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fumifooms · 4 months

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Firefly Wedding is so…

It’s so

It’s them. It’s "It’s just a firefly, they’re meant to die soon. Why should I care about the sick, or the poor?"

It’s "I was purposely trying to scare you and push you away to see how far you were willing to go with your act, how desperate you were to play with my feelings as if I was a fool, but it didn’t work."

It’s "I know you’re just using me but now I care. Please keep using me. I need you to need me."

It’s choosing to give her her freedom anyways. Because your love is no longer all about you, no longer selfish. Because this love isn’t just a shallow balm to soothe your complexes anymore.

It’s being betrayed, finally facing the lies and no longer pretending you both don’t know that this is a farce, but desperately wanting to keep it going anyways. It’s "I should hate you now. Why don’t I? Hey, tell me we’ll go through with the plan, tell me you’ll marry me after all. Otherwise, why am I still here? Why don’t I want to leave? You act like you don’t need me but I still need you."

Like that’s so revolutionary for a yandere story. The self-delusion is strong, denial that things have changed despite it being impossible to truly believe, BUT HE STAYS. It’s no longer selfish 😭😭

"I don’t care about you anymore, I won’t help you. Get yourself killed for all I care." <- Jumps to her rescue 3 milliseconds later when she almost falls down a ladder/roof. It happens twice. The ‘lying and trying to emotionally distance yourself from something to protect yourself and not get hurt’ defense mechanism is blatant and it’s failing really bad.

It’s "My sense of duty and goals to have accomplished something useful in my short life are making me do this, but I do want you to stay with me." The yandere stuff here gets turned on its head because what he says is empty where it matters and meaningful where it matters. It’s knowing that if Satoko asks him not to kill anyone he won’t, but knowing that he won’t give up on her no matter what, even if she’s unattainable, even if she’s sickly, even if she pushes him away like just before. It’s so thinly veiled for "I’m determined to see my goal through, but that’s not what I want. If you just so happen to take me away and I don’t try to run away hard enough then we can elope and be free. I want to have an excuse to leave with you. Please give up on marrying me. Please don’t. I want that, but I can’t."

It’s "If I didn’t burn brightly in my short firefly life, then what was the point?"

Except that burning brightly doesn’t have to mean making big achievements, or being useful to your family.

It can be living happily, living for the ones you love, fighting for them. It can be worth to risk it for things that actually matter to you.

It’s giving your heart to someone, figuratively and literally. To lend it to them even if it might get used or battered, for as long as it beats to use your body to protect them, even if you have to sacrifice yourself. A love that burns bright into a bonfire before they both turn to ashes. Unwise but wholehearted.

It’s despite even that, needing grandiose gestures to be able to trust that this is real. It’s needing external cues that prove it to feel safe in their love existing, other people to confirm that he’s not crazy, that this is happening and this is how they both feel. Their love has been fake, both being a warped love and being a lie, only being out of necessity or because the other was the only one willing to offer it to them, offering comfort, safety, support and care. And showing that they care is the most loving of all It’s despite everything falling back into old habits that "Oh if she was miserably worried for me then that means she’s not indifferent to me! That’s good!" And then once again being taken aback by her, by her earnestness and by her will. Because oh, no, this goes deeper than that. She cares. It’s love.

It’s opening your heart up to love, and both being punished and rewarded for it.

But most of all it’s

And it being the most loving thing he’d ever heard

Firefly Wedding is so…

And yet it’s also

The complicated and hurtful nature of love and the joy and light it brings are two sides of the same coin, because that’s what inevitably happens when you care about something. But caring about a firefly isn’t a waste even however short lived it is, or how hard the loss will inevitably hit you. Isn’t their light just such a wonder to witness?

#hotaru no yomeiri #firefly wedding #firefly marriage #firefly wedding fandom how we feeling #Spoilers #he’s like Denji except. Worse #Lmk if i need to take out the pictures or smth #I genuinely don’t know if firefly wedding will end happily or in tragedy I AM SCARED??!#Iirc the very beginning is a letter that says how she died?? Anyways i am so fine and cool and collected #Ah yes my favorite genre dark romance that manages to become healthy somehow by the end of it <3 #Can’t believe they invented love in 2023 #It’s like seeing them slowly work through loving someone loving yourself and loving life live it’s so good #Gimme the sad af dark romance about what it means to love someone 😤

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casliveblog · 4 months

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Custom Toonami Block Week 158 Rundown

Spy X Family: So the season starts out with a banger as Yor gets shot in the butt and has to avoid doing butt stuff. Loid thinks she’s just in a really bad mood like that episode of Ed Edd and Eddy where Ed gets a rock stuck in his shoe, I do think it’s fun that the two immediately think they did something wrong whenever anything happens, like they’re basically always off but it’s quite considerate in their own ways. I feel like this could’ve been solved if Yor just said she threw out her back lifting boxes at work but then we wouldn’t have an episode and it’s a comedy so it’s alright. But yeah Yor eventually drinks some poison from one of her enemies that ends up solving her butt troubles (this is way funnier because we’re talking about Yor’s butt instead of her back or anything) and Anya has to stop the guy from building a bomb, somehow reading his mind about how to build it and doing it before he has a chance to even get there and setting up several Satoko Hojo-level traps along the way, no clue how the timeline of that works but point being it’s pretty awesome and she scares the guy off. Yor’s feeling better (until the morning at least) and they have a nice date where Anya finally stops tailing them and just fucking crashes it. I also kinda like that Yor has an immunity to poisons from her job as an assassin and Yuri basically became Shizuo Heiwajima from eating her cooking all his life so like it runs in the family but for two separate reasons. Seems like we’re back to the light stuff with mild idiot plots for comedy after the back half of season 1 had several heavier arcs in a row, personally I like more of the ones that at least make some logical sense and take up a whole episode as opposed to the ones that are half an episode with the clearly telegraphed gags and this one was probably half and half.

Inuyasha: So Naraku’s sitting there like ‘okay that was definitely Kikyo’s arrow that nearly killed me so she’s still alive so let’s smoke her out real quick before she keeps this shit up’. Kohaku’s doing his best to pretend to still be a coma victim and not reveal he’s regained his memories but Naraku and Hakudoshi are sharp enough they’ve probably already figured it out because despite not disobeying them he’s not doing great hiding his emotions or anything. Inuyasha goes to look for Kikyo but doesn’t find her and because Kagome can’t take that on faith despite her supposed character development last time she gives him like five Sits for no reason only for everyone to complain about how she’s being mistreated. Usually I love Kagome but this is something that happens throughout the series where the girls are abusive and sometimes it’s more warranted than others but sometimes it’s just for nothing and it’s a little psychotic, like I get it’s for comedy and like half the time it’s filler stuff the anime snuck in to add more gags to a scene because from what I know the manga supposedly does have the characters get less abusive towards each other as things go on and relationships progress and they have less of their gag spats. So yeah on to the main plot, Hakudoshi and Kohaku unleash a plague of Demon Rats on the world and like they steal the Infinite Rat Box from its master and just kinda… leave it open? Like idk why the Rat Master wasn’t doing that to begin with since there seems to be no downside to havening infinite rats but I guess he was rather weak and didn’t want to draw attention to himself or have someone destroy the box. It’s actually a moment where Miroku gets to be MVP because destroying them only makes more rats so he gets to play Human Vacuum Cleaner and suck them up since Naraku doesn’t have enough Saimyosho to give the whole rat horde an escort I guess. It’s kind of funny because Kohaku brings up this being how to smoke Kikyo out and Hakudoshi’s like ‘oh right that’s what we were doing, I was just having fun unleashing plagues on the world’ like he fucking forgot the mission and was just enjoying being rat boi. Kikyo’s smarter than that though and finds a way to lure the rats out without giving herself away and creates a big fuck off spirit tree for them all to climb while Inuyasha and Kagome head to the tree and Sango and Miroku try to find the Infinite Rat Box now that the stream is more focused. Sango eventually finds Kohaku in front of the box as he’s contemplating if saving the five guys the rats haven’t killed yet is worth blowing his cover with Naraku (it’s not) and Sango gets to play the ‘I have to kill Kohaku even though I decided last time it was best to let him live’ game for like the fifth times because character development in this series is a sequence of small circles.

Yu Yu Hakusho: Yusuke meets with Yomi and his proposal is one that’s kind of beautiful in its simplicity, and also the most Yusuke thing that could’ve happened: he wants to have another tournament. This time the winner will be the ruler of Demon World no questions asked and it simultaneously stops a bloody war and dissolves all the complicated allegiance shit Mukuro and Yomi had been planning, like Yusuke just snapped Game of Thrones in half and made it into DBZ and it’s kinda great. The beautiful thing about it is Demon World is a Might Makes Right place so if any of the kings refuse to participate they’ll look weak, Yusuke wrapped them in the Chains of Command without even trying. Kurama breaks off ties with Yomi to fight on his own side (not sure how that’ll affect him being blackmailed into his mom being murdered but we’ll see I guess) and Yomi eventually agrees too though he’s secretly hedging his bets with his kingdom’s fighters fighting in his name, while also growing his own little Meruem/Cell child that’s supposed to be ridiculously strong to cheat more. Still, a bunch of Raizen’s old sparring partners come to visit his grave and tell Yusuke about how they live more peacefully now after seeing Raizen literally die to avoid killing humans and Yusuke gets a measure of respect for him in a way you only can by learning about how someone else sees someone you know, so that’s pretty cool even if Raizen’s backstory is still the stupidest shit. The power levels of all Raizen’s old drinking buddies doing a Half Blood Prince ending into the air gives Yomi and Yomi Jr. battle boners and they both decide to only go in for themselves after all. I can see why people would be mad about what was set up as a big convoluted Pirates of the Carribean arc of allegiances just turning into another Tournament arc but I kinda love it, like the power of Yusuke’s big dumb pride and confidence overthrowing centuries of ridiculous plotting and scheming is pretty cool.

Jujutsu Kaisen: Gojo and Geto beat their big fights from the cliffhanger off-screen and are formally introduced to Riko who’s a bit of a chunni but I guess that’s kinda how you have to do this kind of character, like if you’re sending a demure quiet girl to her death it’s kinda both more sad because she’s just accepting it but also less sad because she makes less of an impact so this is probably how it has to be by writing law. Megumi’s dad’s just bumming around gambling on random shit, he seems to be trying an Arkham City approach and waiting for everyone else to bombard Gojo and Geto with assaults so they get tired and have divided attention but they seem to be literally having no problem with anyone and literally made a big criminal organization go defunct off-screen. Still we get a neat little fight of Geto owning an old man and Riko’s maid crushing a paper bag man’s dick with a mop so that’s fun, plus Gojo uses his still incredibly undefined powers to own the rest of paper bag man’s clones though he shows he hasn’t fully mastered the big kamehameha thing yet so he’s stuck on Almighty Push and Almighty Pull mode, also Riko’s maid has been kidnapped so uhh yeah that’s not good.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: So… Scott’s dead, short series right? The mini-boss guy is for some reason surprised that turning a guy into coins doesn’t make Ramona want to date him and kinda kills the party vibe but I guess you don’t self-identify as evil and devote yourself to stalking a single girl you dated for two weeks in high school by having social skills. Ramona dyes her hair a new color and heads over to Scott’s funeral where Knives Out is kinda mad about her being there since while she didn’t really have anything to do with his death she is the manic pixie ignition switch that got him punched into coins so she has a full Gorillaz makeover to show how angry she is. Also Envy Adams is there and she’s a model I’m guessing based on the billboards but also Scott’s ex and a weird Ragyo Kiryuin knockoff because she has an entourage and sparkles everywhere. Also I’m noticing that you kind of have to use someone’s full name whenever they mention someone like you use their first and last name even when they know who you’re talking about. Anyway Envy upstages a fucking funeral and for some reason they had an open casket funeral just to show off the fucking coins Scott got turned into so yeah it’s a fucking shitshow. The Evil Exes all get invited to their own lair and #1 is like ‘hey bro I just killed the protagonist so I should be in charge’ and #7 is just like ‘fuck you bro get out of here with your midboss vibes’ and also apparently one of them is dating Envy? Like if you’re currently dating someone why are you in an self-proclaimed evil league to win back another separate girlfriend? Is dating in-universe Lady Gaga just an automatic poly relationship? Anyway Gideon and Matt fight and they do this cool Tekken/Soul Calibur stage transfer thing where each part of the fight is in a different thematic location and both of them equally look like they’re fucking up at various points but Matt has magic Stand User cheerleader girls and Gideon’s… kinda good with swords I guess? So yeah, Stand Powers win and Gideon signs Kaibacorp over to Matt so he can fully Starscream it up and fuck things up with his new leadership position and ungodly amounts of wealth that Gideon probably shouldn’t have agreed to wager over a fight, like betting the League was probably enough. Ramona’s probably a bit more broken up about a guy she knew for two days dying but she did kinda get him involved in some supervillain shit on accident and her having seven exes in her early twenties does suggest she’s the type of person to fall for people easily. So yeah we end the episode with a suggestion from right out of Futurama that Scott’s still alive and only the woman he loves can help find him, I’ve seen this one it turns out Ramona was in a coma and she got all the space bee venom while Scott lives with a hole in his gut.

Ranking of Kings: Okay as much as I’ve been ragging on the filler season, this one does actually answer a question I’ve been looking forward to: finding out how Hilling assembled her squad and recruited Ann, like it still amounts to ‘fight bandits’ with just the names and places changing like one of those Radiant Quests in Skyrim like half the stories have been this season but yeah it’s cool to see more of Hilling’s backstory back when she was just the white mage of a Frieren-esque party and Ann is cool but it’s still not much to talk about. The second story is about Daida learning healing magic and finally getting the hang of it after pushing Bojji off a comedically well-hidden cliff that’s like five feet from where they were playing. I like the detail that Bojji was initially going to meet his snake friends since he was hissing to call snakes before Daida jumped him but yeah otherwise pretty paint by numbers and kinda makes the big reveal of Daida’s magic during the climax of last season less surprising given half the cast should already know he has it but okay.

Vinland Saga: Thorfinn and Einar get properly acquainted and honestly for being a slave it sounds like a prtty good deal, they get their own plot and get to sell off what they grow and they’re free once they earn more than they were sold for. Like the guy’s using slaves to expand his farm and I get you can’t really do that indefinitely without recouping costs somewhere and the land is completely untended and this may turn out to be way more impossible than it looks but still kinda on the boat that this is a very doable deal if there aren’t any surprises (there will almost certainly be surprises). Thorfinn’s about as talkative as he was as a kid so Einar doesn’t get much out of him except advice to keep his head down about some of the local assholes and Einar gets too much of a boner for one of the local girls to remember to tell them off so it all works out. Meanwhile we get introduced to the lord’s son who’s kind of a whiny jackass but they also do a decent job of showing things from his side and how the expectations put on him weigh on him and how everyone just seems him as an extension of his dad and he’s caught up in the warrior pride BS that Thorfinn was on back in the day, it’s a good combo of wanting to punch him in the face but understanding why he’s like that. Einar gives us the usual ‘war bad’ speech but most importantly he tells Thorfinn about how the Danes burned down his village and it gives him a chance to reflect on when he was doing the burning and pillaging.

#ooc #Toonami #Custom Toonami Block #Spy X Family #Inuyasha #Yu Yu Hakusho #Jujutsu Kaisen #Scott Pilgrim Takes Off #Ranking of Kings #Vinland Saga

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qu33nincrims0n · 10 months

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My Dumb Thoughts on Higurashi- Onikakushi

The first of my Higurashi Reactions I started on Reddit, now with GIFS! These are basically the notes I put down of my thoughts after each chapter.( I'm not sure if long posts like this are seen as okay, so I may break up the later chapters for readability) [also spoilers for Onikakushi, obviously]

Oh, and before I begin, I read the main five in the following voices:

Rena and Keiichi: higher and lower versions of my own voice

Satoko: heavy enunciation

Mion: Peni Parker's Sonic voice

Rika: Cherami Leigh's voice for Sunako in Shiki

any other voice, I'll say when they show up. With that, let's begin!

Well, that was an uncomfortable opening

Ch 1-1

Honestly the fact Keiichi’s mom has no sprite way more unnerving than it should be

Keiichi, you’re gross. Stop that

Oh hi Rika, I can’t wait for you to murder me and/or Satoko and for it to be like big sad.

Tip about the uniforms: ah, either Mion’s relatives are part of some sort of criminal underground, or this is a pervert thing.

Ch 1-2

WHY DOES MION HAVE A GUN?!

Hello?

(Zero Escape 999) Rika giving me some *Redacted* vibes with these rabbits

Yes, this is a cute picnic, but Mion still has a gun, and no one has said anything about it.

Tomitake Is voiced by Kyle Herbert (specifically his Kaito voice). No one can tell me otherwise

Oh, shit a Sanders Statue!

When Rena talks like my great grandpa side stepping topics ‘,:(

Why is there no tip about the GUN?!?! - future me here to say I now know why no one talks about the gun. thank you. -

Ch 1-3

Should have believed in the heart of the cards, Keechi.

So Mion is shady about the 79’ murder too, Huh?

Never let go Sanders!

The XX killer be like:

That moment when you completely redress to grab an axe.

Ch 1-4

Zimbo Zamboo Zombie blasto!

Man, Mion had to be really lucky to fake a tagging. Like how did that even happen?

Ayyyy Tomitake!

I’d love for a pic of the guy who died in 79’ to show up and its straight up Colonel Sanders given the parallels

Ch 1-5

I don’t like the one kid who canonically has a gun is the one proposing a “four demon fire-fight”

Oh hey, it’s like me playing pook. Keiichi has learned to believe in the heart of the cards!

Rika: So, you want to die? That can be arranged.

You insinuating somthin’ Rika? I don’t like that tone

Ch 1-6

Festival time!!

+ Tomitake has joined the party+

Me: *suddenly realizes we now have six ppl for parallels*

Spooky time with Tomitake and new lady (I’ll call her Ms. Clover until I get an actual name) - also I realized later I forgot to give her a voice, so she's british-

And then nothing bad happened.

Ch 1-7

Well this is a funky version of clue… I wanna try it.

Rika, stop saying cryptic stuff like that. Stop it. Get some help.

Ooishi, sir, you look constantly high. I think I'll give you a southern drawl.

NO!! Tomitake!! Oh, and Ms. Clover is missing, I guess.

Oh god, that’s deeply upsetting.

Secret~ agent~ Keiichi~!

Tomitake isn’t you’re name ?!?

Ah so Ms. Clover is Miyo, and she’s a nurse from nearby. Neat.

Ch 1-8

Two events masquerading as one event. They’re evolving…

“You got home safely, right?” sus

Secret member Satoshi has entered the chat

Hmmmm so that cat eye thing is not just Miyo. Hmmmmmmmm

I don’t like Rena-x.

double don’t like this door shenanigan thing. You call that officer back right now! Keiichi!

Ch 1-9

I feel that Keiichi +passes out for nine hours+

The staple of mysteries, gossiping grannies!

Ooishi out here to drop some truth bombs. Oh shit, may have been too much.

Huh I wonder why he censors death in his own mind there? Maybe effects of something.

Keiichi you are so lucky they don’t know your family’s away.

So, either A, there’s a spy network, or B, they can do some sort of vision thing. Not fun either way.

Welcome to the “Keiichi digs himself into a bigger hole” hour. I hope the conclusion of this game is him eventually learning to talk around the truth.

Keiichi if you don’t cut open those Mochi to check them I swear to shogoth!

God damn it.

Keiichi, you currently have an in with the cops, and actual evidence of an attempt on your life. LEAVE! Find safety, Please!

Ch 1-10

What Keiichi’s brain feels like:

I wonder what they would have said if Keiichi had guessed the mochi?

Keiichi: I just have to act normal

Also Keiichi: No I won’t play games because that would be nice.

*Telling parents about the clock* Ah yes, very subtle Keiichi.

TIP: Hmm… is this implying Satako or Rika aren’t fully in the know? Seems the only reason to play it coy like this.

*Casually looks up how long the game is*

Ch 1-11

White van dude:

IDK why but I imagined Keiichi flying back with a twirl like in a fighting game.

Okay Rika definitely knows as much if not more than everyone else.

Man this sucks Keiichi.

Rena: I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…

Store Tip: huh, does Keiichi have like an eidetic memory or something? Also, hi langolier in my memory.

Ch 1-12

Wait this should be the weekend… *googles* man, tough luck Hinamizawa's a Sunday only town.

Spilling all the beans today, aren’t we Keiichi?

Mion and Keiichi:

(art by @ratt-lord)

Oooo secret past of Mion and Ooishi, sounds interesting.

This cycle? Keiichi do you know something I don’t?

So you’re saying Oyashiro-sama is what, a Cubs fan? God of bats?

That set up with Rena sounds like those guys probably deserved to get beat up.

Wild goons have appeared!

When you monologue so hard you can actually freeze time… HE REALLY IS SHADOW!!!

The Manager? Ryuukishi!?!

Keiichi, Quick! What number was the mochi?

Oh no.

Oh no oh no.

Sorry the most important part was stolen bud. Also, it’s weird they left the white van stuff. Must be pretty confident.

AFTER PARTY

Tomitake!!! You’re Back!

When you are too poor to get a character sprite #Protag-Problems

Love this theory talk. Personally, I’m going with it being people, but the curse is also going on but as an unrelated thing. Also I feel like maybe the girl's astral project or something.

So there's my Reaction for Onikakushi. The later ones have a lot more custom memes, so I hope you like the one I added in here. I'll try uploading Watanagashi some time in the next few days. See You Soon!

#higurashi #higurash no naku koro ni #reaction #long reads #memes #dumb-thoughts-series #so many gifs #humour #visual novel #Onikakushi spoilers

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theothin · 8 months

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a death list, I remember those being a regular thing in umineko but not the earlier higurashi arcs. guess this was the first one

and what looks like some author notes:

Tomitake: "A mysterious old man with the role of an extra yet still popular. He won't be doing much for a while." Takano: "I made this character seriously suspicious. Seems kind of like the last boss. Maybe she should be the one to take the punches in the end. I needed to make her so bad even Coach would punch her. Maybe a full transformation in the end is in order." Ooishi: "A completely enigmatic man, though I'll admit he's convenient. Maybe he'll turn trustworthy in the end after clearing up the misunderstandings?" Kumatani: "A completely enigmatic man, though I'll admit he's convenient. Maybe he'll turn trustworthy in the end after clearing up the misunderstandings?" Irie: "I made him seem like a very good person. I'll need to make him into a terrible criminal in the end." Rika: "A convenient character who can't help but garner popularity. If Satoko doesn't get more popular with this, then she might not be able to make a comeback. Speaking of suffering maybe Mion has it worse (pained laugh). A mysterious girl, in a way. The incarnation of the curse theory?????"

Yeah I don't feel like doing all of these. Let's jump ahead.

Keiichi: "Did he just end up going crazy in the end? My condolences I suppose. Keiichi really never dies in a good way. Am I not allowed to laugh?" Keiichi (cont): "Mental disorder, what? But with so many terrible things happening, people will break. You must never forget that feeling. We all live because we have heart to live with. If we forget that, we are just living puppets. Remember you're alive and have a soul." Ryukishi07 (1): "Part of me wants a good artist, but having to trust someone else with it scares me too much." Ryukishi07 (2): "I'm Ryukishi07. The path here has been a long one. But we're only midway through! The real stuff is still to come! I'll work harder than ever!"

#higurashi

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roseofcards90 · 9 months

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wait what did i miss how did my satoko get sexually abused by teppei??? 😟

I believe this is more heavily implied? (please correct me if I’m wrong) but there is a TIP in the Tatarigoroshi VN that shows statistics from the Showa Era on conditions of reported child abuse using reported cases from the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, and along the list of stuff are cases of various abuse which include physical, psychological, sexual, etc. Since the rest of this stuff on this list Teppei has been shown to do to Satoko (like physically abusing her and preventing her from going to school) I assume the rest of the statistics also relate to her in some way as well. Teppei has also been shown to have thought that Satoko could “satisfy him sexually” if she was older, although I don’t think this completely rules out any other kind of sexual abuse he did before to her either since he could’ve obviously still done stuff without assaulting her or anything.

#again please correct me if I’m wrong it’s been a while since I’ve read the VN but I think it was also mentioned somewhere #that he forced her to wash his back sometimes? but yeah iirc it wasn’t an explicitly confirmed thing #and it’s not surprising for him to do that since Teppei is a scumbag and sees Satoko as his maid so :/#tw csa #tw sa #tw child abuse #asks #anon

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kitkatabasis · 1 year

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Oops I’m writing a fanfic now

As Simple As That

(thanks to the lovely @avese23 for beta’ing!)

She didn’t remember when she first realized she didn’t want to go back home.

Was it when it took her days to pack because she couldn’t bear to take even that first step?

Was it when she wanted Nada to say “yes” when she asked if she wanted to stay in America with her?

Was it when she stared at her in bed as her thoughts ran through her body like lightning, filling up her head until there was no room for sleep, and she realized they wouldn’t be living together forever?

Was it when she first saw her face, her warm brown eyes the only thing visible through her niqab, illuminated by light spilling out of the doorway?

It probably wasn’t only one of those moments. In stories, it was always one moment: one moment that changed everything, that defined everything.

But in real life, in Satoko’s mind, she imagined it was a slow tipping of the scales, each of those moments (and many others) placing a grain of sand on the scale, building up until they all added up to a simple truth, one that she could no longer only indulge at nights lying in bed when the world was quiet but her thoughts were loud, one voice that grew louder and louder, begging her to look at me, see me, listen to me. And that simple truth was this: she didn’t want to leave.

****

It had been a few weeks since Satoko sent in her requests to renew her student visa and apply for another year in her studying abroad program—decisions that had taken a lot of psyching herself up but somehow seemed inevitable nevertheless—and she still didn’t know if she’d get accepted. The website had said it could take up to 60 days to get a response, and each passing day made her more and more nervous and her fingernails shorter and shorter. This was why she didn’t tell Nada. Not because she thought she would be nervous, but rather because she thought the opposite. She acted so unflappable, so positive, and even though that wasn’t always genuine, it was true that she tended to be optimistic. And if she was optimistic, she’d only be crushed when her buoyed hopes were sent falling back to earth, crushed by the weight of reality, if Satoko didn’t get accepted. So it was better this way, right? She hoped it was, but she wasn’t sure. She couldn’t talk about it with anyone, because she would usually talk about stuff like this with Nada, and right now, she was lying to Nada. The weight of that knowledge was a constant burden, the knowledge that she’d always been honest to her before—there’d never been any walls between them, not like with all of her friends back in Japan, and now, Satoko was putting one up. It wasn’t just guilt, but grief—grief for the loss of the first truly honest relationship she’d ever had.

“Where do you want me to put this snowglobe?” Nada’s words snatched her out of her thoughts—although she tried to pretend she hadn’t been lost in them. Yet another lie, she thought miserably.

“Hmm.” She stared at it, stroking an imaginary beard on her chin. “Wrap it up with the clothes I don’t like, I guess? To protect it, but also in case it spills?”

Nada nodded, and began to wrap it in the clothes while talking. “You should get rid of the clothes if you don’t like them, you know.”

“I knowwww.”

“Be like Nada-sensei,” she grinned cheekily, standing up and dramatically gesturing to her dress—today, she was wearing a pink and green one with floral print—with a flourish. “Only dress for yourself!”

“It’s easier when you’re the only one who can see them!” she protested. “Whatever clothing I wear, everybody has to see!”

“My clothing’s only hidden when I’m wearing a niqab, though. When I’m just wearing a hijab, everyone can see it. And my clothing’s the same,” Nada said thoughtfully.

“Except for when you wear pajamas to class under your niqab.”

“Shh, don’t be too loud. My professors might hear you!” It was Nada’s stone-cold, mock-serious expression that really sold the line, and soon the both of them were laughing.

Once they both recovered, they returned to packing. Nada looked at the snowglobe, an expression on her face that Satoko couldn’t parse.

She looked up.

“You know,” she said suddenly, “It’s a shame that you haven’t really gotten to go anywhere other than Boston in America before you leave.” Satoko winced internally at the reminder that her friend didn’t know she might not be leaving.

“Yeah…” she said. “I mean, we got to see a lot of American stuff, like solo cups, but it would’ve been cool to go to like, New York or something.”

Nada was quiet for a second, during which Satoko could almost see the gears turning inside her head. “We could go, you know,” she said finally. “It’s not a long flight.”

Satoko blinked.

“You have a grace period, right?” She said, looking at Satoko, who responded affirmatively. “We could use that to hit up all the stops! The Statue of Liberty, Central Park, Times Square…” as she spoke, she waved her hands around in the air enthusiastically, talking faster and faster. She turned to look at her. “If you’ve got to leave, you might as well go out with a bang, right?”

But I don’t know if I’m actually going to leave, Satoko almost said. But she didn’t. The thing about secrets is the longer you have them, the more entrenched they become inside you, until it takes all your strength to yank them free. And although she wished to be, so desperately that some nights her desire clawed at her and hollowed her insides, she was not strong.

So what she said instead was, “Yeah!”

#ahhh this the first fanfic I’ve ever posted here #Figures it’s for a non-existent fandom #It’ll be up on ao3 once I get my invitation #Satoko and Nada #Yupechika #Fanfic #Harold they’re lesbians #satoko to nada

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orbees · 2 years

Text

Decided to give the higurashi gou / meguri mangas a read yesterday and while it's not yet complete as of writing this, its definitely already better than it's anime counterpart. Certainly a lot truer to the characters at any rate, and you get a much better sense of Why this all happened versus the anime, you mostly are filling in the gaps yourself knowing satoko from the previous works. There's more rika pov too, and her motivation to going to st lucia is a lot more defined which gou/sotsu DESPERATELY needed.

Its definitely not perfect, and admittedly I'm nervous for how they handle the teppei stuff :/ especially because it seems r07 wanted there to be "no more villains" in higurashi, I imagine a lot of the teppei redemption stuff is gonna be kept in =_= which it REALLY does not need to be.

But idk well see I suppose. In conclusion:

#virtual memories

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akuma-homura · 1 year

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I posted 1,386 times in 2022

96 posts created (7%)

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Blogs I reblogged the most:

@who-is-page

@girlwhodeceivesfate

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I tagged 1,385 of my posts in 2022

#[ ;reblogs ] - 1,252 posts

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#undertale - 38 posts

Longest Tag: 132 characters

#and now it feels a little awkward to go back and post something..... maybe it's still okay and like i could still post something but

My Top Posts in 2022:

a couple more disjointed thoughts on Meguri

I love the little changes they’re doing, like how Satoko sees Rika’s 100 years of misery-- Eua forcing her to see it without her asking and all, and her reaction to it-- being WAY more understandable than her reaction in the Anime, which is... hardly. Any at all.

Eua being way more clearly manipulative, too. And how she describes looping for a bit-- testing out in the other fragments, THEN sending her back to the main world to repeat those steps?

That ominous line how not all of the worlds are better than her current one-- I’m so curious. Does that mean she’ll end up experiencing the tragedies herself too? Or something like them?

I just love how Tomato is going about all this, at least as of this chapter. I have-- worries still, but honestly by biggest worry is how Teppei’ll be handled.

I CANNOT actually even talk about him without ranting each time, because each time I think about it, the less sense his turning over a new leaf and situation around it makes sense. He’s not even related?? Like, he’s the brother of Satoko’s stepfather. That’s the connection. AND her abuser. Why does HE get the looper memories first and foremost, in such a profound way?

Like, they seriously cannot try to tell me her abuser, not even related by blood, is closer to her than the fucking club. We DID see Keiichi get some memories, but that ended up not even REALLY being used, or meaning anything, and the rest of the club also got jack shit-- even when it seemed like they SHOULD of remembered SOMETHING. (>looks at Rena)

They literally ONLY used the memory leak for fucking Teppei and to force a new-leaf-turning for him, him of all people. And it still just upsets me since they do that on TOP of Satoko going through her villain arc, and making her a bloody one-note villain at that.

And considering Ryu07 has said things in the past about wanting to make him not the villain or whatever however it was phrased, I just. Currently assume that Tomato will have to follow it, and even if they’ve been doing good changes right now... how in the world do you handle that?

I guess one way to make it seem less egregious is having the club members also remember stuff more and obviously, but even then, I’m just.... hoo boy.

13 notes - Posted January 30, 2022

the funny thing about the swimsuit madoka transformation is that, in any circumstance disconnected from magia record the game, I’d think that it looks kinda neat-- maybe it’s the Vocaloid fan in me with how many PV’s are done, but I think the live2d animation is charming

...it’s just the issue is this is in Magia Record, where most all of the transformations are outright anime-esque animated. Even if not all of them are Quality Quality, they’re still like, fully animated

and thus this transformation just feels--- odd.

16 notes - Posted August 11, 2022

See the full post

17 notes - Posted March 1, 2022

I actually really like how this new chapter of Meguri was done

Showing how like, clearly broken Satoko was after that basically solitary confinement experience-- Rika actually trying to call out to her, but Satoko reacts... well, gives her a dead look, which I don’t blame her given what she. Thinks happened.

Her not even speaking on the drive being pointed out? Keiichi noticing something’s up? God. Of COURSE they’d notice they were all best friends-- and Keiichi being the big bro surrogate--

and god. Her looking longingly at the group and thinking back to the old days. My heart. I’m so, so so so sad for her...

NOT TO MENTION the fact Eua swooped her up there, at the moment, in that moment of longing. There’s something about that I like WAY more than the weird horn touching thing in the anime?? Like it FEELS way more like Eua grabbing her in her low point, in her moment of pain, of longing, of... just. God.

This is good. This is keeping my hopes up. Tomato, I believe in you to make Satoko’s downward spiral more true to her and not just ‘lets just imply what happens to loopers and not actually Show it in process and just Show her going from how she was to ‘mwahaha imma break rika’ like nothing’

30 notes - Posted January 7, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

tbh that actually seems like it could help smaller creators, like-- promoting their art or commission info or something, but

1: it’s tumblr. paying for that feels like it would be asking to get hate mailed by some tween

2: still not sure if i trust tumblr with money information

182 notes - Posted April 18, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #oh god my january meguri thoughts hgfdfgh

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muninnhuginn · 2 years

Note

rika furude for the ask game owo

Before I start I'd just like to mention that whilst I have watched the original Higurashi anime at least twice, it's been a few years. More recently, I've watched Gou/Sotsu so most of my takes will likely be more influenced by that than anything else. VN-wise and manga-wise, most of my knowledge is assorted spoilers I've kinda adopted into my reading more than anything I've directly read. Anyway, if it sounds like I’m making stuff up about the OG anime that’s because it’s been so long the show has mutated in my head :V.

Long post below cut.

Why I like them

Her passivity is a very relatable flaw especially in the ways it actively hinders her in both OG Higurashi and Gou/Sotsu. Like... her not saying something until it’s too late and as a result letting things get much worse than they could have been, but at the same time it’s such an ingrained habit that it’s hard to break free? She does make progress with it in different ways, but it’s really slow going.

Also, the way her VA does the voice switch between Rika in nipah mode vs looper Rika is one of my favourite voice switches. (Other voice switches would be Nana from Talentless Nana, Conan from Detective Conan, and to a lesser extent, Hanako from Hanako-kun. It’s the entire thing about dropping an act and it actively showing through their voices.)

Why I don’t

Rika sometimes doesn't listen to others to the point of it veering into arrogance. I can understand it from a character perspective (as a looper she’s used to knowing more than everyone + she’s used to everything going wrong so doesn’t want to hope (OG) + elements of denial which means she refuses to take in some information which could break her happy ending (Gou/Sotsu)) but it’s very frustrating to watch. And something about the way it’s more active ignorance as opposed to the more passive inaction makes it more frustrating to me because she’s *choosing* to do that?

Also from a meta perspective, you want her to actually start figuring stuff out and believing there’s a way out earlier than she has reason to in the series and again that frustrates me even if it makes total sense in context.

Favorite episode (scene if movie)

Gonna cheat here but just generally when she steps up. You see it near the end of Kai and you also get a peek in Gou/Sotsu where she decides to get behind Keiichi and the others to help Satoko. Because most of the time she doesn’t believe she can make the difference and Hanyuu actively encourages her not to get her hopes up so seeing her faith in the others restored and her choosing to believe in them hits so well.

If I had to pick a specific scene rather than speaking generally though, then probably the scene where she asks Takano not to drug her as she ritually sacrifices her. The fact she wants to remember and is willing to go through excruciating pain to achieve that. (Also I just googled that scene to make sure I wasn’t misremembering and that scene hits differently now with how Takano is like “being gutted whilst you’re awake is pretty rough, you know?” and Rika is all “this is so I remember you’re my enemy” to Takano and then Satoko takes Takano’s place in GouSotsu and ouch)

Favorite season/movie

N/A

Favorite line

Um. No comment. My memory isn’t good enough for that.

Favorite outfit

St Lucia uniform maybe? I feel like it’s the outfit that’s most ‘fitting’ for her, at least.

OTP

Satorika, but it has to be messy for me to really gun for it? Whilst original Satorika has its charm it felt a lot more equal to me when Satoko also became a looper. It also brought a lot more toxicity in terms of unresolved resentment to the mix *but* I think where Gou/Sotsu ended and from what I've heard about where Meguri seems to be heading, I think they can definitely come to an understanding.

Anyway, with Satorika, their flaws and triggers are part of their own characters but when you push them together you see how they actually exacerbate issues in each other? For Rika, her trauma lies with Hinamizawa, having been trapped in loops there for so long that of course she wants to leave the place she associates so much with death. Meanwhile for Satoko, she’s someone with a history of being abused and bullied with the lingering after effects of Hinamizawa Syndrome even after the syndrome itself is gone from her system. And on top of that she has abandonment issues from losing both her parents and Satoshi. So when they head to St. Lucia’s, Rika is so happy that she’s finally free that she ignores the signs that Satoko is being entirely left behind. And Satoko is someone who despite being bullied actually fit in in Hinamizawa because the mixed years and non-standard schooling actually *helped* her. There’s no way she would have been able to hone her traps in a ‘standard’ school and she finds that out very quickly once she gets to St. Lucia’s. In Hinamizawa, Rika is surrounded by her triggers, but at St. Lucia’s, Satoko is.

At the same time, they do absolutely have the background with each other where they want to be with the other and are willing to go to great lengths to achieve that ("destroy the world" levels).

And that’s basically their conflict in Gou/Sotsu? That they want to be together but their traumas are so diametrically opposed that it’s hard to find a common ground where one of them can be happy without making things worse for the other. So whilst I find the conclusion bittersweet (and hate the way the anime presents it all as so permanent), I do agree that they need to find themselves separately before they can reunite because as they are in GouSotsu, they’re just hurting each other trying to be close to each other.

Brotp

Rika and Keiichi maybe? They seem to get along when Rika is playing up the kid aspects, but at the same time, Rika does legitimately trust him and it’s him who first gives her a glimpse of hope out of the loops when he gathers the town for Satoko.

Head Canon/Unpopular opinion (merging these two for reasons because my unpopular opinion is something that I’m not sure is entirely supported by the source)

Not sure how much this is unpopular because I’m not super into the fandom but I think that a lot of Rika’s passiveness and avoidance is actually intentional denial? In the OG series, her passiveness seems to come about because she’s basically been so beaten down by constant failures that she’s just habitually fulfilling her role rather than trying to break out, well, at least until the others’ bonds start leaking through enough to give her hope.

Once she hits Gou/Sotsu though, she has her “happy” end and wants to retain that. And that means that in terms of Satoko she misses a lot of the signs. My interpretation from the anime at least is that some of it she legitimately misses but other times (her friends at St Lucia’s badmouthing Satoko and Satoko being called away) she did notice and just said nothing. Perhaps she didn’t realise quite how bad things were for Satoko but I feel like her noticing and not saying anything *has* to have a layer of denial to it. This would also make sense with how Rika promised to be there for Satoko at St Lucia’s the second time around and then failed at this again. Some of it was basically that the situation made it hard for them to communicate, but Rika had a heads up the second time and it still went the same way with Rika noticing stuff happening with Satoko and yet not acting. Rika thinks if she can just ignore hard enough she can keep hold of her ‘happy end’ they all worked so hard for, but unfortunately for her, it’s already gone.

There’s a lot of stuff about Rika that (possibly encouraged by Hanyuu idk) is basically trying to manage her expectations. From not getting her hopes too high in the original series because when it fails it immediately puts her into despair to refusing to register certain problems in Gou/Sotsu until they become too big to ignore. (It’s pretty interesting how both Rika and Satoko end up with patterns of thought that make sense for them as loopers but are incredibly different from the other - Rika wanting to preserve the timeline and Satoko wanting to tear it all up)

A wish

A happy end.

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen

Worst possible outcome would be something like Rika deciding to leave Hinamizawa because it hurts too much and then just entirely cutting ties and never returning. Yikes. Even if it was well-written and accounted for Rika’s avoidance etc I think I’d still hate it.

5 words to best describe them

Purple-haired looper chasing miracles

My nickname for them

N/A

#fruitygamo #wdym I forgot about this ask for two months im sorry #ask meme #higurashi

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onewholivesinloops · 8 months

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satoko watches minagoroshi and sees her friends coming together with the entire community to fight for her sake and save her from her abuse because of the deep and genuine love they feel towards her but feels none of the hope this fragment's satoko feels, because in her own world rika gently had the elders passively stop ostracizing her by putting an end to the dam war without addressing any of their wrongdoings against her and leaving her bearing scars that everyone pretends don't exist, which means satoko didn't get the chance to work through all this trauma, and to be convinced by her best friend at her most vulnerable that she does deserve to be loved, to be provided with the help and support she needs to escape her abusive environment, and most importantly that it was okay for her to be born and to continue living, but even then this fragment was ultimately never satoko's story, it was rika's and satoko being saved is only a part of that. a stepping stone towards rika's victory, so to speak. rika is the main character, rika is the special one, and rika is the one who was gracious enough to always let satoko be a part of her life by inviting her to live with her and protecting her from the village's discrimination. there's an immense power imbalance in their relationship caused by their upbrining and rika holds privilege over satoko, because the environment they were brought up in always treated them as polar opposites. satoko was the scapegoat, the one who's ostracized, neglected, and abused by family and the villagers alike. rika is the one who's deified and loved by the same people, and this dynamic was never challenged and is reflected again in how they're treated at st. lucia. satoko never allows herself to feel any resentment over these things for the longest time and compartmentalizes that, because after being told her entire life that she brings her abuse onto herself she believes she deserves it and she needs to suffer to get stronger anyway because it's all a trial, but after going along with rika's dream and watching her loops she watches herself being saved from teppei's abuse and yet nothing about this is cathartic because, even if this had happened, the future wouldn't be any different and she'd still be stuck between traumatic past and future with nowhere to go. satoko being saved from teppei's abuse becomes immaterial because she already knows how this tale ends. no matter what, satoko ends up feeling betrayed, isolated and unwanted. satoko becomes certain that, from the moment she was born, she never had a chance at happiness.

rika was complacent in her abuse her whole life, and satoko later learns that she was the same for a hundred years worth of that. in every tatarigoroshi fragment rika just drank herself unconscious and after witnessing a hundred years of that where she lived through so much suffering, including stuff that rika didn't experience or doesn't even remember, it becomes even more painful that rika keeps asking satoko to suffer for her dream's sake without granting her the chance to say no, even though she only ever fought for satoko's sake a couple of times. it's hypocritical and insulting. there's no undoing all of this and this story could never genuinely happen when her uncle is nice now, her friends are also kind, and the world is supposedly so much better, but she's just as traumatized and alone as she always was, so all she can do is weave together this tale which is a deception of a story she only ever got to watch and never actually experienced. satoko has always been someone who doesn't want people to pity her. she feels guilty because being pitiable is what she thinks led to satoshi abandoning her and her mother blamed her for being the catalyst of that and even went as far as telling her she shouldn't have been born, but in these loops she's once again trapped in a hopeless situation where all she can do is lavish in this pity. revictimizing herself because satoko doesn't feel like she has an identity outside of her suffering and trauma. satoko houjou is nobody if not the girl who's always abandoned, abused and ostracized.

tatariakashi is satoko pouring so much of her anger and resentment into one tale because nobody will ever see her for who she is and she feels as though she's being gaslit by the contradiction between the past and present because almost everyone arbitrarily decided it's finally time to stop abusing her without actually making any effort to acknowledge the hurt they caused her. rika also wants to save satoko from her abusive situation and this feeling is rooted in the deeply flawed and tragic love she has for satoko, but it's also selfish, controlling and thoughtless because rika feels special and wants to have both her dream and satoko even at satoko's expense when saving satoko this way ensures nothing but her tragic fate.

satoko may not be capable of being the main character in the same way as rika, but she can, at the very least, become the controller of the tale behind the scenes. she can be the abused and the damsel in distress and the pitiful princess, but also the witch and the bad victim.

#can't reread the section of minagoroshi where rika convinces satoko to ask for help without thinking of this sorry #higurashi #gamo.txt

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livecharliereaction · 5 months

Text

Bye tsumihoroboshi

thats all for tsumihoroboshi chapter ZAMN. omfg i did cry i cant lie at that big battle on the rooftop i did i did i did.. It just hits a litte close to home friendship and all that... I love my friends so mach i get everything theyre feeling u know... AND the delusions of rena what a crazy writing style i dont think ill get over it like ever. urgh. Well the final tip almost wanted me to consider that "ooh maybe she was right!" but honestly my takeaways from it are juts 1. disaster happens regardless no matter how the events go otherwise 2. rika was murdered? Thats pretty weird 3. BUT theres hope liek she said BECAUSE: keiichi rememberd something from "another world" (i know a timeloop when i see one. its def a timeloop. Hells yeah) 4. the scrapbooks do hvae some evil spell or something takano i am onto you its weird anyway she shows up at such times and all.. Idk if shes the #MAIN VILLAIN DEMON OMG but shes Something.

Rena i love you thank you for solidifying your place as my favorite good time. argh every chapter so far is better than the one before it goes for this one too it does it does... Which is amazing implications for next ones... Lets hope they keep it up...

And keiichi i cant lie i do love you. I love you i love you i love you. Ughh. If i was still 16 hed have a big chance at going to that kinlist. But hes so gross so i wouldnt actually have added him then either!!! im unable to kin these days because EVERY GOOD CHARACTER EVER has Some Traits I Can Relate To Myself becuase i dont know something something human emotion something i am just like everyone else and everyone is just like me in the end and i love it. But yeah keiichi love the guy hes so #Power of Friendship #Protagonist. Im mentioning this cos i loved the girls from the start and still do but keiichi had to prove himself a little...

Yeah im curious about satoko now too i dont think i paid her enough mind i sort of ended up assuming shes #Normal but just super close to rika obviously but that one line about her being older. I couldnt tell yet if its Haha satokos body is older and rikas being funny! OR Omg satoko some immortal or something too woww! but yeah. I wouldnt think she is it doesnt seem that way at all BUT u never know w this fuckass series..ou ou ou ou ou

Mion i love you the girl that you are. Rena you are everything and more. Rika how have you managed to stay mysterious ive been here for like over 30 hours total for sure maybe even 40. But hmm

if its a timeloop i still cant tell what its about. id say rikas in charge (wants to keep giving this world a chance) n takano is with the antagonistic forces But how does it work exactly? If rikas the one "looping the time" directly it doesnt really compute unless she can do it from the afterlife. I dont konw.

And Omfg i hate this series because i STILL believe satoshi will show up one day. Even though it seems impossible now. But i liked him n shion so much dude i love shion so satoshi HAS TO come back for her. Urgh urgh urgh

But yeah i fr didnt think keiichi would be able to break renas delusion even for such a long moment But he pulled it off. Shes really cool i love her. I love her i love her i love her. UGHHH. Everything and more. and i said it alr but ill say it again the portrayal of her delusional state is SO personal to me i get her i get her i DO so good... Urghh. Ok. Thank u charhigurashi6 i have to check how many games the bundle i bought still has hmm

ok these 3 i own but havent installed lets see The first one here is um well i dont know that girl i havent seen her which is concerning! I feel like i mightve seen a sprite (in the og style that i read with) but thats kinda it. I recall seeing a name somewhere too shes a furude i think but not too sure Im always frustrated when i see a spoiler like that but then it never makes me any more knowledgeable about anything so so far its fine #LOL. proably has to do with the demon stuff tho...

takano in the middle one right takano you are so weird and offputting. Damn maybe she IS the big bad afterall

last one aww rika But yeah thats. I dont know its at least 5 hrs each but i think i spent like 10+ hrs on meakashi so it could possibly be up to like what. 15 even 20? per game. At least 15 hours left though.. Idt theres anything outside of the bundle after this its either higu anime time or umineko time ill see what kinda time i have then (i can probably watch the anime while multitasking i dont really care so much but umineko i want to be TUNED. IN.)

yay exciting ok thank u charhigurashi6 best chapter so far loved it love u rena love u everyone ok gn

#charhigurashi6

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togamzee · 1 year

Text

“Don’t worry, Izumi! I’ll be back, like. In three days? Something like that. See you then. Don’t miss me too bad.” Sometimes he wondered how easily she could see through him as he did her. There were moments he lied–though he’d argue calling it lying was a reach; at least to some degree. Omitting the truth? Muddling moments down to reduce the impact? Shiro didn’t think he had outright lied to her. Apart from the number of shark pens he owned; the words that passed through his lips were the truth, be it a fraction or more. Which was good, and really, a fairly new experience altogether. Coming off of his expansive list of past ‘relationships’ that regularly ended in screaming matches (which he readily enjoyed and found nothing but humor in), there was something refreshing about honesty. And tenderness. He thought of and wanted her constantly and nearly cursed himself for driving in a direction that did not lead to her.

There was anxiety in it, too. Newfound and unexplained. For someone with relatively little experience in thoughts that felt intrusive, Shiro had nearly lost track of the random snippets that popped up as he drove, alerting him of miniscule yet passable danger that could butterfly into his untimely and tragic death.

Odd. Yet easy to push off.

He didn’t like to ruminate.

He nearly laughed at the expression on his mother’s face as he pulled up to the farmhouse in his comically loud car. Taitsuri Satoko had to disapprove. Shiro saw to it she would. The slight puff of her cheeks, the furrowed mark of her brow–amusing. He loved his mother, and despite the fact she hated his car, his tattoos, the fact he had moved to a city full of danger beyond her caring reach–of course, she loved him deeply, too.

Shiro crossed to the porch and easily swooped her up into a hug. “Hiya, mom! Did you miss me? Did your heart break a million times every day cause I wasn’t here?”

She chuckled, hugging the large frame of her son and sighing softly as her feet touched the ground once more. “Of course,” Satoko nodded, pulling back and keeping her hands resting on his arms. “But I don’t miss your car scaring the dogs. Pochi is nearly deaf enough now he’s not so bothered, though.”

He grinned, pushing past her to get a handle on the screen door.

“You ought to help your father, you know. I can get dinner started early for us if you do.”

“Duh. I was gonna do that anyways,” he said, letting go of the handle and turning on his heel to run back over to the car for his bag. He’d brought plenty of clothes he didn’t care much about. Not like he could visit home without offering up help in the barns, at minimum.

He didn’t mind.

“Fa–ther! Your strong and capable son is here! Watcha need?”

Admittedly, he took a little longer getting out here than he should have. Izumi needed a selfie of him in his farmer flannel, of course. Taitsuri Eiji gave him an exasperated dust and grime covered look over his shoulder. “You’re late. Heard your damn car pull up hours ago.”

“Liar. It was not hours.”

Shiro grinned over the stable stall into the goat pen. “Hey there babies! You’re happy to see me though, right?” He opened up the gate, stepping in and promptly closing to prevent any escapees. “Mochi!” Shiro cooed at his very favorite brown goat, crouching and grabbing her antlers. He gave her head a good and harmless shake. “Pretty girl,” he mused, letting the other goats approach him and petting at them once he felt satisfied in his favoritism.

“Left them unattended for you. Better get their pen cleaned. Food ‘n water ‘n all. Whole left side over there needs done. Alpacas need brought inside once you’re done.”

“Missed you too, dad.”

“Yeah, well. We can catch up back in the house. I’ve gotta take care of–”

“Sounds good!” Shiro popped up, leaning over the stall to grin at his father. “If you start telling me stuff I’m gonna get roped into it, and I’m a fragile city boy now.”

“You just said you’re strong and capable.”

“No I didn’t.”

Eiji cracked a half smile. He shook his head and gave his son a wave on the way out.

By the time he had finished, gone back inside, washed up–the sun had barely set and dinner was on the table. It never felt weird, slipping back into the simple routine. The distance gave him a fresh appreciation of it every time, without fail. Shiro knew quickly once he turned 18 he couldn’t live this life forever. He wasn’t meant to. Visiting, though–visiting was fun. And he could never turn down a home cooked meal. He’d even entertain the prayer beforehand, yet he could not stop himself from peeking an eye open at Pochi who laid diligently at his feet. I’ll give you a scrap, he promised internally. Deaf or not, Pochi glanced up, mouth opening in a pant that Shiro read as "you better.”

“Amen.”

“Amen!” Shiro chimed.

His parents allowed the table to remain filled only with the sounds of eating. For a little. He knew the questioning would start soon. Though each time his eyes fell on his mother–and even his father, for that matter–he couldn’t help but feel that something was…off. Different. The way Satoko glanced at Eiji, who didn’t look back at her. The frequent furrowing of her brow that dissipated when her eyes met his. His father was a stoic type, which made the quiet feel the same as ever–but the outward nervousness from Satoko made him nervous, too.

Did they know? Somehow, had they found out? Found out that he was marked a felon for life? He was sure the police hadn’t contacted them. He had discussed that with his parole officer before, and his lawyers, months ago. They didn’t need to know about the incident until he was ready to say something. And yes, he was going to, he was going to have to say something because this was–

“I have a girlfriend!”

Satoko’s silverware fell. Eiji stopped chewing. Shiro beamed at them, taking the opportunity to pull his phone out of his pocket. He brought up the photo of her in the penguin bubble at the aquarium, grinning fondly at it for a moment himself before standing to show his father and then his mother. He also scrolled to a selfie of them together, and he knew his face was a dead giveaway of the affection he held for Matsuda Izumi.

“She’s gorgeous,” his mother mused, a small smile pulling at the corners of her lips. “Where did you meet?”

“She came into the restaurant bar I work at. Total hottie and I was in love with her at first sight, so. Goth baddie. I literally love her.” Shiro took his seat again, glowing with pride in the statement. He hadn’t thought about calling it love directly. And he certainly wouldn’t say it to her, not yet, at least. Timelines with stuff like that seemed blurry. But it was definitely too soon. He was confident in that.

Culture shocked by his lingo, his dad’s eyebrows raised. He rubbed at his temple, letting out an exasperated sigh. All his sighs seemed exasperated. Such was life. He nearly groaned, echoing, “Goth baddie.” So monotone. Shiro bursted into laughter.

“Right? She is. And she’s a writer. Not like a hobby or nothing, I mean like she’s a best seller. And she’s so cute cause she signs some of her books at one of the bookshops and is real protective over them. Won’t let nobody make a movie or nothing. The books make a lotta money but she doesn’t want more which is kinda crazy, but like–yeah!”

“Sounds like she’s got her life together. What are you offering her?”

Ah, fuck. Shiro didn’t let his smile slip, but–it was as good a transition as any.

“Being a felon.” He grinned, taking a few more bites to keep his eyes away from the intense stares from both parents. Clearly, they were going to wait for more context. “Yeah, I um…yeah. I got…arrested two months ago after a fight in a club. I got charged with felony assault.”

He knew, and yet had to confirm. Glancing up, he was met with a gravely disappointed stare from his father, and the brimming of tears in the eyes of his mother. Fuck. She pushed herself away from the table, pushing her glasses up and rubbing at her eyes as she disappeared out of the dining room and into the kitchen. Eiji cleared his throat, expression unchanging as he shifted in his chair to better face his son.

“You…what? Exactly?”

Shiro’s face hardened. “Listen, I know it’s my fault and all for getting carried away. I fucking get it. But this dude just kept touching my friend and she told him to stop and I just…like. He got what was coming. Er. Too much, I get that.” He grimaced, unable to face his father any longer. “I’m sorry. I mean, I’m here, so like. I’m doing good. Got out on bail and my parole officer is cool and it’s never gonna leave my record but like, I’m still doing okay–”

“Doing okay. You are a felon. Your band and your fans all okay with that, too?”

Shiro sputtered, just a bit. “I–like. It’s not the most known thing in the world–”

“But real easy to find out, isn’t it? Shiro. You know I don’t know about music and all that but do record people just…pick up felons?”

“I mean, probably–? Usually people take my side when they hear the full story–”

Eiji sighed, closing his eyes and standing up from the table. He grabbed his plate, shaking his head along the way into the kitchen after Satoko. Shiro could hear her muffled cries.

For the first time, he really did feel bad about the arrest.

Not for the action. Just the arrest.

Nothing else was said during the cleanup. He kissed his mother on the cheek when he set his dishes down, letting her silence serve as punishment enough. Shiro retreated into the living room, ashamed at himself for upsetting the dynamic in the house so badly on his first night. His eyes fell onto the piano, contemplating only for a moment before he sat down and raised the cover to reveal the keys. Ah.

A small smile crossed his face. He set his phone up, visible enough so he’d be in frame with the keys and started a recording.

“I’m gonna play you the Twilight song. The one that plays in the credits. I don’t remember all the lyrics so you better not make fun of me.” He grinned at the camera once before focusing his attention on the keys, and letting the flow of A Thousand Years fill the house with sound. He could add that to the list of white lies he had told her. Shiro did remember the lyrics. He remembered them well, right alongside the melody. His expression remained the same, light and focused as he played and sang, eyes closed.

Only when he came to the line “And all along I believed I would find you; time has brought your heart to me,” did his breath hitch enough to prevent him from singing the rest. Sure, the lyrics had been riddled with a deep and brooding nostalgia to begin with–but. He could only bring himself to finish the song with its instrumentals after singing that particular expression to her. It was true after all, wasn’t it? His face had set in a more serious fashion while he finished, eyes trained to the keys. He blinked when he was done, smiling once again at the camera before finishing off the recording.

Shiro stared at the thumbnail of the video in his camera roll for at least a minute. And a few minutes more after he had gotten laid down in bed. Maybe he shouldn’t send it. The song was a pretty serious declaration of love, after all. He could just re-record a video with Clair de Lune or Bella’s Lullaby and that’d still be a fun Twilight song, just without all of the subtext. Right?

Ultimately, he decided not to over analyze his own actions. Maybe then she wouldn’t, either. He sent the video and let himself fall asleep.

A bright and early wakeup was non negotiable on the farm.

Satoko was kind enough during breakfast. Almost enough that convinced Shiro maybe she had forgiven his transgressions and was going to be normal for his final full day at the house. The nervousness she exuded the night before, however, had yet to go away. The shame of his admission prevented him from asking what was wrong. He might have asked his father if he were here. She informed him there was some business in the town he had to attend to before he’d be back later in the afternoon.

Which meant the daily routine of farm chores fell on his shoulders.

A fair punishment.

By the time his father returned from town, Shiro had nearly wrapped up. He couldn’t leave the barn without spending a little extra time with the goats. Familiar and heavy steps fell across the wood, and Shiro peeked his head over the stall.

“Finished?”

“Yep.” He rose, dusting the bit of hay he had collected off his pants. His father held the stall door open for him as he said a final goodbye to his favorites.

“Listen, son. I know your heart was in the right place. But ain’t no way he made you get a charge like that. There’s other ways to work around a fight than just tryin’ to send someone to the grave.”

“I know that, but–”

“No. This ain’t a ‘but’ situation. Your mother is just frantic about you enough as it is.”

Shiro’s brow creased. He frowned, and followed his father wordlessly out of the barn. Eiji let the silence hang right up until they hit the steps to the house.

“So don’t go causing her pain like that again.”

He nodded, eyes on the older man. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t need to apologize to me. In fact, I’m hurtin’ her one more time by handin’ this over to you.” Eiji pulled an envelope out of his front chest pocket, offering it to Shiro. He took it with a tilt of his head. “From one of your biological parents. Mother, I think. Satoko’s had a lot of guilt and conflict about it and I just don’t want it in the house no more. It’s yours.”

Before Shiro’s mouth could so much as drop, Eiji opened the door. He pocketed the envelope and stepped inside after his father.

He left it on his bed as he showered in stunned silence.

Dinner was quiet. Normal enough.

After they had finished cleaning, Shiro poked his head back into the kitchen, bright and cheery.

“Come on, mom! I wanna show you something outside real quick!”

Surprised, and maybe a bit nervous. Shiro still smiled. He beckoned her along, waiting patiently as she dried her hands off to follow after him.

Once the two were on the porch, Shiro made a quick grab for the lighter sitting on the patio table. He pocketed it, taking the steps down to the yard and motioning for her to follow. She sighed, smiling softly, and joined him. He wrapped an arm around her and gave her a little shake.

“Been looking awfully sad, Mom. Dad told me why.”

Her eyes widened, mouth opening and closing in some unspoken anxiety.

He grinned, letting out a snort at her reaction. Shiro let go of her and grabbed the envelope and the lighter from his pocket. And promptly lit the corner of it on fire.

“Shiro–”

He watched it burn, laughing a little when she attempted to reach for it. He held it out of her grasp. “You’re my mom. Dad’s my dad. I don’t care about stuff like this, okay? So don’t cry or be sad or worried about it. I don’t care. If you get any more of them you can burn them, too.”

Relief spread across her face. He flicked the remaining corner of the ashen paper to the ground, stomping out the bit of flame. They shared another hug and turned in for the night. He sent Izumi another selfie, one he had taken earlier with Mochi the goat. Captioned with a simple yet heartfelt, “da goat. 2nd only to u. see u tomorrow ♡”

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qu33nincrims0n · 10 months

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My Dumb Thoughts on Higurashi- Watanagashi Part 1

the second of my Higurashi reactions. had to break it in two because of picture limits, but I hope you like it! My other chapter reactions can be found with #dumb-thoughts-series. Also, I had to break this one into two parts cause it was too long. that should be up in the next fifteen minutes or so.

Ch 2-1

Some kid causally coming into the game store-

No Keiichi Bad!! Don’t be weird about your middle school friends.

Mion, you can’t leave your own competition! How rude >:(

– future me coming in to say I really need to be more attentive to stuff, can’t believe I missed the inciting incident of this chapter –

I wonder where this would be in relation to Oni timeline wise. The festival will probably help.

Tip: So, you’re saying Mion has a lot of adults in her life? Say, at least five men who may or may not have a white van?

KEIICHI NOO!!

Ch2-2

The unearned confidence level on this lad

“Why would I need to know how to put on a garter belt?” Keiichi, don’t lie. I know you well enough to know there’s a 25% chance you’re keeping that outfit.

Hey Shion. Pretty sure I got spoiled on you existing, but hey its nice to meet you. (I guess there’s a chance It’s actually Mion, but I doubt that. Also really undercuts this plot point to know the steam designs seem to have different bangs. Glad I’m using the originals.). Also, you’re now voiced by Silver the Hedgehog as played by Red Van Buskirk.

--- future me coming in to say I was right in that their bangs are slightly different, but it seems like it switches if and when they pretend to be one another so it’s just a weird choice ---

Also, interesting Characterization of Oni-Keiichi being too stressed to even make much note of the outfits while Wata-Keiichi notices a whole ass new character.

One of her uncles owns this place? Well, that could help explain how the talk with Ooishi got to Mion so fast in Oni

Am I crazy? Did this game take like 20 horny pills when I wasn’t looking? Like Oni had some horny stuff but this is a lot. Like a full armada of horny.

Ch2-3

“Maybe Satoko is helping the most by doing nothing at all 🙂”

Be normal Keiichi!!

Aw man this is chalk game adorable. Reminds me of playing with my little cousins, even if it’s just a diversion. It’s really cute Keiichi just immediately goes along with it too.

Casually drop kick a child. Teacher: does nothing

Compare a Onigiri to Curry. Teacher:

Man you’re real bad at not being suspicious, Mion.

Weird to be on this end of Rena’s lie detecting powers.

That’s actually really sweet, Shion.

“Not like Mion would ever go as far to put a needle in my food”

Tip: okay so Mion and Shion are doing some sort of twin switch thing, right? Where one is the other for a day or something. That seems like what this is telegraphing.

Ch2-4

I feel Keiichi going to sleep during recess in my soul.

Wata-Keiichi not being weird challenge: impossible

I love Collage Mode in Disco Elysium cause now I can make this:

Oh, I remember that keychain from Oni! It’s so Kyu-te!

The entire town acts like bees heating up a wasp, just getting progressively closer. And closer. And clos-

Oh, hey Ooishi, nice to see you back.

Is it really so unbelievable that it might actually be twins Keiichi?

Shion: Keiichi, that’s sexist

Me:

Okay, so based on this, the main divergence point is that Keiichi didn’t go to the junk yard and meet Tomitake, so he’s not suspicious about the events of the dam project, and now even sees it as a cool part of the village.

I imagine Keiichi is an 80-year-old in a child’s body, sitting in a recliner watching Jeopardy.

Aw this is sweet; I can’t wait for this to all go horribly wrong and for it to all be Keiichi’s fault.

Ch2-5

The guys outside when they hear you have an invite:

Chaos! Control!

Keiichi Moments Later:

“Bringing in Reinforcements! The No-Horny Brigade shall prevail!” said Keiichi, unabashed horndog and

I love casually carrying around laxatives in the hope I can use them for hijinks and tomfoolery. Truly the best friend of every growing girl.

You know the answer Keiichi, you just stop beating around the bush.

It’s all clicking together. Also, finally a VN flashback that was actually useful and not filler!

(and so the bento tip wasn’t a switch, she was legit jelly).

Oh nO hOW CoUld tHIs HavE HAppEneD?

Mion seeing the gift:

Hey, kinda a dick move, Shion. You know what, you lost your little Silver voice privileges. Go to space!

(This is because of poor behavior and definitely not because I couldn’t keep the voice in my head no sir-e!)

Prediction time: This chapter, Shion or Mion is going to be murdered, but Keiichi is unsure which one it was, and he begins to think the survivor is the other pretending to be them. Whether it really is or isn’t is left ambiguous.

#dumb-thoughts-series #higurashi #higurash no naku koro ni #long reads #memes #so many gifs #visual novel #reaction #mion sonozaki #watanagashi spoilers

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eternal-aurath · 2 years

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Az's MHA Self-Insert AU Introduction

So I've been waiting to post any of my MHA self-insert stuff here because I wanted to make like a masterpost or introduction post that explains both AU versions first, because they're vastly different. So I'm finally sitting my ass down to do that. I don't have as much recent art as I'd like, but I guess that's fine. I can update this later lol

It's gonna be long so have a readmore.

-----

HEROVERSE

The Heroverse was the original AU and I didn't actually intend to wind up with an entire other AU, but I digress. In this AU, my self-insert is Satoshi Suzuki.

(I have no colored art of him on hand right now oops. His hair is dark brown and his eyes are blue. I'll add better art later when I have/find some.)

He's trans and starts the story as Satoko. His Quirk is Sonar. He can hear everything within a mile's radius, and has the sound-based version of an audiographic memory (Can remember anything he hears perfectly). The story starts with him going to a Present Mic concert (I headcanon he's a musician as well), which winds up getting attacked by villains. In a rare moment of bravery, Satoshi approaches Present Mic and Eraserhead and offers to help with the situation, since searching an entire concert venue can take time, and they don't have that. Sonar lets him find the threat easily.

He later meets Shouta again at a cat cafe they apparently both frequent. They keep meeting there until they sort of consider each other friends. And then Shouta brings Hizashi along one day (They're already dating), and next thing Satoshi knows he's actually friends with the two of them. And then somehow the next thing any of them know, they're all dating and living together.

Come time for class 1-A's first year, Satoshi gets offered a job at UA, by recommendation of Hizashi. With All Might joining the school as 1-A's teacher, they need more security. Nezu thinks Satoshi's Quirk would be wonderful for it, since he can hear an entire mile out. There's more to it, though, because Satoshi has a history with All Might, which he gets the feeling Nezu knows about. Nonetheless, he accepts the role with persuading from Shouta and Hizashi. He has no confidence in himself, but they have enough confidence in him to make up for that.

And through the trials and tribulations involved with being anywhere near class 1-A, Satoshi discovers two things; 1. He's not a girl. 2. He wants to be a hero.

So Nezu, All Might, Shouta, and Hizashi pull some strings for him, so he can also learn to be a hero while working at UA as security. He soon meets Hawks, who takes him under his wing and becomes not only the teacher he needed, but his best friend too. They wind up infiltrating the League together, since Satoshi's Quirk is perfect for eavesdropping.

And his hero name? Sentry. Inadvertently given to him by Shouta.

Along the way, he learns that his Quirk isn't actually Sonar. It's Sensory Manipulation. He can adjust the strength of all his senses, as well as those of others by "tagging" them with any part of his palm or fingers. The tag only lasts a few minutes, however, and other people's senses can't go as high as his own.

----

VILLAINVERSE

Okay this is the one that started off as just a fun "what-if" AU. What if Satoshi, Hizashi, and Shouta were villains? Wouldn't that be fun? But then I started actually thinking about backstory... In which I realized I needed to learn more about Tomura and the rest of the League.

Which lead to a rabbit hole of falling in love with the villains and finding comfort like no other from them. Thus this turned into a wholeass AU of it's own, where Satoshi is shipped with Dabi and Keigo instead. Also Shouta and Hizashi are part of the League in this one, just for the fun of it because I still wanted to explore them as villains.

While Heroverse Satoshi has brown hair and blue eyes, Villainverse Satoshi has bright red hair and yellow eyes. Because why not? His father was a villain who worked with AfO. His mother abandoned them when she found out her child's father was a villain. His father's Quirk was the inverse of Sensory Manipulation; Physical Manipulation.

AfO could see the potential of Satoshi's Quirk, and wanted to take his Quirk and give it to his father to make him extra strong. But his father refused, not wanting to harm his child in such a manner. So AfO killed him and took his Quirk. Satoshi witnessed the whole thing via hearing, but AfO convinced him that he heard wrong. He made it up in his head to protect himself from what "really" happened. AfO then adopts Satoshi as his own. Making him Satoshi Shigaraki in this AU.

Two years later, Tomura is also taken in and re-named by AfO. He doesn't expect the two to get along, nor does he care if they do. But jokes on him because they quickly become close and regard each other as legit siblings. Satoshi is the only one who isn't afraid of Decay and isn't afraid to touch Tomura.

As such, they grow up side-by-side, and this AU of Tomura is a little more soft because he grew up with someone to call family. Someone to keep him sane. That being said, they're still both incredibly fucked up by AfO and very much insane villains at first.

They actually both forget that they aren't actually siblings. They can't really remember a point in time where the other wasn't there. And unlike in the Heroverse, Satoshi transitions before becoming an adult. AfO also gives him his father's Quirk when he becomes strong enough to handle it. Thus creating Respec. A rather terrifying Quirk that can allow Satoshi to punch through concrete with his bare hands, or make someone's bones so weak that just pushing them will shatter every single one. It's complete control over every physical and sensory aspect of the body. So, just like Tomura, all it takes is one touch from Satoshi, and he can kill you instantly.

Upon meeting, Satoshi and Dabi don't get along. They actually hate each other at first. But the more time they spend together, the more they realize how alike they are. How much they both need someone to save them. And next thing they know, they can't imagine not being together.

And then Hawks shows up claiming to want to be their inside man. They all agree to use him as much as they can. But Satoshi and Dabi get particularly close to him, and oops they unravel his hero persona and find all the trauma underneath. Which makes Hawks Keigo realize that hero society is actually pretty fucked. And so he legit becomes an ally to the League. But in the process, he starts convincing the League that they don't have to be this evil. They can tear down hero society, but no one needs to get hurt for no reason.

Oh, and Dabi and Satoshi fall for Keigo and he falls for them. And Tomura has to learn to deal with it.

They also wind up adopting Eri in this AU. She happens to show up unexpectedly during a meeting with Overhaul, and Tomura snaps. He sees himself in her. Scared, abused, alone. So he snaps and goes feral, and the whole League just has to react to that. In the end, they wind up kidnapping Eri, but she views it as being saved. The League then becomes her family.

Throughout the story, the lines between hero and villain get repeatedly blurred, and a lot of trauma is unravelled, healed, and dealt out. A lot of identities are lost and reclaimed. And in the end, the villains aren't really villains anymore.

-----

This post is messy af and could use some better structure, but I just wanted to get a little introductory post out there abt my batshit AUs before I start posting art and story related stuff.

Also, some info abt Satoshi that doesn't change between AUs; His birthday is October 24, and he's 5'3". Tho I am considering making him a bit taller in the Villainverse.

If you've read this whole thing I say both thank you and I'm sorry lol I've put a whole ton of effort into these AUs, but explaining them in a way that does this justice is Difficult.

#Ah shit I need tags for both AUs fuck #Um #I'll just use their fic titles for now #;; i need a hero #;; falling from my faith #Fun fact both fic titles come from the song ''Hero'' by Skillet #I name all my fics after songs p much and I find it funny I was able to name both AUs from the same song

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catsvrsdogscatswin · 2 years

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Higurashi Month 2022, Day 18: Change in the Weather

It was, perhaps, one of the more bizarre gatherings of the Hinamizawa Club.

For one thing, they were assembled not at the school or the shrine or out in the mountainside woods, but in front of somebody’s house. For another thing, rather than clutching tools that were actually fun, everybody had some kind of cleaning implement in hand, or a bucket, or a bundle of rags. Satoko actually had a cart trailing behind her bike, probably courtesy of Mion’s capricious family storage.

Despite the task looming before them, Keiichi took in a deep breath with pleasure. The thick pelt of snow that had all but completely buried Hinamizawa was finally melted away, leaving the still-crisp air filled with the rich, revitalizing scent of damp black earth and sprouting green buds.

“Right!” Mion slapped her hands together with a much-louder clap than normal, courtesy of her thick rubber gloves. A kerchief was bound tightly about her brow to keep her bangs out of her face, in another concession to the job ahead. “Shion, has Kasai-san called yet?”

“Coach is at this very moment sitting down in a maid café with Kasai guarding the exits.” Shion announced proudly, twirling a feather-duster around her finger. Her hair was similarly bundled up under a large white bandanna.

“Thank goodness. Irie-sensei might be a bit frivolous, but I wouldn’t trust him around this much cleaning stuff.” Satoko replied, lifting a bundle of supplies out of her cart and carrying it towards the house as Satoshi held open the sliding door.

“His maid fetish is a bit troublesome and pathetic, mew.” Rika said cheerily, standing beside her cousin with an angelic smile as Hanyuu flinched guiltily away from her.

“H-hau, let’s just start with the cleaning, okay?” she asked plaintively, and Mion grinned, twirling and brandishing her mop like it was a bamboo cane.

“Okay!” she shouted, planting the wooden end into the dirt road to ground her makeshift staff. “Spring is officially here, guys, and you know what that means?”

“SPRING CLEANING!” everyone chimed as they punched a fist into the air, Keiichi moving a heartbeat behind the others.

“That’s right!” Mion grinned. “Spring cleaning! It’s time to scrub, mop, soak, spit, and polish this here Hojo house until it shines! We’ll split up into pairs to clean each room on the list, as per our earlier division of labor, and whoever cleans the most, best, and fastest wins the game! I wanna be able to see my reflection, you got me?”

“It’s wood though.” Keiichi pointed out what he felt should be obvious. “You can’t get it to shine.”

There was a moment of silence.

Then everyone turned to level a disappointed look at him –even Satoshi.

“Change of plans.” Mion sighed, putting one hand to her forehead, before she extended the other in a hard shove that sent Keiichi tumbling into Rena. “Rena, keep Kei-chan here from demolishing whatever you clean. Your team will win if you finish everything on time and satisfactorily.”

“I’m not THAT bad!” Keiichi squawked in outrage as he disentangled himself from Rena.

“I beg to differ.”

“Then beg.” Rena said sweetly, her eyes gleaming as she adjusted her grip on the bucket of cleaning supplies she held, in a way that suddenly seemed like she might use it as a mace or some kind of melee weapon. “Keiichi-kun and I will clean everything we need to.”

~*~

Satoko hummed happily as she pushed open a window, snapping out her dust rag to make the grime fly right off of it, cascading down into the brisk spring breeze. Since she lived with Rika and Hanyuu, and Satoshi was still recuperating at the clinic, the Hojo house was untenanted almost the whole year through, except for two occasions. Once in fall, when someone went through the house and closed up everything tightly, preparing for the winter snows, and once again now, in spring, when everything was given a real good, thorough cleaning.

For some time this had been Satoko’s job and hers alone, but of course, the club wouldn’t let her go through this alone, and Ni-Ni was finally here to clean his own room for her, a job she had jealously guarded for years. Thanks to how tightly she shut everything up in the months that nobody was here, not much more than dirt and dust and the leavings of small vermin had crept inside the house, but that was still quite a job in itself, as evidenced by Hanyuu’s squeals of horror as she was confronted with the cobwebs that needed brushing out in the corners of the upstairs hallway.

“Ah…ah…”

Satoko ducked her head back inside, raising an eyebrow under the handkerchief bound tightly around her brow.

“Yes, Hanyuu?” she asked expectantly.

“Ah…AH…HWA-CHOO!”

A sneeze thundered through the house as Hanyuu flew back across the newly-dusted floorboards, arms akimbo and her hair fluttering everywhere as it settled over her face and arms.

“Hau…” she whimpered, giving a miserable sniffle. “S-so much dust…”

“That’s the point.” Satoko sighed, turning back to the window and snapping her rag out again. “Honestly, Hanyuu.”

“Hck.” Hanyuu sniffled one last time, snorting up a bit of dust-infused snot, and groggily climbed to her feet. Her feather-duster was thick with cobwebs and mouse droppings, and she climbed the small wooden stepladder Satoko had set up with the same grim determination as a climber sighting in on the peak of Mount Everest.

Of course, deep-cleaning an entire house on her own had once taken Satoko several days, but with the club’s help –and Kasai-san’s help in diverting a maid-crazed Doctor Irie from seeing them all with cleaning supplies and kerchiefs bound about their heads and then inevitably getting in everyone’s way as he ranted about maids and tried to get them into uniform– they could probably get it all done in one day, if Keiichi-san didn’t ruin the floors or the walls by using the wrong cleaning solution.

“Eh…” Satoko sweatdropped a little, before she shook her head and snapped her rag with more vigor, before turning back to the hallway with a devilish glint in her eye. Not a mote of dust would escape her wrath, and by the end of the day, Mion would have to concede that she and Hanyuu were the best cleaners.

~*~

Mion whistled a cheery tune as she flung the damp futon out through the air, draping the heavy cotton over the double-strung clothesline as the scent of soapy water and warming grass filled the air around her. She spread it out a little, not wanting it to get wrinkles, and took several clothespins from the bristling forest of wooden pegs clipped onto the sleeves of the white sweatshirt tied around her waist. She pinned one flap of the heavy futon to the first line, then stepped over to the other side to pin it to the other line, preventing the drying futon from blowing away or –more likely, in the case of the wool mattresses like this one– getting blown onto the muddy and grassy ground and ruining an hour’s worth of washing.

Satoko’s house didn’t have a washing machine, and so Rika, seated on an upturned bucket, was forced to improvise with a rack and a large wooden basin as she merrily scrubbed at some of the quilted blankets that had previously been folded up in the linen closet. They were washing the heaviest bedding first, slowly working their way up to the lighter things like sheets and pillowcases, so that everything should be dry more or less at the same time. Mion might not look like it, but she had learned a lot about cleaning a house alongside her duties as the next Sonozaki head. Their ancestral home was just that –ancestral, drafty as hell in the winter and apt to constantly spring new leaks if you didn’t keep a careful, constant eye on keeping up repairs.

The maid that came to clean daily just meant that Mion didn’t have to clean daily. She still had to keep an eye on everything, and she’d done plenty of mending with her own two hands. They were saving that for after, though –sewing up all the little holes or the age-given tears that had happened with the bedding that had been folded into storage. Then they’d fold everything away again with cedar-and-clove sachets and lavender sprigs to deter pests until next year, or whenever Satoshi and possibly even Satoko moved back into the house –whichever came first.

Mion liked laundry. She liked the fresh, clean scent, she liked lifting and wringing out fabric and feeling water run over her fingers, she liked the satisfaction of seeing something become perfectly clean, and she especially liked the opportunity to twist some of the laundry into rattails and give the nearest unwary victim a sharp snap with them.

“Hehe.” Mion cast a glance at Rika, who was, of course, safe: Mion could flick her, sure, but Rika also had access to one thing Mion didn’t, and that was a large vat of water. Escalating a conflict under those circumstances was a bad idea, so Mion, once they got into the realm of pillowcases and loose sheets, would have to pick and choose her victims carefully. Perhaps once everyone else finished up with their cleaning and brought their handkerchiefs and dust rags out to be cleaned…?

~*~

Shion tried to control her blushes as she and Satoshi-kun entered his room, but it was rather difficult. After all, this was Satoshi-kun’s room that she was inside. Satoshi-kun’s room. That was i-intimate, even if it was just for cleaning.

Really, Shion, get ahold of yourself. She smacked her cheeks several times, making sure to do so a bit more gently than usual, given the latex gloves she was wearing. Focus!

“We’ll need to dust first, starting from the top down, and then we can sweep out all the dust from the floor.” she said, pointing. “After that, we can scrub down all the surfaces, then dry them, and then go over them with polish and varnish and all the rest of it if we need to.”

“Muu…” Satoshi-kun eyed his room with morose expectation as he brandished his dust rag. “You sure know a lot about this, Shion-san.”

Shion puffed out her chest a little, smirking proudly.

“Well, they taught us this sort of thing at St. Lucia’s.” she said. “They were trying to teach us how to be good brides and stuff, I think.”

Shion then realized what she’d said –even if it was perfectly true, they had been doing their best to indoctrinate Shion and all her haughty stupid classmates into brainless housewives– and blushed a bright pink, hastily turning away to a patch of wall.

“A-anyway!” she said. “If you want to move your furniture around and stuff, you can do that after we finish dusting and sweeping out the dust, okay?”

“Sure thing.” Satoshi-kun said complacently, raising his dust rag and heading for a different corner with a determined expression.

Most of the windows and doors, both within the house and leading out of it, had been thrown open, and so the spring breeze whisked through the house without hardly any restraint whatsoever when it came, bringing with it the twitter of birds and the scent of spring. The dust scattered away in that breeze when they swept it outside, and Shion ran the hose coiled up beside Rika-chama, who was scrubbing cheerfully at a tub full of cotton with a stack of stored bedding beside her on a mat. She filled a plastic bucket with soapy water, then dragged it laboriously back into the house and up the stairs, heading for Satoshi-kun’s room.

They each took sponges from the supply bucket Shion had left outside and wrung them out, before starting to work with a will on the walls: the tatami mats on the floor had already been taken out and were airing on their sides in the hallway, away from the damp and dust.

Shion took deep breaths of the lovely fresh air as she returned to the bucket, plunging the sponge in and out of the soapy, grey-tinted water. The whole world seemed to sparkle on cool spring mornings like this, crisp and new and clean. Despite the chorelike nature of these tasks, she would have been hard-pressed to remember a time when she was happier.

~*~

Rena sighed as she set Keiichi to vacuuming the tatami mats braced against the wall, using a handheld vacuum plugged into the downstairs hallway outlet. He’d at least known to go along the grain, rather than against it, and Rena cast it from her mind as she returned her attention to her own task, spraying aerosolized vinegar on the mats he had finished vacuuming.

Much to her chagrin, she had indeed had to walk Keiichi through pretty much every aspect of cleaning, since he more or less completely relied on his mom for that as well as shopping and cooking. It was a good thing Keiichi was so smart in school subjects, because out here, he was pretty much functionally useless.

Rena mentally tabbed that idea. She should suggest hosting some more housework-based club games to Mion, if only because Keiichi would probably live on his own someday, and she wasn’t at all convinced that he wouldn’t starve to death in a messy apartment if the rest of the club didn’t take a hand in his home improvement skills. Rika-chan and Satoko-chan had mentioned once, when they had that contest to make boxed lunches, that Keiichi had been absolutely abysmal at cooking even when club competition had lit a fire under him.

And maybe said competitions would give her a chance to show off her own skills…n-not that Rena had such ulterior motives at all. At all!

“Hauuuu…” Rena hummed under her breath, her cheeks reddening, as she started spritzing the tatami mats with slightly more vigor. That was a dangerous line of thought to take!

#Higurashi Month #Higurashi Month 2022 #Higurashi no Naku Koro ni #Higurashi When They Cry #When They Cry

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