#I’m gonna make an interpretation card of him because I don’t care about his canon anymore and SPITE

[pigdemonart]

Battle Subway Depot Agents (by pig-demon)

When I made designs for these guys last year I didn’t really think they needed colored references/master post, but since then I’ve drawn them a lot! Also people have added them to their fanfics and drawn fanart! So I figured it was time I made a post for easy ref. :]

These designs are obviously free to use, just give credit (and link me your work if you're comfortable, because it makes me happy to see!) All I request is to stay respectful to their pronouns and skin colors, ya knooow… 👍 note: The pokemon on their cards are all companions, not the ones they use on the Battle Subway. Except Jackie...the litwicks are just there to fill space/give them company.

More info under cut:

Edit: Important disclaimer:

These are again my designs/interpretations for the agents. Please don’t treat them as canon or as the only, quintessential designs for these literal background npcs. Many people have done takes on them before and after me, even back in 2010. It feels silly to ask, but due to past experience, I ask that you please DONT hunt down anyone that does a different take on the depot agents!! 👍

Tags:

I'm gonna start tagging them individually, but for now all Depot Agent comics and art on this blog are tagged under Depot Agents.

Height chart:

I’m not too strict about heights, so I don’t really care about actual measurements. Here’s an approximation of what I tend to visualize though:

Sexualities/Gender Identities: I don't have official labels for each and every agent because I like keeping things fluid for characters to develop these traits on their own. However, as a queer person, I enjoy designing characters who are also queer, therefore I can safely say none of these characters are straight. The ones who are set in stone are Ramses (gay man), Cloud (lesbian woman,) Jackie (non-binary.) Furze uses he/they pronouns but their gender is undetermined. I also welcome anyone giving the agents a different gender identity to suit them (as long as it's done respectfully.)

Notes about each agent...

Cameron:

- Cameron dyes parts of his hair blonde and keeps other parts in black. This is because he is a big fan of Elesa and her fashion choices.  - Though there have been a few occasions to meet his idol, he is always way too nervous to approach her, feeling deep down that he'll mess up somehow. - He practices modeling poses in secret. He loves flourishes and flare, but is simply too insecure to put it on display. - Of his coworkers, he gets along the best with Furze. He's the easiest to talk to because Furze will do most of the talking. - Cameron is easily intimidated — even mean Pokémon can make him nervous. Though, his two worst fears are being left in a room alone with Jackie, and being left alone in a room with Isadore. - He takes advantage of his height to sometimes hide behind some of his coworkers. - Cameron is much better at Pokémon battles than he gives himself credit for. Emmet and Ingo were pleasantly surprised by this, since Cameron was promoted to fit a temporary role on the Battle Subway. They happily made him a permanent member when he proved himself capable. - His Dwebble (Pebby) is secretly very strong, and rushes to protect Cameron when it can. Cam sometimes thinks Pebby helps him feel more confident in himself too.  - If he stumbled into any of his coworkers outside of work, he would simply explode of embarrassment. - He is the youngest child and only son of his family. He lives in his own apartment in Nimbasa.

Cloud:

- Cloud (like Ramses) knew the twins when they were very young. - She used to be an ace trainer in her youth, even going so far to compete in the Pokémon league. Winning and becoming the champ was the most important part of her journey, but something happened along the way that changed that outlook. - It seems with age, her competitiveness has mellowed out. However, she maintains an intense energy when battling.  - Her favorite types are Psychic and Flying types. Swoobat (Sweetie) is her ace.  - Her favorite hobby is baking, and she often bakes sweets for the crew. She knows all their favorite flavors by now! - She prioritizes keeping a friendly relationship with all her coworkers and thinks of them fondly. She considers Ramses family after all the years of working together!  - She is a big fan of Brycen's movies and can recite the lines. - She lives with her wife in Anville. - Cloud loves doing maintenance work both at home and in Gear Station. She enjoys bringing her own tools and industrial flashlight.

Furze:

- Furze only has one volume setting (mid loud,) but he finds himself feeling right at home when talking to either one of the twins. - Furze has ADHD, and this is reflected in some of his habits, most visibly is his fidgeting when sitting still for too long. - He rides a bike to work every day. When he is late, Cloud clocks in for him so he doesn't get in trouble. - This is a kind of a guy that sits crouched gargoyle style on chairs. Only outside of work, of course. Bad posture could get him in trouble. - While working on the Battle Subway, there will be times Furze feels sorry for his opponents and offers to quietly let them pass anyways. This...has also gotten him in trouble. :[ - He went to the same elementary school as Isadore in Castelia. Though Isadore seems to have forgotten their short-lived acquaintance, Furze has not. This is part of the reason Furze claims they are in fact good friends!!! - Furze is the middle child of a big family. He lives with his mom and takes care of her, along with his many Darumakas and Darmanitan. All of his Pokemon have famous trains names. - He collects model trains. Naturally.

Isadore

- Isadore had plans to become the station master the moment he was hired as a depot agent, but alas... (sad trumpet sound.) - As a youth, he was more interested in science and engineering over Pokemon battles. He enjoys the strategizing aspect, at most. Not so much the competitiveness. - In addition, his Pokemon are all rescues and not used for battling. He's had his Watchog (Winston) since he was in his late teens. - His Electrode (Gregor) and Voltorb (Leonard) were rescued from the likes of Team Plasma. - Isadore admits he understands Pokemon better than humans. This has been apparent his whole life. - In spite of acting like a sitcom villain, Isadore cares about the management of Gear Station and the safety of the passengers to an incredible degree. He sees it as a personal life goal to assist in the management of Gear Station, as well as the success of the Battle Subway. - Though it pained him to become a subordinate to the twins, he begrudgingly accepts it for the greater good. - His almost militant efficiency certainly made up for his years of antagonizing the twins before they became the bosses. Ingo and Emmet understand this better than anyone. - Isadore keeps tabs on all of the staff members. So he very well knows all their birthdays and makes it a point to celebrate it. This is by no means a -happy- or -festive- event. It's just customary. - Like Furze, he was originally from Castelia, but now resides in Nimbasa. Isadore's only family is his mom and she lives in his childhood home with their Stoutland. - Isadore would have probably been voiced by every glasses guy ever J. Michael Tatum had he not already been cast as dear Emmet lmao

Jackie

- Jackie is a mystery and they like keeping it that way. When they talk, it's practically impossible to determine what is a lie or truth, especially if the subject is themselves or their background. - They love scaring Cameron the most and will ask to be paired with him whenever possible. They claim Cameron is their "favorite coworker," while Isadore is the least favorite. - It's plain to see why -- Jackie is the only one that doesn't passively tolerate Isadore's tirades. - Though my comics sometimes may allude to Jackie being a ghost/supernatural, this is not confirmed nor canon. I just personally enjoy toying with the concept. : ) That being said...

- Item #: SCP 7453

- Object Class: Euclid

- Special Containment Procedures: The ████ ██████ is ██████ within ████-██████. - Ingo and Emmet choose to not question anything about Jackie, since it's clear they're one of the more efficient workers. However it can be a safety concern... - Cloud and Ramses have worked with Jackie for a long time, though they've forgotten somehow. They believe Jackie is a new hire since they appear to be young. - Anyone trying to make sense of Jackie's employee records simply can't bring themselves to any conclusions. It's better to ignore the inconsistencies. - Jackie has never been seen to leave Gear Station. Jackie has never been seen in anything but their uniform. Jackie has never been confirmed to eat, drink or blink. Jackie knows your secrets. Jackie thinks it's... amusing.

Ramses

- Ramses sometimes misses having a full head of hair, but he thinks his signs of age make him look distinguished. (he is correct.) - Ramses is sort of the "mom friend," making sure everyone's concerns are heard, as well as trying to keep the peace whenever a conflict might arise. - If another coworker is feeling low, Ramses will try to cheer them up with a lighthearted joke or offer advice if they'd like it. - When the twins were promoted to bosses of the Battle Subway, Ramses cried because he felt so proud. - In most circumstances, he is a very simple and logical man. He is quick to find solutions and tries not to fret over the little stuff. It's not good for his heart after all. - His ace is his Pikachu (Musa,) though the mouse is more of a lap pet now. At home, he also has an Audino (Sara) and a Manectric (Nubi) who keep Ramses' husband company. His Klinklang (Moli) is the only one of his personal pokemon that accompany him to work nowadays. - Ramses considers Cloud family. They are best friends and love having family gatherings outside of work. They also gossip a lot, and don't mind when Jackie decides to join. - Ramses jokes about looking forward to retirement, but really doesn't want to leave until he is physically incapable of working anymore. Gear Station is like a second home to him.

In-Game Quotes

The most important reference of all are their in-game quotes, of course, so I'm adding it to the post. A lot of their personality traits can be extracted and interpreted from these few lines. And I personally love that about Pokemon NPCs -- there's a lot of room to explore and play with. Some appear very obvious. Cameron practically announces that he isn't ready for the battle that's about to ensue and seems genuinely surprised to win. Furze comes out the gate talking about the subject they actually care about, which is their job and their love for trains. The two of them are very easy to understand. Now, Ramses lines allude to a gentle and simple personality. He views himself with humility, and maybe even with a bit of humor comparing himself to a train and to his opponent to a station. If he loses he shows no signs of disappointment, he just accepts defeat with one last honest quip. It s also amusing to see the Depot Agents all use train metaphors to describe themselves since it falls in line with how Ingo and Emmet talk.

In comparison, Cloud does the same thing calling herself the terminal instead. Immediately, she is way more daring, though still keeping a sense of professionalism. To me, it's obvious she is competitive as she even admits she was expecting to win ("Ah...I didn't see it coming.") Jackie's lines are fun since it's up to interpretation if they are being literal or lying. It's almost like they are more interested in confusing/creeping out their opponent than actually beating them. To me, it gives off a mischievous vibe. Isadore's opener "There are only two roads in life." is a curious one because it almost feels like he is trying to be philosophical. Definitely a guy who views himself as an intellectual, regardless if that’s true or not. I like to think it's a saying he really believes in, and it applies to his life. The road he likes (long route) vs the road he hates (shortcut) -- fighting tooth and nail to become boss vs biting his tongue and accepting Ingo and Emmet as the Subway Masters.

Those are just my thoughts on how I write these characters. Please have fun playing with these lines too!

#depot agents #depot agents master post #my art #submas #submas adjacent ahaha #will probably edit as time goes on but who knows really #if you spot any typos no you dont kiss kiss #cameron #cloud #furze #isadore #jackie #ramses

[belphegor1982]

hehehe I am rubbing my lil hands together gleefully and i am here to ask after "Underture" and/or the Ghosts AU, because I'd love to see how you've expanded on it since I last heard about it!

Then you shall have both!

I haven't got much further into the Ghosts AU, except to figure out how the titular ghosts died - some got murdered, some died by accident, some from natural (if way too early) causes - and also which ones retain some kind of power/impact on the living world, to some respect (ie. everyone but Grog and the twins).

Also, I figured a "modern day" era would be 1496 Post Divergence in this universe. The VM timeline happens around 812PD; Greyskull Keep was built for them around that time, and I had Grog haunt the place before that. So if I do manage to make something out of it, here's the dates of everyone's death/arrival at the keep:

787 PD: Grog (-709)

1097 PD: Pike (-399)

1176 PD: Scanlan (-320)

1288 PD: Vex & Vax (-208)

1343 PD: Tiberius (-153)

1383 PD: Keyleth (-113)

1415 PD: Percy (-81)

1496 PD: Allura & Kima move into the keep

Also, I'm keeping their races, lifespan and all, and toying with the idea that some races have gone... not extinct, but rarer by the time the 1400s roll on. We'll see!

As for Underture, it's strictly The Legend of Vox Machina, set pre-canon, when everyone has realised they work well together but before the most hard-headed realise that they actually care about the other chucklefucks. (they do. They absolutely do but some of them are too used to rely on themselves/their twin to see that yet 💜)

So the premise is Vax and Scanlan falling into a deep mine shaft and trying to make their way back to the surface; meanwhile (/three days earlier - each "Vax and Scanlan" chapter is followed by a "how we got there" chapter), Vox Machina is hired to send a message to a miner/look into his disappearance. Shenanigans ensue! (hopefully :D) It's too early for ships, but there are hints to Perc'ahlia, Vaxleth and (of course) Pikelan ^^

Here's a little exchange from the second Vax and Scanlan chapter! Since in the stream Vex's and Vax's original character sheets mention "low-light vision (carry over from Pathfinder)" while both Scanlan and Pike get the whole 60 feet of Darkvision, I had Vax have trouble seeing in complete darkness. Which leads to this:

“So you really can’t see for shit?”

“Yes I can,” retorted Vax. “Just not clearly. Everything further than a yard starts to blur together and I can’t really see where I’m stepping. But I can keep up.”

“Sure you can. That’s why you keep hanging back, to look at the scenery.”

“Maybe I do! Someone’s got to check what the walls are made of to see how close we are to the exit!”

“Oh yeah? In that case, how many fingers?”

“Three,” Vax snapped back, flipping the double bird in answer to Scanlan’s own raised middle finger. Damn. Either the el—the half-elf did see better in the dark than Scanlan gave him credit for or he was starting to know him too well.

Scanlan let his hand fall and rolled his eyes.

“Look, you don’t need to get your panties in a knot. I can see better than you at the moment, so the way I see it there’s only one way you won’t fall behind and get lost.” He walked back to Vax and thrust out his hand with a grin large enough to be obvious even in the dark. “Wanna hold hands?”

Vax stared down at him for three full seconds. Scanlan didn’t lower his hand, but his smile fell.

“Oh gods, you’re not one of those people, are you?”

Vax didn’t go as rigid and dangerous as he’d had at the elf thing, but it was close.

“What kind of people?”

“You know, the morons who think that holding hands with a dude is somehow gonna knock points off their manly man card. Or manly half-elf, as it were.”

Something flashed over Vax’s face too quickly for Scanlan to interpret and he let out a strangled laugh.

“I have held hands with a man before, Scanlan.”

“Oh, good.”

“Many not as many times as you must have, but my manly half-elf card has seen some good use in its time.”

Scanlan grinned at the insinuation. “All right.”

In practice, the mechanics of efficient half-elf/gnome hand-holding took some time to figure out, due to Vax’s hand being approximately a third larger than Scanlan’s. In the end, Scanlan wrapped his whole hand around the three last fingers of Vax’s, and off they went, Vax making an effort to walk in Scanlan’s footsteps and Scanlan purposely slowing down his pace.

Once they had set a good rhythm Scanlan looked up at Vax.

“Just to be clear, you’re saying you’re into guys, right?”

Vax snorted.

“I’m a lot less picky than that. It’s pretty much fifty-fifty for me. Opposite gender and all the rest. I just don’t like to make it as obvious as you.”

Opposite gender I had figured, thought Scanlan, the way you fumble like a schoolboy when Keyleth has her special beaming Oh hey, Vax smile on.

But – in a very wise move, he thought – he made no such comment out loud. “Hey, when you want it you gotta flaunt it.”

“Not sure that’s how the saying goes.”

“You know what I mean. How’s the other person supposed to guess you’re into them if you don’t show it?” Scanlan paused. “Did people give you a hard time about it growing up or something?”

He felt Vax’s fingers twitch slightly. Boy, the guy needed to learn how not to display his emotions on his freaking sleeve like that. It was liable to get him fleeced at cards, for one thing.

“Well… not exactly? It’s like… Vex and I being half-elves was bad enough that it overshadowed everything else. Compared to that, I didn’t come across that many people who gave a damn about who I took to bed.”

“…But?”

“But there were a few, yeah.”

Scanlan shook his head.

“Man, that’s so weird. Imagine caring what’s in people’s pants. Or giving other people shit about things like that.”

“I know,” said Vax forcefully with – if Scanlan was starting to know him at all – a scathing eye roll. “I mean, hot is hot, right?”

“Exactly. People have weird hang-ups, man.”

“They sure do.”

And maybe smiling like a couple of idiots did nothing in the long run to help them find their way back to sunlight, but it didn’t exactly not help, either.

_

My boys 🥰 They'll get there eventually ^^

The "elf thing" is Scanlan mistakenly (innocently) referring to Vax earlier as an elf and Vax correcting him immediately in a way that makes it obvious even to Scanlan that it's Important. Hence the quick self-correction. I'm 15k words into the story and I really really hope I can finish it! 🤞

#sometimes I write #thank you! #also #hey first post of the new year!

[julie-loves-cake]

I made this out of spite because I’m upset

#friday night funkin #fnf ron #I’m gonna make an interpretation card of him because I don’t care about his canon anymore and SPITE #I’m spiteful and angry and Ron with be my coping mechanism #I hate Ron but #god his fans are worse #I DON’T THINK RON WOULD MESS WITH BOB’S (now unfortunately ex) GIRLFRIEND #ESPECIALLY BECAUSE BOB LITERALLY KILLS (and possibly) TORTURES HIM #GOD I HATE THIS FUCKING FANDOM #THIS HOUSE IS A FUCKING NIGHTMARE

[myhumanweakness]

I don’t want to be a huge asshole, but...

There are a lot of people trying to find a modicum of positivity in the finale. It’s not about this Destiel-Bibro war that’s happened over the years, it’s not about Cas, it’s not about any of the superficial drama. This finale was the weirdest mixture of OOC and in character writing I have ever seen. 

Things that are in character: 

The brothers put each other first. They are each other’s safe place and stability. Up until the very end. Sam respected Dean’s wishes, stayed with him in his last moments, and let him go gracefully. Sam even went on and had a full life so Dean’s sacrifices weren’t in vain. 

For Dean, Heaven wasn’t perfect without Sam there. And he had this huge sense of relief and happiness when Sam arrived. 

Jack deconstructed the walls of Heaven so that it was a vast place where everyone could be together. They weren’t living out their “best memories” anymore. They were creating new memories eternally with each other. And Bobby recognizing that Jack is like Dean’s son by saying, “That boy of yours...” 

Cas helped build the Heaven that he always dreamed of. Cas always had such a high standard for Heaven, and it always fell short. He helped Jack build a home that was warm and comforting and beautiful and open and loving and true. Everything Cas stood for. 

Bobby, the man Dean adopted as his father, was there to share a beer with him (just like Dean shared with his dad in his childhood). And Bobby was happy and confirmed that Dean is in a Heaven he deserves. 

Sam mourning Dean’s death for the rest of his life, but also living his life to honor Dean. Classic Sam. 

Dean using his last moments to tell Sam how much he loves him and how proud he is. Sam deserved to hear that because we all know Sam looked at Dean as a parental figure. 

Things that are OOC:

Sam not marrying Eileen. The show created this HUGE story arc around Sam and Eileen and their real love and connection. And then they shoot this finale and couldn’t even get an actress that looked like Eileen to stand it the blurry background. Like, I don’t care what you say, it’s NOT open to interpretation. Sam did not end up with Eileen. All of you people who are Sam stans, who say you want your character to be happy and live a full life should be livid. Sam ending up with Eileen wouldn’t have canceled out the fact that Dean was/is his number one person. Dean gave his blessing for Eileen, and he loved her and welcomed her into their lives because he knew Sam loved her and had a genuine connection with her. Having them together would not have ruined the ending in any way. Sam still could have ended up with Dean on that bridge. 

That woman with the blonde/light brown hair is NOT Eileen. They couldn’t even get an actress with dark brown hair to keep hope alive that they ended up together. Absolutely awful. 

Dean just accepting Cas’ death and not even talking about it, other than to say, “Yeah I think about em’ too.” I don’t care if you don’t believe in Destiel or that the love was reciprocated. Dean EXCLUSIVELY said multiple times that Cas is a member of their family and a brother to the boys. He said the words, “YOU”RE MY BEST FRIEND.” I’m not saying Dean should have scarified himself to go pull Cas out of the Empty (because we had 40 minutes to wrap up 15 years). But the fact that Dean was like: I’m gonna eat some pie and just not acknowledge any feelings or thoughts and act like nothing ever happened is SO OOC. If your best friend died tragically, you’d have something to say about it or act like you had something to say about it. And that’s not to say I wanted Dean to be miserable and hurting. I’m happy he got a dog and found some normalcy. But they lost SO many people, and he’s just walking around cool as a cucumber? When every other season/episode where they lost someone important to Dean he was a mess. And I’m not just talking about Cas- we all obviously know how Dean behaved when Cas died/was missing/Lucifer was controlling him. But even when Jo and Ellen died. Even when Mary died. Even when Bobby died. Even when John died. Even when Crowley died. Even when Jack died, Dean was shown hurting. Suddenly everything is cool and normal there’s no pain or anything? The fuck? A brief moment of acknowledgement. That’s all it needed.

I will never forgive the writers for ending Dean’s story that way. A rusty nail impaling him (probably in his pulmonary arteries/aorta based on the angle) on some random hunt after he finally exhaled the episode before and said, “We’re finally free.” He sacrificed his ENTIRE childhood and life for his brother and the world and so many other people, and he didn't even get to enjoy being a human on the Earth and living a life for more than a week. What! Dean was always a character filled with tragedy, and yeah, maybe he did have to die. You can make that argument. But like that?! AND. AND! Sam held a funeral for Dean and DIDN’T INVITE ANYONE! What!!! No one was there to toast to Dean and share their memories and give him the send-off he deserved. Sam just burned his body alone. Never. That would have NEVER happened. Sam loved Dean SO much and looked up to him and thought the world of him. Dean was his big brother who was fearless and strong and the best hunter on this Earth (and probably every other planet), and he didn’t celebrate his life in the end? 

Cas not showing up in Heaven is absolutely insane. INSANE. It doesn’t matter what you think of their relationship, the show has proven that Cas is important to Dean (even if you think Cas is way at the bottom of the list, he’s on it!). Dean’s ideal retirement/endgame was him, Sam, and Cas on a beach, drinking cocktails, with hula girls. That was the future Dean wanted for him and his family. And you’re telling me that Cas helped Jack build the best version of Heaven possible, and the minute Dean Winchester arrived Cas wasn’t there to greet him. Even just to say “Hello, Dean.” Even call Dean’s phone and say, “Welcome home.” Cas would have been the one greeting Dean in Heaven, with Bobby. Requited or not, it’s canon that Cas is in love with Dean. You don’t just ignore the opportunity to see the person you’re in love with. And... and! Even if Cas didn’t greet Dean in Heaven immediately, he would have appeared in the Impala during the drive. He would have met the brothers on the bridge to welcome them both home. Cas loved Sam too. He would have been there. The three boys together again. Team Free Will!  

I love Cas, and I know a lot of Cas stans feel buried and betrayed and hurt over the show doing a “is he there or isn’t he?” thing. And that is completely valid. I can’t even express to you how sorry I am that so many of us in the fandom are hurting. But I know this show. And this show has always made it clear that it was/is always about two brothers. Fine. But Dean Winchester, the most caring and loving human in the entire universe, deserved better. I am so sick to my stomach that Dean’s whole life was him convinced that there was only one way for his story to end and it was him dying tragically. For years he never let himself even entertain the thought of living a life because he 1) didn’t think he deserved that or was worth it 2) it just wasn’t in the cards. We watched Dean grow so much, SO MUCH, that we finally saw him talking about the future and having hope for the future. And yeah, maybe he wouldn’t get the future he talked about with the retirement on the beach, but he would have lived long enough to experience life outside of just “playing whack-a-mole” and being God’s favorite story and puppet. Dean didn’t even get to enjoy his freedom and humanity. They took a character that they purposefully pushed through so many stages of character development to attain hope and faith and self-worth and promise, and killed him. 

What the fuck!

#spn finale #spn 15x20 #spn 15.20 #spn spoilers #I truly have no words #it was such lazy writing I don't even know #dean winchester #Sam Winchester #castiel #jack kline #bobby singer #Team Free Will #team free will 2.0 #saileen #eileen leahy #sam and eileen #sam x eileen #destiel #deancas #dean/castiel #dean x castiel #cas #my fucking heart hurts so badly #spn meta

[four-rabbit]

Game Night

I don’t really know what this is, I’m just glad I was finally able to finish a sanders sides’ fanfic for the first time. 

This fanfic was born from the last video, obviously, and the realization that the creativity twins canonically feel physical pain when their ideas are desregard or their function is “offended” let’s say, which I had to exagerate and turn int angst, of course, so enjoy!

Summary: Remus get sick so frequently that those nights have became his idea of a sleepover. 

Ship: platonic dukeceit. Or romantic. You can interpret it however you want

Characters: Remus Sanders, Virgil Sanders and Janus Sanders 

Warnings: swearing, kinda grapphic descriptions of pain and sickness, mentions to vomit. Also maybe some umsympathetic Virgil? I don’t see it like that, but I guess it depends on how you interpret it. 

Word Count: 1729

Sorry for any mistakes, english is not my first language

-----------------------------------------------------------------

If Remus was real, he would be dead. 

And if snakes could demonstrate worry, they would make exactly the same expression that Janus had after looking at the thermometer. 

"How do you manage to get so bad so quickly?" 

"What can I say, being bad is the only thing I'm good at" Remus joked, the words scratching his throat as an unwanted cough came with them. Janus rolled his eyes, trying to seem calm. And falling. 

"Any idea what was the cause this time?" Remus' focus went down to the old and familiar sheet, which he fiddled with, avoiding the question. 

"How hot am I?" He vaguely pointed to the thermometer. 

"You have a 113°F fever" 

"Well, fuck. That's a new record" he touched his own forehead, smiling almost maniacally right after "Shit. How long do you think it takes until my brain melts? 

"Bold of you to assume it hadn't already" Virgil was the one to answer, entering the room with a bowl of hot soup in his hands. 

"Wow Virgil, that was fast " Janus lied, raising an eyebrow. "What happened?"

"I was trying to actually cook something real for once"

"Please don't tell me your burned the kitchen" the half-snake child replied, with some amount of actual fear behind the dramatic hand to his chest and horrified expression. 

"Ha ha" pause "...not on purpose" Virgil replied, looking away. 

 "Yeah, that's my job!"

"Remus, eat your soup, the grownups are talking" the embodiment of Fear interrupted jokingly, even though any of them was older then twelve. Then he turned to Janus again, already guessing what he was going to say "but... it's fine now. I took care of it" Janus made a mental note to go take a look at the damage as fast as possible. They could all be kids, but Janus knew very well he was the only responsible there. 

"I don't like it...!" Creativity replied, sounding like a child who doesn't want to eat salad. Janus sighed as his thoughts were interrupted, conjuring a bottle of perfume and poured it in the meal. 

"Now eat" and so he did. Virgil raised an eyebrow, but he was smiling, trying not to be so worried. Or at least not demonstrate it. After so many times, he should be used to it, but... well, he was Fear. It was his job to keep track of the worst case scenarios.

"Did he get better?"

"On the contrary. The fever is higher than ever"

"And I also feel like someone ripped my bones out of my skin and then put them back, but like... in the wrong way" Remus added, spilling hot soup all over the sheet and his clothes by trying to communicate with his mouth full. 

"So it's one of those nights" Virgil mumbled.

"I'm afraid so" 

Remus finished his soup smiling like there was no tomorrow, opening his arms despite how much that simple gesture hurted "Game night while I'm dying!" Janus smiled, with more sadness in his eyes than anything else. 

"I'll get the monopoly"

•••

"I won"

"No, you did fucking not" Remus immediately answered, not even looking away from his cards.

"You can see for yourself" Janus showed his game, which clearly meant a victory, indeed. Remus tossed his cards on the sheet like it was their fault. He was so fucking close!

"You cheated" Virgil said sharply, as if it was an undeniable fact. 

"Do you have any proof? Janus challenged, not losing a beat or his mischievous smile.

"Yeah. It's the only thing you know how to do" the teenager replied, his tone as cold as a lake in the winter. Janus looked down before he could help himself. Couldn't he keep it down for at least one night? The night Remus needed both of them?

The cards caught fire. It was an accident, but Remus decided to go with that, jumping out of the sheets, trying to ignore the terrible twist that movement gave to his stomach. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if he threw up. At least that way these two would stop fucking fighting. 

"What the hell?!" Virgil exclaimed, tossing his game away like it was burning. Which was the case, indeed.

"Let's watch a horror movie!" Well, he got their attention. 

"Did you need to burn things before saying that?!" Virgil screamed. He was standing and seemed even more distressed.This was a mistake, Janus realized. It was foolish to think they could ignore their differences for the sake of Remus. 

"It's more fun this way! What can it be? One of the classics? Some shitty obscure one?" He kept trying, getting out of bed and walking toward Virgil, who walked away from him. Janus immediately got up too, already anticipating the disaster that situation could turn to. A worst one. Because it was already a disaster. 

"Please, control yourselves"

"I'm controlled! I'm not the one burning things" Virgil replied, the trace of the tempestuous tongue in his voice proving that he was anything but in control. 

"Remus, please. Apologize for burning the cards"

"It's just some stupid paper!

"Now"

"It was a fucking accident"

"We all know it wasn't" Janus almost, almost told Virgil to shut up after that. But he didn't need to make things worse than they already were.

"It was a fucking accident" his voice started getting threatened, his eyes started shining with a red danger "But you know what wouldn't be a fucking accident? if I..." his vision went black, a headache that felt like someone had opened his skull being everything that existed and then not even that. 

Anxiety got out of the room immediately after his friend fainted, keeping his gaze to the ground, knowing that he wouldn't be able to stand any amount of time alone with Deceit. 

•••

   Remus wished he was real, so he would be dead. 

   He felt like someone had catched his body on fire, then hit his head with an axe, then exchanged his blood for poison and his bones with knives. 

   "I knew you were stupid, but not stupid enough to try and suggest an idea for Thomas. On your own. After terrorizing him the whole night. Literally hours after recovering from your last..." Janus looked down at his friend, in one of the only moments he didn't try to hide his emotions. Fear. Somebody had to fill the vacancy now that Virgil is gone, I suppose. 

   "It was..." He coughed blood. "A good idea"

   "Oh yeah, I'm sure he thought the same" Janus rolled his eyes. Remus tried to say that he would be fine, but his throat still hurt from the acid of his stomach and the scratching of his coughs. 

   "I told you to not do anything too dangerous. We are..." he looked down to his gloves which, as he knew, covered up for the scales that apparently had decided that half of his face was not punishment enough. "In a delicate situation, now that..."

   "The emo is gone. I know" Remus completed, his voice not much more than a whisper. 

   "Oh please, no. We are better off without him haunting us all day. If he prefers to deal with them, the only thing I feel is pity" anyone else would have believed that. Remus knew it was bullshit the second those words left his mouth. But he didn't say that. Mostly because he was feeling nauseous again and he learned that, apparently, people don't like if you throw up while trying to talk to them. 

   Janus stayed in silence for a couple more seconds, then something changed in his eyes and he got up.

   "Well, if you need me, I'll be reading" said, but before he could go too far, Remus grabbed the bottom of his coat, deciding to make use of his positions of creativity, as with a snap of his fingers green words appeared in the air:

   "It's game night, not a fucking book club"

   "I don't think you're able to play games right now"

   "I've never been better in my entire fucking life"

   The words glitched as his consciousness stumbled. 

   "Remus"

   "You've been reading, studying, planning, whatever every fucking time we were together" he finally was able to find his voice again "Is it me, Virgil, or just you being a dick? 

   "You need to rest"

   "I'm gonna vomit on your shoes"

   Janus sighed, sitting again on the bed. 

   "What do you propose?"

   "Truth or dare" Janus never plays truth or dare. The two of them, Virgil and Remus, would play it at any given opportunity, on the other hand. 

   "Don't test me"

   Floating words again: "I'm gonna take it easy"

   "You never take it easy."

   Remus frowned. 

   "Ok" the half-snake man sighed "let's find a compromise: I can play Never Have I Ever" 

   Remus smiled diabolically. So they had a deal. 

•••

   "Finally! It's been so long since our last sleepover!"

   "This is anything but a sleepover" Janus replied, not looking away from his book.

   "Yes it is! We're sleeping together not in a sexual way and wearing pajamas.

   "I'm not-" Remus snapped his fingers and suddenly Janus had a yellow onesie on. "...I'm not having a sleepover with you. And you're not even that bad"

   "But I'll be. And in the meantime... Please play truth or dare with me just this time please please" he said in one breath. 

   "You already know my opinion about this game"

   "I know that you like it! You would always laugh and even participate when me and Virgin played!" Janus flinched.

   "That was a long time ago"

   "Just two rounds!" 

   "I..."

   "C'mon! You're not gonna lose an arm if you play just one time. And even if you did, you would still have five perfectly good ones left"

  Janus hesitated. He knew Remus would get worse. It was obvious by the tiredness in his voice, even when he was so excited. And how pale he was. How deep his eyeshadow appeared, making him seem like a dead body. 

   He sighed. Remus smiled from ear to ear. Literally.

   "Truth or dare?!" Asked as if he was a child whose birthday had come earlier.

   "Dare, obviously" Janus said, unable to stop himself from smiling at his friend's happiness, even though they both knew it wouldn't last long. 

   But that was okay. Because they would have one another. And that was enough. It had to be.

#sanders sides #fanfic #dukeceit #tw swearing #tw vomit #tw sickness #remus sanders #janus sanders #virgil sanders #rabbit writes

[elffees]

some little additions to the ep 5 endings for low brotherhood

oh this post is going to hurt but i’m doing it anyway. these are just some brainstorms on tweaks to the endings bc for the most part, they all come off as high brotherhood, which is fine for me tbh bc i have never played a LB route cause im Soft™️. but i’m also Curious™️ and thought up some variations that couldve been made for people that did have a LB playthrough

these are mostly tiny changes. nothing too major bc like in canon, i think morality having the highest affect on Cross vs. Surrender is fine, but it would’ve been kinda cool if the epilogues had been tweaked a little to reflect brotherhood also. so possible tweaks i thought of is basically what this post is about.

here’s some:

redemption

(sidenote: okay i said the changes were mostly little and i promise they are. this ending specifically tho just has the most significant ones i’ve made by adding in like 2 extra scenes. but that’s really it)

in this ending things are the same when they reach the road block, including daniel tearing up, until sean says “you’re my brother”. they do not exchange i love yous nor hug or touch foreheads. sean goes straight to “and i know it’s gonna be alright” while keeping an outstretched arm on daniel’s shoulder. daniel also goes straight to his “how do you know”. the car scene plays out the same from then on except without hugging. they mostly stay separately in each other’s seats.

daniel doesn’t panic and jump to his feet when the police start walking sean to the car. he stands up resigned and watches sadly but quietly. sean doesnt say anything as he gets in the car but does look back at daniel before they pull off

in the collage, there is still a picture of daniel visiting sean in prison, but they don’t hug and just speak tensely across from one another.

daniel doesn’t come on the day of sean’s release, karen is the only default. now, like lyla, daniel is a determinant. (imagine if they were all determinant and even karen didn’t come meaning sean could get out of jail with nobody in the world caring about him jesus christ) there’s a scene with sean afterwards visiting daniel’s apartment. when daniel opens the door, he’s shocked and slams a palm to his forehead, clearly having forgot sean’s release date.

there’s small polite smiles on their faces as they greet each other at the door, but sean never makes it past the front steps. their conversation is brief before daniel gestures that he actually was walking out and has to go. they say their goodbyes with a casual hug (quick back slap) before daniel hops in his car using his power and pulls off with sean watching.

sean still goes back to their first campsite but alone. it mostly plays out the same where he still cries, but with no comfort, and then drives away towards the right after taking one last look at the trail

the epilogue ends with daniel stepping out of his car and approaching faraway friends that he waves to. they’re drawn vague and out of focus to save on production costs (don’t worry dontnod i gotchu). the angle of the scene shifts so it looks like daniel is walking off towards the left

summary (1/2) -> sean took the heat in order to let daniel have a childhood in america. and he succeeds in this, but because their relationship was poor, during his incarceration their bond practically turns to dust. daniel gets a childhood, but sean loses his own and his brother in return

summary (2/2) -> sean still wants some kind of relationship with his brother, but its awkward and distant. daniel does not hate sean. he holds some semblance of polite respect for him bc in his HM!eyes sean “did the right thing” at the end of their journey. but overall, they are not that close and are more like acquaintances who just worked on a group project one time.

blood brothers

sean doesn’t say “be careful” before daniel gets out the car. just “you know what to do”

they don’t hold hands after daniel’s massacre. daniel just stares out the window while sean focuses ahead

(after the 6 years) when sean backs into the garage and daniel sees he’s being held at gunpoint, daniel doesn’t do anything at first. he doesn’t even move forward to get a better look. he simply watches the scene play out until the gang members notice he’s there, bc sean keeps glancing his way, and they begin to threaten him too. that is when he uses his powers.

sean giving daniel a pat on the shoulder? yeah in this LB version it’s now a shove. he noticed that daniel did not have his back. daniel just shrugs.

he still heads out to their patio and takes a seat. the scene is angled so that the player sees sean over daniel’s shoulder think about joining him, wanting to go smoke, with their dad’s lighter already out so we still see it. but he instead waves his hand dismissively and turns back into the shop.

daniel stares out towards the beach alone.

summary -> they gain freedom and escape to mexico, but their relationship is empty. there’s no polite respect, but there’s no outright animosity either. it’s just….. empty.

lone wolf

daniel doesn’t say the “it’s my turn to take care of us” line (omg it was so good tho). it’s now smthg along the lines of “i won’t let you stop me here after all this”

when saying the “we made it” set of lines, he’s still happy but also boastful, ready to hold it over sean that he was right

he doesn’t cry. instead of sobbing over the death of his brother, he is more shocked bc of how unexpected it is. he still calls out for sean’s name frantically, but does not get distraught afterwards. instead of leaning onto sean’s arm like he does in canon, after it sinks in that sean’s dead, he only grimaces while sitting uncertainly in his seat

the pictures stay the same

when sitting on the beach and looking over the ocean, he is not drawing in sean’s journal. he still has a small smile on his face but we also see him taking swigs of the beer can(?) here instead of later

also instead of a teardrop tattoo, he has a tattoo of 3 dots. the teardrop has several meanings, including death of a loved one or crime affiliation. but bc a lot of players interpreted it as being a tear for sean, then i think it’s preferable to just not have it in the LB version at all to avoid confusion and just have him with the 3 dots to make it clear it’s solely part of the gang/crime lifestyle

(moving on) daniel heads over to sean’s memorial and it is absolutely not as decorated as it is in canon. there is only 1 candle and no plants. the brick is still there but instead of a cross, it’s just a hastily laid single wooden plank with sean’s name scribbled down it. there’s no eye patch. the only thing of sentimental value there is their dad’s lighter.

daniel doesn’t sit, he stands looking at the memorial while drinking his beer. he realizes it’s empty tho and lazily litters the can beside sean’s memorial before turning to walk off and as he does he sees the gang.

most of their interaction plays out the same, but while daniel’s walking away instead of sparing the group, it’s clear he kills them as they are all unmoving, us seeing the dude with the gun flop to the ground over daniel’s shoulder. this change is bc personally i interpreted daniel sparing them as a sortve homage to sean’s high morality in this route. as in he’ll still do what needs to be done to survive, but will try to kill as little as possible out of respect for sean’s beliefs. so being as though daniel does not value sean as much in this LB version, he doesn’t care about that and kills them without thought.

summary -> for the most part, daniel still has the relatively content life he does in canon except, going by the now bare minimum memorial and littering, he doesn’t value sean’s memory nearly as much as he does in HB. sean’s death was ofc still a shock and smthg he still remembers, but it didn’t crush him like it does HB!daniel, and he honestly feels more annoyance than regret. in his LM!eyes, hes disappointed and thinks its a little stupid that sean wanted to switch gears at the border like that. he doesn’t hate him tho, he just sees sean as a disappointing memory.

parting ways

at the border daniel still cries, but instead of saying sorry to sean he says “i can’t do this sean. i have to go”, making it extra clear he’s not crying bc it’s the end, he’s crying bc of the damage he does not want to do.

he still says the “i hope you’ll be happy” line, but instead of being genuine it’s now full of disappointment with a twinge of bitterness

you know that quick angry facial expression he has before he’s walked off by the cops? WELL HOWDY IT DEFINITELY STAYS

the picture collage still shows him having a relatively happy upbringing with stephen, claire, and chris

when he’s on the phone at the reynolds’ and claire comes up to him, he’s still smiling and content. when he gets the letter with no sender name, his smile drops after taking the pic out and realizing who it’s from. the player doesn’t see yet tho. emphasis on 1 pic bc it’s not several like it is in canon/HB.

daniel rolls his eyes and with his power tosses the envelope & photo card (no sand btw) across the room so they land on a distant table. the camera zooms in on them and we finally see it’s of sean in mexico.

when claire comes back into the room, she halts seeing the mail and picks them up, glancing between them and daniel regretfully before sitting down

we go back to daniel and with arms crossed, he glances out at the tree in the yard for a brief moment before walking away

the scene stays focused on the tree and we still zoom out to the Wolf Brothers carving, except it has a not-recent slash cut through it

summary -> daniel gets a childhood in america and sean gets his freedom in mexico, but their relationship is destroyed. daniel doesn’t approve of sean’s final decision at all and holds little to no respect for him. sean sends the post card bc, like in redemption, he still wishes to hold some kind of relationship, but he doesnt try all that hard and doesn’t miss daniel that much to send several pics and a chunk of sand.

and so these were some of my ideas for low brotherhood endings! i tried to put them in order from most positive (minute respect) to most negative (outright disdain). i’d love to hear thoughts on this or if anyone wants to add to these, then that’s fine to! just don’t break my heart pls

#lexi plays lis2 #life is strange 2 #surprisingly my variations to the LW ending hurt the least #still messed up but my redemption & blood brothers tweaks just feel cold #and the parting ways one…. :( #lis2 #lis 2

[sledgefuweek]

Each year we take a close look at the prompts for Sledgefu Week, for those who may be stuck for ideas or not quite sure about what the prompts could entail. Below the readmore are all seven prompts, as well as a short write-up exploring what they mean and some ideas to help get the creative juices going. Enjoy!!

Sickfic

This is a really popular and well-known fanfic trope that I feel probably needs little explanation, but I’ll write a little bit about it anyway! It essentially covers fic where one character is ill and the other cares for them -- it could encompass any kind of illness at all, (including chronic illnesses) and there’s a lot of room to get creative with it. You can go for angst, hurt/comfort, or fluff: it’s just a really good general prompt that I think works nicely to kick the week off!

It suits for Sledgefu pretty well, considering Snafu’s canon mild hypochondria, as well as the fact that Eugene’s dad is a doctor. It could be fun to lean into it: make Eugene play doctor for an actually-sick Snafu, and it could be just as fun to subvert it! There’s really endless options for canon fic: shrapnel wounds turned bad, heat-sickness, seasickness, illness from bad food or bad water or any kind of tropical disease you can think of (malaria is a big one!). You could make one of them (or both) a medic; you could genderswap them and write the gay field nurse fic this fandom sorely needs. And of course if you choose to branch out into modern AU you can begin to think of what might afflict them outside of a war setting: has Eugene been working too much and come down with a cold? Are they hungover, and need mutual care (and lots of takeout)? A lot of the time sickfic focuses on one character doing the comforting and the other character feeling unwell, but there’s nothing to say they can’t both be feeling shitty! I think we say this every year but there’s really no rules at all, you do whatever you feel inspired to do. With Sickfic, just be mindful to tag anything that others might be affected by eg. vomiting, blood, needles, etc.

Tarot

I feel like Tarot is pretty well-known to the Sledgefu fandom, or at least to those who like to write Snafu or his family a little witchy. In case you just have a vague idea of what Tarot actually is and what its purpose or origins are, I’ll explain it as concisely as I can! Tarot decks started life in Europe as playing cards, but eventually began to be used for divination. It’s made up of four suits, or the Minor Arcana, (Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles) as well as a twenty-two card Major Arcana (the imagery of which you’re probably very familiar with). Commonly, tarot decks and tarot reading is used as a means of communicating with the higher self, deities, or with the universe. They can be used as a way to see the future, answer questions, or to give/receive advice. There are different ways of reading them too, depending on how one lays out the cards: I don’t want to make this too wordy, but if you’re curious I encourage you to check out this site to learn more!

For writers, there’s a lot of places this prompt could take you! Probably the most obvious will be fortune teller fic; a classic. Lean into Snafu’s Louisiana roots and have him telling fortunes in the depths of the French Quarter, or go against the grain and have Eugene reading cards and palms and tea leaves as a practice passed down through his family. Or maybe more casual: modern AU Sledgefu flirting through amateur tarot readings with a deck picked up from a junk shop. If you read Tarot and have a connection to it, you can express that through writing! It’s a pretty open-ended prompt, especially if you consider some of the meanings of the cards; you could even write a story inspired by that! The Hermit: Snafu withdrawing, leaving Eugene on the train to spend the next few months in solitude, working through things. The Moon: Snafu and Eugene hitting a rough patch, hiding things from each other. The opportunities really become endless once you start taking the readings of the cards into account! And for visual artists, this must be such a fun prompt: I feel like it’s so a visually rich, whether you’re re-drawing the cards to encompass Snafu and Eugene within them, or making a collage based around some of the things mentioned above: fortune tellers shops, witches cottages, etc.

Trinket

Every Sledgefu Week we tend to have a couple prompts that are a little more open to interpretation, and this year’s ‘Trinket’ is one of those. It might be difficult to try and think of something to base a whole fic or piece of art around, but we really encourage you to let your imagination run wild! There’s already some great trinkets in the show itself: Eugene’s ring, the lighter that Gunny Haney gave him, Snafu’s stolen gold teeth, or their dog tags. Think of small, special objects that you might have: what imbues them with comfort or meaning? What makes you love them? You could have Eugene giving Snafu his ring, or have Eugene musing over war and death and loss while smoking a cigarette lit by his lighter. If you’re into Modern AUs, how could these objects carry through to modern day? Once you start thinking about it, the ideas start rolling in. Feel free to invent special trinkets for them: or maybe trinkets that they hate and want to get rid of, trinkets that remind them of bad times. Trinkets that remind them of each other, or family, or war. So much meaning can be held in the things we own, and I think it’s such a lovely concept to explore!

Crossover

So this prompt was born from the sheer number of suggestions we had for various movie, TV, and book AUs. We didn’t want to put them all to the poll and risk a lot of you feeling disappointed over the one you wanted not being selected, so thought it’d work best to condense them into a ‘Crossover’ prompt so everyone could do whatever they liked. So this is a very very broad one! It would be impossible for me to really go through the prompt and highlight some things that you could do for it, because you can really do anything you want to! Anything! It encompasses movies, video games, TV, books, musicals... if something tells a story, you can do a crossover. So if there’s ever been a film/book/etc. AU you wanted to do for Sledgefu Week but couldn’t quite get it to match the prompts, now is the time!

Vacation

A pretty self explanatory prompt, and one that I think can appeal to people who prefer canonverse and those who like modern AU too! Do you want to send Snafu and Eugene on the holiday of their dreams, or are they gonna be bickering in a gas station over who gets control of the map? Is Snafu gonna drive across a couple states to surprise Eugene by visiting? Is Eugene gonna do the same? There’s a lot of scenarios you can apply to the backdrop of them vacationing, and a lot of emotional journeys you can take them through! And for the canonverse crowd, you have the extra addition of letting them go have fun on an R&R, or taking a road trip post-war, visiting 1950s Paris... you can really do whatever you like!

Historical

This was another prompt like ‘Crossover’ that came from a lot of various suggestions that all boiled down to a similar thing: different historical events or periods. So like Crossover, I won’t linger too long on it (this post is long enough already) except just to say again: do whatever you’re inspired to do! There’s no rules here, you could even take everyone out of the Pacific and put them over in Germany: give them a different experience of war. In fact, you can do that with any war if you wanted to! Wanna do a M*A*S*H AU but made something else for Crossover? You could do it here! Want to put them in the 1920s? You got it. In the 1850s? Yeehaw, they’re cowboys now. 1969, Summer of Love? 1600s, make Snafu a prince? Literally the world is your oyster!

Horror

Past Sledgefu Week prompts have included things that could come under the horror umbrella (Supernatural, for example) but didn’t necessarily have to be made 'horrific’. For the ‘Horror’ prompt this year, we want to see frightening! Disquieting, uncomfortable; creations that either cross over with existing horror franchises, or lean on horrific things you come up with yourself. Horror movies, or TV shows, or books or podcasts or pieces of art all seek to elicit a sense of fear: this can be done by tapping into common phobias, or nightmares, those things which are universally and almost instinctively scary. We want to see things which lean into that, in whatever way you want to do it! 

I’m no horror media expert (not by a long shot) but the opportunities for this prompt are really vast simply because horror has so many subgenres to work with. You could go gothic horror; Dracula, Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights (a personal favourite AU -- Eugene soaked out on the moors, searching for Heathcliff-Snafu? Divine). Or you could go to the opposite end of the spectrum: Jennifer’s Body AU, Final Girl AU -- there’s no set way to do horror, in fact you could even bring horror into canonverse if you don’t like AUs. Think the Terror: some unknown beast lurking beyond the borders of their camp on Pavuvu, or Okinawa. Or you could even take the prompt entirely literally and explore the horrors of war and the toll it takes on them both. Please don’t feel stuck into needing to do Scary: horror is about fear and revulsion and dread, and these feelings don’t necessarily need to come from a haunting! (This is also a prompt ripe for monsterfucking, just FYI).

                                                - - - - - - - - - -

So that’s the prompts for this year! They’re all really really great, and have a lot of potential to make some fantastic stuff :~) And to reiterate something I said right at the start, there are no rules here! I think every year we normally get at least one person unsure whether their idea will be okay for the prompt they’d like to make it for, so I just wanna say here: don’t second-guess yourself! As long as it can be linked back to the prompt in some way or another (can literally be the vaguest way possible) you’ll be absolutely fine. We don’t vet submissions at all, especially not for their content relating to the prompts. All we ask is that you remember to stay respectful in what you’re writing, and when the time comes to post it, you tag and warn appropriately :~)

On the subject of writing respectfully, we’d like to just take a moment to link the document on mindful writing re: race and gender that was made last year. Please take a look at it, even if you read it last year! It’s always good to keep these things at the front of your mind, as fandom is a community sport and we want to keep it fun and safe for everyone involved! So thank you if you’ve made it this far through this whole post, check out the doc, and enjoy the rest of the run-up to Sledgefu Week!

#sledgefu #sledgefu week #mod talk #info #if you saw this post before yes you did no you didn't <3 it has the horror prompt on it now lmao

[thelovelyghostwriter]

do you think kuraneon is gonna be canon in the official hxh universe and what must have happened?

Whether or not they would be canon is up to Sir Togashi himself. While he does have romantic elements in his previous works like Yu Yu Hakusho and Ten de Showaru Cupid, it's not as explicit in HxH (e.g. Meruem/Komugi).

If you asked me this before knowing about the KuraNeon Marriage Theory (will give a link in the reblog later on) and KuraNeon paired up in mobile games, I would have said "0% chance" because we do not see them interact on-screen (even if I had shipped them since I first laid my eyes on Neon).

However, it is kinda sus that Kurapika became a Nostrade Family Young Boss; with Light and Neon nowhere shown. The more "accepted" theory is that Light is unable to continue and Neon is dead (although I do have rebuttals about Neon being dead - that's another conversation). I do wonder why he had to keep their mafia family name - there is no reason to if he truly let them wither. But from Light's last appearance in a manga panel, Kurapika did reassure him that he'll handle everything and you see the Nostrade mafia family organisation doing well under Kurapika. Which is also why my friend went to bring up that plausible KuraNeon Marriage Theory. 

I know that a lot of people think they don’t interact, but that is on-screen. After York New City arc, we don’t see Kurapika until way later, however him being in charge as the Nostrade Boss indicates that he stayed with the Nostrades. God knows what they did while living under one roof. 

Another thing that is major sus is the mobile games. Even non-shippers are baffled why KuraNeon is a thing. Kurapika and Neon are seen dressed as Hikoboshi and Orihime in two sets of the mobage cards; a romantic couple that is known in a Japanese legend and celebrated on 7 July (Tanabata Festival). They are even shown writing on coloured papers in one of the cards + Kurapika holding a bamboo - these coloured papers are used during the Tanabata festival where wishes are written on them and hung on bamboo. It is believed that the reunion between the two lovers Hikoboshi and Orihime are so joyous that they grant the wishes of the people. As far as I know, the only pairing that gets to have a Orihime/Hikoboshi theme in their cards is Machi/Hisoka; and we do see Hisoka/Machi having a soft spot for one another in canon (in the current arc, Machi does patch him up after his defeat and Hisoka spared her).  

Hmmm.. I should make a post about this whole Tanabata thing actually. Asides from that, they are also the v-day banner in 2019 for the games and she gave him a cake during the valentine’s day event, to which showed a scene of him thinking about what to give her back (and low and behold, Kurapika’s White’s Day card featured him with a gift and him wearing the same outfit of the scene where he thought about what to give her). 

In a separate mobile game, they have a special attack together. Their mobage cards have identical backgrounds and themes. Therefore, it isn’t just one mobile game that does this. It makes me wonder why the official team devs do that when this pairing shipping sub-fandom is really small and many even dislike it. 

Even as a shipper, it also baffles me why devs do that when they have little screentime together (gotta be more objective here). If you do consider the KuraNeon Marriage Theory or consider that they might end up together in the manga, it makes sense why the official hxh game devs pair them together. And I am unsure about the source - but I think for Japanese manga production of non-manga material, you need approval from the writer? All the more to be suspicious of the mobile games that contains KuraNeon above every single pairing out there. 

Hence, if you ask me, there is a chance of Kurapika/Neon being canon. How that might happen is a little tricky and depending on the type of portrayal they will be (I have four interpretations of this ship on my pinned post lol). 

I’m not sure if you only define canon as the vanilla/romantic type, or it also includes one that is a little twisted. I've noticed that hxh has friendship and family dynamics that are already complicated and not as wholesome as one would think. I do believe that if KuraNeon were to be canon, it would be the latter interpretation. 

There are actually a few things that are needed to be considered for it to happen: 1) Neon’s fate - she needs to be alive (or maybe not)  Now, a lot of people believe she died because Chrollo’s book speculates that she does. However, we don’t see her dead body. It’s literally just Chrollo’s interpretation. This is contrasted by Kurapika that states that the previous Scarlet Eye owners did not need to be killed (and the “daughter of a mafia leader” is one of them). If the daughter of a mafia leader is truly Neon, then it brings a question of who should you believe more: Chrollo or Kurapika? (Imo it’s super interesting how these two guys who are enemies have different narratives on the same girl). 

Of course, there was this potential discrepancy I found while re-watching this arc. The Scarlet Eyes that Kurapika bidded for 2.9 billion was a fake. They thought it was stolen when Squala took it with him and died - but it was actually that Kortopi’s Gallery Fake copy disappears after 24hour. So technically, the Eyes is with the Troupe. Now, assuming that Togashi has not forgotten this detail (I believe he still remembers), I do think that it is possible that since Chrollo is the type to get bored of the stuff he steals, he will just sell it and it will be obtained by the later owners. As for “the daughter of a mafia leader”, I’m sure it’s Neon that Kurapika is referring to - be it him mentioning her as merely a previous owner despite the set of Scarlet Eyes being “stolen” or she bought another set. (There is a chance that is not Neon, but another daughter of a random mafia leader, but what are the chances of another daughter being like that?) 

I guess I just wanted to point this detail out because many people readily believed Chrollo’s book (it was not even himself). He stated that he did not know when it disappeared. 

As for that “Hisoka killed Neon” theory, while it is believable and interesting, the only thing that is doubtful for that is that a) Hisoka could not have gone off to kill Neon in such a short period of time, b) that would be an insult to Kurapika’s capabilities if she was under his care, c) the fortune-telling ability doesn’t bother Hisoka. Pakunoda and Hisoka had a short conversation about the fortune and both of them acknowledged that the future changed. Hisoka wrote over his fortune despite having a good one to manipulate the events in hopes of fighting Chrollo - that is an indication of his belief that he writes his own future, and therefore which is why I argue that the fortune-telling ability never bothered him.

As for the “Kurapika killed Neon” theory, I think... they all need to get one thing straight about Kurapika: as much as possible, except for the spiders, he doesn’t kill (or at least dislikes to kill). He stated that none of the owners had to die even if two preferred to die. If there’s a way, he will not shed blood. Besides, Kurapika doesn’t actually hate Neon - contrary to popular belief. There wasn’t a single manga panel that indicates his hatred for her; or even annoyance. It was only the time where Mellody mentioned that he will kill her if she stands in the way, but Kurapika, as much as mentioned before, doesn’t kill if there is an alternative way. 

I have yet to fully explore possible reasons why Neon’s ability disappears from Chrollo’s book if she’s still alive (my friend thinks it’s related to Kurapika’s dolphin ability). However, there are many rebuttals to the theories on how she died. 

But yeah, I think for it to be canon, Neon has to be alive. Unless... they were already canon and he sailed to the Dark Continent and she died slightly before that event (tbh I rather not have this).

2) Kurapika’s fate - he needs to live

Number 2 is a condition is if they aren’t canon yet before he sails to the Dark Continent. 

One thing that confuses people is that they think that just because Kurapika is under the Kakin Employment, it means that he is no longer affiliated with the Nostrades. The Kakin Employment contract is temporary - he is still affiliated with the Nostrades (and their business is bodyguarding, take note). As for him being in the Zodiac, he is still the Nostrade Family Young Boss - being part of the Zodiacs is like some political committee. 

I know there are rumours (I say rumours cause I don’t see the interview script by my own eyes) that Togashi once indicated that the Phantom Troupe and Kurapika will all die. I do think that Togashi can kill one of his main characters, but there’s one thing that makes me question whether he changed his mind: Nitro Rice from the Dark Continent. 

The Nitro Rice is a thing in the Dark Continent that prolongs one’s life - a direct solution to Kurapika’s Emperor Time problem. I think if he does last until they reach the Dark Continent, he has a chance to prolong his lifespan that he has lost while using Emperor Time. 

Now, if he indeed gets to survive, manages to complete his mission, there’s another problem he will face: a will to live. Because currently, all he has ever lived for is bringing justice to his clan. Beyond that, what can he live for? Which kind of makes the ending for him to happily live with someone (be it his friends or having a family) a suitable one. 

3) Neon’s development

Neon is seriously misunderstood among the fandom - even her personality. I’ve seen a lot of Kurapika x (other character) ships where Neon is the 3rd party in fanfics; and it is a one-sided love. 

However, Neon is actually an emotionally detached person while Kurapika is the one that gets attached to people, even if he initially avoids them. Neon has what psychologists will call “Avoidant-Dismissive Attachment Style” while Kurapika has “Avoidant-Fearful Attachment Style”. This is rightfully so due to their different backgrounds. I actually believe that between the two of them, Kurapika will be the one who falls first or if this is one-sided, Kurapika is the one that likes her because of their attachment styles. 

Neon has zero friends, is materialistic and lacks sympathy for dead people (the complete opposite of Kurapika). She believes in focusing on the present and the living (it’s actually a pretty good principle to live for). She needs to learn how to be more attached to people and learn compassion - which she actually is seen as being capable of. She was surprised that Eliza broke down and cried, and even forgo bidding physically. I think this is an indication of her starting to feel sympathy for people and perhaps being more mature - cemented by the fact that she lost her powers.

Therefore, I do think she needs to learn how to warm her heart up to people (which she might have already started to after the York New incident) if she were to feel something for Kurapika. 

4) Kurapika’s view of her

Okay, this is one factor that is either you take it the vanilla way or the kinky way lmao. I actually wrote a Cognitive Dissonance Theory for Kurapika on my Tumblr post for this one (will try to link it in the reblog). 

Kurapika’s initial belief is that flesh collectors are scums who should be arrested, yet he is surprised to see that his flesh-collecting employer is a girl of his age. I think there is already dissonance in his mind there once he met her. 

Contrary to popular belief, Kurapika doesn’t hate Neon (there’s no single manga panel that ever once showed he detest her or feel annoyed with her; as compared to other employees of hers). In fact, he does quickly understand that Neon is being exploited by her father - to which he corrects Basho about the situation. In the manga, when he woke up after the fever, he says her name (in the 2011 anime, it was “Boss” but in the manga, it’s “Neon”) and immediately asks about her; which indicates that he is concerned for her. Of course, she is his employer but in that situation where he is bedridden and not working, him asking about her won’t be just due to him working as a bodyguard. 

However, this doesn’t show that he has feelings for her. It only proves that a) he doesn’t hate her, b) he does care about her. He needs to see Neon as more than just a flesh collector for him to like her; on top of spending time with one another. He needs to see (if he hasn’t already) that she is a girl his age that has a different predicament than him. 

This is the vanilla way I guess. 

The darker and more saucy interesting interpretation would be him thinking it’s okay to objectify her just as much as she objectifies his clan’s eyes (that’s another post I gotta do for another day - but hey, this interpretation is paralleled to Tserreidnich/Theta). 

5) Spending Time with one another

I think as mentioned, it is already a given that Kurapika and Neon had spent time together under one roof off-screen while we see Gon and Killua on-screen during the 3 arcs. However, I think Neon cannot suddenly become less detached and Kurapika cannot want something more than his mission at the moment; so I do think that even if they had spent time before Dark Continent Exploration arc, Neon and Kurapika needs to spend time together after he comes back (that’s if they haven’t banged before he sailed to the Dark Continent like they did in my fic lmao). 

So yeah, I think these are generally the five things that I think should happen if they were to be canon. 

I don’t know why I was compelled to do a long-ass post of this, but I hope this answers your question. I can go on and write a report about this but Imma stop here for now. 

[haec-est-fides]

How to start Discourse TM about Octavian:

Discuss.

This struck me at like 2am so I apologize if it comes off as rude? But hear me out.

This stupid chart is a gross oversimplification ofc, but at its most basic this captures the issue regarding Octavian’s characterization / how the fandom perceives and understands him: his ambiguous motivations.

Octavian fans, as far as I’ve seen, tend to write redemption AUs and characterize Octavian as a misunderstood victim -- which isn’t to say that they excuse his crimes or anything like that! There’s actually a really good understanding of “this kid did horrific things but there’s more to it than that and he deserved better” among them tbh.

The thing is, most Octavian fans (box II / top right if you’re following) are from Heroes of Olympus and may not have read Trials of Apollo. They know, from their reading, that Gaea influenced Octavian somehow, but not about the Triumvirate. They also probably read into Will Solace’s “anemic” comment / other “unhealthy” descriptors of Octavian and think his death was a complete failure on Riordan’s part like what the fuck. What I’m getting at is that if you’re sympathetic to Octavian, want to be able to explain why he does what he does, and hear that Gaea -- the big bad of the series -- is messing with his head? You’re going to put a lot of weight on that manipulation. It colors your entire understanding of his character.

Octavian haters, which I’ll admit make up the dominant chunk of the Riordanverse fandom, are box IV / bottom right. They also largely come from Heroes of Olympus and may or may not have read Trials of Apollo. More importantly, they don’t care. These are folks who read Heroes of Olympus and didn’t stop to think about Octavian or his motives. These are people who missed or didn’t bother to think about the mention of Gaea’s involvement. As a result, they obviously don’t see how he was pushed into what he did and so they blame it all on him. To them, there is no rational reason Octavian acted like he did. He’s just “crazy” and a jerk.

(I’m also gonna say it: The most insistent Octavian haters are Percy stans / Camp Half-Blood 4 Lyfe types who think everything that isn’t Percy Jackson and the Olympians is meh at best, people who read Trials of Apollo for Percabeth content and then get big mad because they were “cheated”, people who still get upset about the pillow pet in 2020. I bring this up because even if you don’t know that Octavian was influenced by Gaea or the Triumvirate, you could conceivably find a motive by understanding Camp Jupiter / the entire idea behind New Rome -- but the graeci don’t spend any time thinking about New Rome ever. Riordan himself is notoriously shallow about Camp Jupiter and the whole series is framed as anti-Roman tbh. That’s its own discussion.)

Box III / bottom left is a wild card because I’m pretty sure I’m like,,,the only person in that box. Basically, what I got from my reading of Octavian in Heroes of Olympus was “oh wow this kid walked straight out of Rome, c. 27 BC” and “omgs, he’s Augustus II”. Trials of Apollo only confirmed that interpretation more for me. The main cause of his strife with everyone around him is that he’s trying to act like a full blown ancient Roman in a modern, mini Rome. Almost everything held against him is literally nothing when you come at it from a Roman mindset. Anyway, I hear you saying, “That’s all well and good, but box III says he WASN’T influenced by Gaea! Isn’t it canon that he was?” Truthfully? I really don’t think Gaea had all that much to do with Octavian’s actions. Maybe a nudge here or there, but nothing that would remove his agency as a rational actor in what he did. Why? Because we only ever -- and I mean ever, Trials of Apollo included -- hear that Octavian was influenced by Gaea from extremely biased speakers who admit they don’t know what happened, namely Apollo himself. Apollo, whose ego is so big he would never admit to being played by a teenager. Hell, this should get its own post one day. Moving on.

Box I / top left is really the most rational place to be. It isn’t very popular because it’s just,,,complicated. It allows for sympathy and understanding, which the Octavian haters can’t or won’t consider. It allows for blame and agency, which many Octavian fans prefer to avoid. All in all? It’s likely that the Triumvirate (which is honestly just shorthand for Extreme Romanness) played a role in Octavian’s worldview and therefore his motives. It’s also likely, if you take the text at face value, that Gaea pushed Octavian over the edge to divide the camps. If all of that is true, he’s a complex person who got dealt a bad hand but still played dirty with it.

Now, before I shut up, I want to make clear that I’m not actually trying to start shit. All interpretations of Octavian are wonderful and valid! He’s a very badly-developed character on Riordan’s part and that means you can hc almost anything. (That’s why there are so many readings of him in the first place, and there’s nothing we can do about it.) Also, I know that a lot of Octavian fans project / see him as a comfort / coping character, and I did not mean to demean that or otherwise upset y’all with this post. <3 I just wanted to share an observation as to why Octavian, as b-plot villain as he is, is such a divisive character in the fandom.

#hoo octavian #hoo gaea #triumvirate holdings #heroes of olympus #hoo #trials of apollo #toa #filodox! #this may be unpopular or entirely ignored and that's ok #I'm just tired of the whiplash I get when I go looking for Octavian posts #is he Baby Boi ? is he Evil ? fuck Riordan didn't know and neither do we

[uppertwo]

♚ ♤ ✘ ♢ ❀

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐔𝐍'𝐒 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍. / accepting.

put under a cut bc i rambled hardcore

♚ Do you agree with fandom interpretation of your character?

it kind of depends, bc as someone who is pretty active amongst douma fans, they seem to be pretty divided on how to approach him? but i suppose the general consensus is that it’s his emotionless state that makes him evil and NOT his active choices, so for the most part, i don’t agree with it. i think douma is incredibly messed up, but heavy dissociation does not an evil person make.

however, there is a rise of people approaching his character as if he’s a tragic hero in disguise and i don’t agree with that, either. he is tragic, no he is not a good person. he is horrible, and cruel, and makes disgusting decisions. he is incredibly shallow, he uses people, he’s a manipulator – if you “uwu he’s just misunderstood” him, a manipulative cannibalistic cult leader who mostly preys on women, i hate you.

♤ Has your muse developed to be different from their canon selves through roleplay?

sort of? it's less that he deviates from his original character, and more that i just understand his original character more. i used to write him to be a lot more openly sadistic. nowadays, i have come to realise if he’s openly horrible to people, that directly conflicts with his inherent need for people to worship and love him. the entire point of douma is people need to be comfortable around him, that’s how he gets u. so, he’s not sadistic, and i play my cards a lot more carefully on how he behaves around others. whether that aligns with how he is in canon is a difficult thing to approach, considering we see so little of him, so whether i'm loyal to canon or not varies from person-to-person.

✘ Any unpopular opinions about your muse?

kinda the same as the first question i answered:

1. his dissociation is a sign of intense and severe trauma, not a sign of an evil heart. can it contribute to his choices? absolutely. is it the reason for said actions? no.

2. he’s bad. bad bad bad. bad. stop thinking he’s good. stop it. he literally has a villains wiki page.

♢ What's your opinion on different interpretations of your muse?

i’m gonna be honest and say i’m naturally a little weary of doumas, purely because there is a LOT of potential for ppl taking his violence against women lightly (which i have seen in the rpc over the course of 2 years), or they outright just don’t understand the nuances of his character re: his emotionlessness, and take the easy route of emotionlessness = evil villain. again, it’s just repeating myself.

❀ Share a headcanon you have not shared.

i haven’t shared it on this blog yet, but i plan to write up a whole post on notable moments in douma’s life. read it here if u so desire, this one is about his childhood (but please be careful, as it is disturbing. i have placed appropriate warnings in each title).

#uchjha #ooc. #asks. #memes. #dissociation ment / #cults ment / #manipulation ment / #death ment / #murder ment / #ask to tag /

[chaos-and-recover]

I am not trying to be rude but I actually know more than you do, as someone who works in the industry. Being on tumblr had given you the impression that everyone is a progressive slash shipping fangirl. The CW cares about fangirls just enough for fan service but when it comes to Nielson ratings they care about 18 - 40 year old white men and the old cishet white men who run the network itself. It is a business and they hold the cards. Am I saying that there is a secret deleted scene with a kiss? No. There is no secret episode or deleted makeout scene. (Although yes there was obviously an original script for 19 and 20 that they massively changed because of covid. I think they should have waited because those episodes were really bad but I digress.) What I am saying is several cast members and several episode writers put in subtext on purpose. It is called queer coding. And somewhere along the way, there must have been an audio somewhere of Dean saying I love you too OR a simple me too. Given that the episode was finished filming months and months ago, it was probably sent out then. Jensen was called in for ADR in the fall for 18 specifically. Changes were made. He even admitted they edited his reaction and dialogue. Those are his words. This isnt a conspiracy, it is a fact. The dub itself exists. It would not exist unless there was audio somewhere. In America they could say "oh it was meant as friendship or like brothers" and they could say "oh it is open for interpretation" to anyone who doesn't approve. In Spanish there are different ways of saying "I love you" and "me too" that mean separate things. Somewhere along the way something changed. That is a fact. It would not exist in the spanish dub otherwise. And yes, changes are often made that we, in other countries, dont get for whatever reason. If you want my opinion Dean likely said "me too" or to that affect after Cas left, while he was crying on the floor. They then ADR him crying over it instead. This would explain the weird bird chirping sound in Portugese dubs. In America, it is very homophobic right now. In Mexico, destiel was more openly embraced and even advertised. It is very likely that since Castiel canonically romantically loved Dean in a "gay" way, which the network promoted, which is why they used te amo (romantic), even a simple "me too" from Dean even if it was presented ambiguously would be assumed to be romantic there, where in America it could be platonic. After months of the finished episode sitting in the CW desk, after they realized they were going to have to rewrite 19 and 20, and that Cas would NOT be in the episode because of covid, they made the decision to edit out the "me too" part for coherency going into the last two episodes.

I mean I’m a whole ass adult who doesn’t form their worldview based on Tumblr but sure, tell me what I know. The major networks gear their shows toward 18-40 year old men and that’s why you never saw a gay character on Big Bang Theory or whatever but the CW is literally a teen network, that’s not their demo, that’s not who they’re going for and that’s not who they anticipate is gonna watch Walker.

I’ll concede you know more about the dubbing process if that’s what you do for a living, sure, but I still think you’re wrong, I don’t believe the CW was ever going to make Destiel canon in any market. I think that’s wishful thinking. They had 12 years or whatever it is to do that and didn’t, it would have been fan service to throw it into the last 3 episodes any way they did it.

The conspiracy isn’t even consistent, there’s one arm insisting Misha was in Vancouver at the time 15x19 and 15x20 were shot, he confirmed it but said he was “going camping” or whatever but now they had to cut him out because he wasn’t there for filming? I’m not buying it I’m sorry.

You will not convince me there was some grand conspiracy to cover up canon Destiel that just happened to miss the Spanish dub, do you not hear how ludicrous that sounds...

#destiel #spn #supernatural #if they had time for ADR they had time to re-dub the end #Anonymous

[rise-above-the-grave]

beware stained glass shards

for @dekusmynamecryingsmygame​. you said angst was fine, so uhhhh have some mf-ing erasermic angst I guess. please note that a) I am brand new to this fandom and am still figuring out headcanons and characterizations. hopefully I didn’t screw anything up too bad in that regard...but if I did, please at least be gentle in your critique :’)... b) I wrote this in...about 4 hours, all completely after midnight. it’s not gonna be my best work :/ but I did my best! and I wanted to get this up asap so you could see and read it sooner rather than later.

tw for: canon-typical injuries, hospitals (and everything that goes along with hospitals like doctors, nurses, surgeries, etc.), some implied (it’s only implied!! and it’s super duper uber vague) nsfw stuff, and an off-screen (debatable; maybe-it-was, maybe-it-wasn’t) suicide attempt. (was it a suicide attempt or a villain attack? I don’t even know myself! - at least not yet. read it however you wanna read it. I purposefully leave it open for interpretation.)

and if you don’t wanna read it because of that even potential suicide attempt, lemme know and I’ll write you something else, Peachy... alkdsjflkjdsf unfortunately I have a bad case of “I didn’t think this through” after midnight, and I didn’t even think of that possibility until I was basically done writing it. at that point I was like “It’s 5:30 and I need to sleep, I might as well post this on the off chance they do want to read it...” if you don’t wanna read it tho lemme know and again, I’ll write ya something else tomorrow <3

----------------

He falls.

There is lightning, there is thunder, there is rain—and for an instant (a second, a heartbeat, a breath), he is a swallow, a sparrow, a falcon. He flies with invisible wings, the air is caught beneath him and above him and before him, the world spreads out into infinity below the raindrops hanging suspended in the air. The lightning gilds his dark hair in quicksilver, the thunder that follows an instant later shakes his bones, and the rain that drives him to the earth soaks his clothes into a second skin.

He falls, the asphalt of the alley that runs beneath the comet of his body rising nearer and nearer in a rapid sequence that he thinks, distantly, should be alarming.

I should be afraid, he thinks.

This is going to hurt, he thinks.

Hizashi—

And then there is pain, and there is fear, and there is darkness gilt by lightning, silence shrouded by thunder, blood watered by rain.

---

Yamada Hizashi is 22, desperate, and dangerous.

He is older than he thought he would ever be. When he was young, he had imagined himself living to the infinite age of 50. He would look at himself in the mirror hanging in the bathroom, fingers combing through hair he imagined going silver, palms smearing smooth skin he imagined going wrinkled and weather worn. He would pluck at the band t-shirts he’d wear under too-hot, too-heavy jackets with fidgety hands, wondering what he’d wear then.

I’m gonna be a hero! he’d told his moms, and when they laughed and hugged him and told him, You’re going to be the best hero there is!, he believed himself immortal, invincible, inevitable.

And he was. He was immortal, invincible, inevitable. He could be hurt, he could be beaten, he could be knocked down. But no matter what—no matter the pain, the struggle, the difficulty—he healed, and he fought until he was victorious, and he stood back up. No one could keep him down. No one could diminish him. No one could threaten his impenetrable view of the future.

And then—and then Oboro. And it had all crashed down around him, like so many shards of shattered stained glass.

With Oboro goes his heart. His future. His eternity. He is taught, with the sharpness of stone, with the heaviness of rubble, with the choking taste of dust, that death lurks in the most innocent of shadows, that pain waits in the wings of the theater, that certainty is a lodestone chained around your neck.

Nothing is certain. Not everything can heal. No one is invincible.

He stops thinking he’ll live to 50.

He stops thinking he’ll live past 20.

“Fuck you,” he spat, and Shouta flinched as if he’d been struck, the Happy birthday that had been on his lips dying a silent, painful death. “Fuck everything.” Without warning—without even fully processing what he intended to do; he just hurt, and he needed something, someone, to hurt with him—Hizashi threw his tumbler against the wall behind the bar. The shelf the tumbler hit broke, and a cascade of bottles and liquor crashed to the floor in so many shard of glass and fragments of dreams and spreading rivers of blood.

There was a shout, and then Hizashi felt Tensei’s and Nemuri’s hands on his shoulders, heard Shouta’s voice sounding unusually placating and apologetic as he spoke to the bartender who had rushed over.

“Get him out of here,” Shouta snapped a few seconds later, turning and looking straight at him with death in his eyes. For an instant, Hizashi almost felt guilty. Then Tensei and Nemuri were dragging him away from the counter, away from the gathering crowd, away from the bar.

“Idiot,” Tensei muttered as Hizashi listed against him in the alley behind the bar, all at once too drunk and too sober to function.

“Idiot,” Nemuri sighed, guiding him into the cab, buckling the seatbelt across his chest and waist and then letting him collapse against her shoulder.

“Idiot,” Shouta hissed at him as he undressed him and shoved him unkindly into bed.

He stops thinking he’ll live—and so he stops caring. He drinks too much. Eats too little. Throws himself into his work with a single-minded mania.

His relationship with Shouta suffers. They grate, like two broken ends of a once-whole bone, the nerve that is Oboro’s death still laid bare between them. Shouta can’t sleep without Hizashi in his bed; Hizashi can’t sleep unless he’s alone. Hizashi drinks to drown his memories, his emotions, his pain; Shouta tries to starve his out. They argue about it, until Shouta erases Hizashi’s quirk and Hizashi throws a punch—about Shouta’s energy pouches, about Hizashi’s whiskey. About the lights Hizashi wants to leave on at night. About the socks on the floor inside the door. About the uncapped toothpaste left by the bathroom sink. About the half-eaten takeout sitting in the fridge. About the nights Shouta will disappear without warning, without a trace. About—

Hizashi wonders if it is his fault the day Shouta walks out, slamming the door behind him.

Shouta doesn’t come back.

Hizashi drinks more. Eats less. Works harder. Does anything, anything to distract himself from the event horizon opening inside his chest.

I’ve lost my best friend, he thinks, curled up alone and unable to sleep in a bed that had once held two.

For the first time in years, he wishes someone was sleeping beside him.

It is dangerous. He knows this—knows the risks, knows that the rewards are negligible compared to the ruin it could bring him. His career is on the line. His future hangs by a thread.

Hizashi doesn’t care.

He isn’t going to live past 21 anyway.

Only a few of his partners know who he is. Those that do keep silent. It is never wise to paint a target on your back, and Hizashi makes it clear that he doesn’t want a relationship, isn’t looking for a connection—that there is no reason for them to think there is anything between them but drunken carnality.

He learns fast how to duck cameras—and how to attract them. He learns how to avoid reporters, except when he wants to talk. He learns how to sidetrack paparazzi with glamour shots. He finds he is good at this game of chess, of Russian Roulette, of cards built into fragile palaces. He is good with people, good with crowds, good with playing the symphony’s strings.

I’d make a damn good villain, he thinks one night before he drifts off to sleep, a cute blond whose name he can’t remember already asleep beside him.

And then he thinks of Shouta—of Eraserhead—and the guilt he’d swallowed eight months before, when Shouta had walked out and left nothing but empty shadows where he’d been, threatens to choke him. He barely makes it to the bathroom before he vomits, bile tasting of too-much alcohol and too-little food, of regret and shame.

What am I doing? he thinks, leaning his forehead against cool porcelain.

“Are you okay?” the cute blond asks. He stands in the door to the bathroom and looks down at Hizashi with concern in his pale eyes.

“Get out,” Hizashi says, not looking up.

“But—”

“Just—just go.” And then, softly, voice breaking halfway through the only syllable that matters, “Please.”

The cute blond leaves, and Hizashi is left totally, utterly alone.

---

“You’re listed as his emergency contact.”

Hizashi stares at the window overlooking the city and sees nothing but smears of too-bright light against a stormy night. Sees nothing but the unknown caller ID flashing up on his phone screen after its ringing had woken him. Sees nothing but the memory of Shouta’s face just before he’d turned away and stalked out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him.

What had they even been fighting about? Hizashi can’t remember.

“I’ll be right there,” Hizashi says, unsticking his throat just long enough to remember what he’s supposed to say.

The line clicks dead, and Hizashi stumbles blindly out of bed and into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. He throws on a jacket, a pair of boots, a set of headphones. Ties his hair up in a bun to keep it out of his face and, hopefully, dry once he pulls the hood of his jacket over his head.

The trip to the hospital is spent in a haze of emotion, fear, and dread. He can’t parse any of it, though. Can’t understand it, give voice to it, give structure to it. All he knows is that he is feeling, and that he is afraid, and that he is certain that the scythe has finally fallen once again—only once again it hasn’t come to reap his life.

The hospital is bright against the rain-swept night, clean and sharp and stinging. Hizashi feels bad about the mud he tracks in, feels bad about the water he drips on the floor, feels bad about the lingering scent of gel and hairspray that seems to hang around him no matter what shampoo he uses.

He tells them who he is, who he is here to see. The nurse helping him looks at Hizashi with a curious expression that he is too strung out to try to interpret, and then leads him down a maze of white corridors that he knows he will never remember. They stop outside a door in the ICU, and the woman rests a hand on his forearm and says something Hizashi does not hear. Then she opens the door, and Hizashi steps into the room.

Shouta is unconscious on a bed, surrounded by machines. His chest rises and falls with intubated breath, and two IVs are hooked into the backs of his hands. His eyes are closed beneath the purple and black bruising shadowing his face, and Hizashi can just see more bruising peering out above the bandages swathing his chest.

“How—” He chokes, unable to form the words that he needs to say.

“We don’t know,” the nurse says. “He was found in an alley by a couple of drunk college students. We think he fell.”

“Fell?” Hizashi repeats dumbly. “But he never falls.”

The nurse is silent. Whatever she is thinking, she does not share with Hizashi.

For that, Hizashi is grateful.

“Is he going to make it?”

“We don’t know,” the nurse admits. “He has to stabilize before we can use any healing on him. If he survives the night, his prognosis will be good—but it’s a big “if”.” She hesitates, then says, “It’s a good thing you came.”

Hizashi moves to sit in the chair pulled up to Shouta’s bedside and sinks into it. He does not see the nurse watch him with concern—does not hear her pager go off a few minutes later. He does not even notice when she disappears through the door, or when the door clicks shut behind her.

For a long time, Hizashi is silent. There is too much to say—too much he needs to say, too much he wants to say, too much he can’t say. The words sit heavy on his tongue, in his throat, behind his teeth. They are stones in his stomach, glass in his lungs, thorns in his heart.

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.

He laughs weakly.

“You always did have a way of leaving me speechless, Sho,” he says at last. His voice is a clap of thunder in the silence of the room.

Hizashi sighs and buries his face in his hands.

“Please wake up,” he whispers through his fingers. “There’s so much I have to tell you. So much you have to know. Like, you have to know that I—I’m sorry. For…for everything.”

He swallows. His throat constricts, and his breath comes in shaky gasps.

“I can’t lose you too,” he says to his palms, because looking at Shouta is too much. His voice is hoarse and barely audible and pleading. “Please, Sho…”

The machines beep. The vents rattle. Shouta’s false breath hisses.

And Shouta doesn’t wake, even when Hizashi begins to cry.

---

Hizashi is asleep when the doctor comes in, just after dawn. He startles awake at the sound of the door closing, blinking blearily and turning his head to stare at the tall, dark man. The doctor smiles at him, and goes to check on Shouta.

He had survived the night. That much, at least, is a relief.

“We still don’t know,” the doctor warns Hizashi. “But we can start to be hopeful.”

They take him away for another surgery. This time, they promise Hizashi, a healer will be involved.

Hizashi stands, stretches, and goes in search of food. He finds the cafeteria, and buys a meager breakfast that smells bad and tastes worse. When he looks at his phone, he sees that he has missed calls from both Tensei and Nemuri. He shuts it off and shoves his phone back into his pocket to deal with later.

He’s going to have to call his agency soon, too, but he has a few minutes until that call is critical.

He spends a quarter of an hour sitting at the hard, plastic table in the cafeteria, staring out of the window at the overcast morning and thinking. He thinks about what he is going to say if—when—Shouta wakes up. He thinks about what he is going to say to Nemuri and Tensei. He thinks about his choices, and about the certainty of death, and about the possibility of life.

He thinks about Oboro, and about Shouta, and about how he lost one and how he might lose the other.

Hizashi stands, shoving his chair back so hard it topples onto the floor with a bang. What few others are in the cafeteria stare at him with varying degrees of irritation and wariness, until he rights the chair and walks away with a casual wave of apology.

He calls Tensei.

Tenya is running around in the background, laughing maniacally, and Tensei is distracted during the call in spite of his concern. He promises to come by the hospital when he can, though, and tells Hizashi to call Nemuri. Hizashi promises he will, and hangs up.

Nemuri is unusually quiet as Hizashi tells her what he knows of what happened, and while he tells her that Shouta is back in surgery. When at last she speaks, she only says, “You were still his emergency contact.” It is not a question. It is barely an observation. More than anything, it is a revelation.

“I guess so,” Hizashi says, cradling the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he feeds a bill into one of the vending machines. His breakfast had been bland, and he wants sugar.

They talk for another few minutes about nothing in particular, and as Hizashi unwraps his candy bar and begins to eat, he is struck with the notion that Nemuri is just trying to distract him. He appreciates it. Before long, though, she hangs up with a quick goodbye, and a promise to come to the hospital after her last patrol.

Hizashi crumples the empty wrapper and tosses it into a trash bin, and wanders his way back toward Shouta’s room.

He calls his agency once he is seated by Shouta’s still-empty bed. He tells them there was a family emergency, and that he will not be able to patrol today. They are surprisingly accepting of his feeble excuses, and Hizashi wonders if someone else had already contacted them. Probably Tensei, he decides. That was always the kind of thing Tensei thought of.

His phone calls made, Hizashi settles uncomfortably into the hard, plastic chair to wait for Shouta to be brought back. He tries not to think. He mostly fails.

He thinks of Shouta. He thinks of Oboro. He thinks of invincibility, and of shattered stained glass, and of birthdays. He thinks of a broken shelf of liquor bottles. He thinks of screaming at Shouta in their apartment, so angry he’s lost control, and of Shouta silencing him with a red-eyed stare. He thinks of broken promises, and broken hopes, and broken dreams.

They bring Shouta back in sometime around noon. He is still unconscious, but he looks a little better than he had the night before. The bruising is lighter—more red and purple than black and purple—and he is breathing on his own. Some of his color has returned as well, though he was never anything but pale.

The nurses leave again, after telling Hizashi things he does not hear, his attention fixed on Shouta to the exclusion of all else. He wonders, vaguely, as he feels them leave the room, if they had figured that out, or if they had just finished telling him what they had to say.

The seconds drag into minutes as Hizashi waits, the minutes into hours. Hizashi sits, stiff and sore, in the chair by Shouta’s bedside, watching his chest move beneath the bandaging, watching his eyes flicker beneath his eyelids. He wonders what Shouta dreams of.

The doctor comes in again. Leaves again. Hizashi ignores him.

Nemuri comes, but does not stay long. She talks, and Hizashi listens with half an hear, saying nothing as she tells him about her day, about her night, about everything but her worry over Shouta. It’s there, though, lurking beneath every strained story, every forced laugh, every brittle word.

Nemuri is older than him and Shouta and Tensei—but, like Tensei, she had found them adrift in the wake of Oboro’s death, and like Tensei she had decided, “These are mine, now.” Hizashi is grateful for it most days.

It is only after Nemuri stands and presses a kiss to Hizashi’s cheek in farewell that he speaks.

“They think he fell,” Hizashi says, not looking anywhere but Shouta’s face. Nemuri freezes.

“But he never falls.”

“I know.”

“Do you think—”

“I don’t know what I think,” Hizashi says, short and sharp. “And neither do you.”

Nemuri hesitates. Then says simply, “Okay.” She leaves without another word.

---

Tensei visits for an hour, and when he leaves he promises to return later in the evening so that Hizashi can run home to shower and change clothes. Hizashi agrees without really knowing what he’s agreeing to.

Night has just well and truly fallen when Shouta’s eyes flicker, then open. He looks around, taking in the lights and the ceiling and walls—and then his eyes fall on Hizashi, and he freezes.

“Hey,” Hizashi says.

Shouta turns his eyes away and stares up at the ceiling.

“Uh,” Hizashi says, feeling suddenly awkward and tongue-tied. “Thanks for leaving me as your emergency contact.”

Shouta grunts. Hizashi wonders if he can even talk right now, or if it’s too painful.

“Look, Sho…” Hizashi grimaces. “Shouta,” he corrects.

Shouta looks at him again, eyes flicking over to his face. Hizashi rubs the back of his neck, and tries to figure out how to say what he wants to say.

“I know this is a bad time,” he says finally. “But I have to say this before the doctors come rushing in, and before you get up the strength to kick me out.” Shouta’s eyes narrow at him, but Hizashi isn’t looking at him anymore—is staring, instead, at the edge of the bed.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts out. “For…” He takes a deep breath. “For everything.”

Shouta looks back at the ceiling, and does not speak.

Hizashi calls the nurses. They come quickly, and Hizashi excuses himself from the room so that they can fuss over Shouta in peace. By the time they are done, Tensei is back, and Hizashi finds himself kicked out of the hospital until he has showered, changed, and eaten a full meal. He agrees to the terms grudgingly, but only because the memory of Shouta not even being willing to look at him is still fresh in his mind.

It haunts him as he showers, as he changes, as he walks to a small take-out restaurant a few blocks from his apartment and places his order. He wonders if he should even go back to the hospital, or if Shouta would prefer it to just be Tensei there.

He almost decides he would.

Tensei calls him just as he’s finishing his dinner, though.

“You on your way back?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Hizashi says, because he can’t quite bring himself to be selfless enough to say no.

---

Shouta is still awake when Hizashi walks into the room again. He looks at Hizashi when he opens the door and steps inside, then looks away again before he can close it. Tensei notices the silent exchange with a pensive look, but says nothing.

“Well,” he says, standing, “I have to go. I’m babysitting Tenya again tomorrow morning, and that little monster drains more out of me than twenty villains.” The soft smile on his lips belies the cutting words, though, and Hizashi knows that Tensei would give the world to his little brother if given the chance.

“Thanks,” Hizashi says, and claims the chair Tensei had just vacated.

Silence fills the room in the wake of Tensei’s departure, heavy and awkward and uncomfortable. Hizashi looks everywhere but at Shouta. Shouta stares at the ceiling.

“I…” Hizashi begins at last, entirely uncertain where he means to go with his next sentence but knowing he can’t bear the silence any longer.

A sigh cuts him off. Then, abruptly, in a ragged voice, Shouta says, “I’m sorry.”

Hizashi finally looks at him, startled. “For what?”

“For…everything,” Shouta says. “For walking out. For not being there for you. For ignoring you when you needed me.”

“Shouta, I…” Hizashi swallows hard. “I dug my own grave. I don’t expect you to dig me out. I never have.”

“Maybe that’s your problem,” Shouta whispers. “Our problem.”

Hizashi frowns. “What happened, Sho?” he asks suddenly. “How did you fall?”

“Someone pushed me,” Shouta says without hesitation. “I didn’t see them until it was too late.”

For the first time in seven years, Hizashi isn’t sure if Shouta is lying.

“Okay.” The word tastes like ash on Hizashi’s tongue, but there is nothing else he can say. Not now, anyway. Not yet.

Maybe not ever.

Shouta is silent again, but it is a different kind of silence. Hizashi waits, knowing he is preparing to say something. At last, after a few heavy moments of pregnant waiting, Shouta says, “Can we start over?”

Hizashi looks at him, surprised. “I’m not sure that’s going to be possible,” he tells Shouta.

“Maybe,” Shouta agrees. “But…try again, then.”

For the first time in over a day, Hizashi smiles. “Yeah,” he says. Then, again, “Yeah. I’d…like that. I’d like that a lot.”

Shouta nods, just a little, against the pillow behind his head. He closes his eyes.

“Will you be here?” he asks, voice already thick with sleep.

“Yeah,” Hizashi says, knowing what he’s asking. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Shouta nods again, eyes still closed, and in seconds his breathing evens out into a soft, sleepy cadence.

Hizashi settles back into his uncomfortable chair, preparing for another long night of half-conscious sleep. It’ll be worth it, though, he thinks. Anything is worth having my best friend back.

And for the first time since the stained glass of his invincibility shattered, Hizashi thinks that maybe, just maybe—if Shouta is at his side—he’ll see his 25th birthday. Maybe even his 30th.

Maybe even his 50th.

#erasermic #hizashi yamada #shouta aizawa #aizawa shouta #hizashi x shouta #suicide attempt tw #(or is it???? was it just a villain attack????? idk my dudes. idk) #hospital tw #canon-typical injury #*finger guns* anyway i know hizashi is super like. NOT flamboyant and Weird in this #but this fic is also literally about how his life is falling apart around him (with the implied meaning that this is hidden beneath his #hero persona - and is before he has his radio show i think? idk i haven't figured everything out yet) #but regardless i purposefully wanted to show a hizashi that wasn't him putting on any sort of act or persona #but was him in his rawest and most desperate emotions and thoughts and feelings #soooooooooooo he's p serious in this #*shrugs* i worry about characterization a LOT fam #pls don't be mean but also pls do tell me if i screwed up big time? i guess #just...pls be gentle. my heart is fragile #my disposition weak #if you've read this far into my tags bless you lmao #oh also if i need to tag anything else lemme knoooooooooooow because i'm really bad at tagging stuff #i've also never been in a fandom that has such THOROUGH tagging so usually i can skate by no problemo #but i have a feeling i'm missing some stuff i should have tagged. *shrug* #okay i'm posting it now before i lose my nerve and then going to SLEEP

[hydra-collector]

a sanders sides analysis of “far“

far, if you’re not aware (which honestly you probably werent) is an album by regina spektor (the same one as ‘one more time with feeling’ from logan’s playlist) and regina spektor has songs that work weirdly well with sanders sides so i’m going to give each song on the album a side. i might do this again with ‘what we saw from the cheap seats’ but its not as weirdly perfect as far.

this ended up being really long, so it’s under the cut.

the calculation: logan, no question. it’s basically about trying to 'calculate’ love from what they saw around them, mostly in media, because don’t understand it. they’re desperate to make it work, so they try again and again “beating their hearts against each other” and eventually, it sparks. intrulogical if you’d like someone to pair it with, since roman has all the romance with thomas.

eet: this one was more difficult, but i think its a lot of patton. after all, the summary on genius literally says “’Eet’ is a wistful, introspective song brimming with nostalgia. The overarching themes seem to be about a person’s development of morality through their experience in their childhood.” it connects a lot to ‘moving on’ in that respect, where thomas wishes he could go back to the times he remembered in patton’s room. if you don’t already know, eet is the backspace key on a typewriter, but since it actually prints letters, you can’t really go back. i also think the line “using your headphones to drown out your mind” is perfect for virgil. i think in “someone’s deciding whether or not to steal/he opens a window just to feel the chill/he hears that outside a small boy just started to cry/’cause it’s his turn, but his brother won’t let him try” janus could be the thief, trying to decide what thomas should take for himself, and obviously remus would be the brother that’s crying because he doesn’t get his turn to be listened to.

blue lips: janus or logan. part of it is kind of like an analysis of society, but it’s mostly about death and aging, which i think both of them will have thought about. the line “the pictures in his mind awoke/and began to breed” definitely reminds me of remus, intrusive thoughts and stuff. its preceded in one verse by “and no one saw and no one heard/they just followed lead” which i think could be about how thomas won’t let himself talk about remus’s thoughts, or janus’s lies, or even logan being tired of how thomas just tries to do everything everyone else does.

folding chair: roman, i think. part of it, patton, maybe. it’s hard to articulate exactly what i mean, but i think a lot of it has to do with being tired and lonely. i think maybe what i’m thinking with roman is that he’s been living so long one kind of way, but it’s not a happy kind of way. like he wants to do something (maybe flashbacks to ‘broadway here i come’ mayybe) or become a dark side, but he’s scared. “now i’ve been sitting on this abandoned beach for years/waiting for the salty water to cover up my ears/but every time the tide comes in to take me home/i get scared, and i’m sitting here alone.” i’m still not completely sure why this came off as roman to me, but maybe someone else would see it better. i don’t think it fits nearly as well as the other songs, but hey, i said i’d do all of them.

machine: janus or logan. kind of surprised it’s not a definite ‘logan,’ with its name, but it’s a lot about society and there’s a transition from “pre-war apartment” to “post-war apartment” which doesn’t fit logan very well at all. and rather than being ‘i am a machine,’ it’s “i’m hooked into machine.” i think that implies that the machine is society (forgive me if that doesn’t make much sense, genius doesn’t have much on this one) because we’re so intertwined, so connected to each other and functioning as a society, possibly how the government wants us to. some of the lyrics make me think it’s about some alternate universe, like “I collect my moments/into a correspondence/with a mightier power/who just lacks my perspective/and who lacks my organics/and who covets my defects,” which is the only reason i didn’t take logan out of the characters completely.

laughing with: janus, if he’s singing it sarcastically. i think he would be making fun of the people who ‘laugh at god.’ also the line “no one laughs at god on the day they realize/that the last sight they'll ever see is a pair of hateful eyes” which i think would’ve resonated very well with janus before svsr. not gonna say much else bc i can barely listen to the song as it is, much less analyze it.

human of the year: maybe also janus, but then again maybe moreso roman or patton. i say janus mostly because it has a very creepy vibe to go with the fictional award of “human of the year.” but roman or patton fits more with the receiver of the award. at least roman would probably give up anything to be deemed that great person, that hero.

two birds: anxceit babyyy. or roceit. it’s really weird because i can’t really tell whether virgil is leaving the wire or janus. the obvious option would be virgil, leaving for the light sides, but the subtler option is the callback. then again, i’m not sure if the one on the wire would change to roman or the general light sides if it was the callback. i also don’t think that virgil wanted janus to come with him, which doesn’t make sense for how the one bird would ask and the other would lie (hehe deceit) and say he was going to come. then again, that could just be a different interpretation of how virgil left the dark sides. in my opinion, though, roceit is much more fun. “i’ll believe it all:” roman. “i won’t let go of your hand:” janus. roman is lying to janus, he’s saying he wants to go to the wedding. janus is trying to just get him to go to the callback. roman’s tempted by it, tempted by how janus is treating him. the line “one more or one less, nobody’s worried” could maybe be janus trying to convince them that it doesn’t matter if they go to the wedding, that lee and mary lee won’t really care. anxceit’s also fun, though.

dance anthem of the 80′s: doesn’t really have a side that it fits in canon, but i think it’d be interesting to put it with patton in an AU. the character is peppy and innocent at first, but it descends into a more depressing tone. i also think the heteronormativity does it a favor in its context. again, it has nothing to do with canon, just thought it’d be cool in an AU.

genius next door: logan, or remus. this song hurts me every time i hear it, since i’ve started associating it with logan. it’s pretty much about this kid, the genius, who’s presumably depressed and goes into the lake each night, holding his breath until he comes back up. this ends up being a bad idea, because at one point he holds his breath too long, and dies in the lake. mostly as i’ve thought about it, i’ve considered logan, but honestly it kind of fits remus better, like how he “didn't care as long as he was able/to strip his clothes off by the dumpsters/at night while everyone was sleeping/and wade midway into that porridge/just him and his secret he was keeping” (the porridge is the lake.) in addition to that, they describe his death as “and the genius next door was sleeping/dreaming that the antidote was orgasm.” sorry for y’all having to catch me referencing other songs, but in the mountain goat’s “amy aka spent gladiator 1″ he says “do every stupid thing that makes you feel alive/do every stupid thing to try to drive the dark away” (which i think is also a very remus song) so he’s describing how it feels good to risk your life. the adrenaline will make you “feel alive,” which is probably why the kid in the song did it (which i saw in the comments someone compared to being the ‘orgasm.’) and while this is not a good idea, considering what happened to the genius next door, i do think it’s a very remus thing to do if he was depressed.

wallet: patton. it’s a very cute song, and it’s pretty much just about how the singer found a wallet, looked at it a little, then returned it to the owner. the singer says “i have no wallet/i keep my cards together with a blue rubber band” and i think that would be something patton does. “you'll never know me/i'll never know you/but you'll be so happy/when they call you up” is probably how patton would feel returning it. finally, something not depressing.

one more time with feeling: i don’t need to choose a side for this one, it’s already logan. i do want to share my thoughts on it, though, ‘cause it seems i disagree with a couple people (plus i didn’t analyze his playlist so i haven’t said anything about it before.) “everyone takes turns/now it's yours to play the part.” he’s supposed to help thomas, as he did in dwit and tried to in svsr. “and the misery inside their eyes is synchronized and reflecting it to yours.” they didn’t listen, though, in svsr and it took half an hour in dwit. for the chorus, “hold on/one more time with feeling/try it again, breathing's just a rhythm/say it in your mind until you know that the words are right/this is why we fight,” i think maybe he’s trying to be interesting to them. to just get through it, and practice and practice until he has the words that they’ll like. that’s just my little hc, though. “you thought by now you'd be/so much better than you are/you thought by now they'd see/that you had come so far.” these lines hit the hardest for me. remember how logan was in the beginning? especially in moving on, he seemed to have no compassion for thomas’s feelings. but hasn’t he gotten better? i think he’s trying to be better to them, to be kinder about emotional problems. and he has come far, but not as far as he would’ve liked, especially considering that he hasn’t seen them appreciate it. he was hoping that they’d notice, that they’d be glad he was doing better. that they’d be proud of him. but they aren’t. they just disregard him even more, unable to forget about who he was, unable to consider how far he’d come (maybe projecting a little.) i also think that the “this is why we fight” could be him talking about how because they don’t listen, he’s exhausted from getting angry at them each episode, and they get annoyed but their ignorance is why they fight.

as a whole, i think he’s just trying again, and again, and again, and i thought, maybe he’s trying with feeling. like, he’s trying to feel for them, trying to care. maybe it has to do with what he did in svsr, where he hinted at his feelings, how he felt like they didn’t care. and they didn’t say a thing. they only could’ve reinforced the idea that even though they’ve tried to tell him that he feels, they don’t care. i went on a whole rant about patton, roman, and thomas in svsr and i could again, but that’s not related to the song.

man of a thousand faces: roman, loosely. at first i was like “man of a thousand faces?!?! janus?!?” but it actually barely fits him at all. it might actually be about drugs, but we’ll ignore that. “his words are quiet like stains are/on a tablecloth washed in a river/stains that are trying to cover for each other/or at least blend in with the pattern” could represent his mistakes, his ideas, maybe stuff that didn’t turn out. and maybe the better ideas will cover up his mistakes. “good is better than perfect.” it could be that his perfectionism is driving him insane, and he needs to start reminding himself that it’s better if he starts reaching for at least just good. “and i’m crying for things that/i tell others to do without crying” is such a roman line i...

anyway that’s the album. if you read through this i’m... impressed.

#now to tag all of that #roman sanders #logan sanders #virgil sanders #remus sanders #janus sanders #anxceit #intrulogical #roceit #patton sanders #c!thomas #angst #tw suicide #tw manipulation #tw drowning #tw food #tw sex mention #tw drugs #tw crying #tw bold #uh #i dont think theres anythign else #tw gore mention #for the hearts #tw organs #ts roman #ts logan #ts virgil #ts remus #ts janus

[lonelier-version-of-you]

Headcanons about how Henrik gets diagnosed / diagnoses himself? :)

*stares into the distance like Mabel in that one episode of Gravity Falls* My time has come.

Ok so tbh I can see a few ways Henrik getting diagnosed might go, but I think the most likely one is it happening through Oskar getting diagnosed.  Especially as Henrik and Oskar share a lot of the same traits and Henrik has at least briefly considered this as something running in the family, and that’s established canon. So let’s go with that. Also I’m gonna bold new sections of this post because otherwise it would make even my own eyes glaze over, nevermind other people’s.

- One of Oskar’s schoolteachers or whoever notices autistic traits in him and brings it up with Sara first.

Sara then mentions it to Henrik later over a phone call/video chat, goes into the teacher’s reasoning (Oskar doesn’t talk when he’s upset, he’s hyper-fixated on a certain subject - in his case science/biology, he has sensory issues with food*, etc.), Henrik’s like “oh yeah I was like that as a kid too”... and then there’s the Awkward Moment of Silence™ where they both realise there’s probably a reason for that.

(Actually I wouldn’t be surprised if Sara brings it up to him because she wonders if Henrik’s on the spectrum too. She’s pulled the “you don’t have feelings” card before, after all, which I generally interpret as a sign the character doing it has noticed Henrik isn’t Emoting ‘Properly’ in a way that makes them uncomfortable but doesn’t quite know why. So I could see her connecting the dots quickly.)

[* - I know the show only briefly toyed with this and then backtracked and implied Oskar just wasn’t eating because he was upset and missed his mother but fuck, let me have my headcanons.]

- Henrik proceeds to stay up late into the following night, reading everything he can find about autism because he knows about it in a medical context but how it actually affects day-to-day life is a whole other ballgame. Definitely has a lot of “oh, fuck, that’s what [symptom] is called?? there’s a word for this?? I’m not just a freak??” moments.

- Being the type of person he is, I think he’d be too shy to bring it up to his colleagues right away, but he probably does ask someone if they can see it just to test the waters.

And by ‘someone’, I mean probably Jac. I say this partially because I like their friendship but also we’ve had previous instances of him going to her about things because he sees her as the person Most Like Him.

I like to think that conversation basically goes like this:

Henrik: So Sara told me that one of Oskar’s schoolteachers has suggested having him assessed for Autism Spectrum Disorder--

Jac: Because you have it too, yeah, I know.

Henrik: *¿?!¿?!¿?!*

Jac: You didn’t know??

😂

He’d tell more people as time goes by. Jason would definitely know; I like to think their friendship, while pretty much dropped by canon, actually is a thing and we just don’t see much of it. So Henrik would tell him and tbh I think he’d be another one to be like “oh, I thought so”.

Other friends/colleagues get told after a while and I can see some of them not having guessed, e.g. Dom. If we’re assuming John/Rox/David are all alive and well in this ‘verse, he’d tell them early on too I think.

I don’t imagine him ever being fully open about it, because again, he’s such a private person - but not necessarily ashamed either, just... if it comes up, it comes up: if it doesn’t, they don’t need to know.

- I go back and forth on whether he’d actually seek a professional assessment or not. I find it interesting that you suggest he might self-DX for this reason, actually! I could see it: he did canonically self-DX his depression (he says so to Mr. Clarke in Black Dog: “I’ve never been diagnosed, but it’s always been there”). On the other hand autism is a much more... complex disorder and I could see him wanting professional confirmation on it. So. 🤷

- Either way, he’s now opened the gateway to finding autism-specific resources, and even if it was just self-help style stuff I honestly think that would help him a lot. I think he’d find it a relief to finally have an understanding of why he’s different and why certain things don’t come naturally to him. And he’d be able to look into ways to actually learn the skills he failed to pick up earlier in life, instead of just... trying to copy other people and hoping he gets it right.

- For that reason, I can see him really caring about making sure Oskar knows he’s autistic and that there’s nothing wrong with him, because Henrik knows what it’s like to grow up different from the other kids and blame yourself for it and he doesn’t want Oskar to have to know that pain. He’d definitely try to be as involved in Oskar’s life as he could from overseas (though lbr he’s doing this anyway). I like to think Sara asks Henrik for advice when Oskar’s struggling with stuff, too, because she’s a good person who wants to learn from Henrik’s experience and make sure Oskar doesn’t grow up feeling othered.

...And that’s about it. 😅 Sorry, I’m sure you weren’t expecting that wall of text. I just have a lot of feelings about this!

#Holby City #Henrik Hanssen #autistic Henrik tag #asks #anons

[writtenbyhappynerds]

Unit 6: Making it Real

    When we say realism, we mean capturing both the voice of the canon characters while providing an OC who realistically fits into the narrative. This can be one of the hardest things to grasp as a writer, and a fanfiction writer on top of that because the cards are inherently against you. While your OC is your own character and can have whatever voice you want it to, the canon characters (cast) are voices you have to mimic. They are not and will never be your own voice, just an imitation of someone else’s voice. Some of the best fanfictions capture the voice of the cast extremely well which is why their fanfictions work. Because we as readers see how they have interpreted the cast and find it believable. There are many tips and tricks we as writers can use to mimic the voices of characters. To start, we are going to discuss some of the easiest mistakes and how to correct them.

    Just because a piece is a fanfiction doesn’t mean you can come up with ridiculous plot lines and reduce the cast to one-note personalities. It is very easy to rely on the most blatant part of a character’s personality to carry over their impression, but it isn’t enough to make realistic fanfic. In Harry Potter fanfiction, for example, Hermione Granger is often reduced to a clenched butthole who never stops screaming about homework. Hermione the canon character is a muggle-born witch who sees magic as an opportunity and wants to be the best she can possibly be, as well as a character who staunchly opposes injustice. She will not ignore injustice for the sake of academics, which is how organizations such as SPEW and Dumbledore’s Army were created. As a writer, it helps to flip back through Harry Potter and make notes for yourself on the themes of each character’s personality and flaws. For Hermione, instead of focusing on the academic, the writer needs to remember the bravery and the pursuit of injustice. They also need to remember how stubborn she is and how much she hates to lose or be proven wrong (See Harry beating Hermione in potions in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince). If you’re including characters like Hermione in your fanfiction, it requires some research, and having a cheat sheet will be helpful in developing a more realistic voice.

    Some issues in realism also come from the writer having way more voices than what they know what to do with. This means that maybe you had one OC, but that OC interacts with a large group like One Direction or The Avengers. There’s an easy solution: Your OC does not need to interact and be best friends with every single character. That itself is unrealistic. Take your own friend group for example. There are some members of that group you text every day, there are some you only see at events, some you only see on weekends, and some who are around all the time. It is perfectly ok if you as a writer are uncomfortable, to have some characters back up and take on a lesser role at the start of a fic. As you grow more confident with larger groups, you’ll still have the option to reintroduce them, or you can even have a specific arc in the story with your OC and those background characters. What the Editor and I see all too often is groups being forced to stick together as a group. What happens then is that the watered-down personalities infect all the characters as a whole and decrease the value of the fic overall. Take One Direction for example. In these fics, because it’s so important for the group to stick together as a group, Louis’s personality is reduced to screaming about carrots. Liam screams about spoons. Zayn does it with mirrors, and Harry, his hair. Not only are these boys reduced to the bare bones of personality, but all the writer has also done is taken the most ridiculous parts of their personalities and made it represent their entire beings. It’s not realistic. What you can do as a writer is send them off to other places or keep them in the background. You have no clue how to write for Zayn? He’s gonna be on his iPad for this scene watching a movie. You don’t know what Louis would do during this part? He’s gone to the store or gone for a walk. The characters don’t have to be together all the time. The same is true for Avengers fanfiction, and I’d argue that it’s easier to do this for Avengers because you can be more creative with the excuses. Clint’s at the farm. Natasha and Steve are on a mission. Tony got dragged to some event with Pepper. Bruce is in his room- he asked to not be disturbed. There is no rule that says a group has to stay together at all times, and if you’re uncomfortable you can find ways for those characters to leave, or put them somewhere in the background where they won’t interrupt the scene.

    Let’s talk briefly about love interests. The notes for the romance chapter are already horribly long, as the Editor and I have been discussing all the common mistakes and errors we see in romance fictions, but we’re saving that for after Exam 2 since I already have to apply a curve to Exam 1 for everyone who didn’t study. I digress. Love-interests can get just as bogged down as regular members of the cast. We’ve previously discussed how characters wouldn’t drop their entire personality the minute their love interest appears. That still stands because it isn’t realistic. Another thing that isn’t realistic, is amplifying a rival’s personality to make your pairing better by comparison. I see you people, and making a character or member of the cast more obnoxious or annoying so your pairing looks better is unrealistic and needs to come to an end. For example, say you’re writing a The Vampire Diaries fanfiction and your OC is madly in love with Damon. Fine, whatever, I don’t care. What I do care about is you the writer making Elena more obnoxious or more of a bitch to force your Damon/OC pairing. That’s not kosher. In the real world, relationships can fall apart and come together for reasons other than this person is suddenly super annoying and controlling and I don’t know why but oh look this new girl I’ve never seen is totally nice and super chill. Relationships are a partnership, and as a shortlist, they can fall apart because of: differing levels of commitment, they’re no longer on the same page, they’re afraid of being alone (yes relationships can fall apart because of this), someone compares their relationship to everyone else’s, someone tries to rely on their body language as a form of communication and as such, they don’t communicate, someone sees their partner as inferior, and so on and so forth. Another helpful way to naturally push a breakup is that in many couples who have been together for a long time, what originally were quirks and cute becoming obnoxious flaws that are too much effort to deal with. An example of this can be found in Neil Hilborn’s spoken-word poem OCD, where he describes how his ex fell out of love with him because his tics that were at first fun and cute became annoying and too much to handle. It’s sad, but it is more realistic for two people or two characters to break up over these reasons than one character waking up and turning into a complete nuisance. We will cover more of this in the Romance Unit.

    We sometimes find an error in the Meet Cutes or the way in which the OCs first meet and interact with the cast. These can range from they came to the coffee shop I worked at to they saved me from xyz villains. However, if this story is taking place in the real world we’d appreciate a spoonful of realism. If a character is planning a trip abroad, they would not get to the airport 10 minutes before the flight leaves. That is a fun way to suddenly not have a trip abroad. It doesn’t build tension for the audience when things like this occur, it just sets up unrealistic circumstances and makes the entire scene less believable. The same is true for say, One Direction fanfics where the fan somehow miraculously sneaks backstage and meets the band. That wouldn’t happen in real life. I understand it’s hard to figure out how two characters can get into the same room, but you have other options. Going back to One Direction, a teenage girl becoming the personal assistant for five teenage boys is very unrealistic. I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t write those kinds of fanfiction. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t write One Direction fanfiction though! You just need something more realistic. You could have:

The daughter of an executive producer or choreographer or stylist for the boys who have to bring their parents something they’ve forgotten.

The store manager at a shopping mall who lets the boys sneak out the back of the store when they’re running from paparazzi.

They could be a musician who is trying to get signed to the same label as the band.

    So long as your fanfiction is realistic fiction, I want you to lean heavily on realism. This does not apply just to One Direction fanfic. Every universe has a set of stakes and standards. We covered this in Chapter One. What we need to do now in realism is to apply those standards and make sure that when two characters meet, it feels natural. It feels like something that could happen and not something that was forced to happen.

    Speaking of forced to happen, let’s delve into character flaws. We talked about in Unit 5 how some writers appear uncomfortable with seeing their characters struggle. What some authors fail to realize is a tougher uphill climb makes the view so much more worth it. Seeing your characters struggle is a fact of life: not everything comes naturally to you, so why would it to your characters? When I was first trying to force myself to give my character flaws I would scour lists online for “common character flaws.” There is an easier solution. Your character’s flaws can mirror the positive attributes of a character. For example, If your character is very loyal, they may be headstrong and unwilling to hear or believe criticism of the person or thing they are loyal towards. You can think of that in terms of a devoutly religious person who won’t hear criticism of their beliefs, or of a loyal friend who won’t believe the person they know did something wrong. A character who is very giving may not take time for themselves or would let themselves go without before seeing their friends suffer. A character who is romantic and loves to try and woo their significant other may be jealous when they can’t spend time with that person or may be needy, and struggle with being alone. As an easy trick, try and view your character’s positive attributes through a negative lens and see what flaws you can pull out, so like me, you can stop scrolling the lists online just to say your character bites their nails or smokes.

    The best example of flaws and consequences of those flaws is Percy Jackson. Riordan makes a point for the heroes to have “fatal flaws” with Annabeth’s being pride and Percy’s being loyalty. You see consequences for these flaws throughout the book, and you see bad things happen to the characters because of their pride or loyalty. Annabeth wouldn’t have gone after the spider alone if it weren’t for her pride. She wouldn’t have tried to hear and survive the siren’s song. She makes mistakes and falls down and even lands in Tartarus because of her pride, which makes her a more realistic character. The same is true for Percy, whose loyalty to his friends and those he loves forces him to act recklessly and to even defy the gods in the name of those he cares about. You can see it in Nic DiAngelo as well because his grudge against the demigods is what kept him out of the books for so long. Until such a time where Bianca could tell him to get over it and forgive. Flaws are important to have and vital to character development, but we should also see consequences for these flaws otherwise we won’t know they’re there. Remember, we as readers can only infer from what you give us, and we’re not doing character bios anymore. So if you want your character to have flaws, the only way we can see that is by consequence of their actions. It’s okay for your characters to fail from time to time. It makes the victories better by comparison.

    In the same vein of character flaws, let’s finally talk about Mary Sues. A Mary Sue is a character who can accomplish any task no matter how difficult with little effort and is adored by all. Depending on the story, we can see this play out in different ways. Often, we see authors try to disguise the character’s Mary Sue-ness by giving her some random flaw to prove she’s not perfect; however, that flaw doesn’t seem to impact her life in any way at all.  For example, in Avengers fanfics, our Mary Sue has some vaguely defined powers that allow her to do absolutely everything imaginable but may have a flaw that was added as an afterthought like being bad at math. This flaw may later be ignored as in another chapter she could/would solve a physics problem that stumped Tony Stark. Her flaw had no impact on her ability to be better than everyone around her, and this makes her a Mary Sue. As a side note, when you give your characters superpowers, the character should have a consequence or rule for using those powers. The book Magic or Madness starred a family of witches, who had to use their powers because they would go insane without them. However, using those powers cost them years off their lifespans. In Mary Sues, we see characters who make themselves the plot, instead of joining or coming along for a storyline that they participate in. We see this happen a lot in Victorious with Tori Vega. Anytime something, all of the characters turn to her to magically swoop in and save the day. For example, in the Great Ping Pong Scam episode (season 1, episode 11), Robbie ordered way too much caviar and now they’re unable to pay their bill. Don’t worry though, Tori has this shit handled. We see her borrow Jade’s dress and sing her way out of that situation. There was absolutely no reason for that to happen; we know Jade is a talented singer, she could have easily done that herself. Make it mean something, and make there be consequences for these characters.

    Another common trait of Mary Sues is a tragic backstory. The character might have lost their family, may have been abused, may have been homeless, had depression, been suicidal, or even all of the above. It’s not a bad thing to have a character with a tragic backstory. What makes that character a Mary Sue is when that backstory does not impact who they are as a person. The backstory is there for the audience to sympathize with the character, not as an internal conflict of the character herself, and more often than not the tragic backstory manifests itself in being closed off and, “refusing to trust people,” while still having a large group of friends like the Avengers or the cast of Harry Potter or the Heroes of Olympus. There are consequences for actions. Things people do and say can have lasting effects and carry on with someone for the rest of their lives. It can manifest in rational fears, and irrational fears and a character may have both healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms. If you write in a terrible instance that has occurred for your character, you need there to be consequences for the actions of both that character and those who hurt them. A good example is in Bill Willingham’s Fables: Legends in Exile in the characters Snow White and her sister Rose Red. The short and long of it is that Snow White was rescued by the prince, and abandoned her sister. Rose Red was eventually sent for, but only after a great deal of time had passed. This made her feel unwanted, and as revenge on her sister, she slept with Prince Charming and destroyed their marriage. Beyond that, years later, Rose Red still struggles with inadequacy compared to Snow White and still resents her for abandoning her. She can’t keep a stable relationship and feels she isn’t good enough for any of her potential love interests. Rose Red is a great example of a character still feeling the aftershocks of a traumatic event. She was abandoned, and she grew bitter, and she got the revenge she wanted but it still wasn’t satisfying and did more harm than good to her in the long run. To avoid Mary Sues, you need to make your characters have flaws, make them have secrets (beyond their superpowers that inevitably get revealed later in the story), make them have selfish moments, make them afraid, and make sure that if they experienced tragedy and heartbreak that it is something they’ve never forgotten.

    The next few notes are not specific to one genre or fandom but are aspects of realism that need to be addressed. First and foremost, it is biologically impossible for boy-girl twins to be identical. This is because when two haploid cells make a diploid zygote, which is how babies are made. Identical twins are always the same sex because they come from the same egg, and all the DNA is copied twice, making them completely identical. Because they are completely identical, they are the same sex. Fraternal twins, which are also more common than identical twins by a longshot, are made when two individual eggs are fertilized at the exact same time. They then grow together in the uterus and make babies who don’t look exactly alike. All boy-girl twins are fraternal because it is biologically impossible for them to be identical since they can’t have a difference in chromosomes while still coming from the same egg. The biology major in me is really coming through in this paragraph, and I apologize for that, but what we’re trying to say is that you can’t have a set of twins that are boy-girl twins and describe them as looking exactly alike. That is unrealistic. Fraternal twins are way more common, and more realistic than identical twins. Give them a shot.

    Song lyrics written out in their entirety are a very quick way to ruin the immersion and take your reader out of the story. Having a character sing to another character, very often it is in an unrealistic set of circumstances, and it comes across as cringy and extra instead of emotional. This is more abstract in terms of what is okay and what isn’t and it does go on a case-by-case basis. The good rule of thumb is if you the author have seen this happen in real life or it is something that can actually happen in real life, go ahead. But don’t put the lyrics of the song. Instead, while the character is singing describe how the character they are singing to is reacting. Romanticize the shit out of their surroundings, and make something that’s charming and sweet, instead of cringy. If you need help, our examples of good scenes that involve singing are:

Two people in love singing badly while they dance drunk around the kitchen.

A little boy or girl sharing their favorite song with a stranger to show the innocence of children.

Sports fans singing during a match or a game

The dying rebellion singing their battle cry only after loads have died as a means to try and reignite their hope.

The happy and alive rebellion singing at the top of their lungs because they’re young rebels with a cause and no one has died yet.

The old homeless man getting a guitar for the first time in 2 years and singing a cover of Creep that breaks your heart a la the Youtube video that will be linked below.

Nightmare musical numbers

Songs sung by two voices in two different time periods a la Bojack Horseman’s I Will Always Think of You

Sad reprises

    If it can happen in real life, go for it. But don’t tell me what the lyrics are. If you’re worried the readers won’t get it, put a link to the song at the very end of the chapter. Or, if music is a big part of your character, make a soundtrack and put it at the end of the story. A memoir I read recently, Rustbelt Femme, the author Raechel put her mixtape at the end of her book because the music was such a big part of how she came into her own identity and discovered her sexuality. This was something she wanted to share with her audience so in the book itself she would mention the bands or songs in passing, and at the end of the book, she put them in a list for people to listen to on their own. I can understand wanting readers to grasp the importance of the scene, but let them explore that in their own time. Don’t force it down their throats by putting song lyrics in the middle of a story.

    Next week we’re talking about crossovers. I am very excited, as I love a good crossover fanfiction. We’ll discuss how to make crossovers work, how some don’t work and why, and tie it back to both characterization and the Rules for the Universe. Xoxo, gossip girl.

Additional Reading (Listening): 

Neil Hilborn’s OCD 

Homeless Man Singing Creep by Radiohead. 

#ff101 #fanfiction #fanfiction101 #writing #OC #realism #fandom #Harry Potter #DC #Marvel #Victorious #Addams Family #Rose Red #Supernatural #Twilight #Sherlock #Original Works #Percy Jackson #percy jackon and the olympians #Avengers #self-insert

[isa-ghost]

Hi I’m gonna just,,, gush here for a moment-

I’m personally really not a big fan of “make [ego] canonically evil/etc” stuff, I like to stick to keeping those things in AUs bc then our imaginations can just go fuckin WILD and anyone that dislikes/feels uncomfortable with those headcanons won’t be bothered by it being canon. HOWEVER, the bunker!egos actually fucking LOVE seeing that kinda shit, AU and not. At the end of the day, they know themselves better than we do, and they love to see what we think up for them.

Marvin especially is super touched at all the different portrayals we have of him because all that exists is his birth video, and yet we put so much love and thought into him all on our own. He’s personally really fond of “mysterious chaotic neutral, morally grey badass” and “borderline magical girl anime thot that’d hex you for a quarter.” Both of those have become big parts of his personality tbh. Despite the flood of headcanons about him being evil giving him some thoughts and urges he’s not okay with, the fact that we care so much that it’s popular enough to actually effect him speaks volumes about how much the community cares about him and it makes him really Soft(tm) for the community.

Even Jackie likes seeing AUs and “what if” posts about him snapping or turning on everyone because there are days he feels so worthless or so outnumbered that the idea comes to mind. He also likes seeing how many different ways we can make him a hero aside from stereotypical superhero things. Not to mention Anti has put him through so many different traumas that nothing we think up to put Jackie through could scar him worse (though I have some mutuals that would totally consider that a challenge XD Please don’t). His favorite thing isn’t headcanons or “what if” posts though, he absolutely lives for angst art and fics of him, bonus if he gets to beat Anti up or do smth way more fucked up than Anti would and thus show him up. Jackie THRIVES off “Jackie Is Not A Perfect Flawless Lawful Good Boy” stuff, because he’s super hard on himself and has a lot of guilt and next to no confidence in himself, so seeing people expect less than Absolutely Virtuous things out of him eases his psyche a bit. Though he’s not always a huge fan of these sort of posts about his brothers, especially Chase, but that’s just because he’s Big Brother(tm).

Henrik? Oh my god Henrik absolutely OWNS the shit we come up with for him. He despises the “he’s a failure” / “he’s working with Anti” stuff about August 3rd because of how personal and traumatic it was for him, but even the “working with Anti” stuff he’ll spitefully joke about. But the feral doctor/mad scientist stuff? He practically struts around about it. Like Fuck Yeah I Might Sell One Of Your Kidneys For A Fruity Drink, What Of It Bitch?? It also really means a lot to him we’re so fond of how Not Completely Sane he is because he’s hugely self-conscious of it and worries regularly he’ll harm someone he cares about. Seeing us so in love with the concept that he’s a little bit or moderately crazy entertains him a lot. He also, despite not going actually on vacation contrary to some of our beliefs and actually being trapped/tortured for months, finds it fucking HILARIOUS we say he went on vacation, and even funnier that we’ve drawn him in Hawaiian shirts so often for “vacation” art that he literally has a bunch appearing in his closet.

Chase is a bit more sensitive to some of the stuff we make just because a lot of the substance we have to use to create things based around him is emotional for him, traumatic or not. But he still likes to see our ideas. He especially loves all our different interpretations of his kids, being that they and Stacy aren’t actually real. There’s a select few ideas he’s not fond of at all, but he just ignores them and lets us do our thing because he doesn’t want to police anybody. Even if he doesn’t like them, they still fuel him to be the best he can be, so even those ideas help him to a degree. He has a weakness for the super skilled assassin/sniper stuff honestly. He’s training himself along with Jackie’s help to try and get that skilled with weapons, and he hopes at some point if he gets that good he can record a thing of him so we can see what he did for us.

Jameson probably has the most fun of all of them with all our different interpretations because even HE doesn’t know too much about himself because he’s just such a wild card full of so much potential until Sean spills some more tea about him. He’s super partial to the time traveler, mob boss, assassin, and Marvin’s assistant in magic ideas we’ve made up. At this point even though he hates the “he’s a puppet” stuff, he’s grown numb to it and knows he isn’t one, so he just lets us explore the concept. If anything, our interpretations of it help him make up plans for what to do if he does get strung up and how to protect himself from Anti.

TLDR; The bunker!egos adore morally grey/Not Good Aligned stuff we come up with for them and even some of the ones they don’t like still help them in some way. As long as we aren’t hoping they die or hurt/kill each other, they’re all for whatever crazy creative shit we think up.

#bunker 88720 #septicegos #jackieboy man #marvin the magnificent #henrik von schneeplestein #dr schneeplestein #chase brody #jameson jackson