or something?”

Shanks goes still as the sound of your very familiar voice enters through his ears

He goes ridged and his emperors Haki lashes out

A few men drop to the floor as the attention turns to him and the small figure who sits looking up at him

Shanks slowly turns and faces someone he had missed for a long time now

There you sat

As young as ever, looking like you haven’t aged a day despite the fact it’s been well over a decade and now nearing a second decade

You still have Rogers coat but now it’s adorned with several trinkets and charms along with the fact you seemed to have gained more souvenirs from other pirate friends (much to his chagrin)

Your eyes are still innocent yet have the spark of something ancient in them

Chubby cheeks pulled up into a look of confusion at his agape reaction

He accidentally spits the beer out his mouth into Ben’s face

His right hand man can’t even seem to be mad when your looking up at the red haired man with a small grin at his expression

“Never thought you’d waste beer like that. Not when you’d beg Rayleigh and then sneak a sip from the mugs of people passed out”

Not even a word after that can come out your mouth before your in his arms

This feels unreal to him

Like a cruel dream he’s gonna wake up from

He’s preparing himself for it yet it doesn’t seem to happen

Your still in his arms

Your still you

He’s still him

His crew is watching gobsmacked and confused as tears begin to like his eyes

Him, red haired Shanks crying for the first time in years let alone at some small bar with a random kid he’s hugging

Maybe they think he’s so drunk that he’s imagining you as Uta or Luffy

But no

Your you

And perhaps that’s the one thing that makes this feel like some sort of fever Dream

He’ll give his captain credit where it’s due, he could’ve never imagined Roger keeping a secret let alone several important ones

Though Shank supposed that Roger was a man of his word, he’d rather cut off an arm rather than go back on a promise he made

And that extended to keeping something a secret

But he had to admit of all possibilities as to why you haven’t aged a single day this was the one he dreaded the most

He was hoping for some mad science experiment or just a weird devil fruit

But this was much worse

Immortality

Many people want it, but like a monkeys paw every blessing comes with a curse

And you had seen the extents of what it could bring to not only you but those you had gotten close to

The mental horror of watching someone you were close to die not knowing they would appear across the world moments later

And then having to grapple with the fact they had traumatized that person now with the possibility of meeting them again in the future

It sounded torturous

But it also now explained the fact as to why you were already hardened to the sea back then

Already seeing it’s worse storms and foes

It’s why your eyes despite their innocence are hallowed out, empty of life sometimes as you stared out towards the sea you loved

Why they always seemed older than what you looked

It’s cause you were technically older, just stuck physically and mentally as a child

One who had braved the seas for both its treasures and tortures

Content in wanting to explore and see all that could be seen, experience everything there was

It is fascinating as it is horrifying

He can’t imagine what you had been through up till now

Who you had met on your journeys

that explains why you’d always tell cryptic stories about people you’ve met that now looking back sound suspiciously like big mom and Kaido

Speaking of which that probably means their trying to look for you still

….god this did not turn out to be what he expected nor wanted

He takes a sip of his beer as his crew can’t also help but be exasperated from how nonchalant you are about all of this

As if dying repeatedly isn’t a big deal

Nor is meeting future emperors and Yonko’s who were definitely affected by your time with them

If he hears that you befriended Doflamingo or something then he’s officially done

With all these things coming to light though he can’t help the small grin that made its way onto his face

You weren’t exactly ok (at least mentally speaking) but you were alive

The greatest blessing that came with your immortality was that you were alive

He can’t help but continue to hold you close

You don’t mind, you had seemingly missed his presence over the years

Even if your time on his ship will be but a blip in your long life he knows you’ll remember it

You have that feeling as well

Every night with them is a party of sorts

Shanks had always been one who enjoyed a festival’s atmosphere so it’s no surprise that each night with his crew is an experience

They drink, laugh and dance with one another

Singing songs familiar to you and your years at sea

Even one that they now realize was made for you

The undying star in the sky that leads sailors to wonders untold

A spark of determination lit in their souls when the star moves across the sky to a new horizon

A lot of old stories and rumours at sea make sense now on the fact that your probably connected to them

But what’s perhaps the most funny thing about all that is the world government knows about you but doesn’t have a clear enough picture to try and pursue you

Photos are always blurry or downright incomprehensible, descriptions are muddied and vary

The people who met you refuse to tell even a pep of what you looked like

They can imagine it’s driving them mad

Especially Sengoku who has been tasked to find you for years now

And for a time you were right under his nose without even knowing

They all get a good cackle out of that

Imagining the old man’s face when he does eventually realize

It would probably take a big public event for that to happen though

Something you’d probably inevitably crash for whatever reason

So until then your relatively safe from marine pursuit

But even when that does inevitably happen you’ll have a good portion of the pirating world at your side

Him and his crew included

Like all those years ago on the Oro Jackson you work your ways into the crews hearts

A relatively quick process that somehow happens with everyone you meet

Yet it’s something that has yielded you much more power than you know of

Hell, your probably the most safe person on the sea not accounting your devil fruit ability on account of somehow getting on everyone’s good sides

How you did this he and his crew don’t know but it’s certainly something their suspecting is due to your devil fruit

Or you just have some uncanny ability in literally having the power of friendship or something

Either way their not writing it off as other just quite yet

Not when their all too caught up in your stories or insisting on teaching you blackjack

You don’t tell them you already know how to play, especially since you use that to win their desserts

Shanks just laughs, especially as they all sulk at “being beaten by a kid” momentarily forgetting your older than all of them

Whilst Shanks is both happy and ecstatic of finding you again he can’t help but feel melancholy

He swears he sees his old crew mates while lucky Rox and Yassop toss you around like a hot potato

His mind playing tricks as Ben messes up your hair just as Rayleigh did

Whenever this happens you seem to know

Always ending up at his side, going to a quiet part of the ship for a moment of peace where he can breath

In its there you both truly talk

You both catch up with what’s happened over the years

After the crew disbanded he was aimless

The fight with buggy

Him raising Uta with his crew before eventually leaving her for her own safety despite the fact it still kills him on the inside

The young boy who ate a fruit he was transporting for the world government, the reason why he doesn’t have Rogers hat anymore and why he’s missing an arm

It’s all a lot to process

Yet it’s even more when you tell him what’s happened on your end

The other pirates you’d met, the marines, becoming and dying as a slave

The pain

The loss

Everything

He can’t help but just sit there for a few solid minutes

Processing everything

And then comes the guilt

Tears

If he had tried harder to find you none of that would’ve happened

If he had done better

If he-

Your small hands shake him from his stupor as you place them gently on his tear stained cheeks

Here he was, an emperor crying as a child comforted him

Yet as he does it feels natural

Like back when he had a nightmare when he was a young teen and you talked with him to help distract from it all

The times that despite being your self appointed “older brother” he’d rely on you for advice

He crumbles in your gentle hands yet he does not care

Because when shanks is with you he knows he’s not the cabin boy of the Oro Jackson

He’s not red haired Shanks, the fierce-some emperor of the sea

He’s not shanks, the bastard child of some celestial dragon who was abandoned at birth in a treasure chest

He’s not the father who left his daughter out of both love and fear for her safety and wellbeing

He’s not the party animal who’s constantly drunk despite his power

To you Shanks is just Shanks

The man encompassed by the colour red

Rage

Stress

Love

Passion

And most importantly of all Determination

For once in a very long while he feels the stress fall from his shoulders

As much as he loves his crew and the sea he feels a heavy burden of responsibility on his chest out of love for them

But like a switch it melts away

He feels a bit guilty that he’s the one crying when your the one who went through so much pain

But when he sees your gentle smile he knows you don’t mind

A soft look of ‘its ok’ and ‘you can cry’

And so he does

So much so that his eyes turn red from irritation

It’s inevitable that you leave

He knows that when it comes to you yet he can’t help but feel sad

And notice something slightly different this time around

When on the Oro Jackson you’d leave from time to time

Staying for good portions of times before leaving for awhile and somehow always making your way back

You never once hesitated to leave

Back then they had all accepted it

Knowing you’d come back eventually, so much so that they’d plan parties in advance

But now as you prepare to leave it’s different

Your tired

It’s easy for him to tell since he’s known you for a good portion of time

Though your smile is as good as a mask as ever he sees the cracks

The way you don’t look at the sea like the way you once did

He can’t blame you

But it worries him

A part of him wants to offer you a place here permanently but that in some sense would be cruel

He can’t will himself to take advantage of your exhaustion to essentially trap you here

The sea is meant to be a place of freedom and would not shackle you like others once did

He won’t guilt you into this when he knows you’d stay out of guilt

He may be selfish but he isn’t selfish enough to do that

Not when all he wants is for you to be happy

So he prepares to let go

Knowing you’d meet again

But not before he throws you the biggest party they’ve had in a long while

Stacks of food are prepared

So many Desserts to the point big mom would have to stop and take a break from eating

Enough booze to create a running river

Streamers and confetti decorating the ship in all the colours of the rainbow

Songs sung loudly as the few who knew how to play instruments strummed away

Mihawk even showing up much to his surprise because he apparently already met you once before

Not surprised at that fact but Moreso on how that stubborn asshole gives you a small well made sword

One obviously custom made and designed for you with it’s whole star design

Neither of you elaborate how you both met

Both giving each other a silent stare before turning to him with shit eating grins saying that “that story is for another day”

It leaves his a bit huffy but he’s secretly happy that it seems the two of you are both well acquainted

Even more so that you finally have something to defend yourself with for once

God knows the amount of times he and buggy had tried to convince you to bring some sort of weapon only for them to say you’d be fine and then save you at the last minute from being stabbed

It seems Mihawk shared this same sentiment since he nearly jumps out of his skin when you start mock sword fighting with Ben and his second hand man gets the death eye of the century

It’s good though, especially as you sing with the crowd of drunks who are either happily joining in for the party or sadly joining in remembering this is a goodbye party

Your hoisted and thrown playfully in the air screaming the lyrics of shanties

Given a few sips of alcohol behind Ben’s and Mihawk’s backs (Shanks is guilty of this as well)

At some point someone decides fireworks are a good idea and almost set the ship on fire

It all works out though as sparks scatter in the sky

Fluttering down until fizzling out

All the while you watch on from the crows nest beside him

Everyone else down below watching and dancing

Mihawk nearby enjoying the lively atmosphere

It’s nice

Yet as he wishes for this moment can last forever he knows it can’t

The reminder of this is when you begin to speak once mor e

Shattering the silence he wishes to keep as to have the moment last longer

To not be reminded of the imminent departure from his ship that this entire party is about

Your words aren’t that bad yet it fills him with solace

You tell him you’ll keep your eye out for a kid in a straw hat

It’s probably inevitable you run into Luffy at some point

Knowing him you’ll probably even join him on some grand adventure

The kid Is a supernova waiting to happen and you seem to have an affinity for finding them

You also promise to check up on Uta for him if your given the chance

Meeting her when she was only a baby when he had found her in a treasure chest just as Roger had with him

For the first few months of her life you helped him raise her

The young toddler even eventually naming you her Auncle

The whole crew got a laugh out of that

As did he

But now as you say that it just reminders him you’ll be leaving again

He doesn’t have the courage to look you in the eyes until he looks up at the stars

They burn brightly in the sky

Golden light thousands of miles away yet still brilliant in their glow

And it’s there looking at those stars he’s reminded of the day you climbed aboard the Oro Jackson

The spark of determination in him to be your friend

…..determination

He remembers now why he had felt that calling all those years ago

The world government had been vague in why the fruit you ate was so important

Naturally Shanks attributed that to the nature of immortality that came with it

But it seems there was more to it than meets the eye

Whenever you had met someone you ended up being a catalyst to their determination towards something

And perhaps that was more powerful that immortality itself

Being the spark that can change someone’s entire life course

It’s no wonder why they wanted this fruit

One that would most definitely play into enlisting more powerful forces and lighting the fuse to their souls that would have them walk to the ends of the earth to accomplish it

It’s like with the gum-gum fruit that they had him try to deliver

But now thinking about it perhaps that one as well has some sort of other purpose they needed it for

Not if he has any say in it though

Shanks is a selfish pirate at heart and nothing comes between him and protecting his treasures

Whether that be a boy in a straw hat, a girl with half white and red hair or a child always floating at sea with stars in their eyes

He will fight tooth and nail to keep them safe

Cause selfishness is something taught to him by his captain

Protect what you love no matter the cost

Protect their freedom and your own,

Be determined to take the stand in liberation

Red is the colour of his hair and it encompasses his soul

Shanks’s hands are dyed that colour as well; the colour of blood and love.

He will continue to stain it that colour to protect what he’s passionate about with vigorous anger if the world government so much breaths in any of their directions

#platonic #shanks x reader #shanks #one piece x reader #one piece #determination!

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dazeddoodles · 10 months

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About Eda's Mandolin

Despite there being foreshadowing of Raine before their official debut. Eda is never really referenced as having played music before that episode, where there's a scene of her finding her mandolin locked in a box making it clear she hasn't used it in a while.

She only found it because right before that she took the photo she had of her, Luz, and King that she had on her stand and was about to lock it away in that same box after she heard Luz and King were planning on leaving.

The next time we see Eda using it is in Raine's flashback, and in it Raine reajusts Eda's fingers on her instrument and proceed to watch her play it while having their own instrument just laying next to them. It's most likely they're teaching her how to, and were the one who taught her to play it in the first place.

All this implies Eda might have only got into playing an instrument and using bard magic because of Raine. So after they broke up she hid her mandolin as to not be reminded of them.

#the owl house #toh #raeda #eda clawthorne #raine whispers #she cant play it anymore now wtf

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ms-cartoon · 5 months

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Warning: This post will contain mentions of assault or anything along the lines of it. You get the idea.

My review for HH ep 2 was supposed to be out by now, but there are some things I have to say first. My reasoning for sticking around for Hazbin Hotel is all gone except for Vox right now. I love Husk too, but they really just kinda ruined him for me in ep 4. I'm probably being dramatic but that's just how I feel. If he's supposed to be this wise bartender who's meant to make people feel better and help reach an understanding of some sort, he really just failed at that.

EP 4 of Hazbin Hotel is probably the worst one out of all the eps released so far. There are PLENTY of flaws to point out, but they can be said for some other posts I'll upload soon. What I'm mainly concerned with as of now is that "Loser Baby" song sung by HuskerDust.

So it's revealed that Husk was once an overlord and was always gambling. He betted his status and powers when playing against Alastor and lost. Now I guess he's forced to do whatever Alastor wants such as being a bartender. . . .

Sorry to get off topic here but. . . . Husk was an overlord??? I don't like how they just suddenly reveal that. It caught me off guard. I know they sorta foreshadowed it in the pilot, but they should've given most newcomers to the show a hint or something. It honestly feels like the writers just pulled that revelation out their asses just to add some positivity and similarity between Angel and Husk's relationship (because Viv and the fans just love idea of this ship oh so much)

Also, since he was previously an overlord, how come nobody's heard of him??? Everybody will get shocked when they hear or see Alastor or recognize him by his radio shows. Everybody knows the Three Vs, Camilla, etc. but not a Husk??? The Overlord with a gambling addiction?? Charlie and Vaggie will get shocked when Alastor comes in the picture but look at Husk like he's some random dude that just popped outta nowhere?

Plus, Alastor didn't force Husk to work as a bartender. In the pilot, he was easily convinced with cheap booze.

Speaking of his gambling addiction; well we all know he likes to gamble judging by his appearance. But gambling being his addiction?? Since when was that implied?

Anyway . . . . At this point, I don't get what the idea of that song is or what Husk meant by it. Maybe I am overlooking it, but its pretty hard not to believe knowing how Viv screws up her writing skills and how she went about it. According to all the Viv defenders, the song was meant to say Angel isn't alone in being stuck in a situation he feels he can't get out of and that Husk can understand where he's coming from and what he's going through. Well sorry to burst y'all's bubble, but even if that was, they just did wrong ENTIRELY. (Sidenote: If you Hazbin lovers wanna see it how u see it, then fine. But Imma stick with what I believe and there's nothing that could be said to change my mind, so don't bother trying to correct me.)

Husk makes it seem like he knows exactly what it's like being in Angel's shoes; signing a contract and being forced to do something against his will. That part seems to be the only thing they have similar. Except what happened with Husk in the past should NOT count as a similarity!

Husk: Loses a bet against Alastor, costing his soul and status as an overlord. Agrees to commit to Alastor's biddings apparently, including being a bartender for a hotel (which he wasn't really forced to do. He doesn't seem to be afraid in refusing Alastor's requests. I partially don't even believe it was apart of the deal to do what Alastor wanted)

Angel: Is a pornstar. Forced to be a pornstar and do whatever Val wants him to do. Including submitting to him and his sexual needs, getting beaten, r8ped, assaulted (sexually even), exploited, drugged, etc.

What part of Angel's problem should Husk be understanding? Alastor doesn't beat or r8pe Husk! It's never even revealed what Husk goes through with Alastor. I doubt it's anything bad on his part, since he clearly isn't afraid to talk smack to the powerful radio demon who could kill him in an instant. They just . . . had that past and now Husk is doing him a permanant favor. What Husk is doing now isn't even anything bad. He's working as a bartender for a hotel and is being paid to do it. He may not like, but it's nothing bad. What ANGEL is going through on the other hand?? The word "bad" doesn't even begin to cover it.

Husk may not know what Angel goes through (though he should connect the dots since Angel hinted at him when he revealed he gets drugged all the time) but Angel just full on agreeing with him and accepting that he's a loser for what he goes through and having to embrace his situation????

Ummm . . . . NO!

Bro! You just saw Angel about to get drugged!! He should NOT have to accept that!!

#anti hazbin hotel #hazbin husk #hazbin hotel #hazbin #hazbin hotel critical #hazbin hotel critique #hazbin hotel criticism #vivziepop critical

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77dekiru · 20 days

Text

MHA 423: Breakdown + Speculation

(MANGA SPOILERS.)

I would like to start this off by saying that there was a lot set up with the OFA realm that never got used (if this is the true conclusion.)

Nothing further came from Katsuki entering the OFA realm. (I think that it’s obvious that Katsuki came back being able to tap into OFA, but that was never actually confirmed.)

Nothing came from Toshinori and his vestige syncing...

Nothing came from Star’s vestige reappearing. (Star originally gave up her chance to kill Tomura/AFO, because she saw Tenko still inside the vestige realm… this is all very interesting timing.)

“Master… I found a sad child. He’s right there.”

(This literally happened only 10 chapters ago. It’s not like these were older events that were suddenly written out as being relevant.)

All of this was done for a purpose, all foreshadowing for something more. It would be horrifically bad writing if quite literally nothing came from it.

How Tenko Will Survive:

“I have no doubt All For One was absorbed and stopped existing.”

Izuku questioned how AFO was able to come back, even stressing how he was sure that AFO had been fully absorbed (this literally happened 2 chapters ago…) and ceased to exist.

All For One isn’t the only character this has happened to either!!

Yoichi (+ the other vestiges) came back as well. AFO was certain that Yoichi’s vestige had been shattered and destroyed.

“How dare you destroy my One For All… My Yoichi…”

“When I heard the sound of Yoichi being shattered to pieces… my whole world turned grey.”

Even Star’s vestige reappearing is an example of this happening… the fact that we have gotten no explanation for any of this is so weird.

There is definitely something more going on here that hasn’t been revealed yet.

((I personally think that this is gearing up for All For One (quirk) reaching the point of singularity… OFA has already reached that point, but AFO has not. I feel like it’s somewhat inevitable, imo.))

I can see Tomura’s “soul” (his sense of self, IMO) being saved by whatever had originally brought back the other vestiges, and his body being saved by the Overhaul quirk he possesses.

Tomura believes that his only purpose (the reason that he was even born) is to destroy. He literally mourns the fact that he wasn’t able to destroy Izuku’s arms, not because it was something that he enjoyed, but because destruction is the only thing that Tomura believes he’s capable of…

Overhaul gives Tomura the ability to CREATE and not just destroy. Tomura didn’t even have a chance to process the idea that he could possibly do that. It didn’t even seem to register for him at all.

I think that Tomura referring to himself (“Shigaraki Tomura”) in quotations is gearing up for a “death of Shigaraki Tomura, rebirth of Shimura Tenko” type deal.

I also want to add that we never actually saw Izuku use One For All on Tomura.

We didn’t see Tomura’s body cease to exist, we saw his vestige be destroyed.

Izuku and Tomura do not actually need to be near each other in person to interact within the vestige realm!! (I truly wouldn’t be surprised if some Kurogiri portal fuckery is going on here as well.)

Speculation:

Alright. I’m trying not to be delusional about this, but there was definitely something off about this chapter. Not in a poorly written way, but in a “there is some fuckery going on here” type way.

This seemed like a purposefully manufactured “end” to One For All and All For One… A performance more than anything. (This could be the result of a rushed ending, but I’m going to be optimistic about all of this.) Izuku referring to All Might as “the Eighth” was so odd.

The scene of AFO speaking to Yoichi’s “embers” was also very strange to me. The entire conversation between Yoichi and AFO felt off, as if Yoichi was just a distraction. Also the fact that all of the vestiges were able to hold their full forms, except for Yoichi is such a red flag… (Even AFO’s vestige was able to revert back to its pre-injured self.) Especially since Izuku had held onto OFA the most out of all of the past users quirks… OFA is special to Izuku, not for its power but because it had been a gift from All Might.

Izuku is not incapable of being selfish.

I can definitely see him trying to hold onto something from One For All…

The reason that AFO’s “soul” was finally shattered is that the idea that Yoichi was truly gone left him with nothing else… AFO no longer cared about ruling over others, finding it pointless without him.

If there is even the smallest bit of OFA left, I can very much see AFO coming back again (😭) I genuinely think that he wouldn’t give up if there was even an ember of Yoichi left…

All For One definitely will not be getting any sort of redemption by the end of the series, but I do think that he will possibly get some sort of closure for Yoichi's death... which will be what finally stops the cycle.

[End of meta, beginning of rant:]

If there is nothing more after this, that was probably the worst conclusion to a plot line that we have ever had in the entire series.

I am of the firm belief that what happened this chapter would've been fine (minus, Tomura's possible conclusion) if it had been spaced out between even 2-3 chapters instead of a single one. It felt rushed and this "climax" fell flat.

I don’t think that Tenko is dead (or at least will stay dead) but the idea that that was the conclusion of the OFA/AFO plotline is making me feel insane.

There is so much important shit that still needs to be resolved, and the idea that it's gonna happen AFTER the climax in some post-war bullshit is also making me feel just a little bit crazy. ngl.

It's all just gonna feel so anticlimactic. Unless something changes drastically in the next chapter, I just know the ending will be disappointing on some level if things stay as they currently are…

(Even if this is not the conclusion of the OFA/AFO plotline, this chapter could do so much possible damage if things are not handled properly, I really don’t know if whatever is being planned next could even fully salvage it…)

Izuku’s actions:

I’ll be honest, I’m not particularly surprised with how Izuku acted this chapter. His view of Tomura has always been flawed, and that had been shown time and time again throughout this battle…

(I’m working on a longer post about this. It’s been something that I have kept to myself for a while now, and I think now is a good time to post my thoughts on it.)

Izuku never wanted to save Shigaraki Tomura, he wanted to save Shimura Tenko.

I think that this chapter perfectly displayed that particular flaw to readers… I really don’t think that this is the result of poor writing, but was a flaw purposefully given to Izuku.

(A flaw that he has yet to overcome… I do hope that this will be something that is resolved by the end of the series.)

The Fandom Response:

I’m seeing a lot of people say things like “Tenko can rest now.” or “Well, I guess Tenko’s heart was saved in the end.” when that is simply not true.

Tomura did not have any sort of revelation about AFO’s grooming. He still believed that he was born to destroy, that did not change in the slightest.

Tomura did not get any closure for the death of his family. He practically learns that he and his family were doomed from the start, and then just accepted it.

Tomura did not die “happy” or even at peace.

The idea that the only way for Tomura to be stopped was for him to be killed is just simply not true. He literally gave up a few chapters prior. It’s not like he was “too far gone” or on a rampage and needed to be put down.

…I have a lot more thoughts on this chapter that I won’t be sharing (yet) but I just can’t accept that it ends there. I cannot accept the idea that the main plotline of the series was so horrifically fumbled after all this time.

If Tomura truly died like that, it quite literally threw out 5+ years of development.

Tomura was humanized over and over again. For nothing?

It all just seems very… cruel.

#mha #my hero academia #mha spoilers #mha 423 #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #bnha 423 #midoriya izuku #shigaraki tomura #all for one #meta #long post #rant #I have been sorta tweaking out since the chapter leaks originally dropped but I have been trying to be level headed about everything…#so here are my overall thoughts… I will be making a few other posts explaining myself further at some point as well…

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