#...and while i read aloud his dialogues...
DPXDC Prompt. Dead on main with priest Jason: Father Todd brings the Ghost King’s cult into the World of the Living.
So, when Jason dies and returns, the League of Assassins fails to hold him for long because spirits from Far Frozen pick him up after seeing teen through the Lazarus pit.
Jason quickly realizes that, well, they’re kinda obsessed with their cult of the Great One. And yeah the cult of the ruling Ghost King was very popular during the reign of the Pariah Dark but back then the rituals were carried out more out of fear. Now things are different. The population of the Ghost Zone has become interested in the activities of Frostbite and his loyal spirits because of an attempt to understand what kind of ghost the new ruler is and how best to thank and appease him. So Jason had no shortage of stories about the teenager's deeds.
~~~~
Jason to Frostbite: Well, you guys and your lil hobby are nice but I don't understand at all what's so cool about this guy, even if he defeated Pariah Dark and gets along with most of the Ancients…
Danny: *comes to visit Frostbite*, *slips and falls three times, sets the kitchen on fire in an attempt to make coffee then sheepishly smiles at Jason*.
Jason to Frostbite: ... Okay, Understandable, I Hope Danny Has a Nice Day and Some Sleep.
Tucker: Congratulations, you've acquired another Paulina. Great job.
Danny: I'd rather he just asked me out instead of worshipping me. What the hell? I'm just a semi-ghost.
Tucker: Maybe things would be easier if you just gave him your phone number, you know?
Danny: But he didn't ask.
Tucker: Why didn't you ask?
Danny: I couldn't! He's Robin himself, you know?
Tucker: Well, good luck to you idiots to grow old alone near the altars of each other's name.
Danny: Actually lil altar in his honor is not such a bad idea. Maybe this way he'll understand that I like him too..
Tucker: Danny, no!
~~~~
New in Gotham robbers break into Jason's place: Hey, father, God ordered you to share with your neighbors, so bring us some money or we..
Jason, who is talking on the phone with Danny: In fact, he just said that if you don't get out of here now, he will turn a blind eye to the fact that I will use my guns.
Danny*screams internally*: Oh Ancients, he's sooo cool!
Pandora: Honey, we're happy for you but stop flooding us with spam. You have already told 5 times during prayer how good his abs and chest look and how perfect Todd is when he reads aloud. We get it, okay?
Clockwork: Well, I actually enjoy it. It's so much more interesting to watch while listening to the internal dialogue. Show must go on~
Danny: ...Get out of my mind!
Nocturn: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lords in vain if you don't want to share with us, lil blob. So rude.
~~~Team Song: You Are My Religion · Firehouse~~~~
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a/n: hi fellas, i have hypersomnia, which basically just means i fall asleep a lot so here’s the brothers with a very sleepy mc.
At first, the brothers are kind of confused. Demons don’t need as much sleep as humans and they’re baffled by your excessive sleeping. Do all humans sleep so much? Why are you always flaring your teeth at them? (They later learn that this is called yawning.)
Lucifer initially thinks you’re lazy and it honestly bothers him. Simultaneously you remind him of a certain brother, so he also lets many things you do slide. He'll just sigh when you fall asleep 45 minutes into one of his lectures. “I think they understood my point,” he says, before turning to Mammon and continuing his lesson for a good two hours. As you get closer, he understands that you aren't lazy and he even lets you sleep in his office at R.A.D. whenever you need it.
One late evening you trudge into his office, blanket in hand. He looks at you with a raised brow. "Bed, now. You haven't slept properly in like 3 days," you say, while pointing your finger threateningly at him. Much to his own surprise, he finds himself in his bed with you snuggling into his side. He supposes you kind of complete each other in that way, where he sleeps too little, you sleep too much.
The first time you fall asleep during one of your hangouts with Mammon he’s annoyed. He lets you sleep it out because you just look too cute when you’re sleeping, but when you wake up he’s crossing his arms and pouting. “Am I really that boring, huh?” Luckily, we all know the great Mammon can never stay mad with you for too long, so he warms up to you again within an hour or so. If you want you can always speed up the process significantly by giving him kisses or a big hug. It works every single time.
Once he realizes you don’t fall asleep because of him, but because you’re just so damn tired, he stops getting bothered by it. Instead, he just tugs you in, covering you in blankets. He'll even scold his brothers if they're being too loud around you. This just causes them to make fun of him, but always at a lower noise level.
Leviathan is also hurt at first, especially because you fell asleep during an anime marathon. He’s a bit harder to make happy again. He’s absolutely convinced it has something to do with him. No matter how many times you tell him he doesn’t believe you until one day when you fall asleep in the middle of a conversation with Mammon. The sight makes him laugh so hard, he almost falls over.
After that, he doesn’t mind anymore. After all, if you fall asleep around Mammon, then it's probably you who's the problem, not him. He lets you sleep with your head in his lap. He’ll even tread his fingers through your hair, but he’ll never admit that to you when you’re awake. Once you wake up again he’s happy to give you a recap of what you missed in the episode, plus an analysis of the dialogue and the hidden meanings of certain scenes.
Satan doesn’t mind at first, because he likes how it bothers Lucifer. He even helps you get away with it. When you fall asleep during class, he’ll put a book in front of you so the teacher can’t see and he’ll answer the question for you if you’re called on. He even begins to write notes for you. Later it just becomes a habit of his, he does it for you without thinking.
If he’s reading aloud for you and you fall asleep, a smile will tug at his lips and he’ll just continue reading for you. Because of you, he begins researching human sleeping patterns. After he reads that certain foods can make you more energized, he begins to carry fruits and nuts with him, which he offers you whenever you get sleepy.
Asmodeus thinks beauty sleep is very important. It’s only natural that someone as beautiful as you should sleep a lot. Besides that, he’s probably the one who wakes you up from your sleep the most. Too much sleep can be bad for you as well! Besides that, he can't wait for you to wake up to share the insane gossip he just heard. You need to hear it now!
Like with Lucifer, you remind Beelzebub of Belphegor. A lot. His chest hurts when he finds you sleeping in the living room and he carries you to bed. When you fall asleep on his shoulder, he pats your head. He likes just looking at you when you sleep. Not in a creepy way, you just look so peaceful. It soothes the ache in his chest.
If you get too tired while you're out on a trip or assignment, Beel will often offer to piggyback you. Beel is a big guy, he could carry Diavolo around if he wanted to. With you on his back, he barely even registers your weight. His arms hook around your legs and sometimes his fingers will dig into your thighs. He likes the way you wrap your arms around his neck and the way he can feel your breath on his ear, while you whisper things to him. Most of all he likes when you fall asleep and he can hear your soft breathing.
Once you become friends with Belphegor, he’s excited to have a sleeping buddy. You come up to the attic to have your midday nap with him and he immediately opens his arms for you. “I’m serious, Belphie, only one hour,” you say, while setting the alarm on your D.D.D. “You know I can’t sleep for any longer than that.” Belphegor just nods sleepily and traps you in his arms. Once you're asleep, he grabs your phone and turns off the alarm.
When Beel comes to wake you up, saying it’s time for dinner, Belphie just laughs when you slap him lightly and complain that you slept for three hours. After that, you refuse to nap with him anymore until he swears that he won’t mess with your alarm again.
One time you mentioned that you have a hard time waking up in the mornings. The constant night of the Devildom is really messing with your brain. That very same day, a new bed lamp is ordered for you. One of those that imitate the sunrise in the morning, slowly lighting up your room as you wake up. You’re a lot more energetic in the mornings after that, a sight that makes all of the brothers smile your way at breakfast.
thanks for reading! you can find my other stuff here. <3
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Merc With A Mouth Meets Sexy Men
Tf 141 x Deadpool!Male reader
Summary: Watch as the the Task Force captures yours truly and gets me the join them. Damn that Captain has some rizz in him.
Disclaimer- There will be dialogue from the movies and comics
Females She/Her and She/They DNI
M/n was seated on the highway railing while doing some art. He kicked his legs back and forth, he looked like a child.
"Hey I don't look like a child!" The male said while turning his attention the
"Oh.. .Oh well hello! I know right, who’s balls did I have to fondle to be here?” M/n said as he chuckled.
"Can’t say it, but.....it does rhyme with polverine.” I said as I look back over at the traffic.
“I do at the moment have places to be, a face to fix, and oooooh!” I said as I looked at the oncoming vehicle. “Bad guys to kill!” The man in red in black said as he stood.
“Maximum effort!” The masked male said as he jumped off the railing and into the sun roof of the car. Off the bat one guy tried to shoot him but I headbutted him. I grabbed his face and slammed it into the window behind him. My boot collided with the guy in the fronts face.
“Cock shot!” I said as I hit another guy in the balls. I threw one of the guys out of the trunk and I heard him screaming, funny. I leaned to the front and I pulled out a piece of paper, as he turned to face me as I said.
“Have you seen this man.” The photo contained a beautiful drawing by yours truly. The guy grabbed my head before slamming it into the radio.
“Ow...ow....ow”
“Ok time to cause some trouble.” I muttered to myself as I grabbed the guys wrist
(Pov switch)
“A little bit further.” Price instructed as the team made their way down the highway. The ride had been going smoothly, but the traffic build up only made the eldest a bit frustrated.
"What the hell..." Gaz said as he looked up at a car go up in the air, a motorcyclists being given a wedgie. It felt like time slowed as the others looked with wide eyes. The cars ahead of them swerved in order to not be part of the accident. Gaz did the same thing for the same reason and Ghost grunted. The four of them got out the car and watched as the men in black who were still standing pointed their guns at a car.
"What the hell is goin on here?" Soap asked as someone popped their head out of the car.
"Hey!" The voice said as the man said as he immediately had gunshots thrown at him.
"Wait-hold up, you may be wondering why the red suit. Well thats so bad guys don't see me bleed." The man explained as Gaz couldn't help but chuckle at the comment.
"That guys got the right idea, he wore the brown pants!" The man pointed at the man in question which led to more gunfire.
"Ok-fine! I only have 12 bullets so your gonna have to share!." Price grabbed his gun in case things got worse.
"Hold on didn't Laswell say that there was a guy that we had to look for." Gaz asked as Price ducked under a car due to the bullets being sent towards them. Price pulled out the small paper that Laswell had given them which had a short description on the guy they've been looking for.
"M/n L/n...ex Special Forces and dishonorable discharge." Price read aloud as the others gave each other a look. Soap looked at the paper that had a small picture of what the man looked like, well it wasn't a picture of his face but it was what he wore. The same man that was currently wreaking havoc was the guy that they had been sent to look for....Again
“We’re seriously being sent after this this prick again.” Soap muttered to himself, disappointed that they were going after the same guy.
The bridge was silent at this point as the mans voice boomed threw the silence.
"Oh Francis!~" The man said happily as he bumped the car door with his hip as he skipped over to the man who had a katana lodged into his shoulder. The male flicked the grip on the blade and watched it wiggle.
"Now i'm about to show you what did to music in the late 90’s” I reeled my arm back but my hand touched something hard. I touched around it before realizing.
“Dad?” I asked only for whover this giant was to lift me up and throw me over his shoulder.
“Well this isn’t the family reunion I hoped for.” I said teasingly as I eyed the two buns that were in my face. My intrusive thoughts are telling me to just.
“Hehe. Nice ass you got there buddy, seems like somebody’s been doing their squats.” I said as the man grunted before he begsn walking.
“H-hey! What are you doing I need answers from him.” I said while pointing at the man who fucked up my face.
“Shut up your annoying.” The big guy told me with a....British accent. Thats hot. Damnit Francis gonna get away now i’ll have to get another plan.
Timeskip
Thud
Thud
Thud
“Can you stop!” Price yelled, getting tired of the mercs constant headbanging on the table. The man in red and black squinted at the older man before sighing dramatically.
“Come on sugar you’re boring me here. Can’t we do something fun.” I asked as the man huffed at my comment.
“Hey, you and your guys are the ones who chose to take me... again....you can’t get mad at me.” I said defensive as the man sighed. Price looked at me with a deadpanned expression.
“M/n....we’ve come up with a proposal. Join the Task Force, it would be good for you.” Price said to me as I sighed out of boredom. Can this dilf stop with this same dialogue. At this rate his voice is gonna break me!
“How many times are you gonna tell me this! Seriously just give up already.” I complained as Price leaned in and stared at me. Is he trying to make me cum from staring into my soul...kinky.
“Listen, I believe you this job is fit for you because, well.....your you.” Well ain’t that nice of him to say.
“Ok.... I still don’t believe i’m "Task Force" material but...what am I getting out of this.” I asked while putting on my ‘thinking face’. The other man sighed while running a hand through his hair.
“We’ll help you find a cure for your face and we’ll give you a high rank.” Price said thinking that would make me agree.
“And....?”
“We’ll all take you on a date-”
“Deal!”
Side note-There will be another part or 2
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But First, Coffee
Post-DI!Leon S. Kennedy x Corp Exec!Reader
summary: Leon is after his next target when he encounters a not-so-cooperative informant.
warnings & contents: older Leon (as per usual); could be age gap, could be none; accidentally plot-heavy and a dialogue heaven; mentions of smoking; Leon doesn’t do one-night stands; hints of power play; the reader could be any gender; might be turned into series (? big question mark).
a/n: this one just wrote itself as the pairing dynamic bugged me for a while—I haven’t seen it anywhere yet, but nudge me if I’ve missed anything; I think Leon might enjoy being bossed around a bit (for his own good, also by someone who isn’t Ada)—and as he can easily boss back, too. Overall, desperately clinging to my last brain cells. As always, proceed at your own risk—and let me know if this smaller font is unreadable. Minors DNI! Masterlist
Also—holy smokes, folks—this blog hit 100+ follows! Might sound insignificant to some, but it just blows my mind. Thank you so much for reading! xoxo
***
‘I haven't seen him. I wasn't paying attention. Please, I have more important things to attend to,’ you begged repeatedly—until a cop who was torturing you gave up. She knew she couldn’t keep you in the interrogation room for longer, so she had to let you out—eventually. You never thought that your morning run would end up with you in a police department.
‘We’ll have a short break,’ she sighed, giving you a stern look. ‘You may grab coffee next door; I'll call you back.’
You breathed out an irritated ‘Great,’ and took your chances, making your way to the only coffee machine in your vicinity. That one looked abused by thousands of hands eager to get a dose of instant caffeine.
‘You’d be better off drinking plain water than this,’ you heard a chuckle from your right before you noticed a tall man leaning on the nearby wall, watching you. He was dressed casually–heavy boots, dark jeans with a straight fit, and a probably expensive leather jacket; his sharp gaze trained on you, attempting to look into your soul—luckily for you, some of your employees were convinced you had no soul, so you left unfazed by the efforts.
You chuckled back at him. ‘Fair, but I don’t think that even this swill of a drink could worsen my situation.’
‘You don’t look like a local,’ you mentioned aloud, and he smirked in reply.
‘Good eye—I’m not. Well, not anymore,’ he confessed, stepping towards you. He didn’t seem to be planning to give you more details about himself, and you weren’t in a hurry to ask—or, instead, you didn’t care—yet.
‘Well,’ you gave him a look full of friendly irony, ‘if you’re not my knight in shining armour who can get me the hell out of this interrogation immediately, so I won't lose my job, I’d rather get on with my coffee.’
You turned your attention to the visibly overused coffee machine so you didn’t see how his eyebrows rose up a little, and a slight smirk touched his lips.
You grabbed a half-full coffee cup from under the machine and then turned as you heard your name down the corridor. ‘And that’s me.’ You emphasized before walking away. He watched you calmly, his eyes expression unreadable. ‘So long, local boy.’
You couldn’t hear him when he quietly chuckled in amusement as you returned to the officer’s lair.
It took twenty more minutes of unnecessary suffering before the door to the interrogation room swung open.
‘Leon?’ The cop looked surprised as you glanced at the intruder quickly—the local boy. Now, you were intrigued.
‘Jess, sorry for interrupting,’ Leon smiled at the old friend, ‘but I have Chief’s clearance to get this one,’ the man nodded at you briefly, ‘out of this questioning.’ He gave Jess—or, as known by you, Detective Jessica Harlow—an apologetic look. ‘D.S.O. orders.’
The detective sighed and returned him an irritated but tamed look. ‘Fine,’ Jessica glanced back at you. ‘It was a waste of time anyway.’
You couldn't hold back a scoff. ‘Tell me about that.’ Leon gave you a dirty look, although you could see his mouth twitch in a suppressed giggle.
‘Alright, get out.’ He said with a sigh, waving you towards the corridor. ‘I'll explain everything on the way.’
As you stepped outside the NYPD building, you took a moment to examine him. ‘So you are the knight in shining armour.’
Leon chuckled lightheartedly. ‘Oh, I'm definitely not that.’ The man neither considered himself noble nor his usual tactical vest was shiny. From his point of view, he wasn’t a hero type either.
‘Leon Kennedy, Division of Security Operations under the U.S. government,’ he introduced himself, done with the jokes. You held back a moan—so the local boy was a trap—a quite high-flying bird, though. He read you and showed a soft smile. ‘I know you have spent a lot of time with Jess, but I might have a couple of questions more.’ Leon thought he was worthy of the favor after he pulled you out of the interrogation with NYPD hours before Harlow would get satisfied—Jessica has always been thorough. ‘And for a change, they won't be about that theft you witnessed this morning.’
You weren’t excited; he could see that much. ‘Do I have a choice?’ You sighed.
‘Not really,’ Leon admitted honestly. You found him amusing—although the man knew he was in control of the situation, his look was soft, allowing, lacking arrogance you get used to seeing in your line of work, and he was too relaxed to your liking.
‘Can it wait at least?’ You pressed with desperate notes in your tone. ‘I am late to a critical meeting.’
He nodded reassuringly after a short pause.
Although still impatient, you sighed in relief and took a business card out, handing it over to the federal agent. ‘I guess I can skip my introduction.’ You stepped to the side, hailing a taxi. ‘Call my assistant. He’ll match our schedules.’
‘I can wait, but I can’t wait for long,’ Leon retorted as your leg stepped inside the yellow car.
You gave Kennedy a sweet smile before you shut the door. ‘Great. You tell him that.’
Leon was left stunned for a moment as he watched the car riding off deeper into downtown New York.
‘Shit,’ he mumbled with annoyance in his voice—and with a sudden hint of admiration, too.
***
‘I told you—I can’t wait that long.’
You jolted in surprise as you heard a familiar voice and your car door swung open. It was a couple of days since you met him for the first time.
‘I told you to call my assistant,’ you smiled politely as Leon made himself comfortable in the backseat next to you. You gave the nod to a company driver that he could drive on despite the unexpected guest present.
‘Oh, I have called—but the only available slot is three weeks from now. I guess you forgot to brief him on the urgency of our meeting.’
‘My bad then.’ You sighed, showing no remorse. ‘Close the door if you want this conversation to happen. I was just about to drive back home.’
Kennedy followed your advice and shut the door before the car took off.
‘So, what do you want to know?’
You were direct—Kennedy preferred that style of communication. Leon pulled up a picture on his phone. ‘There’s an assumption to believe you should know that guy.’ You tensed a bit as you took a look at the image.
‘I would prefer to have my lawyer present,’ you replied casually, making Leon chuckle.
‘Come on, it’s a friendly conversation. I’m not here to accuse you of anything—I have more important things on my plate.’
You scoffed. While thinking, you pulled up a cigarette case out of your purse and were about to light up one of those when you noticed the man making a slight grimace—it wasn’t his goal to tell you what to do, and you probably wouldn’t have noticed it if you didn’t glance at him at the right time. You shot him a look. ‘What’s that? I saw it.’
‘I just… prefer my clothes not to smell of cigarette smoke,’ Leon replied, his voice gentle but confident. Despite the diversion, he stayed close to the topic. ‘But I'd rather you answer my question than we talk about the dangers of smoking.’
You had to admit that this annoying motherfucker had a style. ‘Great. Otherwise, I was looking forward to being scolded by a stranger.’ Your tone of voice was surprisingly friendly. Leon seemed not to hold a grudge.
You didn't care much about the opinions of others generally—but this time, the unknown force made you slow down and put away your lighter before you got a light out of it.
At last, you entertained his question. ‘The man is Art Rankine.’ You glanced back at Kennedy’s phone, still showing the photo. ‘I had a pleasure to work with him on one of the mergers.’
‘Legion Corp.,’ Leon assumed, and you raised an eyebrow.
‘Good to hear you did your homework. Then I don’t have to break my NDA—and thanks to that one, I’m not sure I can help you much.’
‘I would question that all of your encounters with Mr. Rankine were covered by the NDA.’ The man smiled, giving you a look. You felt your cheeks getting warm. ‘Am I right?’ Leon tilted his head while keeping eye contact. After a moment, you returned a dirty look at him.
‘We dated. Fleetingly, if I may add,’ you admitted reluctantly.
‘Good. As the merger was closed recently, I'd assume you still have his private contact?’ Kennedy asked.
You felt like you were falling into the James Bond-esque rabbit hole, and you didn't enjoy it.
‘So the all-knowing Leon Kennedy knows I slept with the man but couldn’t get his number?’ You didn't hold back on sarcasm, but it left the federal agent unfazed.
‘Something like that,’ he retorted. ‘I need your help to set up a meeting. That’s all I ask for.’
You scoffed. ‘You request me to contact my ex, and then you call it a small favor?’
‘That’s the best offer I’ve got.’ Leon admitted. ‘I’d rather we establish this partnership quickly.’ Oh, you knew well what that meant—a very gentle threat of making you spend a lot of money on your lawyer. It annoyed you as much as, to your amusement, you found it hot.
You sighed.
‘How do you want the meeting?’
You could see his watercolor eyes light up in satisfaction.
‘We can talk about it tomorrow. Care to give me your personal number?’
You took his mobile phone out of his hands before quickly typing in your number and calling your cell.
‘I am saving you under a horrible name,’ you warned the federal agent, and Leon let out a chortle.
‘Flattered. Now, I can get off right there,’ he nodded at the closest street corner. Soon, the driver stopped there for a moment.
‘So long, local boy.’
You watched him get out of the car, observing his features unintently—and then, by accident, you caught himself staring at his lips for a quarter of a second.
He noticed it.
‘Buy me a coffee first, sweetheart,’ he smirked before closing the car door as he exited the vehicle.
You realized you were holding back your breath after a while—you shook it off right after, finally putting a cigarette into your mouth and briefly cursing under your breath while you lit it up.
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Hello!
I would like to request a Rocky x reader (romantic) oneshot. A fluffy one with a bit of spice would be nice ;) I don't really have a specific plot in mind, but maybe something on the topic of affection? Whatever the story, i'm sure it will be amazing ❤
Thank u, and have a nice day/night!
Hello, Anon!! Thank you for dropping by!! Your request just so happened to align with an idea I've had, and... I got a bit carried away, I suppose. This is well over three thousand words.
Hope you'll find as much entertainment in reading as I did in writing, anyhow!! (I missed crafting dialogue for this silly cat, even if it's equal parts shameless purple prose fun and an absolute pain in the neck.)
“Absolutely not.”
The pose of cheerful enthusiasm he presented the idea with didn’t falter, although his grin seemed to by a sliver.
“Aww, why?”
“It’s not gonna work.”
“We can’t know that until we try!”
You’d come down before opening hour, when many of the lights framing the red-curtained stage and finely carved pillars hadn’t been ignited yet in order to lessen electricity bills, leaving the grandiose speakeasy hall to ruminate in a mellow, warm late afternoon dusk. Leaning against one of the pool tables webbed with gilded patterns on the sides, you glanced him up and down in half-lidded skepticism. It was brief, yet defeating.
“I say this with all the love in my heart,” you prefaced the ruthless confession with a teasing smile, “but you don’t look like you could lift a cornstalk.”
“And you have a point! But consider this,” he countered, gesturing passionately with his hands as if materializing a vision of success before the both of you, and that’s when you recognized this conversation was about to shimmy beyond the bounds of reality. “What wonders can be achieved through the power of love? It can avail you to weather a sea of infernal blazes, crumble ancient mounts to their innermost cores, compel the course of celestial bodies–”
“But it can’t give you muscles.”
The conjurations of poetic fancies promptly shattered, and he gave you a disheartened look.
“Oh, come on, dearest,” he pleaded, all gleaming blue eyes and droopy ears. “Have you no faith in your one and only chevalier?”
“Concerning any other situation… a hard maybe. Depends if anything flammable’s involved.”
You put a finger to your chin in lighthearted contemplation.
“But this… well, I trust you in pulling this off without either of us getting hurt about as far as I could throw you with one hand.”
“I don’t weigh much,” he perked up assuringly. “You could toss me a good few feet, I reckon.”
“So then we should try this the other way around.”
A glint of curiosity hinted he may not have been entirely opposed. Nonetheless, you could tell he wouldn’t let himself be so easily shot down in his steadfast ambitions, about which you happened to be right.
“Your suggestions are appreciated,” he placated upon your prompt sigh of disappointment, “but in the name of chivalry I must persist with my vision. Because I am certain that there is a way, as there is a will, to achieve it.”
He pondered aloud whilst leant against the pool table opposite to yours, tail swishing figure eights in the air as if stirring up the brainworks.
“Just let me think about it…”
A bit to the left, two of the local employment were spectating from their usual spots by the bar. Zib, who had draped himself half-across the counter while Viktor was cleaning it around him, regarded the scene from under his hat with a caustic glance. The smoke simmering from the cigarette he was languidly tasting occasionally wafted your way.
“Looks like chivalry’s not dead yet after all,” he grumbled, the corners of his lips teasing amusement, “but he’s about to be.”
The burly slovak continued with his somewhat menial task in dutiful disinterest, intimidating all unsightly dirt spots off the wooden surface with an effortless glare.
“Idiot vill break own spine vid effort,” he stated matter-of-factly, then after a thoughtful pause, shrugged. “Saves me the trouble.”
“Oh, such searing pessimism!”
Rocky turned to theatrically retort, rejoining your circles from the far reaches of whatever realms his mind had been venturing.
“Well I regret to inform you, gentlemen,” he gave an easygoing little smirk, “that the only sort of spectacle you’ll be getting today is the glorious display of romance’s incandescent triumph.”
“You should heed your sweetheart’s advice, kid,” Zib warned over his glassful of a somewhat suspicious golden beverage. “Artists like you and I just weren’t built for these kinds of strenuous feats. You’ll get a hernia and then the boss lady will be down one questionable bootlegger.”
“Pff… Nonsense talk!”
He waved off the notion as if swatting away a bug, and you pinched your brow in exasperation.
“Waste not such paltry concerns on me, my friend! You see, it might not leave that impression at first glance…” he flexed a bit to show off his bicep then stared at it with a blank expression once it failed to strengthen his argument, “nor perhaps second… but these spindly sinews are rife with untapped potential! Why, you think the Atlas of mythology had trained in advance to support the whole world on his shoulders? And yet, it still goes ‘round smoothly to this day. Which is to say that, hopefully helped by Fortuna’s favor, the release of a comparable innate strength shall aid me in this fated task of carrying mine.”
Despite his conspicuous lack of visible musculature he gave a grin of such radiant certainty it could’ve powered the rest of the lights. Zib blinked slowly, unimpressed in his fermentative, cigarette-stink skepticism. Viktor kept cleaning.
“Albeit I suppose there’s more point in a show rather than tell.”
Rocky stretched his arms in a somewhat comically overstated manner.
“So the old-fashionated way it is!” He then took up a stance and spread them in anticipation. “Come hither, my darling love, let’s prove those naysayers wrong! Leap into the arms of your favorite bard!”
“I still don’t condone this idea.”
You crossed your arms, resolution as hard as the wood digging into your lower back. Unstoppable force smiling baffledly at the inmovable object.
“You don’t?”
“Not really.”
He pouted. Oh, how you couldn’t stand it when those gorgeous sapphires looked at you so coyly despondent. And of course, he was aware.
“You mean you won’t even give it a chance?” he implored, tail gingerly lowering. “Not even if I’ll sooner have my organs be crushed into a fine sludge than let one hair on your head bend the wrong way?”
“Especially not then.”
Patiently, you stood, the twitch of your ears and your own tail’s gentle whipping behind your legs and brushing up to the smooth block of wood being your only movement. You watched him deflate in a slowly progressing manner not unlike that of a balloon animal leaking from a small opening; you could even imagine the characteristic sound to go with.
You tried not to laugh.
“Not even if,” he attempted once more, “it could be a most passionful pageantry of courteousness?”
“More like foolishness.”
Irritated by his snark for a change, you tilted your head in Zib’s direction. When he earned both of your attention by extension the resident nicotine eater, chin resting on the heel of his palm, flicked a huge ear and leisurely presented his back to you as though he’d never cared.
“Just picture it for a second!” Rocky suggested, snapping back to the conversation and taking your hand in his to help transmit the mental imagery through skin-to-skin contact. “A most consummate culmination of chivalrous custom!”
“Certainly,” you rolled your eyes yet didn’t resist when he snuck up close to grab a hold of your waist with an almost imperceptible delicacy.
“I’d gather you in my arms,” he narrated, “a most beauteous royal rose, pooling in your eyes the glimmers of a star-speckled galaxy, a divine black ether brimming with a variegated, dazzling cavalcade of celestial hues… oh, what fair nobility of ephemeral grace, molded in the realms above from the finest marble and ambrosia by lilium-scented, angelic hands…”
His face was close to yours, and your gazes intertwined; you could be quite sure he was just describing what he saw. You averted your eyes, slightly flustered.
“You sure know your words,” you nipped without any real teeth to it.
“I try,” he acknowledged cheerfully, nonetheless keeping proximate. “And me, no more than a humbled troubadour, a mere mortal permitted by Providence to embrace salvation itself,” you made an inarticulate noise of incredulity, “gentle tethering of your mass serving to remind that this resplendent scene is no meager illusion, a cruel trick of the light, but bona fide reality…”
You squirmed half-heartedly away in your chagrin, yet each bit of distance you created between the two of you he kept closing just as effortlessly, drinking in your expressions.
“In rapt entrancement we’d behold each other’s countenance,” you could feel his words on your whiskers, “honey-glaze lusters dancing across our lips in nectareal beckoning, your arms entangling my nape with fervor as you pull me under to merge our souls by way of osculation in the heart of the Earth–”
“Enough rhapsodizing,” you entreated with a wide, mildly embarrassed smile you couldn’t fight, “you poetaster.”
“Now, don’t tell me you wouldn’t enjoy that.”
You exhaled in a burst, gripping the wooden brim you were leant on. Tail curling and uncurling in thought.
“It sounds fine,” you emphatically minced, “but I don’t require it. You know you can just talk sweet to me like that or give me a kiss when I’m still on my feet and you’ll just as easily sweep me off them.”
“But there’s no harm in experimenting, right?”
“That’s… a very dubious statement.”
“Well, if it does work, it shall surely be memorable.”
Across the way, over ornate red carpet and leather seats, Viktor had since taken to polishing glasses while Zib ever-industriously continued to metabolize the establishment’s embalming fluid reserves in spite of the hour.
“…And if it doesn’t,” Rocky proposed the possibility with great hesitation, “as far as I can recall, bone fractures actually heal a lot quicker than you’d expect.”
With the band backstage, that’d be only two direct witnesses to your loss of dignity.
“You’re not about to let this go until I oblige,” you observed with a heavy heart and patted his arm, “so go ahead. I’ll give you a chance to enter history records as the world’s first cooked pasta-based organism to princess carry a whole person.”
You adjusted yourself in front of him at a roughly ninety-degree angle and put your arm around his shoulders. Enthusiasm flawlessly rekindled he took swift hold of your back in return, biting his lip in anticipation like a giddy kid.
“But if you sprain a muscle, I’m not bringing you the ice,” you stated firmly to his face.
“You can’t sprain what’s scarcely there,” he beamed back like it was of any reassurance.
“Well, alright.”
That obnoxious smoke hit your nose again. Beneath the golden glow of red lampshades, Zib had unexpectedly honored your ambitions by sitting marginally more erect, pushing up the brim of his hat to ensure his sight wasn’t failing him.
“Wouldn’t you look at that,” he grunted, pointy eyebrows raised. “They’re doing it for real.”
Viktor stopped in his surprisingly gentle handiwork and fixed a sharp, singular eye on the pair of you. When your clumsy preparations and nervous fidgeting painted a confirmatory enough picture, he set the glass and rag down with a thud, leisurely slapping two huge paws on the clean oak counter to lean on it.
“Dis vill be amusing.”
You gulped at the audience, blooming in your chest a severe doubt. You squeezed Rocky’s shoulder and felt the pointed conjunction of bones digging into your palm without any real effort.
“Whenever you’re ready…”
He smiled at you with those sweet blue eyes that drew your attention like a magnet, adamant on dissolving your worries within themselves. It almost convinced you that what you were about to do wasn’t both ridiculously asinine and physically unsafe… albeit still rather mild by the standards of dating Rocky Rickaby.
You looked at one of the curling, wrought iron chandeliers and sucked in a resolute breath.
“…Here goes nothing.”
In clenched-fist concentration, you jumped and threw your legs in the air for him to catch. He grabbed after them in wide-eyed startlement and as the momentum flung you at him, you prayed.
There was a grunting noise. Something in-between the squeak of a strangled rubber chicken and the aghast chuff of a scuffed, abused bagpipe as every last square inch of air is violently crushed out of it; you’d heard naught of such a combination before yet were instantly able to identify it. Arms clasped tight around his neck you hung on for dear life whilst he gripped your side and thighs in a no less firm desperation, fingers unintendedly clawing into tense flesh. He stood taut as a bowstring, you could feel as much beneath the clothes, though unfortunately nowhere near as straight and with every slight tremble and corrective squirm you feared yourselves tipping over in his direction and giving the carpeted limestone a sore greeting.
Time collapsed to a halt under the weight of anticipation. Cautious in your breaths, wide-eyed and blatantly uncomforted by his palpable quaking, you watched as his rigid expression of concentration strained on a half-hearted grin for your sake to mask what very much still was mortal terror hatching from amongst the shards of hubris.
And then… nothing.
You blinked a few times. Other than your own heartbeat, and what amounted to the whimpers of a heavy wooden chair being dragged across the floor that you soon confirmed to be coming from him instead, all sounds of impending doom receded. You took a deep inhale of the stagnant cave air and held it in bewilderment, knees squished close to one another.
Well, you’d be damned.
Flush to his torso and clutching the cheap fabric of his shirt, you stared on, trying to comprehend the situation. As was he, evidently, with how amidst his tight-lipped yet valiant bearing of the ramifications his eyes darted around the room as if disaster was running unusually late. No gears turn at such a pace however, for when at last the ice in your tendons began to melt in contemplation of asking whether he could move enough to put you down safely or if you should just jump for it, he exerted a small huff of accomplishment and it changed something, because you began to dip rapidly forward. Some indiscernible profanity escaped your mouth.
At least he gallantly broke your fall… and a rib as well, by the sound of it.
The ground was about as soft as you’d imagined when it kissed your limbs and left you with your hands splayed on velvety carpet. You caught glimpse of your audience and, lo and behold, Viktor for a brief second appeared to possess something of a smile behind the bar. Of schadenfreude, naturally. Nonetheless the witnessing of such an evanescent miracle left you nothing short of humbled.
“Well, that surprised nobody,” Zib sneered, a whiff of smoke leaving his nostrils. “We’ll hold him a tasteful funeral.”
“He’s not dead,” you indignantly countered, blowing tousled locks of hair out of your face, then turned to your knight in shoddy armor just to be sure. “You’re not dead, right?”
With that, you recognized that the reason your posterior ached less than the rest of you was his organs still being smushed under it, so you hastily clambered off. Sweetly enough, he hadn’t mentioned, though it may have just been that he’d yet to recover from getting the wind knocked out of him enough to form a sentence.
“Never felt more alive,” he wheezed in affirmation, clutching his torso. “I’ve come to sense fibers of my physique I didn’t know existed.”
“No wonder. Did you dislocate something?”
Crouched over your boyfriend on all fours, you scrutinized him whilst your tail lashed back and forth in acute concern regarding his lack of attempts to get up despite having him practically caged under you. Considering his talent for looking pathetic while curled up on the floor, you couldn’t be blamed.
“Well, all of my bones are still inside,” he tilted his head without raising it to look over himself. “That’s their designated place, I believe.”
“You’re such a twit.”
Bright blue eyes flicked up at you innocently, arms clasped together in a protective self-embrace. Your features softened with a sigh.
“I heard a crack,” you explained, gaze lingering over his ribcage. “I thought I’d hurt you.”
“Oh, that was just my pride,” he dismissed jovially. “Nothing worth the bewailment. Poor thing wasn’t about to survive the winter anyhow.”
That restless, puffy tail of yours came to a tentative pause upon his knees, drawn only halfway up to accomodate your presence as he squirmed lightly in his restricted position. Though the barely lit murk of underground, his grin still shined as disarming as any other.
“You couldn’t hurt me if you tried.”
Whether he meant that remark as a pacification or a challenge, you preferred not to dispute. You let go of the tension in your shoulders however, easing off to settle down next to him and allow him some space to do the same.
“Well, this was just stupid,” you concluded, listlessly examining your bruised appendages. “I have no idea what drove you to something so pointless.”
He carefully rolled up off the ground then simply sat there, blinking at you in a way that betrayed neither any particular discomfort nor the absence of it. You observed him in ponderance. Due to the lack of any concrete signals from upstairs you decided you’d just have to assume the best.
“Unless,” you teased with a squint of suspicion, minding your volume, “you just wanted me on top of you that bad.”
Now that definitely reached the headquarters. When it did, he responded with one of those downright sinful grins that made the notion of punching him in the face sound vastly appealing.
“It wasn’t according to my plan, per se,” he gestured in a sly manner, “but it’s certainly not a development you’ll catch me complaining about.”
“You cad.”
You regarded him with a scolding glare you didn’t really mean but perhaps should’ve. He stood or, well, sat his ground, and it didn’t take a medium to guess anymore what newfound visions might’ve been stirring on behind that striped forehead of his; you only hoped he wouldn’t start waxing poetics about it.
“Could’ve just asked me nicely,” you murmured with a smirk.
You noted the proximity all of a sudden; his nose couldn’t have been two inches away from touching yours. He peered down at you in awareness, chuckling.
“Ah, but the overture's half the merriment.”
“This place has marvelous acoustics, by the way,” Zib spoke out of nowhere and made every bone in your body flinch, “so you might wanna consider taking this somewhere else before our sparse patronage arrives–”
“Oh, shut it, Zibowsky.”
You snapped at him, ears pinned, feeling rather deserving of some soap in your mouth. Rocky got over the interruption with a more careless ease and disregarded the air of awkwardness he helped create in favor of lighting up in triumph.
“But our labour for love wasn’t in vain, after all!” he exclaimed over your shoulder. “We all saw it, right? My romantically inspired exhibition of unprecedented prowress? I must’ve held on for a good minute there!”
“How long did it last, by the way?” you inquired, watching as Viktor continued cleaning glasses. “I was too busy panicking to count.”
“Two seconds.”
Your face stretched in astonishment. Zib took out a lighter.
“You’re pulling my leg.”
“No, really,” he reiterated, igniting another cigarette with a series of clicks while the previous butt laid crumpled beside him on the counter, “two seconds. I was just about to congratulate you.”
You stared on at the sprawling carpet, befuddled, yet the intricate patterns held no explanation for this anomaly. Time does simply happen to slow to a crawl when you’re fearing for your life, as it turned out. Rocky slumped in dejection.
“Ah well,” he lamented, bushy brows descending. “It would appear that my hopes to beguile you with a debonair display could not come true after all.”
His tail gingerly curled around him, saddened to an equal degree. You pouted along in playful endearment.
“You’re so silly,” you ascertained. “I don’t mind that you’re a weakling.”
You took his hand balled up on the ground, enveloping it with your own. He watched in slight trepidation.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
The two of you locked eyes amidst the magnificent cavern of bygone extravagance; the ‘heart of the Earth’, as he’d put it. Decked in hues of crimson and gold and marinating in a mystiqueful twilight, a regrettably vacant wonder of architectural design honoring the arts décoratifs, all the dazzling sights of the establishment couldn't have hoped to draw you away from the one instrictic extension of it you delighted in looking at the most.
“And I wouldn’t trade you in for the brawniest of gallants,” you pressed a tingling kiss on his cheek, “my noodle-limbed prince.”
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Hazbin Hotel Live Blog: Overture
. While I am being kind to the show as it is, I cannot push out of my mind the fact that this is still Vivienne Medrano, and while this seems to be an interesting direction the series is considering to take the story, I am lacking any intrigue. Medrano has a knack for interesting ideas, but once executed are often trimmed down from all nuance and then played in the most straight forward and storybook fashion.
Evil existed before and separate from Lucifer
Eve is linked to the root of evil through the animation
Dichotomy of Lilith and Lucifer
Why does Heaven think Hell will rise up?
Charlie is reading the storybook to herself. Aloud. And the reason is because she’s like a child seeking comfort. Also Charlie’s delivery of “Pretty worked up” is just feeling off. Like isn’t this supposed to be a somber moment? Why is it delivered so chipper? The pilot had her crying and singing a lamentation. Downgrade.
Info dump dialogue
“This kingdom was something she really cared about.”
Vaggie’s voice is such a downgrade. She sounds so uninterested.
“Daddy issues by fixing you” So alastor knows about Charlie’s family situation already.
The lineart around Alastor is so distracting. It’s so bizarrely thick.
I wish there was no dialogue
Her dad calls her but she is supposed to have a strained relationship.
I feel like Medrano doesn’t know what Angel Dust is. As in the actual drug. PCP is not Cocaine.
That was the worst segue into a song I ever saw.
“If you dont mind the smell, it’s a happy day in hell.” I hate this line.
Vaggie just never sounds right, does she? Her singing is so nasal dominate it doesn’t sound like her throaty modal voice.
What was the contract? What did it say? Why even have Charlie sign anything if we have no concept of what that is? It is such a rip off from Ariel’s contract in the Little Mermaid that it feels more like an Easter egg than relevant to the story actively being told. You need to show why the actions happening are taking place, you cant just do things and expect us to pick up the pieces for you. Are you trying to get across that Heaven is full of bureaucracy and paperwork? There is no receptionist and no other person in the building until she signs ONE paper. You failed at portraying an overabundance of bureaucratic red tape and it is distracting and infuriating. All I see are the better DISNEY MOVIES that were clearly just plagiarized. Not an homage, not inspired. Plagiarized.
Lucifer calls Charlie to meet Adam. Adam says he knows. So this doesn’t feel like this is Charlie filling in, the way the dialogue is written is that it was specifically planned for Charlie to meet Adam.
Everything has a gradient.
I bet $15 that the Dickmaster portion of Adam’s dialogue was Alex Brightman’s improv. I was not impressed by his Kaiju Dick improv in Oops and this is just as flaccid. Pun intended.
There is a clear discccrepency in talent between Alex and Erika. He has such a smoother voice and range while Erika feels like a Disney understudy where every delivery is pretty much identical to the last. Like the songs themselves are not doing her any favors. They range from bad to mediocre, and even in the better songs, there is always one horrifically bad lyric that just ruins the entire experience.
I like Lute. She feels like Peridot.
RIP Katie Killjoy.
Nifty is cute. The joke for her had a lot of potential of being hilarious but didn’t meet my threshold of comedy due to lacking a feel for Nifty. Imagine if she was in every scene with Vaggie talking her head off and never shutting up. Then when Vaggie is like, “If anyone can sell this hotel, it’s Nifty.” And we had this foundation that Nifty is known for being a huge chatterbox only to then be dead silent when the camera is on her. It would have been hilarious. But we see her once and she has one singular line previous. So it just feels like a cheap visual gag.
As a musical, it is lackluster. I see that Evil is something separate from Lucifer and something he dislikes. Lucifer is said to see free will as a spring of creativity, but humans used it to suck and that killed Lucifer’s love of life. In the meantime, Lilith is empowered by Hell. Hell fuels her sense of freedom, which she spreads through her “songs”. Only for her to just vanish I guess. She just hopes out without a word, Charlie says she must be doing something important over the last 7 years, but no inclination on what important things Lilith would be doing. Additionally, Lilith is said to have loved Hell, like Charlie. So it sets up this idea that Lucifer dislikes Hell or even hates it, while Lilith revels in it. Alluding to their marriage falling apart from this dissonance. At the same time, Lucifer calls Charlie to meet with Heaven, despite the pilot being canon. So we get the impression that Charlie and Lucifer had a falling out (“Maybe dad was right.”) but she doesn’t have much more than surprise at her father calling. Then he just sets up this meeting for her to meet with Adam off screen entirely. It is unclear how this was conveyed, but Lucifer doesn’t believe in Charlie and her meeting Adam has nothing at all to do with her hotel.
But the way Adam talks about the meeting is unusual in that it gives the impression that it wasn’t about Charlie “filling in”, but that this whole meeting was specifically set for Charlie and Adam. This is compounded by how the ending reads like they didn’t know if the angel was dead until that moment. So the extermination being moved up has nothing to do with the angel’s death. Maybe I’m wrong, but this all feels really disjointed.
But Lute really is just Peridot. So much so that when asked what I liked about the episode, I literally said “Peridot”, not Lute. The one good aspect of this episode is another stolen concept from a better show with a more competent creator. But I also like Alex Brightman’s singing. He is very talented and he does elevate the material by really playing with his delivery, but it’s still at best Mid due to the weak lyrics,
3/10
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hi, hello, i'd love to see romantic obsessed narrator please.
hello????
uh hi welcome to my inbox. sorry I kind of lost my mind seeing you hop in here less than a minute after I reblogged your post while fangirling over your writing.
well, I’ll take a chance to be grossly self-indulgent any day. here’s your meal!
Romantic Obsessed Narrator/Reader HCs
- if you’ve read soup’s writing on the platonic version of this subject, then you know the main vibe that narry gives off when he’s in this kind of headspace
- he will do anything to keep your attention. Whatever it takes.
- he will keep making new content for as long as he needs too- he will read off different scripts, write and rewrite new ones, reward every single incremental decision you make to keep you interested.
- a romantic narry wouldn’t want to make you scared of him though. He wouldn’t want you to be uncomfortable or confused- maybe then you’d leave him. He’d never have a chance to woo you if you had a grudge against him.
- so he tries not to make it too obvious how much he’s tailoring the experience of the game to you. He’ll try to make it all fit in seamlessly with the rest of the games shenanigans.
- you, the player, don’t really see anything odd at the start. The game is so layered with secrets you’re not really shocked that you’ve found things you haven’t heard about before. That’s just how the game is.
- his obsession is the kind that manifests as a collection, almost hoarding: whatever information he learns about you, he cherishes.
- for the sake of this concept, let’s say you have some kind of mic attached to the game. Something that transmits your voice, your reactions- the thing that he fell in love with in the first place.
- something about your personality just… enraptured him. he wants to know more about you. He wants to know everything about you. Every piece of information, he keeps.
- He has an incredibly strong memory, but he knows how fragile the mind can be (r.e; the confusion ending), so he writes down what he knows about you. He writes all the tiny details down, everything he learns, every itty bitty thing.
- your favourite colour? The way you laugh? Your birthday you mentioned offhandedly? The exact times and dates you log into the game?
- everything. He keeps everything. In excruciating detail, too- his fanciful and descriptive writing style translates over to this too. He’s filled pages and pages with his fawning over you.
- these details also leak into the game, personalising it to you. Other endings pop up in your favourite genres; the adventure line changes colour to your favourite; the outside in the freedom ending becomes more and more similar to your childhood home.
- he also uses this information to make you more attracted to him.
- if it’s his voice that gets you (like it does the rest of us)? Then maybe he just happens to sit a bit closer to his microphone. Maybe he purrs his lines a little sweeter or dips his voice lower based on your reactions. Maybe he complements you more than normal- maybe he teases you relentlessly. Whatever makes you flustered is what he strives for.
- if it’s his silly dorky humour and endearing dialogue? Prepare for more jokes. Stupider ones. And a whole lot more dialogue for every possible choice and situation- Whatever made you laugh the hardest.
- and if it’s his stories? His prose, his talent as a creative? He will write for you. He will craft as many beautiful and unique and detailed routes as you want. He will act his ass off for you, moving you from laughter to tears, if that’s what makes you happy.
- it’s hard for him to contain how much he loves you sometimes.
- every time you leave, his heart breaks. He knows you have a life outside of the game- but he just wishes he could be part of that, too.
- when you haven’t played for a while, he has to hold himself back from cheering aloud when you load back in.
- he has to hold back the joy in his voice when you get excited, trying so hard not to laugh along with you. You were just so infectious- it was almost impossible to stop himself.
- but the narrator would defy impossible for you.
- because he loves you. And that means doing whatever would make you happy. Even if it’s impossible.
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post-canon shl scenario where chengling writes terrible goopy adventures-with-background-romance starring wen kexing and zhou zishu. none of them are true, except that wenzhou ARE ridiculous people in love who have had their fair share of adventures. he saves the true stories for his disciples, but it's nice to have fun stories about them out there. amusing AND therapeutic.
but they somehow hit some tipping point where they go from amusing niche things to suddenly everybody is reading them. shen shen's suddenly furtively asking cl things like "did wen kexing REALLY..." no one knows chengling's writing them; people mostly chalk it up to someone who got really taken with a rumor about them and ran with it. wenzhou meanwhile are blissfully unaware of their new flavor of fame.
until yby shows up with a copy solely so he can read bits aloud while wkx like, chases him with a knife and demands he tell him who wrote them and then loudly makes plans about going down the mountain to find them. (he will not do this and everyone knows this; zzs is on the mountain).
meanwhile, while zzs and cl sit quietly at the table together with sounds of wkx and yby chaos in the background:
zzs: so how much to put this poetry quote in wen kexing's dialogue
cl: [reading a badly mangled line and trying not to laugh] i'm sure i don't know what shifu is talking about....
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hi Spooky! I just read your meta about Gojo's motivation in the fight and you brought up interesting points.
I thought Gojo was fighting in a way that he's trying to save Megumi, because if Gojo is really trying to eliminate Sukuna for good he would go for the most fatal blow, the brain, he knows that Sukuna can still come back even without heart (lungs and liver)... so I thought Gojo is probably trying to weaken Sukuna to "make room" for Megumi. Even if his facade is "carefree", at first he already warned Sukuna that he won't hold back, he seemed worried when he realized that Megumi is the one that got hit by UV. But now I'm worried about his character growth, is it like he's decreasing? or at least he's not showing something better than the Gojo who killed Toji - teen Gojo; what happened to the Gojo that claims to protect his students' youth and who is supposed to be the "good guy" in this fight...
I still think Gojo is fighting with the belief he can revive Megumi after he takes down Sukuna, but I agree with you anon his attitude towards the fight shows his lack of growth after Toji. Not only does Gojo reference Toji a couple of times like the battle is still fresh on his mind but his emotional state resembles the way he was when he fought Toji post-awakening as the "strongest." It wasn't just a happy-go-lucky facade at that point Gojo stated in his internal narration he wasn't fighting to avenge Riko: it really was just about defeating Toji and using his newfound power to reach his full potential.
It's understandable Gojo reacted that way in the moment though. He's seventeen, and it's probably alienating to have that much power thrust on your shoulders at seventeen. However, Gojo shows a clear lack of progress since that battle. Eleven years have passed since the battle with Toji, and Gojo's kind of trapped there mentally. He's still fighting for the same reasons he fought against Toji. Those lines could be applied to how he feels via Sukuna's possession of Megumi.
"Right now I'm not angry for you. Nor do I feel vengeful toward anyone. Right now, it's just that everything feels right."
Word of god supports this: Gege was asked directly if Gojo matured after the battle with Toji, and Gege explained instead of maturing he left the decision making up to Geto.
This is pretty consistent with Gojo and Geto's foiling with one another. Geto tends to be a deeply self-reflective character almost to a fault. While I'd argue that while Gojo is known by the fandom as the more selfish one, he is oddly someone who doesn't self reflect at all.
We know far more about Geto's internal world and how he sees things because of his internal narration. Honestly, if you compare the short time he's a focus character in Hidden Inventory to the entire rest of the manga Gojo receives a lot less internal dialogue. When Gojo does have internal narration it's almost always just him strategizing for a fight. He doesn't have the same richly developed internal world that Geto has because he doesn't really think or reflect on those things. When he does give insight to himself and his belief it's almost always himself talking aloud to other people.
Which neatly dovetails into my next topic re: Gojo's tendency to mask his true emotions under a light-hearted facade. I think it's inarguable he does that, Gojo was acting happy-go-lucky in front of his students about five minutes after killing Geto. Geto commented in the beach scene in Okinawa that Gojo goofing around on the beach was his way of being considerate to Amanai, and that while pretending to be carefree he'd been exhausting himself keeping the limiitless active for days not even sleeping. Gojo even downplays the burden of that in front of Geto, the one person he allows himself to be vulernable with.
However, I don't think Gojo's tendency to mask his true emotions is because he's crying on the inside during his fight with Megumi and at some point he's going to have an emotional breakdown over it. That interpretation I think comes from the fandom's tendency to woobify Gojo because they want to make him a more relatable and easy to understand character when Gojo is supposed to be alienating and off-putting.
He's an exploration of what being the strongest would due to a person's mind, and how much that would alienate a person from the people around him. Gojo's defined by his inability to relate to others, especially the people he finds as weak so it only makes sense he'd process his emotions in a way that's different from most people.
If people learn and grow and change by their interaction with others, then Gojo who's very cursed technique itself makes it so nobody can ever touch him unless he wants them too does not interact with others and therefore does not change.
It's interesting if you look at things from a budhhist perspective, because there are heavy themes of budhism present in the text of JJK itself. Let's say that Gojo attained enlightenment at seventeen. If he's already enlightened then why would he need to grow any more past that point? The ultimate goal of budhism is to escape the cycle of karma entirely, so from that perspective Gojo untethering himself from the world and earthly concerns and other people is his ideal endpoint.
On the other hand Gojo is like a person living in the world - he eats takeout, goes out drinking with his friends, has a job, pays his taxes. He didn't escape life and worldly concerns, because life went on, he's still living in the world and eleven years has passed since the moment he "attained enlightenment."
If he's already enlightened then he shouldn't need to grow, but considering hes still living in the world you need to grow and change with the world and people around you otherwise you're going to be left behind.
From what we've seen in canon Gojo changed a little bit. His ideals changed in the fact he adopted Geto's sense of responsibility and judgement of good and evil. He also witnessed Geto's fall and lost his friendship which is clearly what influences his current beliefs on wanting to protect the childhood of sorcerers, and that there's something rotten about the Jujutsu Society surrounding him.
I don't mean to say that every change in Gojo's life comes from Geto, but rather Gojo's current sense of beliefs are based around what happened to him in his youth. He wants to protect children because his youth was ruined. If Geto never fell and became a curse user would Gojo see anything wrong with the current system worth rebelling over?
Put better in another better meta here.
Still, my point is that... Gojo simply never cared enough about things like ideology.
[...]
He tried to internalize Geto’s original values of protecting the weak since he could sense some merit to them, finding joy in entertaining Riko and later his students, but he completely missed the reasoning behind those values. This is why he spouted all those things about not saving/reaching Geto (without having attempted it in the first place) and about becoming a teacher to prevent young sorcerers from missing out on their youth (immediately going to indoctrinate young Megumi into their messed up system as a pretext of saving him from the Zenins.
[...]
The only way he can empathize with them is by remembering what he himself enjoyed in his youth, that being companionship with his bff and his growing power. And when some of them don’t show interest in that (like poor fucking Megumi) Gojo is simply not interested in exploring alternatives. To him, it’s not a question of ‘why’, it never was.
Gojo is extreemly self-oriented in all the good and bad that entails. Good because it makes him an extremely strong, and self confident individual that allows him to pursue those ideals (and his ideals are still pretty good) bad because he easily loses sight of other people's feelings.
A gojo who truly changed after the fight with Toji would have reached out to Megumi in an attempt to break the cycle that started with the Zen'ins abuse of TOji. A true example of being the bigger man by going out of his way to help the son of a man who in a lot of ways caused permanent damage to his life and the people around him.
However, that's blatantly not what Gojo did. Once again we have Word of God on this.
Gojo hasn't matured past his mindset of seeing people in terms of "strong and weak" and as a natural extension of that he tends to treat the same kids he's trying to help as assets so he's not living up to his desire to be the responsible adult in their lives. Because he's not really an adult. His growth stopped in the fight with Toji.
Gojo's solution to the problem of Jujutsu Society's use of child soldiers and treating children as expendable is... to create stronger child soldiers. I don't think Gojo does this maliciously, it's just he has no self-awareness whatsoever. He is Jujutsu Society's ideal and constantly praised as such and because of that can't see the flaws in his own ideology and actions. That's also the way Gojo was raised, pushed to be the strongest and to build his entire life and self-worth around being the strongest he can be. People who lack self-awareness tend to unsconiously recreate the circumstances under which they were raised because it's familiar to them. Do unto others what was done unto you.
To return to my original topic though Gojo has a tendency to make his true emotions but I don't think it's done because he's secretly crying on the inside.
I think Gojo's complete lack of reaction to Nanami's death was his genuine reaction. He's not putting on a brave face or anything. He probably does care that Nanami died, but this is just how Gojo processes his emotions. I also think there's a couple of times where Gojo is disturbed during the fight against Megumi such as when Sukuna used Megumi as a shield for the limitless, but at the same time he's clearly having the time of his life with this fight.
I don't think he's faking that. He shouldn't really be enjoying this battle because there are simply more important things right now than whether or not Gojo finally gets to have fun in a fight and be challenged against someone who's his equal - but apparently Gojo didn't get that memo.
Gojo is probably masking his emotions to some extent, but there's a difference between text (what is stated) and subtext (what is not stated and instead relies on reader interpretation). Gojo visibly enjoying himself in the fight is direct text. Gojo announces out loud that he has no problem beating up Megumi, the narration tells us that Gojo is feeling deeply satisfied with this fight.
While characters do sometimes hide their feelings and lie, and narrators are sometimes reliable, subtext is still an interpretation and it doesn't trump what is directly stated by the work.
The text has already told us directly that number one Gojo doesn't feel any hesitation to fight Megumi, and number two Gojo's first priority is winning and his second priority is worrying about Megumi.
Anything that contradicts that is fandom interpretation of the text. I don't think Gege is trying to pull a fast one or unreliable narrator trick here. Gege has always been blatantly honest about Gojo's flaws as a character, hence why I constantly cite his responses in interviews.
I think it's Gege's intention here to show us how Gojo's priorities are eschewed. You can make an argument that Gojo has to worry about defeating Sukuna first above everything else because of utiliarian reasons. If he loses here then everyone else dies. He may have to sacrifice Megumi to stop Sukuna from killing anyone else.
However, those utilitarian reasons are in direct opposition to Gojo's ideals. Gojo wants to create a world where children aren't sacrificed for the common good. In Gojo's ideals chidlren shouldn't be sarificed for adults, but rather it's adults who should protect children so they can live out their youths. If Gojo fails to protect Megumi here he's going back on everything he supposedly stands for.
So while you can make an argument pragmatically Gojo has to worry about winning the fight first. Idealistically he should be fighting to save Megumi, not to win against Sukuna. However, he's not doing that. By having him care more about the fight itself then Megumi, it shows that Gojo's pragmatism often is in conflict with his own idealism. Which is something we've always known about his character. He wants to help kids but at the same time he's using them as tools to further his own agenda.
Again a lot of Gojo's flaws arise from his own lack of self-awareness. Gojo does conceal his own emotions a lot, but I don't think he's hiding a crying child inside. Instead it's more like he's so alienated from both the people around him and his own emotions that he can't process them or self reflect.
Gojo is blind in a lot of ways, like it's made clear by Shoko that Gojo's isolation doesn't just come from being the strongest. There are people around him actively trying to connect with him and Gojo just kind of ignores them because he's too caught up in the idea that only someone like Geto who was as strong as he was could ever understand him.
Gojo doesn't show his own emotions or make deep emotional connections with others because he probably doesn't understand those emotions himself. He's not only alienated himself from the people around him, but he's alienated himself from his own feelings to such an extent that even when he does care it's difficult for him to show it.
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Meet The Parents II. 🎀
Giorno x F Reader / Narancia x F Reader.
Commissioned piece.
Word count: 3.3k.
Note: Dialogue in italics is meant to represent words spoken in English !!
[Scarlet Ribbons Index]
It’s the type of day a tourist couldn’t be happier with. Cloudless baby blue skies, nonexistent humidity, and a light northern breeze to cool the skin.
Giorno Giovanna thinks that the timing for such weather couldn’t have been better. Given your current frazzled condition, entertaining your two special guests from overseas is made easier by the outdoors' availability. The young Don fears you’d stress yourself into an early grave otherwise. You said you’re going to dazzle and distract your parents with Napoli’s beauty, so as not to allow any downtime.
Downtime means more intimate conversations. Apparently, this is a risk you don’t want to take, hence your current tour guide persona.
“Is she still looking out the window?” Giorno queries your Stand, who has taken to floating around dejectedly. In an attempt to soothe your nerves, Scarlet Ribbons tried braiding your hair, an effort met with reproach. While you normally let your Stand amuse itself by fashioning your hair into innumerable styles, you claimed ‘you have a strict image to maintain and can’t go around looking like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz.’
Your Stand nods in affirmation at Giorno’s question.
“Did she at least put the binoculars down?”
This time, a shake of the head.
Hurried footsteps echo against the tile of Giorno’s villa, footsteps that can only belong to you, as he’s dismissed the few employees trusted with the home’s upkeep for the day. Your Stand fades away, apparently still in low spirits from your earlier altercation. You round the corner and sigh in relief upon spotting Giorno.
“They’re returning from their walk,” you have a distinct pleasure in confirming. “We’ve almost made it through this harrowing trial.”
Giorno disguises a chuckle by clearing his throat. “Has it been that cumbersome? You look like you’re in your element to me.”
“Yeah, if my element is ‘ungodly distress’. I think I’ll need a therapist when this is all said and done.”
“I’ll see that it’s arranged.”
Giorno’s attempts at soothing your nerves are fruitful. It’s strange, this switch in roles. You were usually the one who made a point of uplifting the spirits of others. While Giorno’s more reserved nature doesn’t lend well to making you burst into hysterics like Mista or Narancia can, he fills another role. One that is specially carved out in his shape, unable to be occupied by another.
He is the best at getting a read on you. Though he’d never admit it aloud, he takes pride in the fact. The others may have known you longer, but he catches the nuances they’re blind to.
For instance, he sees the genuine sprouts of concern hiding beneath your typical display of theatrics. You’ve gone to great lengths to hide your involvement with Italy’s underbelly. This false impression, meticulously crafted, could shatter like glass at the slightest pressure. Doing so would undoubtedly break something inside you too.
Giorno refuses to let that happen. Not when you’ve become so integral in his life, that he can scarcely remember a time when you weren’t around.
He trails not far behind as you run to greet your parents. Their faces light up the second they spot you — he can’t blame them. Before he enters the conversation, he recalls the words spoken by Bucciarati many years ago on his first trip to Libeccio.
“The others might give you a hard time at first, but try not to hold it against them. That’s just their way of getting to know you,” Bruno trailed off. Then his lips quirked into a fond smile. “However, you don’t need to worry about that with [First]. She’ll make you feel like you’ve known one another your entire lives within minutes.”
It was exactly as Bruno foretold.
“GioGio, my mom and dad want to thank you for your ‘cousin’s’ hospitality,” you call over to him.
Giorno wasn’t sure if he should be concerned or impressed by how quickly you crafted a lie to explain away his opulent residence. For safety’s sake, Giorno thought it best if he met your parents privately, away from the prying eyes that came as a consequence of being Passione’s boss. Thus came the tale that his Posillipo estate actually belonged to some rich cousin who felt gracious enough to lend it to him for a few hours.
Your worldbuilding went beyond that, but that captures the essence of things. He admires your tenacity.
His appearance in the backyard where your family unit has huddled together is met with a chorus of accented ‘grazies’.
“Woah, that was pretty solid,” you give an approving look. “Have you been practicing that?”
“I read on a pamphlet that we should know how to at least say hi, yes, no, and thank you,” your mom confirms.
“Still can’t roll my r’s if my life counted on it, though,” is your dad’s contribution.
“Well, one year of high school Spanish can only do so much,” you give your dad a conciliatory pat on the shoulder for good measure.
He shakes his head. “I took French.”
You make a face of faux sympathy. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
Giorno feels a stirring within the recesses of his soul. This close-knit bond is unfamiliar to him, a long-forgotten desire he chased after futility as a child. He knows of the hardships you endured, and how you were brought into Passione’s fold for the lack of a better alternative. This is what you fought to preserve. What you shed blood, sweat, and tears for, hiding the damning trifecta behind a seemingly carefree smile.
He resolves himself to fight for it too.
“It’s been my pleasure,” Giorno responds in kind. He might not be as English savvy as Fugo, but he can roughly follow a conversation and chime in on the occasion.
The young Don then turns his attention to you. “I’ve prepared a small gift for them, if that’s alright.”
You gnaw on your bottom lip, contemplative. “Is it… proletariat friendly? No Giorgio Armani or Gucci, right?”
“Don’t worry, it’s nothing like that. You can look it over first if you’d prefer.”
“Nah, I trust you. I’m just on high alert. Mista wanted to give them a vintage bottle of Chateau Cheval Blanc and I almost died. I can’t keep giving everyone rich cousins…”
Giorno can’t say he didn’t expect such shenanigans. Everyone is doing what they can to land themselves in your parent’s good graces, for if you hold their opinion in such high regard, it might be the key to claiming your hand one day. This appears to be an unspoken yet universally understood truth. While Giorno would find it unbecoming to consider your parents a means to an end, he isn’t going to pass on this rare opportunity.
It isn’t just about winning them over either. Your approval factors into the equation as well.
After a brief departure, Giorno returns with two wrapped boxes in tow. He hands them to your mother and father respectively. You look as curious as they do, inspecting the present’s outward appearance for any hints. He takes a deep breath. It isn’t often he’s nervous, since his position doesn’t permit such weakness, yet he can’t deny the fluttering in his stomach. He moves on to the next stage of his plan.
“Please tell them I wanted to show a small token of my appreciation, for having raised such a kind and thoughtful daughter,” Giorno isn’t surprised to see your face morph into embarrassment. Still, he continues, a touch of mischief underlying his tone, “I’ll know if you mistranslate, [First]. English was my foreign language class.”
You give an exaggerated sigh and resign yourself to your fate. You repeat what Giorno said to them, uncharacteristically sheepish as you do so. His heart soars at how endearing the sight is. A devious side of himself tempts him to tease you more, but his polite tendencies win out, advising that now isn’t the time.
True to his word, the gifts are nothing that showcase his exuberant bank account. It’s a simple tie for your father and a brooch shaped like a ribbon for your mother — both a recognizable shade of scarlet. You look at the gift, then him, your mouth agape and your eyes glossy. He can decipher the depths of your gratitude without you needing to utter a word.
“Well, look at that,” your father holds the tie up for closer inspection. “You’re always wearing this color anymore, [First]. I guess it’ll be a family thing now.”
Your mother expresses her appreciation next. “What a thoughtful gift. I have an outfit that’ll match this perfectly! Tell your friend he has such good taste…”
Giorno decides the evening couldn’t have ended on a more positive note.
Your parents don’t depart long after that, jet lag still weighing them down. You offer to accompany them in the taxi back to their hotel, but they say they don’t want to take up any more of your time than they already have. So you settle for staring out the window until the cab leaves your line of sight. This time, you’re noticeably missing your binoculars, which Giorno believes your Stand hid in a vengeful act.
Once you’re certain they’re long gone, you run at Giorno with open arms.
He lets out an ‘oof’ at the unexpected impact, his cheeks flushing and hands uncertain where to settle themselves. Eventually, he reciprocates your embrace, ignoring the knowing thumbs up Scarlet Ribbons gives from behind your shoulder.
“I can’t thank you enough, GioGio,” you pull back, much to his disappointment. The bright smile lighting up your face instantly makes up for it. “I really… wow. This might sound kinda silly, but whenever I get homesick, I think I’ll feel better knowing they have a reminder of me like that near them.”
A wistful yearning fills him then. This wish to pull you back to his chest, reassure you that he’d do anything to appease whatever negative emotions you may harbor — homesickness or otherwise — but he keeps himself in check.
It wouldn’t be appropriate for him to do that yet.
Still, he’ll see to it that a day will come when he can.
“It’s the least I could do. I consider your family to be my family.”
And so they will be, if his next dream is to be fulfilled.
-
It doesn’t take much to excite Narancia.
He’s always brimming with energy — too much energy, according to Fugo, but who cares what that guy thinks — ready for anything and everything. His infinite enthusiasm somehow doubles whenever you’re involved. Anyone with a set of functioning eyes could see how utterly lovesick he is for you. Well, except for you, apparently, who finds it presumptuous to assume others’ feelings.
When you still came back to visit him at the hospital, despite the way he snapped at you for what he considered ‘pity’, he swore an oath to himself. No matter the cost, he would see to it that you’re happy and never cause you distress again. If presented with the choice between having you or the world, he’d pick you every time, without hesitation.
You’re precious to him, living proof that not everyone will cast him aside at the first opportunity.
Convincing himself of this has been an uphill battle. He’s been left behind too many times to count, made into nothing but a stepping stone for others to advance forward. Distrust cultivated throughout an entire lifetime is not so easily dissipated. They linger, like sediment that’s fallen to the bottom of a pond, waiting to rise at the slightest stir.
Narancia rattles off the gelato order you gave him, barely comprehending the fact he needs to pay once the employee confirms it. His head is elsewhere. He hands over more cash than necessary, grumbles something about keeping the change, then scurries to the side. In the background, he catches the melodic sound of your laughter. He sees you clutching your stomach, your eyes crinkling with mirth, and both your parents smiling as well.
Narancia has always wanted to secure your happiness… so why is it this sight unsettles him so?
Feeling the way he does now is nothing short of aggravating. He doesn’t understand it or know how to make it go away.
Regardless, he knows he needs to try. It would put a damper on the mood if he comes back over and sulks. He likes your parents and wants them to like him too. He might not be super smart the way Fugo is, or as charismatic as Giorno, but he still wants to showcase his strong points. That’s why he’s been mentally preparing for this day. Practicing English (by listening to rap music, but he still counts it), fixing his posture, and even acting all gentlemanly. He can’t recall a time he’s held open so many doors and pulled out so many chairs.
“Nara, need some help carrying all that?”
Your abrupt appearance nearly has him yelping in shock. Narancia steadies himself, preparing to ask what you mean when he recalls the tray in his hands. He can’t recall a time when he crawled so deep into his head.
His skin flushes when you poke his cheek. “Hello? Earth to Narancia? Did looking at the gelato give you some sort of existential crisis?”
“N-No! There’s, uh, no crisis here.”
You give him a quick glance over, as if not entirely convinced, yet ultimately relent. Narancia sighs in relief. Had you decided to keep pressing the subject, he isn’t sure if he would’ve been able to deflect your attempts. Lying hasn’t ever been his forte.
The gelato is dispersed among the four of you. You’ve settled at a quaint picnic table, rustling branches overhead granting refuge from the Mediterranean sun. Although Narancia can’t understand whatever conversation is taking place, he nods along, his eyes never leaving your animated form. He admires how your hair billows in the breeze, pulled up in a high ponytail and strung into place with a ribbon.
He’s always thought your hallmark color suits you. It’s warm, bold, and passionate. He couldn’t see a shade of scarlet without his thoughts instantly drifting to you.
“My parents were wondering if you’ve ever thought about visiting the States.”
Narancia does what he can to shake the shackles of uncertainty off of him so he can respond. “I kicked the idea around when I was younger, yeah. It might be kinda hard now. Lotta work to do.”
“I can’t blame you for developing an aversion to flying after Sardegna,” you nudge him with your elbow. “Maybe we can revisit the idea when things settle down. There’s so much I’d want to show you. I just know you’d love it! In Times Square, grown men walk around dressed as Elmo and harass people if they don’t give ‘em money after you take a picture together. It’s hilarious.”
Your dad throws something in, which you translate with unrivaled excitement. “I almost forgot! You’d get to try New York pizza… it apparently descends from a Napoli immigrant, what’re the chances of that. I know you fiercely defend your Neapolitan pizza’s honor, but I’m confident I can convert you.”
He scrunches up his nose. “No way. That shit sounds—”
Remembering his company, he slaps a hand over his mouth.
“Pff, Nara, it’s fine, they can’t understand you,” you wave off his concern. “They wanted to let you know you’re welcome anytime. There’s no need to rush an answer, though. I’ll just say that you’re thinking about it.”
Narancia pushes his melting gelato around with a spoon. “Hey, [First]?”
“Mhm?”
“Have you ever…” The words die on his tongue, for the mere possibility submerges him in grief, “Have you ever thought about moving back? To your home, I mean. Cause… Giorno would let you. Then you could pursue your dreams again and be happy.”
He can’t bring himself to face you. Guilt weighs down on him like an anchor — here you are, trying to enjoy an outing with your parents you haven’t seen face to face in years, and he’s bringing down the mood. The fear of this future manifesting into reality hurts. It isn’t a brief, weak pang, it’s a heavy ache that reverberates throughout his entire being.
You’re his best friend, his first love, his everything.
Would seeing your parents — a reminder that you have a home elsewhere — threaten to take that away from him? And could he ever be selfish enough to stop it?
You rattle off something, causing both your parents to stand. They send a friendly wave Narancia’s way, which he returns with as much enthusiasm as he can muster, given the tempest brewing in his heart. Then they’re off to overlook the Golfo di Napoli, fitting in perfectly with another cluster of tourists.
“Is this what’s been bothering you, Narancia?”
He can’t bring himself to speak, so he nods his head.
You rest your hand over his. Your skin is soft and warm, a combination that serves as a balm to his malaise. He recalls when he’d been forced to live in the streets, after serving time in a detention center for a crime he didn’t commit. He remembers how his former ‘friends’ abandoned him, spreading rumors that the eye disease he’d contracted was contagious, his isolation seemingly set in stone. No one looked at him, came near him, much less touched him.
When you visited him in the hospital for the first time, you practically tripped over yourself to hug him. His heart monitor had gone through the roof — he couldn’t believe a pretty girl like you would willingly come into contact with him.
You intrinsically knew how to comfort him then, and you know how to comfort him now.
“Well, I guess it’s natural to wonder that. I won’t lie and say I’ve never considered it. For the longest time, I tried to push it to the back of my mind, because there was a lot of work to do before my debt would be paid off. What you said about GioGio is right. It’s one of the first things he asked me after overtaking Passione.”
Narancia swallows thickly, the silence following your last statement deafeningly loud.
“That being said,” you squeeze his hand then, “I made up my mind. Dreams are fluid, Nara. At least to me. They change shape over time as we grow, experience new things, and meet new people. I don’t want anyone else to experience what I did. By doing some wrong, we can bring about good. I want to keep Passione strong so a worse entity doesn’t take its place.”
You give him a wink. “That means you’re stuck with me.”
To further emphasize the point, you use your Stand’s ability to manifest a ribbon, tying your wrist to his.
“Will that make you happy?” Narancia asks.
“Not always, but life’s about more than being happy,” you reply without hesitation. He can tell you’ve given this some thought, far before he broached the subject. “That’s why we need each other. Gotta keep things bearable, y’know.”
A beat passes. Then he grins, wide enough that it almost hurts, but he pays it no mind. He squeezes your hand back. Sensing his lifted spirits, you mimic his smile, allowing the ribbon to fade away for it served its purpose. You never fail to amaze Narancia with how utterly lovable you are, he swears it’s almost supernatural.
“You’re right. You’re always right, [First].”
At this, you put your hands up, a laugh leaving your lips. “Oh, far from it. Now let’s go get my parents back before the crowd gets any worse.”
Narancia springs into action, the usual pep in his step making a triumphant return.
“If we’re making plans to head to the States, there is one place I really wanna visit.”
You raise an eyebrow as he helps you up. “Oh? And where might that be?”
“The mouse’s home turf. Disneyworld.”
“You know that means we’d have to go to Florida, right?”
“What’s wrong with this ‘Florida’ place?”
You place your hand on his shoulder. “That, my dear Narancia, is a long tale, full of mystery, intrigue, and alligators…”
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I'm begging you to write the cheesiest, sweetest tooth rottening love confessions for Satan
I love him so much, and please make sure to make the reader/yn shy, and they get flustered easily!
cherish me back.
↳ satan × shy!gn!reader
↳ fluff | 800+ | notes: italicized dialogue is them reading, probably | warnings: reader is gender neutral, but they're compared to a female character in a book
↳ im not entirely sure if this is what you wanted but i hope it meets your expectations anyways 🙏 thank you so much for the request i had a lot of fun once i got the flow going hwdhkfdhj
"the forest was bathed in the soft glow of the moon. most splendid of all, he thought, was the sparkle in her eyes; the glisten in her hair."
satan glanced sideways at you as he read aloud. your cheek was squished against his shoulder, your gaze focused on the book in his lap.
he continued, "in that moment, he knew there could be nothing in the world so wondrous as the sight of her beside him."
satan coveted the quiet nights like these. between student council affairs and his brothers, there always seemed to be something taking up your time.
and of course, he was fine with waiting. he was, as tiresome as it may be. it was still worth it to be able to spend time with you. in his room, in your room, or wherever you decided you wanted to read with him.
that night, it was his room. satan made sure the numerous books on his bed were cleared away for the occasion. he shut down all invitations and cleared his schedule, determined not to let anything interrupt.
yes, satan could wait. but when you gave him the opportunity to be in your company, he wasn't one to waste it.
""you look like you have something to say." she asked with a curious tilt of her head."
another glance stolen at you.
"there was so much. so much that his heart ought to burst inside his chest. this devotion seemed to consume him whole, drenching him in nothing but the sheer enigma person before him.
"she smiled knowingly at his silence. he could think of nothing else."
satan felt your leg bounce excitedly. if you knew what you were doing, he wouldn't tell you. he wasn't about to spoil your fun.
he loved everything about you, including your inclination for being on the quiet side. but with its scarcity, he couldn't help but revel in what little displays of emotion you would show. it took everything in him to keep from smiling too wide.
""speak your mind, my love.""
you'd said you read this book before in the human world. so, of course, you knew what was next. but what satan didn't expect was the breath of your whisper against his shoulder.
""there is no one i cherish more.""
satan turned to you with wide eyes.
color spread across your face.
"ah—" you sputtered. "sorry! sorry. i interrupted. you can continue! i didn't mean to.. aaaahhh.."
you threw your hands over your face, sinking lower onto the mattress.
but while you continued to mutter apologies, satan was too starstruck to hear any of it properly.
"speak your mind, my love."
"there is no one i cherish more."
something about the exchange set off fireworks in satan's head. his voice sounded so nice paired with yours..
suddenly, the initial image he had of the protagonists was wiped away, replaced with you and him— the moonlit forest reflected against a lake. him and you, saying those exact words.
satan inhaled sharply as he started to leave his stupor. he looked down at you, blushing so hard that steam might as well have been leaving through your ears.
he could only smile.
"really, mc, it's alright.." he chuckled.
"sorry.." you murmured behind your hands.
"it's not a problem." he said. "we can continue if you'd like."
you were silent for a moment. slowly, you nodded. your fingers started to slide apart, opening up your eyes.
satan looked down at the book, feeling equally sheepish.
"um.. well," he cleared his throat. "we could.. read together this time? ..if you want."
your eyes widened.
"uh.."
"...is that a no?"
your hands lowered a little, revealing a little more than half your face now. before satan could turn it down himself, wondering if he overstepped, you shook your head.
soon enough, you were back in your previous position. this time, the book laid equally split between your laps so you both could read.
"..you can start." you mumbled.
your cheek brushed against his shoulder. satan could feel a similar warmth at the tips of his ears.
he thought of you and him at the lake.
"okay." he said. ""there is no one i cherish more." he confessed, taking hold of his lover's hand."
satan wanted to hold your hand.
""i simply wanted to let you know. i love you to the moon, and all the way past the stars, if you'd let me.""
in the corner of his eye, you swallowed. your voice seemed to quiver the way satan's heart skipped its beats.
""i would." she said."
he stole another glance at you.
this time, you were looking back at him.
for a fraction of a moment, satan thought he could see a mirage of the scene reflected in your eyes.
you didn't look back down at the words as you continued.
""..and i would love you farther still.""
all satan could think then was oh.
oh.
he could see you think it too. in the way you straightened. the way you fidgeted. the way that despite your obvious nervousness, you didn't look away.
your gaze questioned, pleaded; filled with that oh-so-familiar need to know.
satan's fingers brushed against yours. he squeezed the pad of your fingertip in reassurance.
""then there is nothing left to say.""
dividers from @/clutteredfun
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5. from the dialogue with noir!! !
HELLO ANON, YES PLEASEEEEE ok so i didn't lie, i am a poet (self-proclaimed at least) this shall be an excuse to show y'all my poems too :D I HOPE YOU LIKE THIS !!!
(reblogs are greatly appreciated, it helps get my content out there! if you guys like what you see, please reblog it too <:D)
he sees you in all the lines – spider noir x reader
peter had stumbled across a book of poems one day, and though he was never really one to fully comprehend the meaning behind the lines and stanzas, he ought to have given it a try because he knew how much you liked poems, why not make an effort to try and see what you see in these literary tidbits?
he flipped through the pages and ran his eyes over the lines, rereading them every now and then when he thinks he's understood the meaning behind it, only to get even more lost in the words literal meanings as opposed to what they symbolize. though peter found himself slowing down his reading and absorbing the words of this one poem he happened upon entitled, "thread".
he read the stanzas aloud as a murmur, then, he soon reread it several times with his voice getting a little more audible as he allowed the words to sink in.
"i watched under the parade of umbrellas,
the rain speckling,
my thread's color as it's fading.
i stare as you catch my gaze--
you must've thought the same,
amidst this world and all its haze,
you found me,
i found you--
neither of us knew,
but under this spectacle of mundanity,
i've been woven into you."
and there, there in that final line, was everything peter had ever wanted to tell you. ever since you entered his life, you changed how he sees even the most minute of details and things. the way you held him in such intimate ways that, even after a long while, remains with him every second of every day. his palms and arms still tingle with the feeling of your fingers on every patch of his skin; his mind has retained all the memories of you that it could grasp, and refuses to let go of every bit of you it can keep, that he can keep.
when you get home, you're greeted to peter awkwardly clutching the poem book in his hands, with him mumbling a 'welcome home' to you as he tries to keep his sweet smile in. you greet him back and ask him what the book he's got with him's about, and peter finally confesses what's been on his mind ever since he read that line in the poem. "love, i... you know how hard it is for me to understand the hidden meanings in songs and poems, but i think this one's really something, this one really... really spoke to me." he said with a bashful grin as he met your gaze.
"never really understood poetry, but when i read a few lines from this... you were the image that came out of the words." he said as he handed you the book and you opened it to where peter left a bookmark in it. you read the highlighted line at the very bottom. "you've really left an impression on me, ever since i met you. and now that we're each other's... i can never begin to describe how much i you in everything in my life." he said with a slight chuckle as his voice softened from sheepishness. he blushed deeply as he held your hands that clasped the book's ends. "thank you for being in my life, darling. i could never ask for anyone better than you, no one else can weave their way into my life the way you can."
tags !! @thecoolerdor @miguelswifey04 @sabcandoit @binibinileonara @k4tsu3 @luvstarrstruck @maxoloqy @fiannee @fictarian @yuridopted0 @arachnoia @ophanimgold @thee-fantastic-mrfox
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HEELLLLOO EVERYONE!! I am going to talk about THE MAGNUS PROTOCOL and a Theory (maybe theories?) I have so spoilers for the first two episodes of The Magnus Protocol and major spoilers for the ending of The Magnus Archives!!!
(Someone has very likely said this before so it might be repeat information)
Okay. okay. Okay. okay. You guys know… that one comment Alice made about the voices reading statements, right? How there are three voices you can hear when statements are read aloud? We’ve got Jon and Martin as Chester and Norris, but she also mentioned an Augustus there too. “Auhhh but who’s that?? There was nobody else in the Panopticon-“ WRONG!! It’s our babygirl Jonah Magnus.
First off, during the end of the Magnus Archives we get a little “after” dialogue from the girlies about what’s going on. They mention something happening to Simon and why it’s probably for the best that they didn’t find any bodies. But that’s the thing. They didn’t find ANY bodies. Not Jon or Martin sure, but Elias’s corpse should’ve just been hangin’ around in there. But this seems to indicate that it wasn’t. So where’d to go? Probably the exact same place that Jon and Martin went.
Okay okay SECONDLY!! This image (below)
Is taken from the trailer for the Magnus protocol, and I’m sure a lot of people are familiar with it already. The two things I want to draw attention to here are the J.01 and J.02 lines. J1 and M1 are… you know… Jon and Martin. But the J2 doesn’t really have an answer unless you think that it’s Jonah, whose body was never found when the Panopticon fell. Honestly I don’t know what’s up with the master and slave lines but I’m sure those (and the fact that they failed/are undefined) is important.
What I DO recognize however is the date that’s set for 2023 at the very bottom. Keeping in mind that Alice mentioned all this freaky stuff started happening a year ago, and the series takes place in 2024, this is likely the very event we’re seeing of the computers being all wonked out. Though the question I mostly have here is, did someone (or something) put those three in there intentionally, or did that just happen to be where they went after the end of TMA? Furthermore, why NOW? Why now years later (aside from real-life time happening (because I am 100% sure that Jonny has an answer for this and I want to know it)) in 2023? Is there something special about the specific date? What’s up with the EPA Polution Preventer (and why is it spelled wrong)? The memory test went okay, do the three remember themselves? Do they know where they are?
Okay. OKAY. I’ve rambled on for a while but don’t worry we’re close to the end of my scattered, disjointed thoughts. Because the one question I have now is “Who’s listening?” In TMA it was the Web, right? The web, with tape recorders drawn to the lighter (which I’m pretty sure is what was happening but I might be a lil forgetful). But there’s no lighter here? And we aren’t using tape recorders, we’re using… computers, maybe? A cellphone, possibly? The entities have been shown to not really play nice with technology… but there was ALSO the video of the dude who ate his own computer so I’m honestly not sure what to think. I don’t know if it’s the Web, still. Honestly I don’t even know of Smirke’s Fourteen can be APPLIED here. This might be one of those instances where TMA listeners have to forget some things to make sense of this different world. But if it IS applicable to an entity, the best guess I have would honestly be the Extinction. That might explain the EPA Polution Preventer (seems pretty extinctioncore), it might explain Jon Martin and (possibly!) Jonah here, having just come from an apocalypse/the end of the world/AN EXTINCTION EVENT, but aside from that? I honestly am not sure. Because we don’t know how many of the entities are actually intelligent. Sure they can like and dislike things but it’s kind of been very solidified in how much they aren’t very thinking, aside from the web.
So uh… what’s the deal? I have… no idea. I am frothing at the mouth in anticipation. I love this podcast. I love both of these podcasts… this is amazing… this is fantastic. I’m in love. Please anyone tell me if you have any ideas or counter evidence for any of this because I would LOVE to talk to you about all this!!
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by the way, that line Bruce says in REMS that anon mentioned [arent you tired of trying to prove I love you more than anyone else, isnt it obvious] runs in my brain on repeat, I'd like you to know
I know you've talked before about how Bruce isnt the kind of character to ever say 'I love you' aloud, and I think that's one of the things that makes that line so damn good: all the factors internal and external building to a point of feeling in which he just has to exasperatedly and indirectly say to joker, 'I love you, you know that, and I've finally acknowledged it to myself, so why do we keep doing this over and over'
its excellent character analysis and such a great part of the climax of the story <3
You're all too damn kind, thank you so much! I'm especially happy that the line comes across as a culmination of multiple factors, because that's what I wanted it to be... It took so much to bring a character like Bruce to that point, and it's very gratifying to see the moment resonate with so many readers.
Also, I'll add-- you've unlocked a bonus! I actually had more than one way for REMS to get to the ending it has. The other alternate plot I still have bits written for was one in which, after delivering himself to Arkham, Joker would've been involved in a break-out. It wouldn't have been led by Joker, but at some point he'd indirectly be responsible for the death of an Arkham guard... and that'd break their truce, and Bruce's no killing request. Originally, that dialogue was part of a confrontation in Joker's Arkham cell, from Joker's perspective. He would've been sure that Bruce wouldn't allow him to explain (the guard who Joker allowed to be killed was abusive and dangerous to the patients), so his plan would've been to just play the villain role, and be the worst he could be until any trust between him and Bruce broke. Basically just destroying everything himself before Bruce had a chance to. And Bruce would've been incredibly angry, because he'd interpret it as a deliberate attempt of Joker's to end things and the coward's way out... so angry and exasperated that he might've said a version of that line.
The whole thing is too long, but here's some of the lead up:
But well, in the end I went with the current ending of REMS because I ultimately felt that this -- Bruce reacting to Joker eventually killing someone or allowing someone to die -- was something too complex, and which should've been dealt with in the context of the relationship itself. Aka, this is something they would've had to contend with a in sequel. And there's many other reasons; it's much more impactful when combined with Bruce unmasking himself, all while asking Joker to choose not to love him by hurting him for once. But anyway, hope it's a fun tidbit to read about!
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Analyzing all the differences in the storyboards posted by Yasmin Khudari and the final product! - Part 2: Collector Edition!
And so here we are! If you haven't seen part 1, I urge you to do so, as we looked into some pretty interesting and lore rich boards that were cut or done differently compared to their final episodes!
This post will cover all the boards for For the Future, and as always I'll try to be mindful with how many pictures I add for the image limit!
While chronologically the sequence with King and Collector playing pretend comes first, that one gives us a LOT more ground to cover, so I'll start with the Bedtime Story sequence, which is frankly easier to get through!
First of all: minor change, Collector used to get big sparkly eyes when asking King to read them a story!
And there also used to be dialogue by Collector after he drops the huge book down, stating that this book usually takes 300 years to get through, but assuring King they usually fall asleep midway. I think this is kind of a funny line and it would make sense with the way King responds "easy..." afterwards, which did make it in the final cut. Of course we still get that impression without this dialogue, but it was kind of funny. The book also appears to have paper pages here, rather than stone slabs.
Minor visual thing that I think is very cute: the scribbles over the "bad" part Collector did used to have little angry faces! I'm so sad they didn't make it in! Look at them! One is sticking its tongue out!
Small but super interesting dialogue change also: King used to read aloud the part Collector scratched out anyway, and go "yikes" as a response to it (fun! and accessible for viewers who may not be able to read it when it comes up for some reason!) and as a result, Collector doesn't say "don't read the NEXT part, skip to where I fixed it", but rather just "don't read the BAD part", confirming he does view it as bad. He also would say "right..." when finishing reading! I like how talkative he used to be here... sad it got lost.
Minor thing! King also used to tilt his head when telling Collector he only lets one other person hold François. This little movement is absent from the final cut!
There's also a dialogue change with Collector, he doesn't refer to Luz as "that human", but rather by name, going "your old best friend, Luz". I wonder if this was changed because the crew thought Collector might not want to admit this about Luz, or if maybe it felt inaccurate since Luz is more specifically King's sister figure.
And finally... oh these boards have gone viral baby. Excited to talk about them!
Instead of saying "I don't like being alone" after asking King at least leave François to watch over them, Collector says they promise not to touch it which... oh myyyyy God, this is so cute.
But I am conflicted about it! I think the inclusion of the line about loneliness makes a lot of thematic sense considering how this is brought up again by King to Eda and Lilith, as a reminder of the pivotal part of Collector's trauma dealing with his imprisonment, but on the other hand! This original line would have driven home the point of how good Collector is trying to be for King, specially with the divergence that comes next.
This! This feels so important! This is a call back to the moment where King tells Collector they can trust him (and this is present in both the roughs and cleans AND the final episode!) and make a pinky promise! This right here is a direct parallel that has King decide that if he tells Collector they can trust him, he should trust them too! This is decisive in portraying them as two kids who are trying to see each other as equals and just have immensely unhelpful circumstances all around them!
I can understand why it was reworked though, again, I feel like they might not want to let the audience forget about The Collector's loneliness because it is such a pivotal part of their arc and it constitutes the very important theming of how wrongful imprisoning someone is, and how punishing children through methods that border on or are straight up torture do nothing to help them grow. If this wasn't brought up again at least once, I can see the crew feeling this section of his character was neglected, and he was made into just a playmate for King to hang out with that'll inevitably turn good by the end.
I just... wish I could have them both, lol but well, other fans also had some pretty big losses in other storyboard changes, so I guess I'll settle for what we have now! I did speculate the theming of trust and telling the truth and striving to see each other as equals will come back next special, so here's hoping this won't be dropped completely!
Anyway, now for the big event! The roughs AND cleans for the playing pretend sequence! For this one, since there are sometimes differences happening between each of the board sets AND the final episode, I'll be adding those simultaneously as things happen.
First of all! Immediate punch to the gut: In the roughs, Willow used to run at her dad and get close to him and try to talk to him, not just wait until the puppets started running and screaming! I can only imagine they took this out because this would just be really sad?? But this show also revels in sadness and they do want to make us feel for Willow so I do not get it... maybe time save? Either way. I cry.
Oh yeah also! As you can see here! The puppets used to, for the most part, have stars for eyes instead of just stylized eyes? It's more subtle in the clean version but their eyes still turn into stars when they're "activated". I'm not sure why this was changed other than to maybe make it easier to animate.
Willow seems to have no dialogue when running after her dad both in the roughs and cleans, though in the cleans she does only run after him when he starts running and screaming, just like the final episode.
Also! There is a small scene not present in the final episode but both in the roughs and cleans: When Terra is running around as the owl beast, there is a close up of her obscured face with mouth open looking like a big monster mouth. I can see that they probably cut this due to it probably being weird to get such a close up without giving away it's not Eda, or maybe it was just for some extra time.
Another minor change, when she sees her dad getting attacked, in the roughs, Willow doesn't bring out her staff, instead just covering her mouth. In the cleans, she does the final episode motion normally. I think they may have changed this to reflect her personality better: we do know Willow is the type to want to jump into action to protect those she cares for.
Also minor detail: after Collector says "stop right there, beast" there used to be no frame showing Willow being surprised by this and hesitating, cutting directly to Collector's star descending with him and King on it.
Minor dialogue difference as well! Both in cleans and roughs, Collector did not address the "citizens of Bonesborough", but rather declares "I'm here to stop your mad rampage!" at the beast! I feel like it may have been changed to better reflect his view of playing the hero of the story here, instead of just playing the role of hunting the beast as he may have done before.
However the identification of his role as Luz came in the form of something else, as King used to have added dialogue in both the roughs and cleans, going "Use the spell I helped you find, Collector!" This is very cute, and I kind of wish they kept it in, it solidifies that King is playing along as an important part in the story, just like the actual episode they are referencing! I wonder if it was cut for time or if it was redundant or something...
And then King goes "I believe in you!" with your usual "Thanks, best friend" reply from Collector.
We also have this short little cut moment where you can see them looking at each other happily and there's a weird divergence between the roughs and cleans here. See, they're nearly identical, but in the roughs, King appears to be blushing for some reason?
Granted, we have seen characters blush in non-romantic settings before, even cut blushes in storyboards such as Luz blushing when being happy about Philip being impressed by her (I still feel so bad for her!) ...but it is at least notable here because a lot of people debate whether King actually enjoyed Collector's company and would like to be friends in the future or not, but I feel like moments like these in the storyboards (the bit about trusting each other from earlier on comes to mind) help solidify that they were always meant to befriend each other, King isn't just a miserable participant with no agency whatsoever! His little blush could indicate he feels happy by now to play with them! And there are further boards I will show that further prove this!
In the final cut, this bit is of course, absent, instead just cutting to Luz's eyes widening. This also leads to a funny little divergence in the roughs and cleans, where what I think happened here is that the reaction Luz used to have at Terra coming out of the Owl Beast costume was instead at first going to be her reaction to King and Collector playing together and seemingly enjoying each other's company... which is very funny to me. I think they may have changed this because it may have seemed a little too mean spirited to have Luz react so badly at King being happy around Collector.
Look... I made a GIF to show how they're one to one the same frame... This literally is just funny to me.
Another small cut moment, there used to be an overview shot of the puppets cheering for Collector! This one is very cute. Look at them with their little hands on their hips!!
And because Luz's reaction to Collector and King being besties got switched around, this caused another set of fun divergences in the roughs, cleans, and final storyboards.
In the roughs, Luz has a moment where she looks attentively at the Owl Beast costume as the camera holds on it, likely doing a kind of suspense zoom and then bait and switch. In the cleans, the zoom doesn't happen. However in both the roughs and cleans, there is a close up of Luz reacting with a weirded out face at the same time as Terra says "back to normal" offscreen.
I imagine what happened here is that these expressions from the boards were then re-tooled to be the close up shot we see of Luz reacting to King and Collector, her eyes just widening as she stares in shock.
Further on, Terra also has some cut dialogue and actions, which are the same in both the roughs and cleans:
While kicking off a bit of the costume, she then throws her "hair" back and goes "Bad girls and so on". This is a funny little bit that I can only think was maybe but for time!
And then! We actually have a case of added content! In the roughs and cleans, Collector didn't give Terra any descriptions about Eda being "like a cool aunt" who "actually cares a lot". I do think it was clever to include this, it helps show a little better that Collector actually respects and likes Eda despite how things are at the moment.
After that, both in the cleans and roughs, Terra's dialogue changes a little bit, instead of calling King a "stupid little" dog, she calls him a "little freak" dog, which does sound like a kind of harsher insult.
Another minor change that is barely noticeable, the roughs and cleans call for Terra clearing her throat before going "Ooh, I like musicians", and you can see a BIT of this motion in the final cut, but she doesn't actually do it, just sort of inhales.
Similarly, there's another cut bit in both the roughs and cleans where Terra would cough and gag right after this line, indicating she would maybe be disgusted by Eda and Raine's relationship. I think this could've been a funny bit but I understand if it was cut for time or maybe the VA couldn't cough at that moment due to complications for any reason.
This next scene is also slightly different! And contains also small differences between both the roughs and cleans! Collector, instead of saying, "You're not being very nice right now", goes "I never pinky swore to THAT."
In the roughs, he assumes more of a frowny expression, just looking kinda angry at Terra like in the final cut, but in the cleans, he gives this sinister ass smile that I love love love! Oh, my little son named warcrimes who commits atrocities and I adore it.
Minor change: Terra used to plead "no no no no" before getting turned into a puppet in both the roughs and cleans, but this is absent in the final cut.
Alright, this next part gets REAL complicated with the divergences not just towards the final cut, but with both versions - rough and clean - between each other. There's a ton of dialogue changing and even action/expression changing, and I'm very excited to talk about it.
First, in both the roughs and cleans, after going "Collector, buddy, you gotta stop doing that." King doesn't plead "Think about what you're doing to these people", but instead says "You're running out of people to play with." I imagine they may have changed this to make King seem more sympathetic to the plight of the people getting turned into puppets, whereas the first one showed more of his practical side knowing just what to say to Collector to get them to question things, as Collector would probably respond better to being reminded this is less people to play with. Another reason why this may have been cut is because one could argue Collector can still play with the puppets, just that they won't be sentient.
Here is where we run into our first divergence: present only in the cleans, King also adds "plus, you could've really hurt someone!" I imagine this bit was added in the cleans to make up for that need of showing King's compassion, but I think the reason this was also changed is that it doesn't make sense? We know the puppets aren't getting hurt, sure it's terrifying to lose control of your own body and be forced to be a doll and sleep within that wooden carcass, but they're not at risking of being actively hurt and can be easily fixed if anything happens. This is of course still bad, but the threat of physical harm doesn't make sense in this case particularly.
Because of this divergence, here's where the roughs, cleans, and final cut split into three different versions:
In the roughs, Collector responds by continuing to seem sad and going "But we'll NEVER be able to play Owl House right without an Owl Lady." He then pleads: "Maybe if you let me talk to Eda myself-" which... certainly seems a lot different than the chipper "maybe if I ask her real nice, I won't have to turn her into a puppet" from the final cut. This reads even more like Collector wants to connect to Eda and talk to her, but is being actively kept from it by King. I can see why maybe this was cut as it would make King look a little bad for barring Collector so much from seeing Eda if he is so well meaning, whereas the final version actually seems more threatening and like King has a reason to not want them interacting yet.
In the cleans, however, because King added that comment about maybe hurting people, Collector responds in a really interesting way: "You said this game was pretend, why do I gotta worry about stuff like that?" Both the roughs and cleans as you've probably already picked up lack that malicious "you're so boring" jab at King, but this one is definitely the one with the most striking contrast, as this one directly implies Collector WOULD worry about hurting people, and is just confused as to how this could happen in their game.
This makes King go into his little speech about playing pretend having consequences, but this one is also slightly altered: Instead of saying "playing pretend", King says "living in a fantasy has consequences, too. Real ones". And ohhh! I would like to bite my fucking arm off at this!! Do you see this shit! Not only is this perfect fodder for the theory Collector is trying to shut himself away from the grief he feels over the titans and refusing to confront his past trauma and generally repressing his emotions, but! It is even more of a DIRECTLY DRAWN parallel to King, by HIMSELF, at King's season 1 self and his backstory of having once believed he was the King of Demons.
But of course, I can see reasons why this may have been changed. Namely, "living in a fantasy" may have confused audiences while "playing pretend" is more of a direct description of what is happening. Also "real ones" may have just been cut for extra seconds. Lord knows they need those.
After King says that, Collector launches into his usual excited talk of Eda, though he doesn't say "no substitutes allowed". However, just like in the roughs, how he refers to talking to Eda here is pretty different. Here, he says "Maybe if you'd let me talk to her, she'd wanna play-"
Again, no mention of turning her into a puppet. Hmmm.
So, I have some theories. First is pretty straight-forward, they added the threat of her maybe getting turned into a puppet to keep the stakes high and give a reason for King to really object Collector talking to her. The second one... well, it involves a lot about Collector's arc in this episode and how it may have changed over time, but I want to talk more about it once we finish looking at all the boards for differences, and believe me, we aren't done yet.
After this, the roughs and cleans meet again, and both of them feature King going "n-no", but unlike the final cut, his dialogue is slightly different here again: he doesn't say "Her curse is still in effect." He says "She's still... not feeling well... y'know. The curse and all that." It's a subtle difference, and it does use more words and pauses, so I think they may have just changed this for time.
The roughs and cleans and final all diverge again here: In the roughs, King reassures Collector by saying "I'll talk to her about joining the game, don't you worry." In the cleans, it switches to "D-don't worry! I'll talk to her for you". In the finals, we have the known "But I can check if she's feeling better." Here we have a progression that I think shows us the difference between King promising Collector something we really aren't going to see- which is Eda joining the game, to say he'll talk to her for him which is similar but vaguer, and then, just saying he'll check on her. I feel this change may have occurred so his promise is mostly kept here.
Slight divergence: Collector goes "you promise?" as a response in all versions, but only in the cleans and final version does he do that little lean while smiling. In the roughs, he used to remain kind of sad looking. I wonder if initially they were going for Collector initially doubting King, but discarded that in favor of his more confident behavior.
And hoo boy, this next divergence is another that makes me kind of insane. You see, while King says the same thing in all three versions, "You can trust me, Collector" and offers a pinky promise, his expressions and motions! They are so different in storyboards!
In the final version, you'll recall King has his gaze averted while offering the pinky and looks kinda sad while doing it. In both the roughs and cleans though...
Look at how happy he seems doing it! He looks at Collector the whole time, only looking away at their pinkies for a second, then they have a moment where they just look at each other happily!
So this is that further implication I was talking about, that King and Collector, at least in some iteration of the story, were written to actively be friends, and not just have a one-sided thing.
Again, I have a few theories about why this was changed. Another straightforward one is just that they wanted to show King was still worried about things and not just nonchalant about the misery around him. Another possible, less straightforward one is that they really wanted to keep the thing about King actually caring about the Collector and not wanting to hurt him a surprise. In a way, that makes sense, younger people may fall for this, hell, I've seen at least one or two people online confess they really thought King wanted to kill Collector with that line from him. So to show them being so indisputably intimate would kind of spoil that.
That being said though... I have another theory, the very same that connects as to why other things have been changed, but again, it's kind of big so I wanna talk about it after we're done.
Only in the roughs now, there's a small bit where we see Camila scoot over to Luz's side to ask "Is that the little guy you've been telling me about?" (Notice in the final cut she also says little King, not just little guy. I feel like this was done to avoid confusion on who she referred to.) In the cleans, it just cuts instead of showing her getting there.
There's also a big divergence in the roughs, cleans, and final result here. First of all, in the roughs and cleans, there's no zoom in on Camila's face.
Then, in the roughs, after Camila comments "ay, que lindo", Luz gives out a giggle and goes "Verdad?" which means "True", like she was saying "true, right", like!! It's like ikr for spanish basically. However, she looks sad right after, and so does Camila upon realizing Luz still feels bad. I think they probably cut this for time, really, as well as maybe they thought Luz wouldn't be in the mood to laugh at her mom reacting the same way she did when she first met King.
In the cleans, however, this scene is way more depressing. Camila still gushes over King like normal, but here, Luz's reaction is just sighing and giving an eerily blank looking dejected expression. My god girl. You are not doing well. And of course, Camila does get sad seeing her this way.
Minor change, Collector used to not say Archive House, just the Archives!
Another minor but fun change: Amity used to reply to Camila's question about the eyeballs being normal but not Collector, by going "Yeah, that's basically it."
Some pretty heartbreaking cut dialogue here as well, in both the roughs and cleans, after Hunter says they should follow Collector and King as Belos is probably trying to get back to the Collector, Willow points out they're flying too fast.
The roughs and cleans diverge here a bit, but Hunter's reaction is more or less similar.
In the roughs, Hunter goes "Flap would be able to-" before cutting himself off and storming off.
But in the cleans, this is made further more upsetting, as he says "Flap could-" then pauses for a moment, entirely silent, realizing what he just said. Then he announces "It's fine." and walks off, stating that "there's more than one way to find him."
I! Really mourn these losses! These are such neat little moments that solidify Hunter's grieving and I wish we could've kept them! I can only think they may have been cut for time, the crew felt they didn't need to add more, or they didn't want to rub it in.
Minor dialogue changes ahead, Gus doesn't say "it looked like they were playing a game", but specifically focuses on The Collector, saying it looked like (they) were playing pretend (hmmm, possible Gus role with the Collector foreshadow?) Similarly, Luz doesn't described it as a "messed up version" of her life, only HER life. Gus also doesn't refer to them as puppets in roughs and cleans, but rather as toys.
Before climbing up the debri to look at the Archives, Luz would say "The Archives..." dramatically, in both the roughs and cleans. Also, may just be the nature of the roughs being roughs, but in the rough storyboards the Archives look way more like a bunch of floating debri strung together rather than a full on circular castle.
And... that's it basically! Whew! That was... quite a lot as you can tell, just these two scenes had so much material they practically overshadow the sheer amount of content the first part of this little analysis project had.
Okay, so. Again, as the guy who usually goes cuckoo crazy theorizing on every little thing related to the Collector, this was a feast for me, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't very intrigued by how much Collector's characterization -specially in relation to King- changed from the storyboards to the final product.
One thing you may have already clocked just from this is that The Collector and King used to seem much more like close friends, as well as there was less of an emphasis on Collector's loneliness and implied trauma rather than on the issue of trust between King and Collector- can they really call each other best friends if they don't take the steps to trust each other and be honest with each other?
Hell, there's even ANOTHER modified detail from the storyboards where King used to SMILE while beaming up with Collector after meeting Odalia.
So... what happened? Why did they change this? I've given you my reasons before but have been teasing one big theory all along, so I will say it now: I think they were pretty confident up to a certain point in diving into the themes of friendship and trust and telling the truth with Collector and King that I've already kinda identified as remaining in this episode, but that got kinda built up for the next episode, but then they realized "oh shit, we are barely touching on Collector's own trauma from being put in hardcore solitary for hundreds of years and having his psyche shattered into pieces from that we should probably. Focus on that huh."
And so was born a revised version of the episode that focused on King feeling a lot more general pity and sadness for the Collector, and the Collector in turn also being allowed to show more sadness that wasn't just related to not getting why his games are going wrong or why King won't let him talk to Eda. One where a more young and/or impressionable audience may be excused to think King didn't like Collector that much, but the twist is that he does, in fact he feels bad for them and relates to them.
Put simply, these earlier versions were nice, but they lacked the drive back to focus on the metanarrative Collector brings to the table of how terrible it is to punish a kid- or anyone- with extended solitary imprisonment, even if they did do bad things or are still doing them. And honestly, I'm still conflicted! I still like both of these a lot, I really think I would have enjoyed this earlier version with them being clearly besties maybe even more, but I also can't say I wouldn't have been frustrated if they never brought up Collector's trauma and issues ever again, specially after setting that up through Season 2B.
But well... I still will hold these storyboards near and dear to my heart, and I hope this post will reach many more people and spread the good word of the King and Collector endgame besties agenda being real!
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Despair Time Ch2 Motive Analysis
CW: Incredibly dark subject material– lots of death, murder, and suicide/self harm. Implied/mentioned homophobia, transphobia, and eating disorders. Major spoilers through Part 1 of Despair Time Chapter 2. Also it’s long.
Secrets, secrets, secrets! As soon as MonoTV revealed the secrets of Despair Time’s student body to us without telling us whose was whose, I started making plans to write a theory about who their true owners could be. And then the first part of the trial revealed way more than I thought it would. But, no matter! The trial isn’t over yet, and even if/when it is finished, I doubt they’ll spill all of the answers immediately.
In terms of gathering our truth bullets for this case, I saw some bonus material in the comments section of Chapter 2 Episode 8 that I think will give us a lot to work with. In case you weren’t aware, apparently if you go to the cast introductions of Despair Time’s Tumblr page, you can find a hidden quote on each of the characters’ profiles. You can read them all now if you wish, but I’ll make sure to write out the relevant ones when I talk about them later.
Notably, Min and Arei have both canonically said their quotes aloud within the duration of the story, while Xander has not. Does this perhaps indicate that he’ll say it later in a flashback or something? Will other characters say their quotes out loud in the future? Maybe, maybe not. That’s not super relevant to the discussion at hand.
So, let’s start by clearing the secrets that have been confirmed true by their (relatively) trustworthy owners.
“You took on your talent to earn money for your family. But you’ve since put them in a lifetime of debt.” We saw that this is the secret that Teruko received, and that it had Rose’s name on it. Rose later confirmed that this secret was true with detail, so this is definitely Rose’s secret.
“You hide your name and birthright to pretend that you aren’t the daughter of Mariabella Rosales.” Arturo openly revealed that this was J’s secret, and while she was upset, she didn’t deny it. This is definitely J’s secret.
“Blackmail, rumors, lying, stealing, slander. You did everything you could to ruin your sisters’ lives.” Arei outright confirmed that this was her secret to David and Teruko. Levi, the secret’s holder, backed that fact up during the Class Trial. This is definitely Arei’s secret.
“No one accepted you because of your identity. You were constantly mocked by your family, your peers, and everybody else.” Ace exposed this as Nico’s secret, and while, like J, they were upset at it being spread, they didn’t deny that it was theirs. Given that Nico has now come out with their identity, this is definitely Nico’s secret.
With those four obvious ones out of the way, let’s clear a couple more that I think have been attributed correctly.
“Your older brother died, but you don’t remember him at all.” Although J revealed this as Charles’ secret, he didn’t confirm that it was correct. However, the whole point of this secret is that Charles didn’t remember that it happened, and his later dialogue makes it seem like he’s started to remember that this is in fact, true. It’s not 100% guaranteed, but I’m almost certain this is Charles’ secret.
“Your younger sister killed herself because of you. You never should have left.” Knowing that the owner of this secret was an alive male, J deduced that this was Arturo’s secret, and Eden was eventually forced to back her up. While I still have some reserves about this secret, given that Arturo continues trying to deny that it’s his, it’s Eden’s story that really seals the deal for me. If this was not Arturo’s secret, Eden would have needed to fabricate the entire scene between her, Arturo, and Arei seemingly out of nowhere, and it would have to just happen to line up perfectly with the existence of the ripped note. If this was not Arturo’s secret, Eden would have to be pulling off a masterful lie for questionable gain, which seems implausible. Plus, Arturo lied about having a younger sister in the Trial, which implies he had something to hide. His quote, “You hated them, but even that doesn’t justify what you did,” fits this secret decently as well. Pretty sure this is Arturo’s.
“Your body is falling apart, but you’ll still refuse to eat.” Veronika guessed that this was Ace’s secret, and based on his reaction, it really seems like that would be the case. Nico also essentially confirming that it’s Ace’s is just another cherry on top. However, given that Ace didn’t verbally confirm it himself, I put it down here. I think it’s correct, though.
“Your mother is dead. You always omit that truth.” This is a unique one for this category because Whit actually did confirm that this one was his. It’s Rose’s actions that make this more uncertain, given that she never read the secret and therefore doesn’t know who it belonged to. Compared to other secrets, this one is pretty tame, so it’s possible that Whit could be taking advantage of Rose’s forgetfulness to claim this secret as his own. However, because nobody else claimed this secret, that means that he would have to know with enough certainty ahead of time that it belonged to Xander or Min (or theoretically Arei) that he could avoid someone else calling him out. His hidden quote, “We tend to idolize the dead,” also fits this secret, given that he’s spoken highly of his mother before. It’s probably Whit’s, but I wanted to examine all avenues.
“You exist to manipulate others. Everyone else exists to be taken advantage of.” Both Ace and Arei (if Ace is to be believed) called David out for being the owner of this secret, and Whit, via Charles, was eventually forced to admit that it was true. David’s own behavior after this secret was revealed also demonstrates the likelihood that this is true. However, we now know that David lies constantly. He could be rolling with the narrative that this is his secret because he believes it’s not worth it to fight back and reveal something potentially worse. Despite belonging to someone else in this scenario, I think that this secret would just happen to match up with David’s worldview as well, to the point of basically being two people’s secret. However, that would mean that Ace (and theoretically Arei) would have to be wrong, and that Whit, who claims to be a bad liar, would have to be lying. I think this is probably David’s, but if some plot twist occurs in Trial 2 Part 2, don’t say I didn’t see it coming.
“Ever since you kissed her, you were afraid your sexuality would ruin your friendships.” Charles claimed that this was Eden’s secret. While I don’t think she ever confirmed it, I personally trust that Charles is telling the truth (what motive does he have to not), so I think this is probably correct. Eden appears to care a lot about friendship, so this fits with her personality. “You can’t go back, no matter how hard you try,” Eden’s hidden quote, also feels applicable. However, for all the mastermind Eden truthers out there (I think there are a good number of you?), I think that this secret could easily be something that is true, but is also a soft ball compared to what could be said about her.
And, there we go! With ten secrets more or less confirmed, we’re left with six secrets to truly theorize about, and six students left to have them: Teruko, Xander, Hu, Levi, Min, and Veronika.
But, wait a minute! you realize. Wasn’t Xander’s secret already confirmed to be “How could I even select what secret to make your motive? Just about everything you’ve done in your life is worth killing for. The killing game is all your fault”? Well, here’s the thing. The only one who claimed that this secret was Xander’s was David. And, as previously established, David is a massive liar. Although he didn't say it, I get the sense from David’s behavior that he was trying to figure out where each secret lay before and during the trial, so that he could theoretically claim a different secret than was his and maintain his career. That’s why he asked to go last: so that he could have as much information as possible before making a bluff. In doing so, I think he may have claimed that this secret was Xander’s because Xander wasn’t there to tell the others that David was lying.
The way David said it, and especially the way that none of the other characters took the time to react to this information, make me believe that it was a lie. It’s like how they didn’t spend any time having Teruko and Eden dwell on Ace’s life and their relationships with him when they found him in the gym, because Ace wasn’t actually dead. If David really essentially revealed Xander as the mastermind in the middle of the Trial and that information was actually true, wouldn’t you have been curious how Teruko would react? I feel like they intentionally played softball with that “reveal” because it wasn’t true.
Additionally, I have my suspicions that another secret better fits Xander’s character. Namely, “You’re constantly blaming yourself for the death of your parents and siblings. It doesn’t matter that it’s not your fault, just that you didn’t go with them.” Via the story told in Bonus Episode 2 - Visiting Graves, we can gather that Xander’s family (which canonically includes parents and siblings) died due to some sort of disease outbreak while he was studying abroad. Thus, while saying that he “didn’t go with them” is sort of a strange way to phrase it, that part of the secret could be saying that Xander didn’t go back to Chariton to be with his family when they died. Or, it could be shaming him for not “going with them” to the afterlife. That would certainly fit in with Xander’s hidden quote, which is literally the definition of survivor’s guilt: “Survivor guilt (n): feelings of guilt for having survived a catastrophe in which others died.”
While I strongly suspect that this is Xander’s secret and that David was lying, I obviously can’t be certain that that’s true. It could be Teruko’s secret, given that we know that she has a sibling and has seen a dead body. It’s also possible that this could be Levi’s secret, as he is known to have parents and siblings. However, from the way he spoke about them, I feel like it was implied that they were alive. And, even if they weren’t, based on their rocky relationship, I don’t know if he would constantly blame himself. In Bonus Episode 1 - A History of Hope’s Peak, Min mentions that she has (likely alive) parents, while her sibling status is unknown. As far as I remember, not much is known about Hu or Veronika’s families, so it’s difficult to speculate about them.
That being said, I have a hard time believing that the secret “You only took on your talent to distract yourself from your incessant need to harm yourself for fun” isn’t Veronika’s. In Chapter 2 Episode 7, Veronika reveals that she struggles immensely with boredom, and got into horror because fear and thrill interest her. I could definitely see that, before discovering horror, injuring herself was Veronika’s “best” outlet to escape her boredom. Her hidden quote, “Once something is broken, it can never be pieced together in quite the same way again. The same goes for people” seems to match the worldview that this person might have had. Beyond that, I genuinely don’t know who else this secret would fit. Hu, Levi, and Min all feel like strange fits personality-wise to me– they seem pretty level-headed and aren’t big fun-seekers. Xander has knowledge of treating injuries, but I can’t see someone so tied to survivor’s guilt injuring themselves specifically for the sake of fun. Teruko is quite bandaged, but only because of her luck, and she seems to dislike being the recipient of such harm. Therefore, Veronika seems like the best fit.
The last secret that I have strong thoughts about is “Xander’s” secret, which we already talked about: “How could I even select what secret to make your motive? Just about everything you’ve done in your life is worth killing for. The killing game is all your fault.” I think that this is Teruko’s secret. Teruko has canonically stated that she doesn’t know what exactly her secret is. While she has a habit of keeping things from us, if she’s telling the truth, that lines up with “everything in your life being worth killing for.” From the very first scene, we also know that someone who wants to end the killing game has the goal of killing Teruko, no matter what. If the anti-killing game person is anti-Teruko, it stands to reason that Teruko is aligned with the killing game somehow.
I’m not entirely sure about this one, though, mainly because of the way Teruko acts. Wanting to stay in the school for the rest of her life doesn’t seem to align with the goals of the mastermind, AKA running the killing game. However, there are a couple of ways to avoid this problem. The first is the obvious solution that Teruko just forgot that she was the mastermind. This has happened in canon and fanon Danganronpa alike, so it totally could happen again. Alternately, this secret doesn’t actually say that its bearer is the mastermind, only that the killing game is their fault. If the real mastermind began the killing game in order to murder or otherwise get revenge on Teruko (potentially for all the so-called terrible things she’s done or been a part of), this could be Teruko’s secret without her actually being the mastermind.
For what it’s worth, though, I think it’s decently likely that the mastermind is a girl. In A History of Hope’s Peak and Visiting Graves, Min and Xander talk to “Unnamed Student,” who has a consistent voice between the two episodes. While I didn’t mention it earlier, MonoTV also has a hidden quote: “Her name is Mai Akasaki.” Looking at this hidden link, we can also see that Mai looks the same as the person Teruko saw in her flashback after Xander died. I would be willing to wager that this “Unnamed Student” is Mai, and that “she” is therefore a girl. The dialogue implies Mai was in the same Hope’s Peak class as both Min and Xander. Although this series follows the class of a collegiate Hope’s Peak several decades past Makoto, a typical class of Ultimates has sixteen students, eight men and eight women. Thus, if Mai was in Xander and Min’s class, but now is not in the killing game, there’s probably a female intruder who took Mai’s place. That person may be the mastermind. Seeing that Teruko is a girl, Teruko could fit this intruder role.
Of course, the gender balance could be thrown off given that we have at least one nonbinary student, but it’s still worth mentioning. Additionally, I can’t deny that this could still be Xander’s secret, or even someone else’s entirely. Whether David makes it through the second Class Trial or not, I feel like we won’t be getting the truth out of this one for a while to come.
Guessing who owns the last three secrets between Min, Hu, and Levi is where it gets murky. “You always treated the competition with ruthlessness, but poisoning them to win was a bit too far, wasn’t it?” probably gives us the most to work with. I don’t think this would be Levi’s secret, given that I don’t know what “competition” he would have had in becoming a personal stylist.
From A History, we know that Min did have to compete in order to become the Ultimate Student. However, she also tells Mai that “it seem[ed] highly unlikely that [she] was number one in the nation in terms of raw scores”, and that she “doubt[s she] was even the top scorer on that test.” The use of “unlikely” and “doubt” make it sound like she didn’t know exactly what would happen with the results, and therefore that she didn’t take decisive action against her competitors to secure them. However, she could also be concealing the truth from Mai. Or, if her benefactor poisoned the competition for her, perhaps that could count as her secret as well. She might then agree that it was a step too far, though, especially given that her hidden quote is “I wanted to save you.”
Otherwise, this secret could fit Hu pretty well. The arts are always a competitive field, so I could see Hu having competition for being the top zither player. Her hidden quote, “I want to pay for what I’ve done. But even then, I still want to live” could totally match up too. She feels bad about poisoning her competitors, but it’s not like she wants to be poisoned herself to atone for it.
Then there’s “You were quite the hopeless child. Dying once wasn’t enough, so you attempted suicide three times.” While it might seem like Hu’s “even then, I still want to live” could fall in line with this, I don’t see how attempting suicide would leave her with anything to pay for. It would only be if Hu’s suicide attempts drove her loved ones to such despair that they decided to take themselves out too. But, in that case, wouldn’t that probably be mentioned in the secret itself? However, I do think it’s worth noting that Hu’s refusal to share the “harm yourself for fun” secret could hint at her having a past history of self harm.
Min and Levi seem to have both been pretty hopeless children. By her own admittance, Min grew up quite poor, and her parents seemed to care more about her Ultimate potential than her as a person. This could have led her to become suicidal. Her dialogue surrounding these events is perplexing– she says that she obsessively studied for her entire life to pass the Ultimate test, and that she never considered failure as an option. If she’s telling the whole truth, then perhaps she had such tunnel vision on her goal that she never would have tried to take herself out of the game. Or, is she only using such strong language in hindsight, when she had more faltering steps along the way?
Levi also had a very rough childhood, claiming himself that he, his parents, and his siblings were bad influences on each other. It’s possible that their influence caused Levi to feel that “dying once wasn’t enough,” and separate instances of abuse or arguing drove him to the edge several times. His hidden quote, “I always believed that a person is defined by their actions alone. But maybe that’s just a poor excuse for my heartlessness” doesn't totally seem to fit this secret. However, if he was dishing out abuse as much as he was taking it, maybe he drove his family to the point of harming themselves, too. It’s quite sad to think about, but that’s true of whoever holds this secret.
And, finally, “You’re a murderer, and you hold no remorse.” This secret is so vague that it’s really hard to get a grasp on it. I want to eliminate Min from this one, simply based on her behavior in the first Class Trial. If she had killed someone before with no remorse, would she really act so shocked and afraid when she wound up killing Xander? And, how and when would she have been driven to the point of killing someone while she was devoted so fiercely to studying?
However, Levi and Hu don’t seem to make much sense for this one either. Levi seems to be a pretty regretful person, and talking about his “poor excuses for heartlessness” only adds to that reading. I could see Levi having killed someone, but it’s harder to believe that he wouldn’t feel even a little bit bad about it. Same with Hu– if she wants to “pay for what she’s done,” wouldn’t that mean that she feels bad about her hypothetical murder?
If I had to guess at this point, I suppose I would say that the competition was Hu, the three attempts were Min, and the no remorse was Levi? But the dead end on the remorse secret makes me feel like either I’m missing something, or I was wrong about Teruko, Xander, Veronika, or somebody else.
Sorry if this wasn’t as conclusive as you were hoping for– I mostly wrote this all out just to sort out my own thoughts. I only caught up with this series, like, three days ago? So it’s definitely possible that I’m forgetting or missing something. Or, that I just came upon common consensus, and that everyone already figured out and agreed on all this weeks ago. Still though, thank you so much for reading all the way until the end, and if you have anything to add, please feel free to respond in some way. I would love to know what you think!
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