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thatpinkbetch · 4 years

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Bkdk Fic Rec

I’ve been inspired to write a fic rec! This one goes out to you @lonely-rabbit

At like, the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019 I stayed up until 4am every night reading fics, and because I’m such a loser, I made a word doc to keep track of all of them so I wouldn’t forget them.... I tried organizing it by length but it got messy cause I’m ridiculous and cluttered, so sorry! (I’ll save my own for the end alskdjflsdkfj gotta self promote you know). This is going to get...really long, so I’ll put it under a read more! Also, just a heads up, these are all on ao3, in case that’s important to anyone!

Disclaimer: Any fics with mature or explicit content I will add a bolded warning for, even if it’s only a little bit. Normally most fics will be tagged as such, but some fics that are rated as teen I’ve found to be more suggestive than some of those rated as mature, so I will try to point it out where it feels necessary, for anyone who wishes to avoid it.

Fics under 1k:

Illuminate by TheQueen (269 words)

Summary: Bakugou watches the first firework launch and fights to keep his face neutral

Very short, plot is about a case of amnesia, also very cute and well written for that length! Not angsty at all imo

sweaty hands holding secrets - shounentwink (563 words)

Summary: Someone said Midoriya holds secrets in his hair.

It’s not true: He holds it tightly in his hands. Bakugou’s seen it.

I really like this writer! You’ll see quite a bit of them in this post alkdsjfalskdjf

Fics 1k - 10k:

Many sunflowers later - Jeka (2395 words)

Summary: Scholar Midoriya Izuku comes back to the person he left behind after his journey through the kingdom, the mighty dragon clan leader Bakugou Katsuki.

Day 1 of Twin Stars Week 2020: Fantasy AU.

First of all, fantasy au!!! Second of all, jeka!!! (I need to read more of your stuff!!) Anyways, so cute, such lovely, pretty writing, wonderful story telling, and they’re so in love TT_TT

Boom Badoom Boom - warschach (3429 words)

Summary: Izuku's working the kissing booth at the school fair, it just so happens Katsuki has been crushing on him since the first grade.

“Did you—“ Izuku parted his mouth with no sound leaving it, “Did you pay?”

“Yea.”

“For a kiss?”

This one’s a little silly but I love it still. It’s got a “kids in the 80′s over summer vacation” vibe, I think. I love warschach! I should read more of their writing... They have SUCH good bakudeku content! *It’s rated teen but there’s some suggestive content, just a heads up!

Hopeless Ramen-tic - lalazee (7155 words)

Summary: Midoriya is a cute guy who works at a ramen stall and Bakugou is thirsty as hell, but has to hide it by being an asshat. Another love story.

Ah, so good TT_TT so much sass, such good plot development and story telling for a simple concept *It’s rated as teen but again, it can be suggestive at times!

I’ll share this with you, so leave it behind - yabakuboi (3508 words)

Suammry: For the sake of the story, All Might is never in need of a successor, and, when Izuku saves Katsuki from the sludge monster, encourages young Midoriya down a different path. Thus, Katsuki and Izuku part ways after junior high, as Katsuki enters U.A. and the Midoriyas move overseas. It’s later that Katsuki realizes that there’s something missing, that he drove that something away.

Years after, Katsuki finds him in the last place he looks, in the cereal aisle at the local grocery store of their childhood neighborhood.

So soft, so sweet, so good if you just want to curl up in a comfy blanket and drink hot cocoa and feel warm and cozy and a little in love

The Secret Deku Box - yabakuboi (2241 words)

Summary: “Y’know, Bakugou never, ever talks about girls,” Kaminari says, his voice thoughtful.

“And I wonder why that is.” Ashido rolls her eyes.

“I’m just curious!” Kaminari whines. Kirishima drags the box out, unlabeled and unassuming, the lid not even fully clasped over the edges. “The guy has to— Whoa, what’s that?”

Kirishima realizes a little belatedly that this is a serious breach of privacy, and Bakugou will actually murder all of them. “Nothing!” he cries, attempting to shove it back under the bed, but Ashido snatches it away.

“Please be his porn stash!” Kaminari whispers as she whips the lid off.

Cute, funny, in canon, in character, and a must read I would say!

daisy bunches and heather branches - halcyonwhispers (5862 words)

Summary: izuku falls in love with the foul-mouthed tattoo artist next door.

Not another flower/tattoo shop au.... aldskjflaskdjfd Okay but punk!Bakugou is ALWAYS a smart move imo

the best part of me (is the worst I can give) - halcyonwhispers (5668)

Summary: Whole sentences usually make up people’s Words, but Katsuki got stuck with a name instead.

Izuku’s name.

I am such a sucker for soulmate aus when it comes to these boys TT_TT *There is some mature content, just a heads up!

Hard to Say - halcyonwhispers (8390 words)

Summary: Izuku is a Halfling, born after his faerie father spirited away his mom and then left her behind. Never quite fitting in with the humans or any of the supernatural beings in his small town, Izuku hoped that going to a diverse college in the big city will help him finally make friends.

Katsuki’s family has been powerful witches for generations, and he’s no different. Talented and a proclaimed genius to boot, he knew he shouldn’t waste his time on this dumbass (disgustingly cute) half-blood.

Or,

two idiots fall in love and don’t get that the other’s awkward cues are just a result of romantic tension.

I am ALSO a sucker for fantasy/mythical creatures au and I LOVED this one - Bakugou absolutely unable to handle how cute Midoriya is? Perfection - but it’s unfinished, and I don’t think it ever will be continued, unfortunately TT_TT

lots to unpack (throw away the whole suitcase) - shounentwink (4315 words)

Summary: “How’d you know?” Midoriya asks.

There’s a hunch to his shoulders that wasn’t there three hours ago. Freckled shoulders are kissed sunburnt and red: he looks like someone ran him over and left him like roadkill in the sunlight. Bakugou’s working with insurance today, but he could see the sparks of green lightning even from his elevated position in their shared agency. Midoriya’s holding his thumb, cracking it over and over — it looks like he’s rubbed it raw.

“Dunno,” Bakugou says. “Maybe you’re just easy to read, nerd.”

I love this one so much, it was one of the first ones I read, it’s so good, and it’s another that really affected how I view their relationship! Idk this one just hit for me

hang the moon from us (it’s a no from me) - shounentwink (1200 words)

Summary: Midoriya’s gonna get sick of Bakugou one of these days, and then the whole ruse will be over, and the balance of power will tilt beyond salvation, but that day isn’t today and it looks like Bakugou knows it.

What an asshole.

Once again, I’m a sucker for the fantasy au... But even more, the diction, the details, the imagery...it’s absolutely all stunning here. I wish I could write this pretty

In Which Bakugou Finds His One Tru Luv - Erina (5862 words) This is the first one of a series called The Misadventures of Explodo-kill Agency!

Summary: Welcome to the Explodo-kill agency! We can destroy your buildings, crash your cars, and help you solve one of the seven mysteries in life: who is Bakugou Katsuki's mysterious boyfriend?!

I’ll admit I’ve only read the first three but by god they are the funniest fics I’ve ever read in my life. I see that Erina has added more since the last time I checked it out! Tbh I was only interested in reading the purely bakudeku ones... (My favorite was the second one!! SO funny and cute!)

i still do - raeryn (9646 words)

Summary: He’s losing him to pieces, but Izuku still tries to make them count. In which a battle leaves Bakugou Katsuki with amnesia, and Izuku finds himself picking up the pieces.

So, this one makes me cry. TT_TT

One Thing Straight - winningshot (9899 words)

Summary: They totally aren't.

Hints of their relationship is found in all of their friends’ social media accounts, but majority of their fans still think that Katsuki and Izuku are in relationships with anybody but each other.

It was amusing up until it became sad.

Lmao it’s a little salty but I guess I can be too. This is a social media fic! There’s multiple ships in this one, too

A Demolition Boy & his Cryptid BF - kewltie (8472 words)

Summary: Bakugou of the Demolition Squad is famous for running one of the most popular Youtube channels on the web that regularly blow shit up and jumped off a perfectly good building for shit and giggles. He's also famous for his Cryptid BF™, never appearing on camera except for a few bodyshots and all information on him is kept locked up tighter than Fort Knox, therefore drawing all sort of attention and curiosity toward his mysterious boyfriend.

Deku from Deku Explains is a hopeless chatterbox who is known for uploading 20-30 minutes video that talked about his favorite shows and comics and have one of the most devoted following on Youtube. He also can't seem to shut up about his boyfriend Kacchan, who regularly make his presence on the channel as a disembodied voice.

They should theoretically have nothing in common except a shared platform to host their content and an army of fans with an endless curiosity and devotion to their Youtubers. Vidcon is where we lay our scene and the internet is about to get a rude wake up call.

Okay kewltie is SO GOOD and very creative! The formatting is phenomenal, it’s like you’re actually experiencing a social media melt down in real time lol

be my good luck charm - writedeku (6785 words)

Summary: See, the thing is, Midoriya Izuku had been born with a curse. It’s not a curse that’s particularly visible. He doesn’t have horns, or a tortured face, and it’s not the kind of silly curse like a friend of his had way down south in Diagnor, wherein the girl had been born without the ability to say the word duck. Midoriya Izuku is just extremely unlucky.

(Or the AU in which Izuku's the world's unluckiest travelling merchant, and Katsuki is someone who may be able to help him. For a price, that is.)

Oh I adore this one! It’s so cute and such a good narrative! Nice and warm, and Bakugou trying his damnedest to be suave, and it somehow working because Midoriya is just as flustered. *Another one rated as teen but some suggestive content.

Smells Like Victory - majjale (2377 words)

Summary: Bakugou takes two steps into the room and stops, clapping a hand over his nose. “Ugh, what stinks like Deku in here?”

"Good afternoon, Bakugou. That would be the amortentia."

I must admit, not a fan of HP, but majjale...TT_TT majjale writes these two boys so well. This one is really, really good!

Cherish Me - Justaperson1718 (2376 words)

Summary: “What?”

Izuku looked back down at his menu and flipped the page, a small smile on his face. “Nothing.”

Katsuki glared at Izuku from across the table. “If it was nothing then you wouldn’t be staring at me.”

“It’s just a little funny watching you try to look your best for our date when you always look great anyway,” Izuku explained. He wouldn’t look up from his menu while he spoke, but his words remained ingrained with confidence nevertheless. He considered what he was saying to be fact, and nothing else. “Even when you’re not trying in front of the cameras, it’s still hard to take my eyes off of you.”

This is a sequel to a fic that’ll be in the next section, because it’s longer, called Manage Me. Please read that one first before this one! (Not part of a series, but they’re the same story line)

Fascinating - Justaperson1718 (1556 words)

Summary: “I’m not staring at you,” Izuku replied, his eyes focused intently on Katsuki. He’s still wearing his pajamas, sitting on his knees in their shared bed. He was awake moments before Katsuki, and waited eagerly for the other to awake.

Katsuki glanced over his shoulder after his shirt was on and glared. “You’re fucking staring at me right now.”

Izuku shook his head, humming his disapproval quietly. “I’m watching you.”

“That’s the same damn thing,” Katsuki said while searching for a pair of pants in the dresser. “Your eyes are fixated on me like I’m your life’s fucking goal or some shit.”

“I just like watching you get dressed.” Izuku tilted his head to the side and smiled softly at Katsuki’s confused stare. “I know, it’s weird. But I like it.”

*There is a little bit of implied mature content, but overall, it’s just so sweet and intimate, and I just simply adore this one.

in a place once filled with gold - dorenamryn (9226 words)

Summary: It felt strange to remember such details, for they were things a friend should know, and as far as Katsuki was concerned, he and Deku hadn’t been friends in a very, very long time. He could admit, with reluctance, that they were on the path there, now, even though they would never make it. Katsuki would die before they could get the chance.

or: There is a garden growing in Katsuki’s lungs, and he is helpless to stop it.

“Hanahaki disease” okay, I can explain myself. Okay, I can’t. In any case, you got angst with a happy ending if that’s what you’re into!

Kaleidoscope - DPRenFTW (5141 words)

Summary: Izuku is a witch. He just needs to find his familiar. Enter a boy that is a wolf, and a wolf that is a boy - with wild red eyes and sharp smiles.

And Izuku thinks:

"Oh, it's him."

Just as beautiful and fascinating as the name implies! I seriously recommend for the beautiful writing, the gorgeous world, the mythical creatures au, and the lovely bakudeku romance!

Learning Curve - sensiblysilly (4222 words)

Summary: Deku and Katsuki’s first kiss goes rather differently than planned.

And Katsuki’s quickly learning that relationships can be unpredictable - especially when taking into account the variable that is Midoriya Izuku.

This really is just a careful handling of a teenage romance where perhaps one of them may have shit they’re still working through. It’s really sweet, and a careful study at boundaries and the building of a relationship. I actually stumbled across this while looking for another with the same name and ended up pleasantly surprised. Kacchan can has a little validation, as a treat.

4/20 is a national holiday - Ereri_Garbage (

Summary: Izuku is a drug dealer that doesn't really accept the fact he's a drug dealer, Katsuki is hot as hell as shouldn't be allowed a facebook.

Happy (Late) birthday Katsuki and happy (late) 4/20. I actually half assed an edit on this one so it took longer to post than I thought it would.

Uummmm lmao yes I have a sense of humor. ;ALDSKJFLSKDJF Okay, I say that, but this is not a crack fic, it’s a good story that I enjoy with good writing, and *it has mature, content, obviously for multiple reasons here. It’s rated as mature but there are borderline explicit moments imo. It’s a fun fic and funny, too! And, ngl, it really does remind me of college... But forget about me, the bakudeku is wonderful too of course :)

Drinking Watermelon - warschach (8906 words)

Summary: For whatever reason, maybe divine fate, Izuku turned and looked over his shoulder and waved to them.

Katsuki’s heart full on stopped right then, and his fingers forgot their duty on the rails, and his body neglected its job to keep Katsuki balanced.

Izuku’s summer sweet smile fell into concern as Katsuki went airborne and cracked his skull on the porch.

or Katsuki works as a camp counselor, and Izuku is a boy made of summer heat and sunlight.

Love it when people have Bakugou as absolutely enamored with Midoriya; it’s so good and true. Anyways this one makes me like summer camp story lines. It’s funny and also cute and great writing! *It’s got explicit content, just a heads up. Warschach stories just have this youthful 80′s vibe, I don’t know how else to explain it.

there are listed buildings - semiautomatichearts (3309)

Summary: Katsuki first sees colors bloom when he is only three years old. It is timid Izuku, hiding behind the cover of his mother's leg who looks upon him with wide eyes, and Katsuki's world explodes in shades of greens and pinks and blues, and he is so startled, he begins to cry.

His life is then on defined in color, in shades his peers can't see, by the forlorn, timid stare in Izuku's eyes that always lets off more than he is willing to tell. There is a schism driven between himself and his fated other, and Katsuki strives to be better than fate, better than what is defined for him. He is more than the written pages of a book, to be cracked open and read by the gods.

He wonders if it is possible for colors to bloom for someone who will never love you back.

Ah...soulmates :) So interesting how bakudeku fits into soulmate aus like this one when they’ve known each other as kids! And when they’ve had this complex push and pull thing going on all their lives! The writing is beautiful, and so is the story!

Promise Ring - bkdkwritingsdump (3579)

Summary: The midwest in the 1950′s is no place for boys who like kissing boys: something Izuku and Katsuki know all too well growing up there. However, the undeniable bond between the nervous science geek and the aloof delinquent will still find a way to blossom in such a desert.

Cute, sweet, makes my gay heart ache. Longing not just for the one you love, but just to feel right loving them. Very pretty story line, lovely story telling!

Fics 10k - 30k:

Fishy - warschach (19417 words)

Summary: Izuku’s convinced his hot co-worker/neighbor, Katsuki, is a mermaid-or merman- you gotta consider genders even with mythical creatures- and plans to prove it.

(or this is kinda like the show ‘Monster Quest’, except Izuku actually finds said monster, falls in love, and have sexy times.)

Another warschach! I love this one, I love how they write bakudeku, particularly as college students, their stories (at least, the ones that I’ve read) always feel so warm, like a summer’s day, but not a lazy one, one that’s playful? If that makes sense? *This one is explicit, another heads up!

Manage Me - Justaperson1718 (10756 words)

Summary: Izuku caught himself moving forward, his head tilted somewhat to the side, and his eyes shot wide open. His gaze met Katsuki’s half-lidded eyes now that he was no longer in a dreamlike state, and seeing the way Katsuki was looking at him—waiting for him—made him realize Katsuki would’ve let him do it. He might have even wanted him to do it.

“You’re both doing fabulous!” the photographer called out to them, packing his camera into his bag and getting ready to leave. “I just got word that what we have now should be good, so we’ll stop there. Thank you for your time! Lock the door on your way out after you change.”

The pair stayed frozen in place, with Izuku’s arms around Katsuki’s neck and Katsuki’s hands resting on Izuku’s waist, while the photographer and his supervisor left.

“Kacchan,” Izuku cooed once they were gone. “Did you want to…?”

Love the story, love the bakudeku! Very, very good bakudeku TT_TT very sweet *There is some mature content in here as well

point to a map (we’ve been there) - cosmicfuss (10589 words)

Summary: Serendipity / sĕr″ən-dĭp′ĭ-tē Serendipity is the occurrence of an unplanned fortunate discovery. Two men find themselves on a subway, hot coffee on one while the other is in the middle of a screaming match. After that they can't seem to stop finding each other, no matter how far they go.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; this fic owns my entire soul. I love the story, the ease of their relationship, just how lovely they are together. It’s another kind of nice, fluffy fic you’d read on a bad day where you come home and curl up in a blanket and listen to a ten hour video of thunderstorm white noise. *Again, some more mature content in here

Partners - tsukithewolf (13619 words) Another series! Two parts to this one this time

Summary: It is said that in Musutafu there is a charm that one can buy at a temple that will lead you to your destined partner. They say that if the charm works, you would be able to follow the red string of fate to the person you were meant to be with. And if the person returns your feelings, they would be able to see the string as well, proving that both were meant to be.

Three-year-old Katsuki and Izuku misunderstand what the word "partner" means and discover the charm and the rumor behind it is not only true, but more than expected.

Gets a little heavy, depression, bullying, suicidal thoughts, etc. But it must get worse before it gets better, that kind of thing. I also just adore the second part (called Bond) - maybe because it’s much fluffier, what about it?

Learning Curve - iknewaman (10304 words)

Summary: “Izuku.” Uraraka repeats as she motions at the person stood next to her. Green curls, average height, and, well. Up close, not such a bad smile. Uraraka points a thumb at Bakugou and enunciates slowly, “This is Bakugou. He can speak sign language too.”

Wait. Sign language?

The stranger— well, Izuku— looks at him with a raised brow. Their free hand lifts up as they make a slight motion of the hand.‘

Really?’

Bored out of his mind at a house party one night Bakugou is introduced to Izuku, a deaf student who offers to help teach Bakugou sign language in exchange for a favour-- or well, is prompted into asking for a favour.

Ah, I really want to explain this one a little bit? I’d never been into fanfiction ever, only really getting into it with these boys. This was the second one I read, I remember, and it caught me off guard, and it intrigued me. It really surprised me as to what fanfiction could be. Ngl I had biased perceptions of fanfics - I used to be one of those people who thought fanfiction could never be good writing - and this one slapped me in the face with it’s subtle beauty and creative story and heart melting capabilities, and very, very real relationship and growth. Anyways it’s so cute how happy Deku is to teach Kacchan sign language TT_TT Make sure to read the tags!

The Keeper and the Sun God’s Heir - SurelyHeavenWaits (12746 words)

Summary: The Titans' have stolen something important from Izuku, heir of the Sun God, and he wants it back.

This one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one this one- Oh my god this one. Okay so what, I was a Percy Jackson kid, what about it? I love the mythical aus, particularly the god ones. But beyond that, the writing is so beautiful, just like the world, and the imagery. The bakudeku...absolutely stunning. The story itself? Incredible. Cannot recommend more. *There is explicit content in this, though I will say, it’s all in the last chapter, and all of the story is in the first two chapters. There’s also a second part as it’s a series and it’s short but it’s cute and sweet TT_TT

seven days - aaAAAaaahhhhHHHHH (10094 words)

Summary: There’s something about the green haired boy, an aura that just drew Katsuki in before he even knew his name.

[Sometimes your mind forgets, but your heart remembers]

Heed my warning: DON’T read this in front of other people. I bawl every time I read this one TT_TT I know I said I don’t like angst but AJLSKDFJALSKDFJ it has a hopeful ending! I mean yeah you’re gonna cry but...hope? :’) (that username really says it all tbh)

Fics 30k+

Notice me, nerd - useless_donut (40000 words)

Summary: Bakugou is in love with Midoriya. He doesn’t hide it, in fact it’s so painfully obvious that the entire class of 3-A has him figured out in a matter of months (days, in some cases). Too bad Midoriya is the most oblivious motherfucker out there, and Bakugou is too damn stubborn to actually ask him out.

Will the class of 3-A survive the sexual tension? Who will snap first? Someone put Bakugou out of his misery, please, before everyone else dies of second-hand embarrassment.

(a love story as witnessed by the class of 3-A)

Love the idea of Bakugou being brazen and brash, cause yeah, he is. So fucking funny though how that translates to him flirting. Gotta say, thought I was gonna cringe, but his “I’m gay af” outfit really ended up being A Look. Love the mutual pining, it really is strong in this one. *Okay, mature content in this one lads.

While You Were Sleeping - Belkacaramelka (71197 words)

Summary: The one where quirkless fanboy Midoriya Izuku rescues Pro Hero Todoroki Shouto, gets mistaken as his fiancé while he is in a coma, and gets caught up in the most unlikely fake engagement... until his childhood enemy and Todoroki's classmate Bakugou Katsuki tries to catch him out, and they both end up discovering a lot more about each other than they'd expected.

Quirkless AU based on the film; endgame BakuDeku. -- Katsuki didn’t know when the change had happened: how he had gone from asking why Todoroki chose Deku of all people, to wondering why it was Todoroki that Deku chose. Troublesome Deku, who cooed like an idiot at cats, tripped at a random catcall and sang badly. Who, despite everything, proved that it wasn’t the quirk that defined a person. Deku, who was too much, not his, and undeniably off limits to begin with.

Update: Epilogue added

*This one has mature content. If you can, please, for the love of god, read this fic. It’s like, tied with my favorite bkdk fic perhaps ever. It’s based on the movie of the same title, a nineties romcom with Sandra Bullock, but Belkacaramelka has so effortlessly made it into it’s own story, fit it so perfectly inside of the bnha world. I definitely stayed up until 6:30am reading this one. It’s got such good badass Midoriya, who is also sweet, and really really good reconciliation between bakudeku.

All Gifted - fitzefitcher (39129 words)

Summary: The thing about gifts is that they're meant to be given, they're meant to be shared; so Izuku will take his gifts, so freely given to him, and share them with all he holds dear.

Izuku is born without any gifts, as his kind often are, to a witch mother and salamander father, on one sweltering night in July.

This one is unfinished...and I highly doubt it will ever be. But what has been written is incredible. Once again, I’m a sucker for the magic/mythical creatures aus. But the relationship is great! The characterization is great! The found family trope that was building up is great!

under a hollow sun - umbrage (40572 words)

Summary: Midoriya is cursed with emptiness.

Misfortune leads him to a man of ancient magic and endless rage.

To stop an unfathomable evil, their mismatched halves must become whole.

Uuuggghhhh this was so good! I don’t think it’s going to be finished either :( Once again, fantasy au, more amazing writing, on point characterization, incredible pacing, makes you hungry for more story.

all the savage soul requires - majjale (58032 words)

Summary: Bakugou seems to have exhausted his patience for words and no longer acknowledges that Midoriya exists, so Midoriya crosses his legs, stares down at his hands limned in firelight, and makes a list of things he knows.

One. His name is Midoriya Izuku.

Two. He is a Godmarked, future god of life, heir to the divine throne.

Three. The gods have been fighting Death for eons, and now he's coming for recompense with everything he’s got.

This is majjale, so of course, the writing is more than beautiful; it’s absolutely breathtaking. This may be my favorite fic ever - unfortunately I don’t think it will ever be finished either TT_TT There’s the gods/fantasy au, which you know by now I love. But the characterization of our two boys is absolutely perfect, and I mean that as literally as possible. And the story being crafted between the two, the memory loss, the obvious history muddled by it all, it was so dense, and the PINING, so incredibly written, flowing so naturally. It wasn’t even close to being done, but it was wonderful, still is wonderful.

My Writing: (You can skip this if you hate shameless self promotion)

You’re too damn flicking cute (1815 words)

Summary: Bakugou is certain his shitty boyfriend is instigating kisses. Maybe it doesn't help that he keeps giving them away like it's a damn going out of business sale, but the stupid nerd is too fucking cute. Either way, like everything else, this is a competition, and he's going to win it.

Please don’t read this unless you’re going to the dentist afterwards! I’ve been told it’s so sweet it’ll give you instant cavities >_>;;;;

Bakugou Katsuki, you smooth motherfucker (10118 words)

Summary: Everyone around him knows that Bakugou Katsuki has a very special way with words. To the untrained ear he is loud and crass; to those that speak Kacchan, he is caring and inspiring. Yet there are rare moments, moments so fleeting you blink and you miss them, where Bakugou’s words pierce straight through Midoriya’s chest, and surprise everyone around him.

Goddammit, if only he would say them to Midoriya’s face.

Or, the five times Bakugou said something nice about Midoriya, and the one time he said something kind to him (but that was too long of a title).

I think most would consider this my best published fic; it’s one of those snapshot fics, “the five times where x did this, and the one time where they didn’t.” The recurring comment I get on this one is both of them being super in character, so I think that’s it’s defining characteristic! Bakugou and Midoriya have never known a life without the other, and in a perfect world, they never will.

Here, let me fix that (11247 words)

Summary: Bakugou honestly never thought he’d see Deku ever again. And now that they were together in this tiny compartment, alone for the next two and a half minutes, he had no clue what to say. He’d just apologized, right? So perhaps he could leave it at that and carry on with the original plan to never see the green-haired man that reminded him of dense forests, late night adventures, and tear-stained faces, ever again.

Ha! Who is he kidding? These bitches are soulmates.

I’ve gotten some critiques on this one, so sorry in advance if it’s not to your liking! Basically, what if Midoriya never got his quirk? Obviously, life would find a way to put them together because, as previously stated, these bitches are soulmates.

Plenty of Time (16654 words)

Summary: Bakugou found what little sleep he got restless and filled with nightmares that he forgot the second he opened his eyes. Tonight was the first time in a long time where he just had a normal dream - and it happened to be about Deku.

How fucking typical.

In other words, two dorks realize they have feelings for each other but don't know what to do about said feelings.

Ah, my first fic. Very simple, boys being boys, kinda like a slow burn? Idk how to explain this one, just boys figuring out their feelings and trying to figure out what to do about them. Been told these two are a little stupid but I think that’s valid.

We’re all time bombs waiting to explode (39223 words)

Summary: We have now entered the slipstream of time, into an alternate dimension where it neither is, nor isn’t, the 80’s. Two teenagers, burdened with the weight of adolescence in the modern world, find themselves struggling side by side, in part because of each other.

Bakugou, the most popular boy in school, has everything he could possibly want; status, power, and an unbreakable will. Having been dragged along behind him all the way to the top, Midoriya can’t help but wonder how (and why) he ended up standing beside his childhood friend-turned bully-turned friend again, weighed down by their complicated past and present. As the tension between them grows every day, and the arrival of a new, pretty face causes it to peak, it won’t be long before something - or someone - snaps.

I am...very bad at titles, and summaries apparently. This was my Heathers au, but it very quickly diverges from the original (I don’t do sad endings....) *This one has mature content, including implied sexual activity, drug use, and underage drinking, along with other heavy topics; please read the tags! Though tbh Midoriya is 17 for a couple weeks before it hits his birthday halfway through, so keep that in mind I guess? I kind of went heavy with this one, but I think the pay off was immense. This is the one with the most amount of comments stating it’s their favorite bkdk fic ever (and I cry). It’s a rough start, with a rough journey, but so is bakudeku! There’s a lot of petty drama, and then all of a sudden it’s Not That Petty and very much Far Too Real. Many have cried reading the ending, I cried writing it. My sister says it’s her favorite of mine. Now, I did kind of push this out without polishing it so much because I was losing my willpower, so if it feels lacking, that’s one hundred percent my fault.

Okay that was a lot! It took me a couple days...I hope I wasn’t too annoying with all my opinions! Please have a nice day. and enjoy some good reads, even if they aren’t the ones in this post!

#bakudeku #katsudeku #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #mha #bnha #bkdk #fics #my writing #god i really hope i didn't fuck up any of this #i spent a long time on it alksdjflaskjdflkasdjf #this is 39 fics without my own #and 44 including mine #i can tell i've forgotten some but #idk it's hard TT_TT #anyways it's 2:30am #if i go to bed at 4am one more time i'm gonna throw myself down a flight of stairs #i hope this is good enough as is!#most of this was written very late so I hope it doesn't sound...crazed

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imjeralee · 3 years

Text

Comfort in Despair: Chapter 30 - Epilogue

Leon x F!Reader

Disclaimer: Do not own Pokemon

Summary:

Galar is rich in folklore and tales of the supernatural.

As a Pokemon Researcher who specialises in ghost types, this is a great opportunity for you to investigate and learn more about the paranormal.

Along the way, you meet Leon (in the most awkward way possible) who becomes embroiled in your adventures.

^ Basically this story is about ghosts :/

Notes: This is the last chapter... it’s over uwagh T_T

Rating: General/Teen

@marydragneell - here is the latest update

Epilogue

…

[“There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream – a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought – a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"

- The Mysterious Stranger, Mark Twain]

...

The doorbell rings and Jace opens the door to see his best friend standing on his doorstep.

“Chuck!” he exclaims happily. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought I’d come visit."

They share a hug and he invites her in for tea. He’s in the middle of packing so there are plenty of suitcases and clothes lying about though his pokemon seem more interested in playing around with the mess than assisting.

And the weather’s good so he opens the door to his veranda and props two chairs outside where they can enjoy their tea and some fresh air. It grants them an exquisite view of the river and the promenade and together, they sit and chat about old times and Jace’s new job.

“Jace,” she says, before she departs. “Thank you for everything. You were always there to listen and support me. Thank you for being my best friend.”

He pats her on the head, ruffling her hair. “Awwww…thanks, chuck; you’re my best friend too. You’re the bestest friend one could ask for,” he replies and they hug again, but her body feels abnormally cold.

...

Professor Magnolia and Sonia return home.

They’re tired and exhausted, having spent the remainder of the night at the police station where they informed the officers about the attack and filed a missing person’s report. To their utmost surprise, said missing person has mysteriously turned up home the following morning.

She’s sitting in the conservatory with a cup of tea in hand and little Polteageist is floating beside her though he looks downtrodden and holds his teapot lid in his hands, his head bowed low, and the professor and Sonia stand in shock, staring as she lowers her cup and smiles at them.

“Where on earth have you been?!” they cry.

They’re ecstatic to see her though Magnolia tells her off at the same time and the women share an embrace, sit down and have some breakfast.

“I went to find something,” she replies. “Everything’s under control. Did you tell Leon what happened?”

Sonia nods, anxious. “I had to, I was so worried. I called him last night and told him everything. He spent the whole night looking for you.”

In response, she finishes the rest of her tea and immediately rises from her seat. “Thanks, Sonia. I’ll go see him now. Professor, please excuse me.” Without a second to spare, she heads for the front door.

“You just got home!” Sonia exclaims, confused by her behaviour.

She pauses, turns round to the seated women and smiles.

“Professor Magnolia, Sonia. Thank you for everything,” she says, “I won’t forget your hospitality.”

…

In Postwick, Leon paces the kitchen with his phone. Charizard lingers in the doorway, holding his claws together whilst mum and Hop throw each other concerned glances.

He’s been looking for her all night after he received the frantic, distressing call from Sonia, who had informed him that something had attacked and chased her out of the house in the middle of the night, and it had also killed two of their pokemon.

They had cleaned the blood off the walls, stairs and floor and were hoping that she would come back in an hour or so, but she hadn’t.

He wished Sonia had told him earlier because he thought there was something wrong when he had tried to call earlier only to go through to voicemail.

Leon had searched all the places where he thought she might be but he had no success. If it wasn’t for Charizard, he probably wouldn’t have made it back home before dawn.

His phone rings, the screen indicating a call from Oleana.

“Hello?” he says, pressing the phone to his ear.

“We’re outside.”

“Alright. Thank you, Ms Oleana…”

Leon quietly hangs up and looks at his family.

“Leo…” Mum says worriedly, “…I think it’s best to leave the search to the police now. You’ve done all you can...I’m sure she’ll turn up. Hop and I can go look for her and we’ll keep an eye out on the news…. Please, you should get ready…Chairman Rose and Ms Oleana are waiting for you.”

He has a strict timetable today, back-to-back with events and battles which allowed no flexibility.

Leon has no other choice but to nod and he leaves the kitchen, heading to his room with Charizard bumbling after him with dark circles under his eyes. His pokemon is tired; they had spent the night flying around, searching but to no avail. He lifts a hand and pats Charizard on the neck.

“Thanks for your help,” he murmurs appreciatively and Charizard lets out an exhausted snort in response.

They barely got any sleep.

After Leon gets changed out of his casual wear and into his Champion gear, Charizard meets him outside where a black car is waiting.

The door automatically opens and inside, Oleana sits rigidly in the passenger seat with her long legs crossed over the other. She taps at her phone delicately, eyes glued to the screen. A tailored suit in a plastic cover is strewn carefully over her lap with a dry cleaner’s label on the hanger.

Leon slips inside and the door automatically closes behind him; the driver begins to reverse out of their driveway and mum and Hop stand at the front door, waving him off.

“We have a busy schedule ahead of us,” Oleana murmurs, without looking away from the flashing screen of her phone, “Chairman Rose has already arrived at the hotel for the fanmeet.”

“Right, the fanmeet,” Leon echoes, staring outside the window as the scenery of sleepy Postwick slowly disappears behind them; the driver steers the car towards the direction of the motorway.

Once they’ve arrived at the hotel, the chauffeur steers the car to one of the backdoors; despite the attempt to be discreet, some eager and diehard fans are waiting for Leon and once he gets out of the car, he hears wild cheering and a large crowd of women and men of all ages stand behind barriers, holding signs and waving them in the air; the majority of his fans are ordinary folk, though some of them are donned in copies of his snapback and wearing other merchandise he himself isn’t actually particularly familiar with.

Everyone’s chanting his name feverishly and he doesn’t want to disappoint despite his own personal circumstances; Leon raises his arm and waves to his adoring crowd with a wide grin on his face before he does his infamous pose. The group goes wild in response and once the theatrics are over, the security team are quick to escort him inside.

They lead him to his dressing room where the makeup artist and hair stylist are waiting for him.

He is made to sit down in front of the lit-up vanity mirror where he sees just how tired he actually is, but they hide it with makeup and he lets them work on him but the anxiety and unease bubbles within.

Where is she? Where could she be? Is she back yet?

Once they’ve finished prepping his face and combing his hair, he is finally allowed to sit up and leave his chair and the first thing he does is ask the artists for a moment alone.

They’re friendly and accommodating enough, so they oblige and exit, leaving him alone in the dressing room to be with his thoughts.

The show must go on but he is so sick with worry about her whereabouts that he runs to the door – was this really happening? Was he really going to tell Rose he cannot go through with it today? Was he really going to drop everything and leave?

However, none of those are necessary because he opens the door and there you are, standing with a smile on your face.

“Hi Leon.”

He’s utterly shocked to the core, eyes wide, and he looks at you head to toe before he glances around the corridor; how on earth did you get in? This is a VIP section and certainly for backstage crew, for staff members only. How did you manage to slink past?

None of those matter; Leon pulls you inside the room, closes the door before anyone can see and immediately throws his arms around you, pulling you into his chest.

“Where’ve you been?” he manages to choke out, with his eyes squeezed shut and nose buried into your hair. He holds you so tightly, arms crushing your body to his as though fearing you would disappear if he let go. “Sonia told me what happened, and I went out to look for you.”

You let out a gentle sigh, wrapping your arms around him in return and resting your cheek against his shoulder.

“I know, she told me. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to make everyone worry,” you whisper, closing your eyes as you relish the feel of being in his arms again and his warm chest pressed deeply against yours.

“I’m just glad you’re here and that you’re safe,” he replies, his voice muffled as he nuzzles your nape.

As he sighs, tightening his arms around your waist, you pull away slightly to place a hand over his cheek, making him look at you. Your eyes meet and as his eyes searches yours, you smile gently, brushing some hair from his face, running your fingertips over his stubble.

Leon leans in, your foreheads pressing together, noses rubbing affectionately and your lips curls into a fond smile.

“Leon?”

“Yes?”

“Everything’s going to be okay,” you murmur, your voice barely above a whisper, “I’m not afraid anymore.”

There’s a brief silence and Leon slowly releases you. Holding you at arm’s length, he gazes at you intently, his honeyed eyes sweeping over your form before he presses his palm gently over the curve of your cheek.

“What happened?” he says quietly.

Your gaze softening, you lean into his hand and shake your head before you gently take his hand into your own then reach for his other. You hold his large hands tightly with your own and you both avert your glances to your entwined hands.

You smile once more before you look up, your gazes meeting.

“I love you,” you murmur.

Lifting his hands to your lips, you press a kiss over his knuckles and close your eyes. “I love you so much, Leon.”

“I love you too," he stutters out, taken aback by your gesture. His cheeks flush brilliantly and you can hear his heart pounding loudly against his ribs.

He watches as you slowly reopens your eyes and let go albeit you do not mask your reluctance to do so, letting go of him with a shaky breath from the back of your throat. There’s a profound despair settling in your eyes as you look up at him.

“I need to go now,” you say quietly. “Goodbye.”

Something’s wrong, and Leon is overcome with the most dreadful sensation. A desire to hold you back, to stop you, overwhelms him and when you turn, he attempts to reach for you once more but you’re already leaving and Leon follows you outside his dressing room.

“Wait!” he yells, calling after you, “Come back! Where are you going?”

He’s quickly interjected by his makeup artist who has returned with some coffee in hands. “Leon? What are you doing outside? Please go back in, the fans cannot see you like this and the event’s about to start.”

The makeup artist cheerfully steers a conflicted Leon towards the direction of the room with a hand on his elbow, but he’s reluctant to go inside.

“Let’s get you all made up,” she says cheerfully but much to her vexation, Leon shakes his head, pulling himself away.

“I’m sorry!” he yells; although he’s wracked with confusion and guilt, Leon just knows the right thing to do at this moment is to follow you.

“Leon, come back!” she shouts as Leon races towards the direction you had disappeared off to. “Leon!”

...

Sonia tells Leon you haven’t come back so he crosses the house off his list. With Charizard, he goes through some of the places that might be meaningful to you; it could be the cemetery, or the hill where you had watched the sunrise together, it could be the mansion where you completed your first mission together, or it could be the area near the lake where you had camped together and ultimately had your first kiss.

Meanwhile, you stand in the middle of the cemetery, gazing at the large space around you that you can utilize.

Unsheathing your penknife, you grasp it firmly in your palm before you turn to Lucario and your pokemon.

“Do not let anyone enter,” you utter, and your pokemon nod in acknowledgement.

You watch them disperse then glance at the knife in your hand.

“Let us begin,” Deimos says, and you nod. “Do exactly as I say.”

You slide the blade over your hand as instructed, the blade tearing your skin apart so seamlessly and effortlessly…but you do not feel any pain; as fresh blood begins to bubble out from your sliced flesh, you put the blade down and dab a finger into the wound.

Lowering yourself over the ground, you begin to swipe your fingers over the concrete, drawing various symbols and runes.

Leon arrives at the cemetery, having guessed this would be where you are, and as he hops off Charizard’s back, he thanks his pokemon and races towards the locked gates where he sees you within, crouching over the ground near the mausoleum; you’re engrossed with some task that concerns writing in the dirt…and he sees that your hands are drenched with blood.

Leon yells your name but you do not respond, and as he tries to open the huge gates, they don’t budge as predicted. He could always scale the fence or fly over the barrier using Charizard but before he can even take one simple step, Gengar appears from out of nowhere, accompanied with a shiny Lucario holding a wooden staff.

He studies the pokemon carefully, in particular, the shiny Lucario. It’s as you mentioned - the Lucario is real. Gengar, with his never-ending grin, slowly shakes his head before gathering a massive swirl of energy in his hands.

It’s a Shadow Ball, and Gengar quickly sends it hurtling towards Leon’s direction whilst the Lucario spins his staff in a circle and aims the tip at Charizard, a bright light shooting out.

Charizard counters the attack by spewing forth a burst of flames and immediately zooms towards Leon to protect his friend, Gengar’s attack hitting him squarely in the belly.

“Charizard!” Leon yells, before he flings his glance to the pokemon. “What are you doing?”

“You cannot intervene,” Lucario replies, his voice loud and as clear as day.

Charizard snorts in disbelief at the talking pokemon and turns to gawp at your direction; you’re oblivious to the gathering outside, drawing on the ground without stopping.

To get the message across, Gengar flings a Dark Pulse at the flame pokemon and Leon grits his teeth as Charizard dodges.

“I need to go to her,” he yells, but Lucario shakes his head and twirls his staff in his paws, moving to an offensive stance. “Charizard, use flamethrower!”

Outside, you can hear the disturbance as the three-way pokemon battle begins between Gengar, Lucario and Charizard; you’re finished with your runes regardless and you rise to stand, swaying slightly from the blood loss, your body feeling weak.

Surrounded by bloody symbols, you move to the centre of the pentagram you’ve drawn, kneeling down.

“Ready?”

You nod, closing your eyes before you take a deep breath, attempting to drown out the distracting noises of the battle outside.

“Voco autem a tenebrarum gente omnia mala de fovea,” you murmur, holding your arms out, your palms facing upwards; the blood in your hands trickling down your fingertips and nails, droplets staining the ground. “Phobos, viditur.”

Your incantation is finished, you return to the edge of the circle and the sky above swiftly turns from its usual light blue hue to a deep, intense red.

Leon and the pokemon stop at once, throwing their gazes up. Lucario, with no more intention to battle due to the ritual being successfully completed, lowers his staff and Leon rushes up to the gates of the cemetery, grasping the cold bars as a strong wind begins to pick up, sending leaves and debris on the floor whirling high into the air.

He yells your name again whilst Charizard takes to the air and attempts to fly inside – he’s immediately repelled by an invisible force and his body slams backwards. Roaring in confusion, Charizard huffs as he gets back up before he unleashes a massive barrage of flames at the invisible barrier.

Leon watches as the symbols surrounding you begin glowing brightly before the ground splinters; you do not move or step backwards and Leon calls out to you, his pleas falling onto deaf ears.

His eyes widen as soon as numerous black tendrils begin to crawl out from the gaps of the cracked earth, some of them slinking over your feet and stretching towards your calves…the ground bursts apart and the huge creature buried within rises high and into the air with a loud roar, towering over your small form.

Your gaze lands on the creature that manifests, its dark limbs spiralling and contorting in the air before they settle to float around its body aimlessly. It is a creature of unholy origin, something that doesn’t belong here.

“Phobos,” you murmur.

It shifts and coils, the black mass curling into itself and out before a single red light forms in the middle of its body.

“Who has summoned me?”

Its words slither out in a series of scratches and hisses and once it spots you, it lowers itself to your level, peering at you with its glowing red eyes.

“You,” it says. “You have finally figured it out.”

A black tendril shoots out, wrapping itself around your neck tightly and lifting you off the ground as though you weighed nothing; your legs dangle as you’re raised up a few feet off the ground. You struggle, legs kicking as it snickers and sneers.

“You fool; I was going to devour you later, but since you seem so keen….”

Phobos’ voice grows fainter and fainter, its words slowing down as the darkness it is made out of begins to spread, blanketing your vision.

As you stare into the abyss, you attempt to detect any traces of movement that might explain its existence or the matter it’s composed of. Even at this moment, to the very end, you’re still trying to understand, to figure out how things work.

How it works.

But nothing remotely comes to mind.

You can liken it to a black hole but ultimately, you cannot fathom the origins or how it came to exist.

And now you’re going to be devoured.

Deimos’ voice returns: “What’s the happiest memory you can recall?”

“I don’t know.”

“Choose one.”

A series of events are presented to you, almost like a reel. How quaint. A flash of light flickers and there’s a scene depicting you, Sonia and Magnolia and the pokemon having tea in the conservatory. You smile; of course, you had so many lovely, tender memories with Sonia and the professor who treated you like one of their own.

However, it’s quick to change from the conservatory to show you and Jace sitting on the sofa in his apartment, watching and laughing as you watch TV. You had always cherished the time you had spent together no matter how simple it was.

It’s Ezra now. He’s barking orders, using his cane to correct your posture as he circles you. This was a few years ago when you had started training. You’re standing in front of a target – an awkward-looking boulder with a bullseye messily drawn on – and with a talisman in hand, you’re trying to toss it properly and in the best way possible.

“Again,” he barks when you fail, and you remember thinking how harsh and strict he was back then.

Graves is next, and the image of you training with Ezra switches to a scene consisting of you and Graves quietly seated down, watching the game at home on leather recliners. You never realized that although it was a bad time, mere days after your family’s disappearance, but you really appreciated him taking the time to keep you company.

Then the scene changes to the time he taught you several ways on how to hold your torch and another time when you played with Growlithe and Manectric... and finally, you see yourself and Graves eating at Bob’s Your Uncle.

Next, you see Leon. You're camping with him in the Wild Area, sitting close together in those small foldable chairs and looking at the night sky. It’s when you had your first kiss. He’s looking at you and holding your hand so tightly and lovingly, rubbing his thumb over your knuckles, and you smile for you remember this, how truly wonderful it all was.

“You have lived a meaningful life,” Deimos says.

“Thank you,” you reply.

”This is it,” it says.

”I know.”

A single tear drips down your cheek because you know what will happen next.

It averts you to look at Phobos, but you are no longer afraid.

Deimos abruptly bursts out of you in a spray of black and promptly pounces on the creature that was holding you, overwhelming it and tearing it apart, ripping it into shreds; you’re released due to the unprovoked attack and you collapse over the ground, unmoving.

Copious amounts of blood gush out from every orifice – your eyes, mouth, nose and ears.

Leon slams his fists against the invisible barrier over and over again.

Loud, unearthly shrieks can be heard as the two creatures maul and fight each other viciously, slashing at one another and ripping each other apart with brutal abandon until one emerges the victor; the one that had emerged from your body.

It stands proudly over its opponent which lies motionless and is beginning to fade away. Victorious, it faces the sky and emits an ear-splitting screech.

Leon winces from the sound, and his fist finally slips through.

The barrier is gone.

The red sky gradually clears, returning to the normal, tranquil blue.

He rushes inside, acting purely on adrenaline, his mind in utter chaotic shambles. He makes his way up to the centre of the graveyard where your body lies sprawled in a pool of blood and he slowly drops to his knees before you, easing you carefully off the ground and into his arms.

There’s so much blood; his fingers are completely soaked as he brushes some hair away from your bloodstained face. You’re unrecognizable.

Leon murmurs your name and gives you a little shake.

Your body wobbles from the action but there is no response.

The massive coil of black floats beside him; it is as dark as the night sky, hovering in the air with very limited shape or distinguished form, freed from the constraints of gravity. Its body is dotted with plenty of red lights which he recognizes to be eyes. They rotate and roll around this sea of darkness with carefree abandon, but they are all focused on him.

Leon can only stare; this cannot be a pokemon. This cannot be a creation of Arceus. Its design, its origins, are far too complex to have been engineered from earth.

It zips to his left, surrounding him and your body, peering at the Champion inquisitively before it looks at you. Then it dives upside down to gaze at Leon and returns to its proper upright position.

“You can see me.”

Leon nods.

The eyes crease with content.

“It is done,” it says, “Phobos is gone.”

…

White ceiling.

Bright lights.

Overlapping voices.

Squeaking wheels.

A sterile, noisy environment.

“We’re losing her!”

“Hurry up!”

You shake your head at all this unnecessary noise, sighing.

“Sissy!” exclaims a cheerful, happy voice behind you, and you turn round to see your little sister running up to you, holding a Teddiursa doll in one hand and Sunkern in the other whilst Cutiefly buzzes near her shoulder.

“Rosie! Cutie! Sunkern?!”

“Heehee, yes, we’re here!” Rosie says with a giggle as she jumps into your waiting arms.

You lift her up and into your arms with a grunt, Cutiefly flies over and nuzzles you gently, then he buries himself into Rosie’s hair and as you look at your sister, you exclaim, “Oh my gosh, look at you, you’re all grown up! I’ve missed you so much!”

She giggles and wraps her arm around your head, kicking her legs around happily. “I missed you too, sissy.”

Turning to the Pokemon, you murmur, “I’m so sorry I couldn’t protect you.”

”They say it’s not your fault,” Rosie remarks as Cutiefly does a few loops and Sunkern squeaks.

Over the white horizon, a familiar black blob is making its way over to you.

It stops a short distance away before contorting and shifting and expelling two bright lights which come floating out. They are safely deposited to the ground and the blob returns to its proper shape.

“As promised, here are your parents,” Deimos says.

“Thank you, Deimos,” you say as you adjust your hold on Rosie.

“You are welcome.”

Deimos retreats and dissolves into wispy black smoke, leaving behind a familiar couple who head towards your direction at their own leisurely pace.

When the couple finally arrives, stopping shortly in front of you, you gently let Rosie down, who rushes towards mum with a grin.

“Mum, sissy’s here!” she says, and mum picks her up next and into her arms.

Your mum looks at Rosie and smiles, before shifting her gaze to you.

Glancing at the smiling faces of your mother and father and sister, you squeeze your eyes shut and smack a hand over your mouth, before you promptly burst into heartfelt sobs and they quickly move to your side.

“Mum, dad…I missed you so much.”

“We know.”

Your mum gently places Rosie down so she can wrap her arms around you, and your father joins in the huddle.

You're shaking as they hold you, sobbing and sniffling uncontrollably

Rosie is squashed in the middle although she giggles and clings to your side, and mum and dad hold you tightly with their eyes closed whilst you bury yourself in their inexplicable warmth, trembling and weeping in their arms.

They really are here.

It’s as though none of this happened and they had never left your side.

“I had a bad dream,” you say as you finally stop, reduced to a few hiccups every now and then.

You gently pull away so you can look at them and you want to look at them for as long as you can, for it's been such a long time since you had seen them in the flesh and not from a picture.

“I had a horrible dream where you were all taken away from me and I was alone. And I wanted to save you. I wanted to save you all.”

“And you did,” says dad, smiling. “We’re finally free.”

A mournful sob escapes your lips as you close your eyes again, and your parents usher you into their embrace again.

”It’s okay, we’re here.”

You shake your head. “I’m scared that I’ll open my eyes and you’ll be gone again.”

”Don’t be scared, we really are here.”

As you snivel, nodding weakly, you slowly open your eyes; your mother and father stand proudly before you, wearing kind smiles on their faces.

“We’re so sorry we weren’t there for you.”

You shake your head.

”You’ve had to grow up without us. You went through so much.”

Again, you shake your head.

“But seeing you now, we’re so proud of you,” mum says as you emit another choked sob. “You’ve worked so hard and you've helped so many people...we're so proud of you, dear…and now the next chapter of your life’s about to begin.”

“...What do you mean?”

“Here, here, look down there and have a look yourself,” mum says with a chuckle, and she steps away and you follow her to what appears to be a ledge where she peers down. “Look at that handsome young man by your side; despite seeing all these horrendous, evil monstrosities, he is still there for you.”

As you stand by her side, she gestures for you to glance down which you do, where you see a despondent Leon sitting by your side, holding your hand. You’re in a hospital room, lying on a bed with an IV drip and hooked up to a heart monitor. This has happened before.

Dad nods in approval. “He has my blessing.”

“Mine too,” mum replies, and your parents chortle and giggle to each other and as you watch Leon, your heart plummets.

“Well, Rosie, the great beyond awaits. Let’s go,” dad says, and he picks up Rosie’s hand and mum takes hold of her other.

“I’m scared,” Rosie says, glancing between your parents.

“Don’t be. I heard there’s a lot of marshmallows and Teddiursas waiting for us.”

“Okay,” she says timidly, “will sissy be coming too?”

”No, darling.”

You blink in disbelief. “Wait, what? What are you talking about? Where are you going?” you say, making a move to follow them but they turn to you with smiles.

“It’s not your time yet, dear,” mum replies.

“What do you mean? I…I was killed. Deimos killed me.”

They shake their heads.

“Not your time,” says dad, “And I’m darn relieved it’s not. You have yet to live a promising life with Leon.”

”But...”

”Tell your Uncle Chris I said ‘hi’, and not to blame himself anymore.”

“…It’s really not my time yet?”

“Of course not, you still have plenty of more adventures with that young man,” says mum; she smiles too but quickly drops it, mirroring your sullen expression. "I'm sorry, dear. You finally got to see us but...."

"It's okay, mum. I'm just glad I got to see you all again. Even if it's...the very last time,” you reply.

Your family return to your side once more where you share one last embrace with your parents and Rosie. You close your eyes as you hold them tightly; you want to hold onto them for much longer but deep inside, you know you have to let go.

You let go of Rosie last, giving her an extra squeeze before she leaves your arms.

“Take care, dear. We love you.”

"Bye mum, bye dad. I love you too.”

“Bye sissy,” Rosie says, scooping her hand out of your father’s so she can wave at you.

"Bye Rosie," you reply, waving. “I love you.”

“Love you!!”

They're walking away now, and you're deathly afraid that the moment they turn their backs to you they'll vanish from your eyes, leaving nothing but that desolate, empty void that was rooted within you for years and years from the very moment they were forcibly taken away...but strangely enough, that feeling never comes.

Your mind is at ease, your heart content as they throw glances at you from over their shoulders, smiling and waving.

You watch as they slowly move further away and away from you until their voices are scattered and slowly, dissolve into faint whispers in the wind and finally, silence.

They are bathed in a comforting glow and you feel at ease and tranquil as they laugh and smile, disappearing into the warm and serene light.

…

Ezra sits on the bench outside with Absol by his side, his dull eyes unfocused and staring limply into nothingness until he hears footsteps approaching.

An individual plops down on the empty space and there is the sound of a newspaper being flipped open, the paper crinkling under their grip, followed by a very weary sigh.

“Hello, my old friend.”

“…Deimos.” Ezra grunts under his breath.

“Your world is rid of a great evil. You must be happy.”

The old man emits a disgruntled sigh under his breath. “Is she gonna be okay?”

“She will be fine.”

He harrumphs, before his lips spread into a smile. “No sacrifices necessary this time?”

The newspaper is carefully flipped to the next page and the voice hums nonchalantly, “Well, herself – which she was aware of...but I brought her back as you requested.”

”No side effects?”

”No.”

“Her family?”

“Safe and moving on.”

“Thanks,” Ezra replies, “...Thank you.”

Deimos brings out a cigarette and a lighter is switched on, the little device emitting a satisfying crackle. “Would you like one?”

“I can’t.”

“Cancer, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“I have never tried one before. I'm very intrigued."

Ezra listens as the cigarette is lit up, Deimos inhales and takes a deep drag then exhales heavily, blowing some crisp, smoke into the air. In a few seconds, he begins to cough and choke.

“This is vile,” he croaks out, and Ezra laughs.

He hasn’t laughed for a while now, not like this. It’s refreshing yet so strange.

“What’s so funny?” says a new voice, gruff and deep, and Ezra quirks a brow as another set of footsteps approach the bench.

“Hm, if it isn’t Chief Inspector Graves. You feeling better?”

”I’m fine. Thanks for asking. You?”

”I’m well.”

Graves glances at Deimos next. “And you are?”

“I'm an old friend.”

Graves responds with a grunt under his breath before he throws his glance to the cigarette. “You got a spare?”

“I do. Would you like one?” Deimos asks.

“Yeah, gimme.”

Graves plops himself on the remaining empty space of the bench beside Ezra once Deimos hands him a cigarette, and he takes a deep drag before exhaling into the atmosphere. “I haven’t had one in years.”

“Don’t make it a habit.” Ezra warns.

"I know my limits."

"How is she?"

"She's in a stable condition now. There was a lot of blood loss but she's pulling through.”

There’s a brief silence as the men sit quietly before they inwardly sigh with relief.

“Weather’s awfully good today, isn’t it?” Graves mutters, looking up at the sky.

“Yeah,” Ezra replies, “it sure is.”

Many months later.

Leon has a Pokemon battle against Gloria.

He gives it all his best, but he loses.

He is no longer Champion and he silently heads towards the dark corridor on his own, leaving behind the fanfare, the confetti and the cheering, which is no longer for him.

Up ahead, a young woman in a white labcoat leans against the wall, waiting. When he arrives, however, she pushes herself off to stand properly.

Leon grins and makes his way over, sliding his hands around her waist and bringing her close to him, enveloping her into his chest. She wraps her arms around him in response, holding onto him firmly, eyes squeezed shut.

For what feels like a long time, they stand comfortably in each other's warm embrace and when they part, albeit still in each other's arms, he lifts a hand and brushes a loose strand of hair from her face, away from her eyes.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he murmurs.

She shakes her head, smiling. “Not at all.”

“Let’s go.”

He reaches for her and she reaches for him.

Hand in hand, they head for the exit together, towards a future unknown.

#pokemon #pkmn #leon #dande #leon x you #leon x reader #reader #reader insert #jeralee #fanfic #fic #pokemonshield #pokemonswordandshield #pokemonsword #pokemonshieldsword #pokemonshieldandsword #archive of our own #Comfort in Despair

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itsthenovelteafactor · 3 years

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Superhero Gothic

Thanks to everyone who responded to my previous post (special shoutout to @jeyfeather1234 💛 ) about superheroes and gothic media! I know it’s been, like, a month, but here we go.

Here’s a bit of a look into some common gothic themes, and how they apply to Doom Patrol, The Boys, Watchmen (2019), and The Umbrella Academy. This one’s a bit long, not gonna lie, but I hope you enjoy!

Part I: Let’s Talk About Gothic Media

There is not actually an all-encompassing definition for gothic media, or even a universally agreed-upon one. You’re probably familiar with some well-known gothic works (think Dracula, Frankenstein, Edgar Allen Poe, Stephen King) but there is a lot of debate on what exactly makes them gothic.

There are some common themes in gothic works, though: families/characters under the control of a tyrannical paterfamilias, the crumbling of the established order/estate, long-buried secrets that have consequences in the present, and supernatural events that are stand-ins for/reflective of the emotional state/past actions of the characters.

(Note: these aren’t all the themes of gothic works or even most of them, but for purposes here, I’d like to limit this analysis to them. I’d love to talk about other themes/ideas, though, if anyone has them. 😊)

So… superheroes (quick overview in case you haven’t watched any of them… spoiler warnings for the rest of this discussion)

Doom Patrol:

Five misfit superhumans attempt to rescue their mentor figure when he is kidnapped by an old enemy.

They are very, very bad at it.

Also features a singing horse head, a sentient nonbinary teleporting street (who is by far the best character) and the narrator is the fourth-wall breaking series villain.

Beautifully weird but will also emotionally devastate you. Criminally underrated, tbh.

Watchmen (2019):

Story takes place after the canon of the graphic novel which is too much to summarize.

Alternate history (that should really feel more fictitious than it does) where white supremacist organization the Seventh Cavalry, masked police officers, and former superheroes in hiding all collide in Tulsa Oklahoma

Swept the Emmys this year and ABSOLUTELY DESERVED TO

The Umbrella Academy:

Washed up former child superheroes are forced to reunite when their father dies under mysterious circumstances

Time travel, dysfunctional siblings, and a killer soundtrack

Basically a family drama with the superhero story as secondary (complimentary)

Probably the most obviously gothic of all of these it is aesthetic AF

The Boys:

Superheroes exist but they are corporate sellouts under the control of evil company Not-Amazon (AKA Vought)

Regular human protagonists try to hold them accountable for their actions with varying (read: usually minimal) success

Yes, it’s the one from those weird ads earlier this year

Billy Joel!!

Part II: Niles Caulder, Ozymandias, and Other Terrible Father Figures

The Tyrannical Paterfamilias:

Does not always mean a father figure explicitly, often relating to the notion of a patriarchal tradition, or family inheritance that plays a role in controlling the main characters.

Sometimes, it is a father figure.

Sometimes, it is a representative of patriarchal tradition/male head of pseudo-family unit.

So, uh, role call:

Reginald Hargreeves (even in death) holds power over his children, and has shaped all of them into the adults they have become, and that drives the majority of the conflict. Each of the major character individually grapples with the after-effects of his abuse. Luther feels the need to be the leader and protect everyone and alienates his allies as a consequence. Diego constantly asserts himself as a hero (often to dangerous extremes) because it is the only way he was ever valued. Allison has to teach herself boundaries and responsible use of her powers after he encouraged her to abuse them for years. Klaus turns to drugs to cope with his childhood trauma. Five disobeyed his father with disastrous consequences and is constantly fighting to not become him. Vanya spent her entire childhood in the background, and never learned to assert herself in a healthy way. Thanks, Reggie.

Homelander says that The Seven are like a family. While whether or not this is accurate (it isn’t) is up for debate, he does occupy the tyrannical paterfamilias roles incredibly well. Homelander controls every member of the Seven, threatening them and their loved ones whenever they step out of line (read: do not do exactly what he wants in the exact way he wants them to do it.) He is also very closely tied with conservative/patriarchal rhetoric in-universe and at one point dates a literal Nazi.

William Butcher less evil than most of the other characters on this list but the bar is also like, on the ground. Butcher tries to control the Boys in a similar way (Butcher and Homelander are character foils, okay? it’s actually pretty neat). He’s perfectly willing to sacrifice them in pursuit of his own goals, disregards their points of view and the well-being of their loved ones, and tries to cut loose anyone who disagrees with his methods (recall when Hughie tried to rescue his friends at the end of s1 and Butcher… punched him in the face? Yeah, that.) The difference is that the Boys can push back against his without being, you know, brutally murdered. (And also the Butcher isn’t a literal monster; I’m not anti-Butcher, okay? He’s an interesting character and the fact that he seems constantly on the verge of becoming that which he hates most is part of what makes him interesting.)

Guess what, folks? It’s hating Niles Caulder hours. He engineered accidents to turn the main characters into his test subjects, and then kept them conveniently hidden away in his large manor. Stole their autonomy and independence but paints himself as a benevolent father figure. And that’s not even including what he does to his actual daughter, Dorothy. He’s terrified of her growing up (read: becoming a young woman) and so he locks her away for almost 100 years and, when she is freed, yells at her constantly and makes her terrified of showing any signs of maturation (even though she’s 111 and clearly tired of being written off as a child).

The relationship between Ozymandias and his daughter, Lady Trieu, is integral to the final act of Watchmen. Heralded as the “smartest man in the world,” Ozymandias refused to acknowledge his daughter as his until he needed something from her. While Lady Trieu is more self-sufficient and independent than some of the applications of this trope, she goes to great lengths to prove herself, first to him, and then to herself when he rejects her.

Part III: Been a Long Time Gone (Constantinople)

Gothic fiction is often associated with change, and particularly, the collapse of established systems of power. For example, many works like The House of the Seven Gables and The Fall of the House of Usher take place in old, crumbling manor houses. There is a reason for this! These kinds of estates are remnants of a past that is irreversibly gone, and their continued presence in decrypt forms serves as a reminder.

Each of the four series takes place at a moment, either on a wide scale or on a personal scale (or both!), in which an established order is being questioned, and the constant reminders of that failed order are used to gothic effect.

The Umbrella Academy plays this most directly (In fact, there are TONS of parallels between the end of s1 of TUA and House of Usher that I don’t have the time to get into right now... lmk if you want that meta). We can see the Hargreeves mansion as a very literal example of this. While not worn down, the house is notably both very large and very empty. Shelves are filled with merchandise for a superhero team that disbanded over a decade prior, and portraits of a family that no longer speaks to each other. None of the family members ever seem truly comfortable or at ease in the house, and for good reason - every back corner is a reminder of their incredibly traumatic childhood.

In The Boys, the story begins with the fridging death of the main character’s girlfriend, Robin, at the hands of a member of the Seven, a group of heroes so ingrained in the public consciousness that when they later hide out in a costume shop, literally every single costume is for one of Vought’s heroes. The Seven represent the system in power, which, at the disposal of Not-Amazon means corporate greed, shallow altruism, and the cultivation of public personas at the expense of actual humanity.

From that moment on, the sheer presence of The Seven on everything from public billboards to breakfast cereal is a remainder for Hughie (and the audience) that this established system doesn’t work and is based on lies, which serves this effect on a personal level. In the broader scale, however, we also see that the Seven themselves are fracturing under an unsustainable business model. Even their name, “The Seven” starts to seem a bit dated when halfway through season one through the end of season two there are notably... less than seven of them.

The main characters in Doom Patrol are all in recovery after the accidents that irreversibly changed their lives. We see through flashbacks the people that they used to be, and the difference is striking. They were each established in their own elements: Cliff a famous race-car driver, Rita a world renowned actress, Larry a hero pilot, Jane was involved in counter-cultural movements, Vic was a student and athlete. The foundations upon which their worlds were established are completely decimated by the accidents, and now they (save Vic and sometimes Jane) live mostly in isolation in Niles’ manor house, an estate that is far larger than would be necessary to comfortably house a group of their size.

And you feel the emptiness, both in the manor, and in the lives of the characters. They have barely created a shadow version of their own existence when the series starts, so fragile that a simple trip into town devolves into utter chaos.

Angela Abar of Watchmen has also constructed a life following the terrifying act of terrorism on the White Night. It’s a bit of a double life, and we see that the balancing act is challenging for her, even before the story truly begins. The death of Judd Crawford, and the revelation about him that follows is not only traumatizing on a personal level (but it definitely is that), but also upsets her understanding of the world. People she’s come to trust are not just dishonest but truly monstrous. And the more Angela learns about what has been happening, the more her understanding of the world begins to unravel. Her memories, and the memories of those around her are cast in a much more sinister light, and the effect is genuinely chilling.

Part IV: “I’m the Little Girl Who Threw the Brick in the Air”

In episode 3 of Watchmen, Laurie contacts Dr. Manhattan on the cosmic phone booth to tell him a joke. It’s a version of what TVTropes calls the “brick joke,” and it relies on set up taking place early on, other stuff happening, and then the response coming at an unexpected moment.

So, yeah. Events of the past/buried secrets resurfacing with consequences in the present.

Continuing with the theme from Watchmen, the entire series is punctuated with the way the past and the present intertwine, with elements from both the original Watchmen graphic novel, and actual American history. One of the things we talked a lot about in my gothic lit class was the manner in which the overhanging specter of past atrocities casts a shadow over the present, and how many works cannot help but have gothic themes because there are so many horrifying things in the past that cannot be ignored, and provide both context and nuance for the discussions we have in the present. No series tackles these topics quite so directly (and with as much care) as Watchmen. (note: it does not always make for easy viewing, but if you’re in a place where you feel like you can engage with that kind of material, I highly recommend the show.)

In Doom Patrol, the past actions of the characters very much control the storyline (see: previous discussion of Niles Caulder), but the character whose storyline I want to talk about here is Rita (partially for plot reasons and partially because I just love Rita, okay?). We learn when we first meet Rita that in the past she was... not a great person. We know that the trauma of the accident that gave her her powers has changed her, we also know that she still holds on to the guilt and that her guilt has limited the scope of her world for years, but we don’t know what exactly it is that she’s done.

Enter Mr. Nobody, all-powerful narrator who is not just aware of Rita’s greatest sins, but perfectly capable of manifesting reminders of them into the story. She is confronted with empty cradles, and the sound of crying children in the background of many scenes and we see how much it effects her, without a full understanding of why it does (see: The Tell-Tale Heart). Her past begins to haunt her physically, and she begins to crumble in response to it, until finally she is forced to confide in a stranger (and thus the audience). The past actions do not just inform the audience of Rita’s character - they show up to influence her behavior in the present.

The ending of The Umbrella Academy season 1 is super evocative of the gothic genre with Vanya breaking open the soundproof chamber (wherein she was silenced for years) and rising from the basement to destroy the last remnants of the Hargreeves legacy (which would be awesome if the last remnants of the Hargreeves legacy didn’t include the rest of her family). Pretty much every mistake the siblings make over the course of the season feeds together to create the finale, but the primary cause isn’t something any of them actually did. It all ties back to Reginald Hargreeves’ complete inability to be nice to children. Any children. His own and random strangers that need help.

In The Boys, while the extent to which people are making f-ed up choices in the present cannot be expressed enough, we see through the characters of Homelander that many of the present difficulties are a result of past mistakes. Particularly, the profit-seeking corruption within Vought. We learn in s1 through Vogelbaum that Homelander was raised in a lab by Vought as an experiment, only to be unceremoniously thrust into the spotlight and told he was a superhero (which... does not justify a single one of his actions but is still a major yikes). As the head scientist of the project, Vogelbaum is very aware that ignoring his conscious if the name of research has essentially created the biggest threat their world has ever seen.

(Seriously y’all just stop raising your super kids in isolation)

Part V: Put Them Together, and They’re the MF-ing Spice Girls

Having the environment respond to characters’ emotions/mental states is pretty common in gothic works (it was a dark and stormy night = someone is probably not doing super well). One of the advantages of the genre’s tendency towards the supernatural is that, often, those elements of the stories, as well, are reflections of the main ideas of a work of fiction (see: Stephen King’s really unsubtle period metaphors).

Because all of these shows have a ton of supernatural/scifi elements by virtue of being, well, superhero shows, I thought it would be easier (and more fun!) to come up with a short list of elements, what they mean, and what cases they might apply to.

1. A Nonlinear Experience of Time

The Umbrella Academy: legitimately about time travel. Characters are attempting to fix the timeline but are unable to because they are both mentally and sometimes literally stuck in the past.

Watchmen: In the episode This Extraordinary Being, Angela experiences firsthand the experiences of her grandfather, under the influence of a drug called Nostalgia. The episode touches on many themes, one of which being the impact of generational trauma in marginalized communities. Throughout the series, Dr. Manhatten is cursed with experiencing all time at once, and the episode A God Walks into Abar illustrates that, because of this, he is constantly facing the consequences of particular actions before, after, and while he is preforming him.

Doom Patrol: Mr. Nobody is able to physically travel to one of Jane’s flashbacks via his fourth-wall breaking powers, and gives Dr. Harrison an ultimatum for the future.

What it implies: Events, particularly events that evoke guilt or conflict, are not as rooted in the past as one would like to think.

2. Powers/Abilities that reflect personal trauma/failings

Doom Patrol: Larry’s abilities/bond with the Negative Spirit have made it so that he is constantly covering himself with bandages/avoiding other people, which reflects his experiences having to hide his identity as a gay man in the 50/60s. Rita forced herself to walk a thin line, betraying everything in pursuit of her image; her abilities require constant effort to keep her entire body from becoming misshapen and out of control. Vic’s father with boundary issues can literally control his perception of the world through his cybernetic enhancements. Dorothy’s abilities manifest as imaginary friends because she was kept isolated for years at a time.

The Umbrella Academy: pretty much all of the kids’ powers are representative of the interpersonal skills they were never able to develop. Luther is super-durable but also the most emotionally vulnerable of the group. Five can teleport and time travel but always seems to be too late to stop things. Diego can manipulate the trajectory of projectiles but cannot escape the path his father set out for him, not matter how much he resents it. Vanya always forced herself to stay quiet until the sound literally explodes out of her.

The Boys: Annie’s abilities allow her to control light, but she struggles (in the beginning) to bring to light the horrible things done to her behind closed doors.

Watchmen: Not technically a power, but Looking Glass’ mirror-mask is a constant reminder of the hall of mirrors that both saved his life and traumatized him forever.

What it implies: from a story perspective, these allow for an exploration of trauma/guilt to occur on a scale much larger than people simply talking about their problems (as if anyone on any of these shows knows how to talk about their problems...) It also means that the trauma/guilt of the characters takes on a physical form that is able to haunt them, and constantly remind them/hold them accountable for their past actions.

3. Diluted Sense of Reality:

Doom Patrol: The first season is narrated by its main villain, and throughout the season we see that the act of narration itself has an impact on the story.

Watchmen: The event that kicks off the plot of the story is hinged upon a paradox introduced by Angela near the end of the series when trying to speak to her Grandfather in the past through Dr. Manhattan.

The Umbrella Academy: The pair of episodes in season 1, The Day that Wasn’t and The Day That Was take the same point in time and explore two possible avenue for the future from there, with The Day that Wasn’t ending with the events of the entire episode being completely erased from the timeline.

What it implies: you can’t necessarily trust everything you see, even from the audience perspective, giving them a position not unlike that of the characters. The character’s uncertainty and confusion is magnified and reflected in the world that surrounds them.

Other examples: an apocalypse (The Umbrella Academy, Doom Patrol, Watchmen (of a sort)), ghosts (The Umbrella Academy - hi, Ben!), immortality/invulnerability (Watchmen, Doom Patrol, The Boys), and characters that look significantly younger than they actually are (The Boys, The Umbrella Academy, Doom Patrol).

Part VI: Why Did You Write a Literal Essay Don’t You Have Real Schoolwork (yes... shhhhh...)

And... there you have it. I don’t really have some grand conclusion here. This is (clearly) far from a complete analysis but it is the most my finals-week brain can concoct at the moment.

If you have other ideas, let me know! You can always add to the notes or message me – my inbox is always open! If you got this far, thank you so much for taking the time to read this! Much love! ❤️

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hyperfixationation · 4 years

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me ideas relating to boots n bombs but it’s a list for the world to see

Disclaimer that these are all cross-faction (RED demoman BLU soldier because WAR! comic is good stuff) and i cannot promise that they make sense because over the months of writing/yeeting ideas/rambles at myself and sal ( @/0-salty-potato-0 shoutout to her for being my ramble sponge) also in part because i’ve kinda developed BLU and RED team members independently fjskds

summary of summary: perfect world, modern, established relationship, timetravel, royalty, amnesia, mermaid, and then some (20 ideas in varying summary length in total lmao) underneath the cut (if tumblrs a butt and does not cut i sincerely apologies)

Perfect world au Tavish and Jane spend their days fighting each other, belonging to two different teams yet thick as thieves in the bright of day. Their jobs are fun and engaging, their teams close as families, and late nights laughing together over a few bottles of beer to look forward to on the empty battlefields. They’re happy, they have everything they could want and everything is perfect. So why was Tavish saying it’s not?

Modern au where Tavish lives in the affectionately (or not) named RED cul-de-sac, given from the fact that all the houses had some sort of red color tint or highlights. An interesting neighborhood, with even more interesting neighbors. Life fell into an odd but familiar routine since he moved there, life was comfortable. That was until one of his neighbors crashed one of Conagher’s barbecues announcing that his twin brother none of them had ever heard about was going to be living with him for the time being. This wouldn’t have been much of an issue, if Tavish didn't live in the house right next to Solly. (In a vaguely similar vein theres also one where Soldier’s a ghost/eldritch being haunting a house that Tavish buys

Established Relationship AU where BLU Scout stumbles across his Soldier and the RED Demoman being buddy buddy’s not long after the WAR! after a long battle in Dustbowl, confused and a bit betrayed by the Soldier’s actions, he runs back to his base only to be intercepted by none other than the RED Spy. The Spy asks for secrecy, after some persuasion Scout agrees reluctantly. But, how long could the Scout keep a secret anyway? Story deals with both teams reaction to their teammates relationship with an enemy merc

Timetravel au where the RED Demoman drunkenly begs for a chance to fix a great wrong and he’s sent into the past by Merasmus. Only he’s sent far into the past, right in the middle of the WAR! between him and the enemy Soldier. Tavish has to navigate this old world, interact with teammates with years of familiarity gone, without bringing too much suspicion upon himself. All at the same time trying to make sure the future never goes the way it does. It’s almost too much, but he was the bloody Demoman, he’ll persevere. He had to. Even if it meant reliving one of the worst fights in his life against a man he could no longer bring himself to harm.

Mermaid au where the ocean had always called out to Jane. An odd sense of anxiety settles inside of him when the company he’s been working for to fend off supernatural beings from american lands stations him to protect the coasts. And it was fine, he was born to kill monsters. That was what they told him. So why did one of the enemies, a deadly siren with a missing eye, know his name? Why did he seem so relieved to see him? Claiming to know him from a past he had forgotten?

Royalty AU okay i have like 4 takes on royalty au but one of them is that RED and BLU are enemy kingdoms but a sudden out of the blue truce that the RED court is informed of via BLU sending some members of their court as ambassadors, suspicions and tensions are naturally high and they both have to learn to deal with it, however the BLU general and RED prince seem to be getting along surprisingly well after a few spars

Amnesia AU talked a bit about it in that ask anon sent, general concept one day the BLU Soldier goes missing, nobody is able to find him until one day the RED Demoman, Sniper and Spy get stranded in a nameless off the map town. Finding a man who looked, sounded and acted just like the missing Soldier in a bar, only he showed no recollection of them.

Another spin would be the whole BLU team goes missing, also with more of those brainwashy-culty vibes

Classic 5+1, five firsts and one last that details their life together before, during and after the WAR!

Post MVM pre-comics setting where the former BLU Soldier confronts the former RED demoman at his own home, age old lies are uncovered and old bridges rebuilt as the two learn to live together

Canon comics except Jane’s also there, whats on the tin when Miss Pauling goes to recruit Demoman to find the australium for the Administrator she was expecting an immediate yes. She planned for it. Yet the Demoman hesitated, and soon she saw the reason why. Tavish would only go if Jane could come along, car ride’s a bit cramped but it would have to be a minor inconvenience

Idk name of ones/random drabble ideas:

Self indulgent Jane is brainwashed by Gray Mann after the gravel wars, after Gray Mann is defeated he sends Jane (“General”) to protect and hide Olivia Mann so that the company stays his, post comics red team + Pauling have been looking for them but Tavish was the first to find them while reminiscing in Gravel Pits and basically “jane the fuck that kids a devil”

During Scream Fortress where Jane and Tavishs long buried guilt and self hatred regarding their relationship with each other takes form as living nightmares as mountains of gibs and sea of heads

Fusion au except idk how to write fusions so it’d focus more on the vibes

After red v blu wars but Before MVM tavish goes to have an actual talk with jane for the first time in years

BLU Soldier gets turned into a kid and somehow stumbles into RED base

Misunderstanding with Merasmus gets tavish and Jane bodyswapped

Undercover, RED’s protecting some random guy and BLU’s there to kidnap/kill in a fancy rich person ball sort-of setting

Wings au

Soulmate au

Honestly just she-ra au, let them be princesses

#demosolly #boots n bombs #tf2 #rye rambles #BIG rye rambles #fdskjds this is again just summaries of most of the stuff i've been thinking about/drabbling since i started hyperfixating #on this mess of a ship #some of these have some unfinished/messy drabbles but most are concepts i just work on if i feel like it #i usually dont share my ideas like this because of a really weird paranoia/anxiety that people will steal them but also like #pspspsps at fellow demosolly shippers

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shkspr · 4 years

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santhomedusae a réagi à votre billet:

I know I don't know anything about hamlet but I know enough about hamlet to posit spiral hamlet for the consideration of the committee

this is a very good insight and here’s my full thoughts, under a cut because whoo-ee i was not lying when i said i was a powder keg of hamlet thoughts and you ignited me. explosion follows:

hamlet would be courted by several entities. he’s a prince, he’s got power and potential, and he’s got the capacity for any number of things, depending upon his decisions. and which entities covet him most changes as he grows and changes as a person.

prior to old hamlet’s death (pre-canon), the most prominent powers in young hamlet’s life would be the slaughter, the lonely, the stranger, and the web.

he’d make a lovely avatar of the slaughter, like his father before him, if he chose. having armies at his command and perpetuating wars with causes he can’t remember and doesn’t care about.

the stranger and the lonely come from his time at wittenberg, his fascination with theatre, his deep distrust of others and his desire to keep them at arm’s length.

the web would love to use him because he would be king someday, and the king has that power to manipulate and shape events to his liking even without supernatural help, so it would just make sense.

during the brief interlude between his father’s death and the appearance of the ghost (1.1-1.3), hamlet would still be on the radar for those ones, but especially the lonely, and he would also be of increased interest to the buried, the end, the dark, and the desolation.

he falls a little bit in love with death during this time, because - it’s a cliche, but nobody alive understands how he feels. but the incarnation of death itself? that inevitability, that hopeless dread? he feels it so acutely.

then of course there’s the needless, senseless destruction of having his father ripped from his life without even the chance for a goodbye. he’s ripe with despair, and the desolation would eat it up, and it would be so easy for the desolation to turn that around and recruit him.

and then there’s the cold, lonely helplessness of the others. i’ve discussed before the connection between the lonely and the buried and the end, and i think i can throw the dark in there as well. it’s just - he hasn’t been buried alive in a literal sense, but in a figurative sense, he absolutely has.

he’s feeling every bit of that crushing, inescapable weight upon his shoulders, every bit of his own impotence, every bit of his isolation from humanity, every bit of his own ignorance. he knows exactly how much he doesn’t know, and he knows exactly how much he can’t do, and it’s killing him. he can’t move, he can’t breathe, he can’t change, he can’t see, he can’t even die.

so again, while he would very much be a victim to those powers, he would also be susceptible to their. grooming, for lack of a better term. he’s vulnerable and hopeless, and that’s just perfect.

after he speaks to his father’s ghost, he does go a bit twisty. but along with the spiral, this period in his life (1.5-3.3) is also ruled by the eye, the web, and the stranger.

the web is just - there are so many intricate threads of plots and lies and schemes and interpersonal relationships and what they truly are vs what they claim to be, all of it arranged just so, and of course from a doylist perspective we know this is because it literally was arranged by an author, but in a watsonian sense, it’s all very mother-of-puppets.

hamlet’s whole “antic disposition” scheme is of the spiral, using the tools of the spiral for his own ends, but also - you can’t really trust the spiral, of course, and he does ultimately become a victim of his own machine. there really is no line between what is hamlet acting as a madman and what is hamlet truly going mad.

which brings us to the stranger - because hamlet the play focuses a lot on acting as a theme, the dichotomy of reality and fiction, actor and audience. every single person in hamlet’s life (with the sole exception of horatio) is playing a part to get what they want from him, and he is doing the same to them. none of them are what they seem. they aren’t really people, not as hamlet knows them, so much as they are roles to be filled.

intertwined with that theme is the thread that runs throughout the play of surveillance. the actor/audience dichotomy is also a surveilling/surveilled dichotomy. it’s about the “now i am alone” and the “i’ll observe his looks” and the security cameras in hamlet (2009) starring david tennant. it’s about polonius and claudius directing ophelia and gertrude in how to engage with hamlet while they hide and watch. it’s about hamlet watching claudius pray and deciding that to kill him then and there would be too kind.

and finally, finally, we get to the final leg of hamlet’s journey (3.4-5.2), which still plays upon all the themes of before, with extra crunchy layers of slaughter and desolation and spiral and a bit of some others.

there’s so much murder. i don’t feel like i have to explain the slaughter connection here. the second half of this play is full of senseless, needless violence, violence without a clear target, violence without a clear goal. violence for its own sake.

which is also the desolation - so much loss and heartbreak and young lives cut short and loved ones killing other loved ones. all of that delicious destruction, and hamlet is mired in it.

hamlet can have little a flesh/corruption/death trifecta, as a treat: “at supper... not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that's the end.”

the spiral and the mother of puppets have a strong connection here - think of how skillfully claudius seems to be playing laertes and ophelia, how much he thinks he’s pulling the strings, but of course he’s not - he’s telling lies, and all it does is drive ophelia mad and make laertes a rogue element, and hamlet knows this.

hamlet also plays the spiral a bit, himself - the way he plays up his madness after polonius’s death, the way he twists the truth to get rosencrantz and guildenstern killed and get back to denmark - but i think ophelia’s death does something to him, puts a lot of this in perspective for him. it makes him angry, of course, much like it did laertes, but unlike laertes, hamlet knows exactly where to channel that rage.

hamlet understands the inevitability of his fate, and his acceptance of his own lack of agency in this situation is actually one of the most reasonable, rational decisions he makes in the play. when he thought he could manipulate these powers for himself, he failed. now that he admits he’s not in control - ophelia’s death was proof of that - he sees clearly for the first time, and he might be furthest from the spiral here.

he goes into that fight at the end, knowing that there’s something bigger going on that he’s not privy to, and he plays his part as it’s written, he makes amends with laertes, he’s cordial with claudius and gertrude, he’s a good sport. and yes, he dies for it - but that was always a possibility, and he won’t defy augury.

in conclusion: hamlet is vulnerable to many powers, and he leans into several of them, but ultimately, his role is as a pawn in the game, not as a player. he can’t use any of the powers the way an avatar would, and his attempts to pull the strings on the spiral and the eye are what gets him - and everyone else - killed in the end.

at a certain point - and no one can say exactly when - this ending became inevitable. at a certain point, all of the players in this game became pawns, acting out their prescribed roles to serve the ultimate end.

hamlet spends the entire play stubbornly avoiding and running from the slaughter, and he turns to various other powers for aid in that endeavor, sort of like mike crew giving himself over to the vast for protection from the spiral, only in hamlet’s case, it doesn’t work.

he actively attempts to manipulate the spiral, the eye, the stranger, and the web at various points in his journey, and he categorically fails every time. it’s only when he accepts the fact that he doesn’t have that kind of power that the play can run its course and reach its conclusion.

#santhomedusae #magpod #optma #ws #hamlet #ok to rb #long post -#meta

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httplovecraft1890 · 5 years

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The Theme of Free Will in Yandere Simulator

So in the past, I’ve speculated at length about what some broad story points might be for Yandere Simulator and while I’ve revised my opinion on the significance of a character like Fun Girl (her statement of “YOU BELIEVE EVERYTHING I SAY. I WONDER WHAT ELSE I CAN TRICK YOU INTO BELIEVING?” feels a bit embarrassing in hindsight) I do think there are broad strokes that can be taken from what I wrote and applied to newer story points that’ve been shared with us since. You can consider everything below a refinement of those original ideas, I suppose. Let’s start by going back and revisiting Saikou Corp. Note: some of this information doesn’t have a specific source other than vague recollections aside from what YandereDev has said on Twitter, Reddit, etc. so apologies in advance.

What, exactly, do we know about Saisho Saikou? If we’re taking Fun Girl less as an actual plot point herself and more as a vehicle to deliver exposition to the audience then we can summarize a fair few things:

He was drafted into the service of the Imperial Japanese Army at age 17 in the closing days of the war. This retroactively confirms his date of birth was some time in 1928, meaning Saisho is 91 in 2019.

Saisho was confined to kitchen duty after being transferred to Okinawa at first. This changed after a bomb tore his dorm apart and he was trapped with the corpses of his friends for hours until he was rescued by other troops. During the attempted retreat after their rescue operation he called them cowards for wanting to fall back in the face of American forces. The memories of being stuck there with his dead friends still haunts him.

After being moved to a bunker, he was under constant stress from air raids and a chronic lack of sleep as well as malnourishment. When the U.S. finally found their hiding spot he tried to pull a pin on a grenade but it failed to detonate; he was promptly captured afterwards.

- From the June 1, 2018 Fun Girl text files We know little of his life after the war at the moment other than in 1946 he was reduced to running the company that would become Saikou Corporation out of his family’s garage (much like the company it parodies, Sony, was forced to do at first in our world by its creators). Given his later characterization I suspect that he probably ruthlessly took advantage of the breaking of up so many of the zaibatsu (large financial or industrial conglomerates owned by specific families; Mitsubishi is an example) by the American occupying forces following the war. In the decades following his country’s defeat Saisho created an enormous megacorporation that makes most of the consumer products seen in Yandere Simulator’s universe. As Headmaster Shuyona later relates to us, once he puts his mind to something he never takes no for an answer. Aside from the obvious wealth aspect that it grants him, though, what else is at work in his mind?

Like so many others, the defeat of Japan in the war simply unimaginable to him and, as far as he’s concerned, even if everyone else surrendered he never did.

The brainwashing and propaganda of the early Showa period never left him; as more and more Western influence began to creep into Japan, the more he began to freak out about it. Progressive politics and democracy are things he utterly despises.

Unsurprisingly, his reactionary politics have a racial component to them. For Saisho, the only people fit to rule the world are the Japanese and that if only everyone else realized it, there’d be a worldwide utopia. Though not outright confirmed, this also goes some way to explaining the almost eugenics-like obsession with ‘purity’ in the modern Saikou clan.

Even so, probably through careful PR stunts and knowing when to keep his mouth shut, Saisho’s worst beliefs aren’t known to the public.

- From the December 1, 2018 build’s Fun Girl files

It’s with some surprise then we know for a fact that Saisho wanted his firstborn daughter to inherit the company after he was ready to retire and only kept his son, Megami’s dad, as a backup. Despite the grueling and inhuman training that each Saikou generation seems to be put through, it seems that Saisho did genuinely love his daughter based on what Headmaster Shuyona confirms in Headmaster’s Tape #1. While this seems incongruous at first with his far right politics I think it’s helpful to see it less as a belief in equality between men and women, but instead that since she was a Saikou, she was inherently a cut above others because of that. Not many fathers would have schools built for their children in their honor if something wasn’t genuine, I think.

Megami’s aunt is a very interesting character at the moment. We know nothing about her other than the fact that she was first in line for the proverbial throne and hasn’t spoken to Saisho in 30 years because of him disowning her after they got into an argument. Fun Girl seems to hint that the conversation revolved around her trying to remember a supposed sister of hers (i.e., her) but this might just be her trolling us all. I think there’s something else very important given that time frame we also need to keep in mind: the date. What’s 30 minus 2019? 1989.

If we assume for a moment that Akademi opening its doors in 1985 was her first year, then following traditional Japanese high school length, it stands to reason her graduation occurred in 1988. The following year, Ryoba’s murder of the girl who was almost certainly Headmaster Shuyona’s daughter must’ve sent serious shock waves through Buraza Town. Megami’s aunt would’ve probably followed the proceedings with a lot of interest and I think a reason she parted ways with Saisho is because Saikou almost certainly tipped the scales in favor of Ryoba during her trial against the journalist. Why? Because of the country’s insanely high conviction rate. It’s greater than 99%. You’d practically need a miracle to get through it all and make the person who tried to take you to court look like a monster for doing so - something we know she pulled off. It’s not something that she could’ve done on her own without money changing hands or judges being properly blackmailed and flipping the media circus around. Headmaster’s Tape #6 also confirms that by 1999 Ryoba had seemingly regular contact with Saisho and Megami’s dad but it’s easy to extrapolate that they must’ve been speaking with one another prior to then; after all, just because Shuyona didn’t know about it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen (it doesn’t help him either that Saisho almost certainly sees him as a useful idiot). Learning a dark secret like this about your own family, coupled with the hell they put you through growing up, would break anyone and I think it’s a good explanation of why she left. If we accept that Saikou Corporation are Ryoba’s and Mr. Aishi’s employers then several things fall into place - why they haven’t ever had to move, why they live in a well off neighborhood, how they can simply up and leave for 10 weeks at a time to a foreign country - and the picture comes into focus. One of the things that Fun Girl seems to confirm is that Saisho’s love for Japan is equally as strong as what Ayano feels for Senpai. Knowing what we know about how the Aishi family curse seems to work, that’s pretty bone chilling. Coupled with every other horrible thing he thinks, combined with his vast wealth and influence, and it’s a recipe for disaster. The question becomes, however, what the point of all of this is. What could a murderous young woman possibly offer one of the most powerful companies in the world? Her body and mind. Stick with me here. Pretend you’re a scientist working for Saikou Corporation and you’re tasked with finding out what makes Ryoba tick; we’ll ignore for the moment any possible supernatural angle that the story might develop to explain their condition. The Aishi ‘curse’ seems to be a psychological condition, effecting the maternal line, that results in its carriers possessing severely stunted emotional growth, antisocial personality traits, flat affects, monotone voices, etc. This begins to alter in the host, however, an intermittent time after puberty in their late teens when, through various circumstances, meeting an individual causes an unknown psychological trigger to occur, acting as a kind of drug that for a time rewires the brain to enter a euphoria-like state wherein they begin to function on a neurotypical level, but only in contact with the source of this change (19 being the median age when an Aishi woman typically marries their victim). What if you could isolate the factors that cause such a thing to occur? 30 years is a long time to study something, after all, and decades’ worth of research must’ve meant some kind of breakthrough. Assuming that Saikou Corporation is like any other megacorporation in fiction then they’re sure to have their hands in medical technology. Imagine taking the research you’ve done on a so-called ‘yandere’ and began to try recreating it. After all, the idea of being able to use certain external symbols or things as stimuli is practically dystopian in its usefulness. Like, say, introducing a corporate symbol and ensuring its customers only felt a sense of satisfaction when buying a certain product.

Let’s go further than that. What if you could engender the same feelings of emptiness, followed by unbridled joy, when looking at something as simple as a flag? Not only could you brainwash an entire nation, but any other place on earth that allows the services you provide as a global company...

From this perspective, the “why?” of Saikou Corporation involving themselves with Ryoba becomes evident. After coming to this piece of speculation, if it is the case, something else also really clicked for me. Two things, actually. The first is that it’d give new meaning to the speech Megami tells you on the Skype chat you can have with her at school:

Is someone there?...Ah! It's you...Why have you come here? Have you come here to taunt me? Do you even know who I am? I know who you are. I know WHAT you are. My father won't allow me to attend school while you are..."active". He has a reason for tolerating your presence at this school. I don't. You are a vulgar creature that is only allowed to exist because you serve a purpose. If it was my decision, then every last one of you would be exterminated. Have fun while you can. If you and I ever cross paths...you're going to have a bad time.

The purpose is to further Saikou Corporation’s knowledge of the yandere condition and to find further ways to exploit it. Megami’s dad is in on this scheme and has purposefully kept Megami off campus while Ayano is on her murder spree as a way to keep her safe. What’s more, Ayano isn’t the only yandere that’s active either. Such a statement is more revealing than you might imagine it to be too. I think it’s pretty accepted at this point that the journalist’s wife was a yandere herself. He tells us as much in Mysterious Tape #6

But as soon as we met, she wanted to spend every waking moment with me. She wouldn't let me out of her sight, and got possessive if another woman so much as looked at me.

I quickly began to depend on her for everything. It wasn't long before I couldn't live without her. I certainly wasn't in any state to take care of myself... I was like an adult-sized baby. Helpless and vulnerable. Who knows...maybe that's what she was attracted to. Maybe she just wanted to experience the sensation of owning a person. Maybe she wanted to keep a human pet.

Isn’t it odd how she showed up in his life only a year after his ordeal with Ryoba in court? How his marriage to her didn’t involve them leaving the town at all? If I were him, I would’ve probably left it behind a long time ago, especially if it brought up memories as traumatic as what he’d experienced (and the fact he was directly threatened by Ryoba too). But instead his marriage and alcoholism caused him to never get out until it was too late. The timing seems... convenient, doesn’t it? Almost as if it were planned.

It wouldn’t be hard, I think, to sic some girl afflicted with the condition on someone either in hopes they’d ‘imprint’ on them or alternatively try to induce that very same response in them somehow. It’s a safe bet, again, considering how long Saikou Corp. would’ve had to pour over the data they’d collected. There surely would’ve been theories on how it happened and they’d be unethical enough to try it on human test subjects. So if they could do that, who might it happen to?

I think that an overarching narrative theme in-game is going to be that of free will. Let’s consider for a moment both Megami and Ayano as parallels to one another. Both are incredibly driven women who will stop at nothing to get what they desire - order for Megami, Senpai for Ayano - with familial histories of treachery and abuse. If Megami’s life has been lain down before her without her having much say in the matter, how does this similar struggle reflect in Ayano? Arguably, Megami could have everything she ever materially wanted in life just as Ayano has in the form of the feelings Senpai gives her but the issue goes deeper. If the price for Megami was having every moment planned out for her, is it not possible that the feelings Ayano has are just as manufactured? I don’t mean that in the ‘love at first sight’ kind of way; I’m questioning if the meeting with Senpai was something that was set up for her to go through, a test to see if this poor schmuck could be the thing that would let them begin to move onto a new test subject to put them through their glorified obstacle course (Akademi). Not to mention the fact that it essentially occurs right after Ryoba and Mr. Aishi leave for America is an immediate red flag. If Megami is trying to stop Ayano, though, then it must mean that she’s rebelling against the wishes of Saikou Corporation itself. After all, they don’t want something that they’ve put years of investment into slipping through the fingers if they can help it. The end game she has in mind is anyone’s guess at this point but I suspect it will be the purge of anything related to the above secret project. As such, there’s going to have to be someone to offer us an alternative to bringing down the current iteration of Saikou - and I think we also have an inkling of who’s going to aid us in bringing her down.

Kencho is emblematic of the status quo. He desperately desires his father’s approval (the one who’s likely continuing his father’s wishes and pursuing this whole endeavor to begin with) and will do anything to gain it. If Megami steps out of line too much, he’s certain to know that means she’ll fall from grace. He’s only been prevented from doing anything about his current situation because he’s only second best and hurting Megami would upset his dad. However, if she were to have an unfortunate accident... well, it isn’t as if he could be ignored anymore. In exchange, I imagine he’ll give Ayano exactly what her mother had: a nice house, a life untouched by anyone who’d take Taro or Taeko away from her, and a way for the two of them to have children if you go the latter route. All Ayano has to do is just give in to being a pawn like her mother did, like Kencho did, and like his father did. Or she can, at last, have the first real choice she’s ever had in her life by siding with Megami and tearing it all down (with Senpai still the promised reward in exchange for her help, certainly...).

#yandere chan #yandere sim #yan sim #lovesick #megami saikou #taro yamada #speculation #long posts #theory #kencho saikou #ayano aishi #ryoba aishi

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torendheavenandearth · 4 years

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1.7

“At the end of thy road, one must remember the golden rule: all things in moderation, and find the balance in all things. There, in minute perfection, you will find God, and you will find him wanting.” -- From the Discourse of the Tambay Swordsman and the Alcoholic Witch.

▼

Makabintang nears the crossroads. “Hey kid,” says Makabintang, peering behind him. He sees Angela is out, sleeping sideways against the kalesa seat. That’s bound to cause some neck pain.

Makabintang moves the kalesa to the right edge of the road and stops the horses, which have been running for almost two hours. There’s a small clearing here, a little embrace from the trees. Here the soft patter of the stream punctures the silence. The sound of the wind slipping through the bamboo causes a song of sadness to ring out from the forest.

Makabintang climbs up and flicks Angela’s face. Angela snorts as she’s pulled back into the waking world. “Ah punyeta. What--?”

“We’re taking a short stop here. You can rest up here. Get down and stretch.” Makabintang then grabs a glass canteen from behind her and walks off to the stream.

Angela watches Makabintang disappear into the greenery. She tries to move, but is greeted by an orchestra of pain. Her neck is sore, her feet sear with red hot spiky agony, her hands feel raw, and her knees have been scraped. Wincing, she gingerly makes her way down from the kalesa and winces as she hits the ground. Her feet are raw: she’s not wearing clogs or any kind of shoes. She makes her way over to the center of the small clearing where there’s a small campfire used by those before. The charcoal has been doused, but it hasn’t been cleared or replaced. They’re going to have to clean off the charcoal and get some new firewood.

A couple of men riding along on horses happen by the clearing. Angela notices that they’re taking the right path at the crossroads. One of the men, wearing a large salakot and barong tagalog, stares longingly at Angela, and Angela looks away, trying her best to act as if she can’t see them. She briefly wonders if she should just go back to her own kalesa and hide.

The two men stop their horses. One of them--the one wearing a navy blue uniform, has an arquebus hanging from behind his back, and a sabre hanging from his waist--gestures with his head, and the salakot-wearing man nods and slides down from his saddle.

The approaching man is wearing a large cloak that wraps around him, but underneath that he’s wearing large balooning pants, leather shoes, and a fancy striped barong tagalog. His hair looks groomed, and so is his moustache.

Angela squints at them. She sits at one of the logs-turned-benches.

“Hello, binibini,” says the man, as he nears her. He takes off his salakot. “What is a precious young girl like you doing out here, in the middle of the path?”

Angela breathes out, slightly irritated. She didn’t think she’d get these kinds of people in another world still. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to talk with strangers?”

“Then let’s change the situation then,” says the man, smiling. “My name is Don Jose Iago de Lacandola. And you are?”

Angela cringes. “I’m 17. Go away.”

“Age is but a number,” says Don Jose Iago de Lacandola. Angela cringes. He examines Angela thoroughly. “It is better if you are not to stay here, in the middle of nowhere. You seem like you have gone through a rough patch. I can take you to my hacienda, which is just over Mount San Roque. I can care for you like a king would care for his princess.”

Angela blinks. She thinks that this can be a good chance to get some good life out of this miserable predicament she’s found herself in. “Are you some kind of… noble?”

Don Jose nods. “I am a principales, part of the principalia of the Kingdom of Perlesensya. Perhaps that will make my offer more enticing. I will care for you all your life.”

Angela squints at Don Jose again. “Why?”

Don Jose manages a small smile. A shy smile. He looks up at the sky and says, “Well, it is not everyday that a Don such as myself would be graced by God the fortune of seeing an exceedingly beautiful maiden sitting out here in the forests. I must protect all beautiful ladies that I come across but…” he looks down on Angela again. “...never have I seen a woman so beautiful as you.”

“But…” Angela reaches up to her horns.

“Oh, do not worry about that. We can surely hire a surgeon and a healer to surgically remove it from you. We’ve done it before.”

“You’ve… surgically removed horns from people? Why?”

“No horns are allowed in the Hacienda proper, you see,” says Don Jose. “And it’s commonly seen as unnoble within Biringan, the City of Cities. It's just for politeness and so that you can fit in better. Admittedly, that is the only blemish I see in your perfection.”

Angela cringes again. The prospect of having the horns surgically removed is something she’s keenly interested in, but a mote of doubt lingers within her heart.

“There’s a catch to this, isn’t there?”

Don Jose shrugs. “Of course, it would be in my best interest to wed you. Perhaps we can live together in my hacienda, and you can be the loving wife that welcomes me back from military expeditions and other such things! You will have a grand life.”

Angela pouts and thinks. Her forehead creases. She doesn’t quite know what to answer. Not yet, anyway.

“Come on, girl. Do you not want to be treated like a principales?”

“I do,” Angela says, looking up. “But… I don’t think I can.”

“Oh, lovely maiden, moon of my life, why?”

Angela shrugs. “There’s… something I have to do first. There are people that are counting on me, I think. I’m not sure. But I don’t think I can do whatever I have to do if I went with you. Sorry.” And also going off gallivanting with a creepy older man is out of the question, fuckin’ creep.

Don Jose stops and stares at Angela for a bit. Eventually he sighs and shrugs. He produces a piece of rectangular paper from his pocket and gives it to her. “This is a paper signed by me. If you ever come to the hacienda--Hacienda Lacandola it is called--then show this to the gatekeeper. They shall let you in, and perhaps we can talk at length and help you come to a conclusion.”

Angela snorts. “Sure.” She takes the card.

“God bless you,” says Don Jose, before walking back to the horse and then shrugging. His shoulders have fallen. The principales gets on his horse and the two of them begin making their way up the mountain. The man that looks like a soldier looks over his shoulder and stares at her as they disappear into a curve.

“Weirdos,” says Angela. She thinks of throwing the paper away, but then decides against it. Perhaps it can help in the future. She looks around her and finds that the baro’t saya she’s wearing has no pockets in them. Exasperated, Angela sighs. Of course they don’t.

She gets up and walks over to the kalesa and slips the piece of paper into the sheath of the bolo that Makabintang gave her. She stares at her own reflection through the slightly dulled blade of the bolo. There’s still some dirt on her face, from when she fell. Her eyes are red. Is she losing sleep? Her glasses are miraculously still intact. When will they get broken? What will she do if they do? She’s practically blind without them. How will she be able to survive?

The bolo could be a good start, she thinks. Maybe get some training in them and be like a samurai or one of those old Filipino action movies or old Filipino komiks by Francisco Coching. She can manage it, she thinks. She’s always had before.

“I’ll get Makabintang to train me,” she mutters. What is seemingly apparent to Angela is that in this universe, fighting is to be expected at one point or another. At least, for a person like her. So it only makes sense for her to get up and grab some kind of combat training. If not, she’s going to get turned to bloody mush on the ground, and she doesn’t have any plans of dying just yet.

I still need to go home.

She brings the bolo over to the log she sat on and pondered. She wonders how life is, back at home, back in horrible Metro Manila, with the shitty transportation system and the even shittier government. That distant wish for home hit her like a truck. Sure, it was hell, but at least that place didn’t have, like, huge demons and angels and explosions and supernatural kung fu or whatever. If this is heaven, then she’d rather be cozy back home in hell.

She sighs. She wonders how Kristina is doing. One of her best friends. She was supposed to go and have a study date with her the next day, eating and drinking at their favorite cafe along Aurora Avenue. A hidden gem. But no. She was abducted by human-trafficking angels instead. Angela wonders if she will ever get back home. She decides that if she ever does go back home, she will.

In fact, she decides that she’ll do all of this, survive and get strong and hop around with Ang Nilapastangan and Makabintang, just to find a way to get back home. Her mother is waiting. Her little brother is waiting. They are all waiting for her to get back home.

“Oyoy, what was that commotion a while back?” Makabintang’s voice floats out of the trees. Angela looks up and sees him walking out, with three canteens full of water, which he carries with a makeshift flat plane of wood that he found out within the forest. He goes over to the horses and gives them something to drink.

“Some principales,” Angela replies. “Can I ask you a favor, Makabintang?”

“A principales? Did he say his name?”

“Don Jose something something Lacandola.”

Makabintang pauses. He turns to stare at Angela and his eyes go wide. “Lacandola? Are you absolutely sure?”

“Oh what, is he like, super important or something? Is that it?”

“Yes! Yes he is! Lacandola is one of the royal houses of the Kaharian!”

“What?”

“There’s not a lot of them, really. Only nine left: Sulayman, Lacandola, Ache, Colambu, Tupas, Paiburong, Sikatuna, Cabungsuan, and Namwaran.” Strangely enough, Angela recognizes some of those names. Names that she’s seen her friends have, or mentioned in old historical texts. Another weird note that imprints itself onto her mind.

“And this is important to me… how?” asks Angela.

“You shoulda taken the offer and took me with you!” Says Makabintang. “We’ll be rich and living large!”

“I doubt they’d allow a duwende to live in with them, though,” says Angela. “Don Jose already said that he’d have my horns surgically removed.”

“Yeesh,” says Makabintang, and then waves his hand dismissively “But whatever, you’re probably right. Come on, let’s get back on the road.”

Angela opens her mouth to ask something more, but a low guttural bellow resonates from somewhere else, freezing her words in her throat. She and Makabintang stare at each other, eyes completely wide, bodies frozen.

And then the kimera leaps out from within the shadows between the trees.

There’s a moment of absolute fear blossoming from the well at the bottom of Angela’s soul. She leaps to her feet, brings out her bolo, and faces down the kimera even as it leaps through the air and pins her to the ground.

“Makabintang! Help!” She screams, and the fear in her voice is like the shattering of glass. Makabintang rises and brandishes his own bolo. He sinks into the earth and then erupts from a mound to the left of the kimera, sending him cannonballing straight into the kimera’s side, bolo first. The bolo sinks, the kimera screams.

It flails about, sending Makabintang flying from it. This time, it doesn’t underestimate Makabintang. It leaps toward him as he slams against a tree, grabs him mid-bounce, and then slams him against the tree once again.

And then with a single, savage movement, rips Makabintang’s head from his body with its kimera dog mouth.

“Makabintang!”

▼

Ang Nilapastangan is faster than horses.

Upon her bellowing strides of smoke and flame--a neat little trick she’d picked up when traveling with a tigbalan--she crosses the length traveled by the kalesa in half the time. Despite the dewy morning, the road is not damp enough to let wheel tracks be embedded upon it, but that’s okay. Ang Nilapastangan told Makabintang where to go. She knows where they’re headed.

She just hopes she’s not too late. She just hopes she catches up before they go past the crossroads. But Makabintang knows that. Makabintang is a wise duwende, and he’d know to stop by at the crossroads to wait for her.

That is, assuming nothing worse follows after them. The kimera… she can’t brush the thought of the kimera from her mind. It wasn’t there when she looked around. Last time she remembered, halimaw don’t just disappear when they die. It’s popular to use the materials harvested from hunting them for equipment and items.

So where did it go?

Ang Nilapastangan bellows-pumping stride eventually reaches its peak, and she reaches the crossroads at almost a quarter of the time a horse-drawn carriage like the kalesa would. When she gets there, however, the kimera’s maw rips Makabintang’s head from his body.

Ang Nilapastangan’s fury is silent, and the world has told her that she must be silent. She blurs forward. Now right beside the kimera, and thrusts her hand--which is in a knife-hand position--straight through the kimera’s chest. She then inserts her other hand through that same hole, and then rips the kimera in two, vertically.

Chunks of meat and blood scatter across the clearing. Angela scrambles away from the blood and meat, bolo still in hand. Her eyes are wide, her breathing rapid. She feels like she’s going to puke, but she can’t look away from the fantastic gore caused by Ang Nilapastangan.

Ang Nilapastangan hurls both parts of the kimera into two different parts of the forest. Throwing it so strongly that it sends waves of air rushing out. She throws it seemingly so that the two parts of the kimera are as far from each other as possible.

She looks down upon the headless corpse of Makabintang, ripped and savaged. The blood of beings like Makabintang don’t seem to be red like human blood. Their blood is one that is yellow-ish, like the sap of trees, nearing gold.

Ang Nilapastangan scowls. Angela stares at Ang Nilapastangan.

▼

Ang Nilapastangan digs up a grave for what’s left of Makabintang’s body with her bare hands. She is silent, and when Angela looks over at her, her face is blank. Not in that blank kind of way when someone’s loved one dies and you don’t know how to react. Her face is exactly like her face the first time she saw her. As if the death of Makabintang, the only person that she seems to speak with, doesn’t faze her.

Ang Nilapastangan makes an effort to make the grave like a mound, like that of his house. And then, at the top of the mound, she places a single sampaguita flower that she finds nearby.

With that done, she gets on both knees and then bows. Her hands are clasped together, as if in prayer. Angela wonders if she should follow in what she’s doing. Even just to pay some kind of respect to the weird duwende that helped her. But, she feels too awkward, and decides not to.

Eventually, Ang Nilapastangan finishes the procession. She doesn’t do any kind of sign of the cross or anything. She simply lifts her head and then rises to her feet. She turns around and says: “I’m filthy.”

Angela blinks. “Um. Yeah. You’re covered in guts and blood.”

“We can’t afford to bathe yet,” she says, with an almost… complaining tone? Angela can’t help but tilt her head in slight confusion.

Angela also notices that as she’s talking, her burning crimson feet and hands are slowly subsiding. Her black and red eyes are dissipating. She closes her eyes and she breathes out. When she opens her eyes again, her eyes are normal. They’re no longer black and red, but a beautiful white and ash gray.. She, more or less, has the visage of a human.

Save, of course, for the horns.

“Come on. Barangay San Justo is a bit more travel.” She walks over to the kalesa and unlatches the horses from the wagon. She then reaches into the wagon and brings out a pair of saddles. Fraying at the edges, but working more or less. “Ah, the horse carer remembered my request. Good.”

Angela walks up to Ang Nilapastangan. “We’re not going to ride the kalesa?”

Ang Nilapastangan shakes her head. “We’re going to ride the horse instead. Do you know how to ride one?”

▼

Angela and Ang Nilapastangan ride down the path. They’ve gone down the westward road. “The east road leads up to a mountain trail that leads to Barangay Sampotsi. There you will find Hacienda Lacandola,” Ang Nilapastangan said. Angela told Ang Nilapastangan about the encounter she’s had with Don Jose, but Ang Nilapastangan doesn’t reply or respond to it.

Now, upon the trail, there is a slight awkwardness. The only time Ang Nilapastangan has talked to her is to teach her the ropes of riding a horse. She’s ridden one before when she went to Tagaytay and Baguio, but riding one on her own without the guide of some kind of caretaker is a new experience. Surprisingly, she got the hang of it rather quickly, and soon the two of them are on a canter. Ang Nilapastangan took the horse with the black coat, while Angela chose to ride upon one with a chestnut brown coat.

The path is mostly quiet, save for the soft sound of the wind wafting across the trees. The rustlign of branches, the whistle of small zephyrs. The temperature is not too bad. Humid, of course, but the sun is not shining directly at them so the heat is bareable. Angela realizes how much she prefers the temperate, humid climate of the more tropical countries than the more extreme degrees of other countries. She’s glad that they have that climate here, and much cooler than in Metro Manila too, since this place is presumably not choked by pollution and microwaved by climate change.

Their canter is brisk, but not to slow. Its a perfect pace for Angela to ponder upon the things she sees as she travels across the path. The broken twigs on the ground, the kabalyero trees that seem to be more popular here, sending the red petals of their flowers cascading down to the soil. The random snake coiling about a trunk, or flying lizard leaping from one treetop to another. A squirrel scurrying down a tree. Numerous birds flying above.

A soft wind sends fallen dead leaves flurrying into a small tornado, instilling into them once again, a semblance of life.

However it's not the kind of abounding, almost choking, multitude of animals Angela thought she would encounter. It’s strangely serene. The animals here seem to be alone: Angela can’t help but wonder why she only sees one squirrel, and one flying lizard, and one flock of birds. At this point, she’s expecting to be assaulted by an onslaught of mosquitoes and flies, but none come. Maybe one, and it isn’t even a mosquito.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Angela blinks. She looks up at Ang Nilapastangan. The path ahead is long. There’s a patch of the road further down that is shadowed by a canopy of tree branches. “Yeah.”

“It used to be even better,” says Ang Nilapastangan.

Angela waits for Ang Nilapastangan to explain further, but she never does.

After a bit of cantering, Angela speaks, “I’m sorry about Makabintang.”

“Don’t be,” she replies. “You had nothing to do with it. And Makabintang would’ve been honored to go out that way.”

“Wasn’t he your friend?”

“He was. He was the only friend I had and the only one that didn’t freak out when I said that I was the winner of the Hagdanan and that I came to that village to hide away from Biringan. He was a good friend. But he was going to die, I think, one way or another. It always happens.” The wistful tone is almost cliche to Angela.

“You were hiding?”

Ang Nilapastangan nods. “It’s the only way for them not to kill me, or use me.”

“Use you?”

Angela doesn’t get a response to that either.

With a sigh, Angela continues with, “If only I knew how to fight.”

“Don’t worry about the ‘ifs’,” says Ang Nilapastangan. “It’s done now. Move on. That’s what’s important. That’s how you break chains.”

Another silence. Angela decides not to engage anymore with Ang Nilapastangan. Maybe she’s still grieving, and just doesn’t want to show it to Angela so that she doesn’t break her tough-girl demeanor? Either way, Angela loses the will to converse. She looks around her again, and nothign much happens. Not a lot of animals come out. For a world that is the center of the multiverse, she thinks that it should have a lot more colorful animals. Not just a single squirrel and a snake. And some birds.

They ride for a few more hours, passing through numerous canopied sections of the road: the parts where the branches of the trees embrace overhead, as if to provide shelter and shade. The sun doesn’t shine down directly at you within the canopy, and the wind is chilly. As they canter along, her mind begins trailing, looking for more distractions. She wishes she can have her phone right now, numb her mind against her Twitter feed or chat with some friends. But then she remembers that those friends are universes away.

Eventually, to pick up the pace, Ang Nilapastangan tells Angela to gallop and follow her. Angela nods, prodding the horse forward and then balancing herself on her knees. Ang Nilapastangan taught her this just a few moments ago. She remembers what she’s taught: use her knees to steady herself, don’t pull on the reins, lean forward. And she does.

The horse goes forward, and it runs quick and true. It seems as though it’s doing its best to accommodate for Angela’s inexperience. Even though her gallop isn’t as fast as Ang Nilapastangan’s, it's enough that Ang Nilapastangan is always in view.

▼

After a few more hours of riding--which was painful for Angela, having to look around all the time--Angela finds that the road they’re sat upon crests up to the top of a hill. When they reach it, Ang Nilapastangan stops the horse, and so does Angela.

There, from the hilltop, they see Barangay San Justo. A quaint little town with the same wooden houses mixed with stone houses, and with a church in the middle. It is surrounded, of course, by dense trees, some of them breaching the gaps of the town and growing between houses and roads. There is a small wall on both the north and south sides of the barangay, made of earth and wood.

The hilltop road bends down into the southern exit.

The barangay, strangely enough for the middle of the day, is quiet.

“We will look for the albularyo here,” says Ang Nilapastangan. “And then afterwards, I will help you.”

Angela blinks, looking up at Ang Nilapastangan. “Help me?”

“Get stronger and win the Hagdanan. It’s the only way, if you wish to be free.”

Next Arc.

Return to the Table of Contents.

#karanduun #writing #novel #webnovel #filipino #myth #mythology #folklore #arc 1

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fireflysummers · 5 years

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General Thoughts on REIGEN Chapter 5

Tome

On a personal level, I suspect if I were her peer, I’d have hung out with Tome (because she’s funny and quirky and interesting), but I also don’t think I’d have been her best friend. And this chapter highlights why--she’s prone to being rude and obnoxious and insensitive to others, especially in relation to her own goals. She has very little actual empathy for people who mean well.

None of this is a surprise, we saw it from her very first intro where we see her slacking off in the club room and then trying to manipulate Mob with fake tears.

She’s...a teenager. She lacks experience and empathy, and the foresight to understand how her actions may affect others.

And that’s okay, because from writing aspect, that’s what makes her such a fantastic character.

I’ve discussed in other posts my beef with the way that bnha handles the female characters (beyond just the sexualization of teenagers), and while ONE definitely struggles to have a decent male:female ratio in all his works, I don’t have that same beef with him.

Tome isn’t another ‘pretty face’....in fact, her appearance has no bearing on her personality and character arcs so far. Tome isn’t ugly, but she’s not designed to be pretty or alluring or cute or mysterious. Even more, Tome herself is thoroughly unconcerned about being pretty. I mean, the one character that has a crush on her does so for her courage and initiative.

Instead we get a kid who’s allowed to be selfish, mean, insensitive, curious, fun, goofy...basically, traits that are generally only allocated to the male members of a shonen. She’s not tsundere, or any other kind of dere. She’s nobody’s kink or fantasy girl.

She’s just Tome.

And...in a world where girls are only ever as valuable as their bodies, there’s something incredibly rare and special about a character like her.

I’m excited to see where she goes, after stealing the spotlight from the titular character.

Serizawa

Serizawa is an MVP here. He’s grown up so much. He doesn’t rely on his powers, but he’s not afraid of them at all. They’re just another part of him.

On top of that, can I just say that I love how ONE has avoided making Serizawa codependent on Reigen, instead creating a character that got a late start in life but has grown to be independent and strong on his own? Like, that’s a legit worry for a character like Seri, who was manipulated and afraid for so long...it would’ve been so easy to paint Reigen as a selfless savior.

But no, Reigen is Reigen. He wants to be Serizawa’s friend, yes, but their relationship never goes down that path. Instead, we see all these subtle hints about how Serizawa has grown: being unafraid of his own powers; making friends from school; actually turning Reigen down because he has other plans; using an umbrella again, not to hide behind but as a shield.

And then there’s the advice he gives Tome. It’s grounded, but it’s not a rehash of things Reigen and/or Mob have told him. He’s not parroting the philosophies of others. You can tell that he’s thought about this, greatly and in depth, and taken a critical look at his own life too.

It is. So good.

Dimple

Dimple says NB rights.

No seriously though, I’m really happy to see an explicit validation of nb humans (and ghosts), and how even though Dimple identifies as male, he’s relatively unconcerned with anything vaguely gender normative.

Dimple getting a cute nickname after trying to stick cute nicknames to Mob and Ritsu? Hilarious change of pace. I love it. Also, Dimple failing to live up to his reputation as an evil spirit yet again, a la giving Tome good, honest advice despite not having to? Also fantastic.

I think the most interesting thing here, though, is how much Dimple doesn’t talk about himself. Like, we know his goals and dreams, but he gives no information on his own life either as a spirit or a human, beyond that he’s male and that he’s so old that he’s stopped counting (although we know he’s been a ghost at least 40 years, based on his interactions with Mogami).

Makes me wonder how much he actually wants to dwell on his own life and death.

Never thought I’d be so curious about the lil fart’s origin story.

Reigen

Ah yes, the star of the show, who almost doesn’t make it into the chapter altogether.

I’ve talked at length about Reigen’s existential loneliness and how he’s more or less resigned to a future that he’ll alone.

But it’s important to note that we see the changes he’s made, since Chapter 100. Like, I’m certain that Tome is the only person at the office who thinks Reigen has any powers at all, and he’s not lying because he’s trying to take advantage of her like he did Mob. He’s lying because telling the truth would defeat his entire plan to get her out of the supernatural business before she gets hurt. That aside, a kid like that knowing the truth and spitefully sharing it with the world? That could absolutely destroy the business.

That said, his lie about the salt seemed...more on-the-fly and less enthusiastic than the kinds of crap we’re used to him spewing. Honestly, he kind of looks like he’s dying inside to continue that lie at all.

Please help him.

#mob psycho 100 #reigen spoilers #mp100 spoilers #mp100 #text #tome kurata #reigen arataka #serizawa katsuya #dimple #ekubo

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fyrapartnersearch · 5 years

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Searching for an Amazing Partner for a detailed roleplay idea I have!

Hello there!

I hope to not sound like a stickler or anything, but I have an idea I’ve finally finished conjuring up for the last few weeks. I have some pretty high expectations for it and I’m very excited to share and start the idea with someone. I’ll first go over some basic things you should know about me and my writing style.

About me:

- I’m extremely friendly and approachable! I love to talk about ideas and cute things between our characters, so I hope your up for out of context chatting every now and then

- I have work and I go to college. So I am fairly busy. I will try my best to let you know before hand and I may not be able to reply instantly. I hope you understand!

- Roleplay is my hobby! I do not associate any romantic feelings between my partners. I am totally platonic in regards to what I write, I do it for fun after all! If you find yourself “falling in love” with me, I will politely thank you and decline. I’ve had this happen to me a few times before and just for that reason I’m adding it here.

- I typically write from semi-lit to literate, I also tend to match my reply lengths with my partners if longer. If I give you a short reply it’s probably because I’m busy and I wanted to squeeze a reply in really quick!

- I write in third person, I hope you do as well!

- I’m 18+ so I will only write with 18+ writers. Just to be on the safe side!

- I have discord, so I’d prefer we roleplay on there. If you have an alternative app you know, please tell me!

- I will be playing as the werewolf! His bio isn’t finished yet though- I’m still working on it!

Okay- with that over and done with, I’d like to talk about the idea! Feel free to offer any changes or adjustments that you think might enhance the roleplay

This roleplay takes place in the future. MxM. It’s a supernatural/fantasy roleplay that will have its cute moments, but it will also mention death, alcohol, violence, heartbreak, smut (but it will not be a main factor) and drama. It will have romance!! However, it will be a slow building one.

In this setting, humans are living their lives not knowing that they are living amongst Supernatural/Fantasy creatures. These creatures are just blending in to society.. having jobs, going to school, having families… just like humans! However, they do have to be careful as to not risk the possibility of them getting their identities out.

In this roleplay, it will focus on two guys. The first is a derpy cute nerd human boy (and they actually don’t have to be JUST human! If they have some supernatural blood in them that they aren’t aware of until a certain point later on in the roleplay, that’s cool with me too!! We can talk about this if you have more questions.) who is for SURE that supernatural/fantasy creatures live amongst humans. (I’m imagining he’s like the type to carry a camera around with him daily and is constantly investigating ghost sighting areas, interviewing people and classmates that he suspects are supernatural creatures, etc. He doesn’t HAVE to be this way but this is along the lines of what I’m thinking). The most ironic thing about this is that he is RIGHT, while everyone else thinks he’s some crazy kid with some crazy dreams. He is a target for bullying, however.

Now the second part is where the main plot starts. During the last year of their high school, an international broadcast is sent out from the government. It’s a warning for humans saying that there IS supernatural/fantasy creatures living among them. Imagine like— Area 51 coming out of the closet and telling the world the truth. That type of thing. So it’s a HUGE deal because now people are in fear, and the supernatural/fantasy people are in fear of being caught and being captured to have experiments tested on them. Everyone who thought Human boy was just being a stupid derpy boy is now respecting him, and Human boy honestly just doesn’t care, he’s happy because there are such creatures. He doesn’t want to experiment on them, he’d rather ask questions and try to understand their cultures.

As for the Supernatural/Fantasy creatures themselves, they’re in a panic, but only until Aliens reveal themselves to solely the Supernatural/Fantasy Races. (Imagine they get a special broadcast only tuned to them). Basically, Aliens have a higher technology than humans at this point (of course) and they wish to continue to live among the human population to continue their research about them. However, with this big reveal that both themselves and other supernatural/fantasy creatures have now been exposed, they’ll have to try a little harder. Luckily they’re nice enough to let the other supernatural/fantasy creatures in on the deal. Basically, they use their higher tech to allow the Supernatural/Fantasy people still live a secretive life.

(For example- if you have a job some require you to have a Fingerprint card. The aliens can give a supernatural person a medicine that works for 24 hours which alternates their fingerprints, and physical features if need be, to identify as a human. Then it goes into the database that they are a human. Another example is that this medicine can alternate blood composition if they need a blood test. Let’s say alien blood is blue. When the blood is extracted, it’s red like a human’s! So is the composition!)

The aliens make it possible for the Supernatural/Fantasy people to go back into hiding again, but that doesn’t mean that humans aren’t still freakin’ suspicious. There is still a risk of living amongst humans now that they know. Everyone is suspicious of everyone.

Regardless, fast forward a couple years. Human boy has now been hired to a special forces unit that focuses on apprehending and experimenting on Supernatural/Fantasy people who have been called out. It’s the only kind of job he knows of that will let him work with (or rather- on) these people. (I’m not sure what job he could have exactly, perhaps an investigator, officer, psychologist, doctor, I’m not sure-)

Either way he happens to meet and come across werewolf boy again, who is now a Detective at his local Police station. However— this is no ordinary Police station. In Fact— a lot of different establishments are not as they seem. They are underground establishments for Supernatural/Fantasy people to work and protect themselves. They still follow human laws, and do human services on the surface level to appear normal, however they obviously aren’t.

Werewolf boy’s priority is to apprehend Supernatural/Fantasy criminals who don’t care if they get caught by humans. If you think about it, this Police force is like Men in Black (if you have ever watched the movie). If their suspect has managed to come in contact with a human, they will erase their memory and safely apprehend the criminal. The main purpose of this is so that they can contain the supernatural to keep humans from experimenting on more people to find out about more about their hidden population. So basically this job is in opposition to Human boy’s job.

I’m not going to go into FULL details because this part is where it’s going to get fun and angsty and full of drama and we will have to incorporate so many ideas between you and myself! I can’t wait! If you want to know full details of what I’m thinking, please ask and I’ll tell you some of the ideas I have on my mind at the moment. But if you think you like this idea and you want to go for it, PLEASE don’t hesitate to message me. And don’t feel like you have to follow all my hopes and ideas, but if you have questions and concerns, please ask me.

This is all I hope from you:

- don’t leave me on read if you find you aren’t interested!

- Don’t message me like “hey.” Or “hi.” That’s a very bland first impression and I will leave the chat immediately.

- Please write in 3rd person, from semi-lit to literate!

- Please have good grammar and conventions!

- Please have patience!

- I hope you also like to incorporate ideas and talk about our characters and what exiting ideas and plans we have in store for them

- Don’t be afraid to ask questions!

- I’ll probably ask that you send me an example of your writing just to see how you write!

- You don’t need a character bio immediately (heck I’m still finishing mine) but please have one! I don’t care if you do or don’t have a face claim, just make sure you describe their looks!

- Id prefer if you have a discord- if you don’t, it’s fine! Just a preference!

I hope I didn’t ramble too much, but please, if you are interested, please let me know! Thanks!! I can’t wait to meet you!

#longterm #literate #roleplay #supernatural #fantasy

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arcadiaoaksusedbooks · 5 years

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Nadia’s sisters

Nadia isn’t the only living Shard in the world; before the Battle at Killahead she came into contact with three others and together formed a sisterly bond. The other three sisters will share this blog for a week.

Name: Elisi

Age: Over a thousand

Description: Long blond hair tied back into a braid, green eyes, skin paled from being underground for so long, wears loose fitting clothing and boots, fairly muscular.

Powers/Abilities: Super strength (as strong as ten trolls), proficient with swords and blunt instruments, mixed martial arts and boxing. As a Shard, she possesses Life Magic, where she can create sentient life with another’s soul. Immortal. Is a lefty.

Personality: Elisi is a born leader, always making sure everyone is taken care of or has something to do. She takes no nonsense and is supportive of friends and family. Has the patience of a saint, not easily angered or rattled. However, she can tend to overlook the thoughts and feelings of others. While not the first one to jump into battle, she loves a good fight and will protect those who are dear to her, no matter what.

Weaknesses: As a Shard, her powers are tied to her physical stamina; she will lose her abilities when exhausted. She will overlook the needs and feelings of others in order to get something done. Can be overprotective of those she cares about, to the point of treating them like children. STRICT with training others, it’s her way or the highway.

Background: Elisi doesn’t say much about her past, only that she was once a princess but was burned at the stake. It was her first death, and her regenerated body was found by some wandering trolls looking for food. She stayed with them, was taken to their home, and after discovering what she was and what she could do became a part of their community. She married another troll and, with her Life Magic, had six whelps. Soon, Merlin’s Amulet chose one in her tribe as its next Trollhunter, and Elisi volunteered to use her strength to help train him. The Hunter was successful and celebrated for two hundred years until his gruesome death. Since then, Elisi has tried to seek out and train other Trollhunters who emerge. However, the losses leading up to Killahead included members of her family, and her overprotective nature took over. After the war, she took her family into hiding. They eventually settled into Alaska, and the wounds of war healed slowly. Elisi, under an alias, works as a game warden, watching over national parks and keeping an eye on her new territory. She will occasionally, visit Arcadia Oakes to see her sister and a few friends.

Name: Alora

Age: Over a thousand

Description: Short, choppy black hair, brown eyes, tanned skin. Wears pop culture T-shirt, trenchcoat, jeans and combat boots.

Powers/Abilities: Can summon most any weapon into her hands, though prefers swords (mostly swords she’s handled before, cannot summon soulbound weapons). Well versed in combat and warfare. Fast and agile, prefers to strike fast and often. As a Shard, she possesses Life Magic, where she can create sentient life with another’s soul. Immortal.

Personality: Alora wields one of two types of personality: she’s either cold and calculating, speaks harshly and selfishly, and has an extremely short fuse. Or she’s laid back and mischievous, a meme machine like none you’ve ever seen, says what’s on her mind and acts like she owns your place. Either way, tends to have a smirk on her face. She delights in being unpredictable, whether it’s laying the strategy in battle or spending the day playing video games on the couch. The last thing she wants is you to know what’s on her mind or her real motives. It’s just more fun for her that way.

Weaknesses: As a Shard, her powers are tied to her physical stamina; she will lose her abilities when exhausted. Alora is hot-headed and easily angered, as well as easily blinded by rage. In a fight, she goes all out to end it quickly, which would quickly spend her stamina. Her immortality has made her brash and careless, with no fear of death and consequences (a Deadpool Complex, if you will). Has no patience, will get what she wants when she wants it.

Background: Alora started life as a lowly scullery maid of a castle, until it was attacked by trolls. Gumm-gumms looking to get the giant castle out of their warpath quickly gobbled up the young maid when they found her... and she woke up fully alive a few days later. She found herself in possession of a Gumm-gumm general named Borel, and he was quick to use her Life Magic to grow his squad into one of the largest the tribe had ever seen. Not content with just being a glorified brood mother, Alora trained herself in her weapon summoning to fight alongside her general. It took three hundred years for her to find the craft that suited her best, but she was never brought into the limelight. Eventually, Borel lost interest and use of her, and tossed her aside (she doesn’t talk about this moment. Ever.). Alora wandered the lands before Killahead as a loose canon, with only the desire to kill all humans she finds. She was discovered by Nadia, who tried to give her a second chance to live the life she wanted, but Alora resisted. However, she was talked into fighting the War of Killahead on the Trollhunter’s side, to take revenge against Borel. She succeeded, and when the war ended, she decided she had enough of trolls for a lifetime. Her travels eventually took her to California, where she roamed the beaches peacefully to relax and discover herself. She AVOIDS Arcadia if she can, as Trollmarket still regards her as a Gumm-gumm.

Name: Isabow

Age: Over a thousand

Description: Shoulder length, curly red hair, bright green eyes. Freckled skin. The tallest sister. Wears airy, loose clothing, no shoes. Always smiling.

Powers/Abilities: Can manipulate any plantlife to do what she wants (grow big, grow small, grow en mass, gain sentience, attack, defend, help to flee). Can understand any spoken language (something about how everyone’s heart speaks the same language). Exceptional singing voice. Some supernatural creatures describe a pull to her as if entranced by her pure spirit. As a Shard, she possesses Life Magic, where she can create sentient life with another’s soul. Immortal.

Personality: Isabow is always cheerful and looks to the bright side, not wanting anyone to be blue or stressed. She’s sensitive to other’s emotional needs and seems to know what to say or do to put them at ease. Always wants to find the good in others, no matter how terrible or evil they are. She’s also a lovesick thot who is up for almost anything that anyone wants. A true pacifist, the last thing she wants to do is fight anyone for any reason.

Weaknesses: As a Shard, her powers are tied to her physical stamina; she will lose her abilities when exhausted. “So full of love,” she tends to get a huge crush on almost everyone she lays eyes on. Isabow is VERY stupid, and doesn’t understand much of the world (though she has strong emotional intelligence). She refuses to fight, and would rather let herself get injured than raise a bad hand to anyone. Easily tricked and manipulated, very trusting and wants nothing more than to see that everyone, no matter how bad, can be good.

Background: Isabow was abandoned in the woods to die right after being born. She was found by that forest’s guardian after death... and resurrection. Isabow grew and blossomed in power, and her empathy drew many to her. After three hundred years, she had made a glen for herself and those who grew entranced with her. In fact, her neck of the woods was feared by outsiders, since “those who ventured in never returned”. (They were happily living with Isabow as her giant family/harem.) It didn’t take long for her sanctuary to be discovered by Gumm-gumms, who were mind wiped by Gunmar and immune to her aura and charms. Even with her home destroyed, she refused to fight. It was Elisi who persuaded Isabow to make a forest near a battlesite to protect friendly troops and keep the bad troops from escaping: and Isabow herself grew Killahead Forest in one week. It left her exhausted, but she also agreed to try and protect the Trollhunter and use her Life Magic to make an army for him. From the trees, she watched the destruction and death, and it broke her. After the war, she made a new glen within Killahead Forest and stayed there for many centuries. Lately, she’s been brave enough to venture out and see what the world is like.

#profile page #Alora Darren #Elisi #Isabow

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precioustinkie · 5 years

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Gravity Falls

Name: Majority "Dollie" Pines

Age: 11-12 {Canon} 16-17 {Older}

SO: Bisexual

Gender: Female

Hair Color: Brown

Hair Style: Has bangs like Dipper but is down like Mabel

Hair Length: Neck Length

Eye Color: Brown

OutFit: Thumbhole hoodie with a needle and a thread shaped like a music note and a skirt with shorts underneath. Under her hoodie she has a black and white tank top

Likes: >Singing >Walking in the woods >Science >Family >Friends >Dancing > Being Alone

Dislikes < Stalkers <Being Forced To Do Things <Talking <Dresses

Personality: Dollie is a mixture of Dipper and Mabel at times. She can be very nerdy like Dipper when it comes to games, science and entertainment and also outgoing and perky like Mabel but it is very rare that you see it. Dollie is mostly timid, shy and scared and feels out of place.

Realtionships:

Dipper: Dipper is overprotective of Dollie and makes sure she is always safe for being the big brother. Before she was adopted, Dipper had a huge crush on her that slowly went away in due time but there are still some signs of his crush still there. Dipper goes to either Ford or Dollie when it comes to the supernatural but mostly Dollie for how she seems to be an expert in these things. Dollie cares for Dipper and happy that she has him as a big brother but is also worried for his concern on the mysteries of Gravity Falls getting to out of hand and dangerous.

Mabel: Mabel does her very best to try and get Dollie out of her comfort zone to the point where Mabel will step out of boundries. Mabel always wanted a little sister and was so happy that Dollie was adopted but wishes that Dollie would come to her for girl troubles instead of Wendy. Dollie loves Mable with all her heart but gets annoyed at how she would force her to do things that she is not interested in like: make-up and boys.

Grunkle Stan: Stan isn't as hard on Dollie like he is on Dipper and a little more caring to her than Mabel but that doesn't mean he isn't hard on her. Stan tries to teach Dollie to toughen up, stick up for herself and to understand that she is safe. Stan also doesn't want her to be like Ford when it comes to being trapped alone for several hours and an accident happens where he loses her too. Dollie is appreciative of what Grunkle Stan is doing but is also annoyed at his criminal tendencies.

Great Uncle Ford: Ford sees potential in Dollie seeing her as a science wiz and how she could make the world a better place. Like Dipper, Ford offered her an apprenticeship to work under him and she is thinking of considering it. Dollie was surprised and happy that there is someone in the family who almost understands how she feels. She would go to Ford to help and to rant about the family.

Soos: If anyone can make Dollie feel better and laugh its Soos. Soos does his best to cheer Dollie up by talking about games and anime. Dollie loves Soos's company no matter what and just loves the goofball and is always excited to play games and watch anime with him.

Wendy: Wendy looks at Dollie like a little sister and helps her relax. Dollie would always come to Wendy to talk and to really just vent out her thoughts as Wendy would give her advice and vise versa. Wendy is also the first person to hear Dollie sing and encourages her to sing more. Dollie cares a great amount for Wendy and sees her as a role model.

Robbie: Robbie doesn't really care for Dollie seeing her as another kid who irritates him but as time goes by he starts to talk to her about Wendy and start to develop this brother/sister relationship. Dollie sees Robbie as someone she can relate to.

Pacifica: Pacifica mocks Dollie talking about what her voice will sound like if she were to ever speak and mocks her for being the "different oddball" in the family. Pacifica mostly dislikes Dollie for how when she thought she beat Mabel for the singing contest it turns out that another voice [which was Dollie hiding away from the crowd] put her in her place and Pacifica felt embarrassed and realized/believed that the only person in the pines triplets who could have done it would be Dollie. When the events of Northwest Manor happened and Dipper told Pacifica Dollie's past, she felt awful. Dollie feels pity towards Pacifica but also rage on how she treats her family.

Gidieon: Like Pacifica Gidieon loves to mock Dollie seeing her as weak and always love to compare her to Mabel. He would always point out her flaws and sees her as an easy target but later in time starts to feel bad. Dollie dislikes Gidieon because he is a stalker but she is scared that he would be like her past and something similar would happen to Mabel just like it did to her.

Grenda & Candy: Grenda and Candy gets a along with Dollie helping Mabel out with her comfort zone. Dollie sees them as great acquaintances.

Old Man McGucket: Dollie feels bad for McGucket wishing she could of made a machine or device to help keeps his mind stable but is very grateful for his determination and perseverance.

Bill: Bill sees Dollie as an amusing human being, unlike Dipper and Mabel, Bill could not trick Dollie for some how she would always outwit him, only making Bill up for the challenge and have big plans for her. Dollie is afriad of Bill but also worried more so of what Bill's plans are for her.

Waddles:...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................LOVES HER ENOUGH SAID *^*!!!!!

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phoenix1966sbottom · 6 years

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Stories where Jared (and a few Sam Wesson AUs) is a ghost or around them. I’m sticking to Jared (and AU Sam), since Sam Winchester is often around them. Given the nature of the rec, please be aware there are death fics in this lot. As always, heed the warnings where the stories are posted!

J2 AU

Shadow of Doubt by saucyminx on Ao3. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. Jared sees spirits. It's something that he's learned to live with in a rather dysfunctional way - that is - until the next spirit to visit him is one he knows. Detective Ackles might be the one person who can help him. (no penetrative sex)

A Cottage With A Sea View by Tempestquill on LiveJournal. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. In 1993 Jared Padalecki inherits a cottage with a sea view on Santa Rosa Island, just off of the California coastline. 2008, jaded actor Jensen Ackles buys a beach house on a small island off of the California coastline from his therapist to escape the frenzy that his life has become after a recent scandal. See how the lives of these two men collide...

The Darkest Things I’ve Seen by anyothergirl415 on Ao3. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. Jared sees ghosts and has a hard time coping.

A Ghost in Your Garden by dimeliora on Ao3. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. A very loosely based AU of Season One of American Horror Story, Romcom style. Jensen has suffered an accident, and moves into a new home as a form of occupational and geographical therapy. He's surprised on arrival to find that his house is haunted and that his relationship is more damaged than he imagined. Luckily his new neighbor Jared is there to help him deal with the mysteries of his new home, and pick up the pieces of his broken life

Giving Up the Ghost by dimpleforyourthoughts on Ao3. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. Since his parents’ divorce, Jensen Ackles has just about given up on the living. Moving from town to town with his Mom and Sister, his only solace has been found in music, and ignoring pretty much everything else. The latest move to a massive plantation home in Louisiana feels like a dream come true: he'll have all the space and privacy he's ever wanted. But there's something--someone--else living in the house. And they're absolutely bent on making Jensen's peace and quiet a living hell. Jensen's just a moody teenager who wants to be left alone. And Jared is the lonely ghost that haunts his bedroom. Determined to get rid of the pesky poltergeist, Jensen makes it his mission to get Jared to move on from this earth. But the more time they spend searching for Jared's way to cross over, the more Jensen is discovering that Jared might be one of the few people on this earth--living and dead--that he might want to keep around.

Soundproof Box by orphan_account on Ao3. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. After Jared's mother dies, he buys an old, old house far away from his childhood home. Alone and introverted, always thought to be too weird, the ghost living in the house is Jared's only company. Jared doesn't exactly mind -- turns out Jensen is just as weird, if not weirder. Oh, Jared likes him.

The Crying Boy by etoile_etoilee on Ao3. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. Jensen Ackles' journalist career has hit an all-time low. He's ready to jump on whatever story that could make an interesting article. Come along student-journalist Jared Padalecki, who might have found a legitimate haunted house. (no penetrative sex)

Breaking Free by MorganaDW on Ao3. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. Jensen Ackles is a psychologist who breaks free of his old life to hunt ghosts in a small New England town. When he finds out that his new home is actually haunted by the cursed spirit of a young Puritan man he becomes determined to help free him from the torment and pain that has kept him trapped.Jared Padalecki has long since given up hope of ever being freed from the curse that’s held him prisoner for over 300 years. He lives in fear of the old evil that originally cursed and abused him and knows there’s no hope or freedom for him.When Jensen’s arrival starts an unexpected chain of events that brings hope back to Jared, he also begins to learn more about himself and the lies and guilt he was told three centuries earlier that makes him long for a life that he was never allowed to have.As the pair struggle to break the curse they will soon discover that it’s not only the power of the evil witch that still seeks to hold Jared captive they’ll have to face and overcome but feelings that Jensen wasn’t expecting and Jared doesn’t fully understand.

Ghost Sex by Anon on Spn-blindfold. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. From the prompt: Jensen is a spirit haunting Jared. Every night Jensen fucks Jared to exhaustion, but the sex is the best that Jared has ever had. The longer that it goes on the more isolated that Jared becomes - Jared doesn't want to leave Jensen and Jensen doesn't like Jared away from him. Jared's friends don't know how to save him.

High Spirits by Blueeyedliz on LiveJournal. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. Jensen is engaged to Danneel but when they take a weekend break together at an old - supposedly haunted - hotel in Texas, Jensen meets someone who turns his life upside down and steals his heart. This story is a J2 retelling of the 1988 film ‘High Spirits’.

The Lengths I Would Go To by insertcode11. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. The author deleted her journal but allows her work to be shared. Jared runs a matchmaking business and Jensen is looking for a date.

In My Thoughts… by spn_j2fan on A03. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. Jensen just wanted to be a father and a husband. He never pictured himself a serial killer. (warning: Implied but not described that Jared tops once)

First Days Gone by insertcode11. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. Jared and Jensen are soldiers in WW1. The author has deleted their work but allows sharing. The story is one of many in the file. I have said it before and I’ll say it again…run, don’t walk to download this author’s work. It is amazing and almost all bottom!Sam/Jared!

Because Ghosts by indiachick on Ao3. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. Jared's had a terrible summer, what with all the hereditary insanity, possible hauntings, and Jensen.

Haunted Houses are Love by tigbit on Ao3. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. Jared moves into a haunted house. He takes it in stride. (no penetrative sex)

Don’t Even Fix a Price by cleflink on Ao3. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. Heroes sure have changed since Jensen became the ferryman of the dead. (no penetrative sex)

Paranormal 101 by dugindeep on Ao3. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. There are currently 19 paranormal TV shows broadcast across the world, and the Paranormal National Investigators of the Supernatural are no different. Led by Jensen Ackles, the show is a staple on the Travel Channel and of Jared’s TV (and masturbatory) habits. When there’s an opening in the crew, Jared jumps for the chance to join his ghost-hunting heroes. It’s not an easy transition into the cocky gang of paranormal experts, but Jared manages to find his way, and prove what he’s believed all along: ghosts are real. (no penetrative sex. Warning: Jared rims Jensen)

The Lost by Phoenix1966 (me) on Ao3. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. Big screen star Jensen Ackles was on his way to Brazil to continue filming his latest project. He was glad to lose himself in the role and bury the pain of his broken heart by slipping on a stranger’s skin. Because of his manager’s twisted attempt to help, he found himself on a private jet with a high-class rent boy. Before he could figure out what to do with that, a bolt of lightning sent them tumbling into the rainforest.With them believing there were no other survivors, Jensen has to figure how to get them back to civilization. It was a good thing he was as strong and capable as the leading men he portrayed on screen, because how much help could an expensive hooker really be in the middle of the Amazon?

Cheyenne by Magser on mediafire. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. An actor looking to hide, a quaint cabin by a beautiful lake and an old ghost story... (no penetrative sex)

Here Burns a Candle Out by erushi on LiveJournal. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. WWI steampunk AU. Aeronaut and part-time spy Jensen Ackles has every intention of leaving the spy service after his last job in Europe during the Great War ends poorly. Instead, he finds himself sent to a resort outside the city to recuperate, where he meets Jared, an eccentric ghost hunter who is determined to unlock the secrets of a nearby haunted house. Unfortunately for Jensen, things at the resort aren't quite what they seem, and when matters take a sinister turn, Jensen discovers just how impossible it is for anyone to truly ever leave the world of espionage. (no penetrative sex, but Jared seems the more forward/dominant of the pair)

Heaven’s Just A Sin Away by jeyhawk on LiveJournal. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. Jared is a medium and Jensen a ghost...and the sequel And Her Lips Were Cherry Red. After separating from his lover of five years, psychic Jared Padalecki finds himself at loss for what to do, but a plea from help from the FBI turns his life around and soon Jared and his estranged lover find themselves knee-deep in mystery, murders and ghosts with a very real threat towards their lives hanging over their heads. Can they unravel the truth before it's too late, or will their separation turn out to be of the terminal kind? (warning: although there is no penetrative sex onscreen, it is heavily implied they switch.)

Stigmata by Jenshih_Blue on A03. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. Jared Padalecki is a tattoo artist in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania living a carefree party life until a twist of fate makes him a messenger of God-a God he wants no part of nor believes in either. Father Jensen Ackles is a priest and a scientist, who after years of disproving miracles across the world is jaded. When their worlds clash, they find themselves faced with a truth that will either destroy them or unite them in a way neither expected.

Song of the Reaper by Jenshih_Blue on Ao3. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. Private detective Jensen Ackles is a cynic and believes he's seen the worst humanity has to offer until one night a dark haired beauty by the name of Genevieve walks into his office. The job, discover the truth behind the death of her fiancé Jared Padalecki, a local artist. The cops have labeled it a suicide, case closed, but she refuses to believe it. As Jensen digs into her fiancés mysterious past, he finds himself drawn into a world darker than he imagined, a world leading to a path of emotional self-destruction. After all—how can you fall in love with a dead man? (warning: although bottom!Jared onscreen, Jensen thinks about bottoming)

Haven’t Met You Yet by sandymg on Ao3. Jared/Jensen. J2 AU. After an unsettling break-up with his lover, well-known horror writer Jared Padalecki has settled into the quiet and privacy of his new home. Except he's developing an obsession about the visitor in his garden who feels like someone Jared has been waiting for his whole life. Trouble is, the man he wants to meet lives in a world where Jared hasn't even been born. (no penetrative sex, ambiguous who tops and bottoms)

Wincest AU

Crimson Peak by TwoBoys2Love on Ao3. Sam/Dean. Wincest AU. In the aftermath of a series of family tragedies, Sam Wesson finds himself swept off his feet by the debonair Baronet Dean Winchester. When he arrives at his new home he discovers a place with far too many memories and spirits. Things are not at all what they seem and Sam finds himself struggling to stay alive. Based on the Del Toro film: Crimson Peak.

Uninvited by TwoBoys2Love on Ao3. Sam/Dean. Wincest AU. Sam buys a new house. All is going well until strange things begin to happen. This brings a strange man into his life and together they fight what is inhabiting Sam's home.

Can’t Take the Sky by saucyminx on Ao3. Sam/Dean. Unrelated wincest. Sam’s brought to yet another foster home but this time he finds a friend. Of course, he also finds an enemy and something other-worldy he wasn’t quite prepared to accept.

Love Make Monsters by riyku on Ao3. Sam/Dean. Wincest. Sam’s sure of only two things in this world. A Crimson Peak Au.

#fanfic rec #bottom!jared #bottom!sam #ghosts #j2 au #wincest au #deathfic #unrelated wincest #wincest

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kaiden-bailey · 5 years

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this is my new boy kaiden and he’s trash<3 pls love him

tw: abuse

PAST:

kaiden has been in beacon hills since the day he was born and has grown to hate it more and more as time goes by. His parents are junkies - more interested in partying than taking care of him - but he supposes he can only be thankful that they keep paying the rent. he certainly isn’t thankful for the constant emotional and physical abuse that he suffers at their doing.

he doesn’t spend much time at home - only really to shower and sleep - and he can usually be found at his part-time job doing landscaping and gardening. that is, if he’s not somewhere getting up to trouble. as long as he finds some way to pay for cigarettes and beer, he’s not picky about missing out on working hours.

although he manages to make it to school at least four times a week, kaiden has never been interested in doing the work it takes to get anything higher than a C. that’s not to say he’s not intelligent - in fact most that meet him would go at length to disprove the claim - but what he lacks is the motivation to try. growing up with parents like his, in a town like beacon hills, killed any hope for a fruitful future long ago.

kaiden doesn’t have all the facts, but he’s always been aware of the strange things that go on around beacon hills. things go bump in the night, people go missing under strange circumstances, and Scott McCall was definitely a fucking werewolf. he knew it sounded insane - maybe that’s why the rest of the humans in beacon hills had stayed ignorant for so long - but he couldn’t bear to let the supernatural side of his town get him down. he survived on his knowledge of the supernatural - however many holes he might have in his logic.

he had always made it through to tomorrow by hiding and staying on his toes, but it wasn’t until the horsemen came to terrorize beacon hills that kaiden finally had to stand up to the monsters firsthand. He found a weapon and he learned how to use it - he learned everything he could about the horsemen. kaiden protected his parents, and countless strangers; he fought to keep his own life as hard as he could. It opened up the doors to a whole new world of mind-fuck that he couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

ever since the horsemen left, kaiden has been on his toes, preparing for the next attack. he has hideouts - he has weapons. he spends every spare moment working out and learning more about the spooky things that stirred around beacon hills. he craved knowledge; he craved survival, and he always had. kaiden would be damned if he let himself die before he could get out from under his parents thumb.

PERSONALITY:

Kaiden would be lying if he said he knew what it was like to be truly cared for - to truly care for someone else. His parents never wanted him, and if he had other family he had never met them. He convinced himself day after day that he was content being lonely - but as he got older, it was hard not to notice everyone around him begin to find friend groups; partners. Some of them even found family. Kaiden may have a hard exterior - he may be too fuckin’ loud and know nothing about social graces - but there’s still a part of him that craves closeness. A part of him that desperately wonders what it might be like to love someone - to miss someone. After going toe to toe with the horsemen and laying down his life for strangers, he’s gotten more confident about trying to make friends - even if he just seems to push most away.

#bio

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ketzwrites · 5 years

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Rewatch 102: The Descent Into Hell Isn’t Easy

Written by Ed Decter (story) & Hollie Overton (teleplay) | Directed by Mick Garris

This is a poorly written episode. It feels like a filler rather than an episode: it exists only so Clary can find out Valentine is her father. Something Hodge could’ve told her in the first act.

The consequence is that the characters run in circles and make nonsensical decisions to stretch out the storyline into implausible lengths.

General Notes

The biggest problem with this episode is that the dialogues and actions don’t make sense. For example, Jace says Clary isn’t safe outside the Institute alone. But Alec wants to keep Clary in the Institute, not let her go on her own. This isn’t a logical conversation. Also, they are both acting as if Clary will get out no matter what, as if the Institute doesn’t have ways to just lock Clary inside, where she is safe. Like a holding cell or a room with a lock rune around it.

It’s not that the episode absolutely lacks good writing. Jace and Clary brainstorming and Jace coming to the conclusion that Clary’s memories were stolen works perfectly. But it all goes downhill from there.

Another thing that doesn’t make sense is the shadowhunters going to the Silent Brothers. None of the three highly trained shadowhunters present considers going to the High Warlock to get rid of a warlock-casted spell. They do not know Magnus went into hiding. That should be their first option before going to the Silent Brothers - a shadowhunter institution - while breaking the Clave’s orders - another shadowhunter institution.

But, all right, say they go to the Silent Brothers first because shadowhunters trust shadowhunters more than downworlders. Then, another problem arises. Alec thinks Clary is her father’s spy pretending to be a helpless girl in search of the Mortal Cup. It’s a fair assumption even though we know he’s wrong. But then, Clary’s answer is listing all the bad things that have happened to her. Alec should never have been shut down by that. A spy would have a sob story to gain sympathy. If only they had a way to know beyond doubt that Clary is telling the truth- Oh, yeah. The truth-compelling Soul Sword is right there.

But alas, Clary has made her choice between the Shadow and Mundane Worlds. She is now a shadowhunter. Throughout the episode, Clary chooses Jace (Shadow World) over Simon (Mundane World). But this decision comes too quickly. It’s hard to swallow how okay she is with that idea after what happened in the first episode. The explanation that Clary always felt something was missing and now she’s found it notwithstanding (see: The Bad)

Again, Clary makes it clear. “I don’t care about your rules or what is forbidden.” But when offered the opportunity to leave the Shadow World, she doesn’t go. She wants to stay and be a part of it, but only as far as it helps her find her mother. Clary wants to eat her cake and have it too.

It’s convenient how Hodge doesn’t tell Clary about Jocelyn and Valentine being married. We need to stretch that secret for the whole episode, or we won’t make it to the 40-minute mark.

Why would the shadowhunters system even have a restricted file on Jocelyn “Fray”? For all that they know, she’s Jocelyn Fairchild or Jocelyn Morgenstern. Jocelyn used “Fray” to hide from the Clave; if they know about that, they could have found her.

Alec tells the Clave about Clary. As of episode two, the orders are to keep Clary in the Institute. Whatever happens next that isn’t that consists in Alec, Jace, and Izzy explicitly disobeying Clave’s orders.

The Good

Jace might be acting like a jerk to Simon, but he makes a point of warning him against Izzy’s cooking twice. It’s silly but that’s Jace in a nutshell: tough exterior hiding a soft heart.

Good for the show not to shy away from a male figure (Luke) fighting a female figure (Midori – Circle Member). In a world of supernatural beings, gender means nothing in terms of physical prowess.

We get the tiniest bit of complicity between Alec and Jace with the joke about the runes being lethal to Simon. Good. Show us they are friends and they enjoy each other’s company.

The Bad

The justification for Clary accepting the Shadow World with ease doesn’t convince me. Never once did I see Clary longing for adventure or something fantastical to happen in her mundane life. In fact, she refused and fled every time something extraordinary happened. I do not believe she was missing this part of her life at all.

Simon’s interest in Clary loses believability as he ditches her for the new hot girl. I no longer feel bad for Simon when Clary chooses Jace instead of him. Also, Simon has an older sister. Why would he compare himself to Alec, the oldest brother, when Izzy says “firstborn; heavy is the head that wears the crown”?

Why does Hodge look barely older than Alec and Jace? They went with an actor ten years younger than the rest of the adult shadowhunters (and didn’t age him as they did with Nicola - playing the severe and professional looking, Maryse). It’s confusing, especially since Hodge refers to Jocelyn as his best friend.

Shadowhunters has a tendency to go for badass lines in detriment of characterization. In the same episode Clary reacts to Jace’s suggestion that Dot might be working for Valentine with the sassy cold line “even better, she’ll lead us right to him” but then is distressed when Dot is taken by the Circle Members. Does she trust and care for Dot or not?

“Is this the least revealing thing you own?” It’s a top and pants. Clary was admiring much more revealing top just a few days ago. What’s up with the mismatched criticizing of Izzy’s clothes??

Why does Magnus have glitter on his forehead? No, seriously. Why?

The Interesting

Izzy doesn’t act like a human being around Simon. She is too alluring, like she is performing instead of just being. Izzy doesn’t think she’s ever going to see him again, so she’s having fun with him before it is time to discard him. That sort of aloofness gives the vampires a chance to kidnap him.

Jace says that “no training and no planning gets you killed”. He then proceeds to go along with Clary’s spur of the moment decisions for the rest of the season.

I get why Dot wouldn’t trust Luke. He was once Valentine’s Parabatai, he only quit the Circle after being turned into a werewolf, and, even as werewolf, he isn’t a part of any packs. But why would Luke distrust Dot?

22:48: Alec is worried about Clary’s safety, about the repercussions of what they are doing for all of them. He is thinking rationally about it and ignoring the emotional needs of everyone around him. Jace is willing to risk Clary’s safety to find the Mortal Cup before Valentine does because Jace sees himself in Clary and he would be willing to get hurt in order to find answers. He is focusing only on her emotional need instead of the real-life repercussions of what they are doing. This is a “mind versus heart” dilemma.

Jace and Clary cute flirting before entering the City of Bones is cute. Inside the City of Bones? Not so much. It is one thing to flirt over Jace’s personality; Clary and Jace are equal in understanding those. It is another thing to flirt over the Shadow World; Jace is the authority there and if he is not telling Clary how things really are, he is shaping her understanding to his liking. Here it’s harmless and Jace does tell her the real meaning of things, but the tendency isn’t as romantic as the writers think it is.

“No more ‘I’m sorry’s. You’re a shadowhunter now” and shadowhunters don’t make mistakes or aren’t held responsible when they do. Question him, Clary! This world view is wrong.

#ketz rewatches shadowhunters #sh 201 #sh meta #this is a poorly written episode #and it feels like a filler

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