#anyw. back to drawing | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

charrywoman · 8 months

Text

No Amount of Freedom Gets Me Clean.

Part 1

OKAY. IS THIS GOOD?? IS THIS BAD?? I’m returning to my tumblr author era because I had this idea and just had to execute. I THINK IT WILL BE A SERIES BC I HAVE A PLAN?? WOULD ANYONE WANT THAT OR IS THIS A FLOP? LMK! anyway, enjoy:)

A crimson glow spread across your cheeks as he gently swiped at the smudge of chocolate in the corner of your lips. You giggled when he popped his thumb in his mouth and said something corny about how sweet you tasted. The laugh was fake, forced even, and anyone who knew you knew that. Peter knew that. It went unnoticed by him though as you leaned forward and pressed a chaste kiss to his cheek, murmuring a thank you.

“You know,” MJ sat down across from Peter and Ned. “I don’t think that angry scowl is going to make Harry’s head spontaneously burst into flames. Unfortunately.”

Peter didn’t bother to look away, shrugging as he said, “Maybe if I stare for just a little bit longer it will.” He was practically squirming in his seat with jealousy. It was torture watching you be so disgustingly but undeniably cute with someone like Harry freaking Osborn, but Peter told himself that he deserved it, so he kept watching.

MJ didn’t even have time to quip back because in the next second Peter was furiously whispering that you were walking toward them and demanding her and Ned act casual. She rolled her eyes. “You’re literally the one being a weirdo.”

“Hi, MJ. Hi, Ned.” You smiled, purposely ignoring Peter while emptying your lunch tray into the trash can beside their table. Three weeks ago Peter insisted that he, MJ, and Ned start sitting at the specific table.

It was weird for everyone to see you and Peter at such odds. The two of you had always been inseparable. Where there was you, there was Peter. It had been that way since you and your mom moved next door to Peter when you were 6-years-old. May called you “her Peter’s saving grace.” You came into Peter’s life just after he moved in with her and Ben, and she says that it was his friendship with you that made him blossom. And then came Ned. And then MJ. The four of you just made sense, but most of all, so did you and Peter.

You laid upside down on Peter’s bed while kicking your legs back and forth in the air, flipping aimlessly through a comic book that was already there.

“Wow. They’re really generous when illustrating your ass. It is definitely not that big in person.” You held out the page next to Peter’s own body and pretended to compare the two. “What are you doing reading comic books about yourself anyw-” Peter snatched the comic book from your hands.

“Heeeyyy,” you playfully whined, “I was just getting to the good part. You were about to share a passionate kiss with the girl whose cat you rescued from a tree. What a hero.”

Peter rolled his eyes, “You’re so annoying.” He sat down on the bed next to you, and you maneuvered your body to mirror his position.

“Yeah,” you agreed, wrapping your arms around his neck and leaning over to press a sloppy, dramatic kiss to his cheek. “But you looovvveee me.”

You pulled away from Peter but left your head resting on his shoulder, and he instinctively laid his cheek against your crown.

“Yeah, you’re right. I do.”

Mr. Cobbwell was background noise as you doodled hearts and stars and flowers all over your notebook page. Chemistry used to be your favorite part of the day, it was the only class that you, MJ, Ned, and Peter all had together. Now, you dreaded it.

“Isn’t that right, Ms. Y/L/N?”

You looked up from your notebook paper for the first time since class started. “Uh, I’m sorry. What was the question? I was-”

Cobbwell cut you off with a sigh. “Don’t forget about seeing me after class, okay?”

You nodded and pretended to pay attention for a few minutes to satisfy him before going back to drawing. After Cobbwell called you out it felt like time was going by agonizingly slow. When the bell finally rang, you let go of breath you didn’t know you were holding.

As if it weren’t awkward enough, only you and Peter were left in the classroom when you walked up to Cobbwell’s desk.

“You wanted to see me?” You asked, toying with the strap of your backpack.

“Yes,” He sat back in his chair. “I want to talk about your grades, Y/N. What’s going on? You’ve dropped two letter grades since September, and you’re on the way to dropping another considering you failed the last exam. You went from being my top student to barely qualifying to be in AP Chemistry.”

You lowered your head awkwardly. It was silent between the two of you for a few moments as you thought of something to say.

“So,” Cobbwell continued. “That’s why I’ve assigned you a tutor. If you complete the 6-week assistance course and your improvement is evident on the next exam, then I’ll be willing to give you enough extra credit to keep you from entirely failing the course. But the grade you get at the end of the semester is totally up to you. No more favors. Sound good?”

“Mr. Parker,” Cobbwell waived Peter over to his desk. Both you and Peter stood in shock as you realized what was happening. “Peter is going to be your tutor for the next 6 weeks. The two of you used to be my dynamic chemistry duo. I want to see that again!”

This can’t be happening.

“Mr. Cobbwell, when you said you needed me to tutor one of your students I didn’t realize that,” Peter paused for a moment trying to find the right words. “Um. I didn’t realize you meant Y/N.”

“Is that an issue, Peter? I asked you to help a student who is struggling in Chemistry, and you said yes. Are you not capable of making good on your word? Do I need to find someone else for the job?” Cobbwell was lecturing now, attempting to make Peter feel guilty.

“No. No, it’s fine. I can do this.” Peter said as he turned to look at you. “We can do this.”

You rolled your eyes.

“Great!” Cobbwell clapped his hands together. “Then, get to studying! Y/N has plenty to catch up on.”

The frame of your body was shrinking as you hurried ahead of Peter in the hallway. He was out of breath when he finally caught up to you at your locker.

“You’re failing chemistry?” Peter asked, concerned. You avoided his question and continued shoving books in your lockers

“Hey,” Peter grasped your arm just as it was about to dive back into your backpack. For the first time in four months, you looked back at him. His heart was beating impatiently against his chest like it was waiting for him to pour out every thought and feeling he had since the last time you spoke to him.

Your face softened for a moment and Peter took that as his cue to continue. “Talk to me, Y/N. You’re failing chemistry? That’s not like you. You love chemistry. And you definitely love being better than me at it.”

You pulled your arm away from him. “It’s not a big deal, Peter.” You shut your locker door. “Look, let’s just get this over with and do what we have to do for the next 6 weeks. This doesn’t change anything between us.”

Peter nodded. Deep down he had already known that, but a small part of him hoped that just maybe it was going to change things.

Behind Peter, you noticed Ned and MJ walking toward the two of you with confused faces. “I’ll be at your place at 7 tonight. May still has dinner at 6 sharp, right? So, you’ll be ready by then. Great. See ya.” You didn’t even give Peter time to answer before you turned your back to him to catch up with Harry and his friends.

Peter was still watching you walk away when Ned and MJ reached him.

“Um. What was that about?” Ned asked.

“I think I’m Y/N’s tutor?”

Peter thought if he ignored the clock that time would go by quicker. He has spent the last half hour toying with the food on his plate, not daring to take a bite. He was nervous, but he wasn’t sure why. It was just Y/N, Peter had told himself. That’s just it, though. It was you. Peter felt like he had been given a second chance to fix things with you, and he wouldn’t mess it up this time. He was desperate.

Peter groaned when he looked at the clock again and only 3 minutes had passed.

“Okay,” May sat her own fork down to her plate. “What’s up?”

Peter hadn’t told her yet. He didn’t know how. “Hey, I know it’s been four months since Y/N last came over and then disappeared with little to no explanation at all for either of us, but she’s going to be here in 15 minutes!” May would just make a big deal of it and he didn’t need that right now.

As if on cue, two knocks came from the door. May looked at Peter quizzically, as if to say “Who could that be?” But Peter knew.

May opened the door. “Y/N?” She engulfed you in a tight hug. “Y/N! Peter it’s Y/N! Y/N is here. What are you doing here? We’ve missed you so much haven’t we, Peter? You know what, I’m going to go whip up a batch of those cupcakes you and Peter have always loved. The ones that are made with cookie dough instead of cake batter? I can’t believe this! Come in, come in!” May didn’t really give you much of a choice though since she was already pulling you inside.

“Actually, May, um..Peter and I have some studying to do tonight.”

“Oh. Oh, that’s fine, honey. It’s too late for sweets anyway. I’m always getting ahead of myself.” The disappointment in her voice made you feel guilty. You avoided her gaze, shifting back and forth on your feet as an attempt to no seem awkward.

Peter was fast to change the subject saying, “We’ll be in my room if you need us.”

A familiar flutter erupted in your chest when Peter opened his bedroom door. Star Wars bedsheets. Comic books. Action figures. Video games. Superhero posters. This was the best side of Peter, all the greatest parts of him splattered throughout his room like a trophy on display. There had been a time when all of it was just for you. Only you were special enough to know and love the Peter that lived behind these walls.

Your mom was out of town for a business trip, so you were spending the weekend with Peter and Aunt May. It wasn’t uncommon for you and Peter to have a sleepover. May had been babysitting you overnight practically since the first day you moved next door.

Peter was sitting at one end of his bed and you were at the other.

“Okay,” you tossed a piece of popcorn into your mouth. “Who are you crushing on right now?”

Peter went stiff. He had been crushing on the same girl since he was 8-years-old. “Um. No one really. I don’t really have my eye on anybody.”

“Ugh, Pete. You’re so boring!”

“Okay, fine. Who are you crushing on?”

A shy smile crept across your face. “I don’t know. Well, I guess if I had to pick, I kind of think Brad Davis is cute.”

Peter pretended to gag himself. “Brad Davis? You’re way better than that.”

You rolled your eyes at him, throwing the pillow in your lap at his head. “You’re probably right. Brad has definitely kissed like tons of girls, and I haven’t even kissed one boy! Isn’t that embarrassing? I’m 14, and I haven’t had my first kiss yet.”

“Well, I haven’t had my first kiss either.”

There was a beat of silence.

“Should we just get it over with?”

Peter nearly choked on his own tongue. “W-what do you mean?”

“Peter, I mean should we just kiss each other and get our first kiss over with!” You explained like it was the most casual idea in the world.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.” Peter agreed.

You crawled up the bed until you were sitting right in front of him.

“So, how should we…?” Peter trailed off.

You laid your palm against Peter’s cheek and brushed your thumb back and forth a few times. You secretly praised your mom for making you sit down and watch all of those cheesy rom-coms with her. It made you feel prepared. Peter’s face was hot to the touch because he was blushing.

He was watching you innocently yet also so intensely. Before this, you couldn’t remember a time when you and Peter had been so intimate. You closed your eyes and pressed your lips against his. Kissing Peter felt natural. It felt like something you could do forever.

The kiss only lasted a few minutes before the door swung open. “Do you guys want to order piz- OH NO. MY EYES.”

After that, May decided that Peter had to sleep on the couch whenever you stayed over.

You were still basking in nostalgia when you sat down beside Peter at his desk.

“Do you want to start with atomic structure?” Peter asked. “It was covered in the beginning of the new unit, and I’m sure it will be on the next test.”

You ignored him, picking up a picture frame on the side of his desk. It was a picture of you and Peter on Halloween. You were both 10 and obsessed with Mario Kart. You begged your parents to let you dress up as Mario and Princess Peach.

“I can’t believe you still have this. I remember we ate too many gummy worms that night and May told us that we had gummy butterflies growing in our stomachs and we cried.” You laughed. It was the first time Peter heard you laugh in so long. It made him smile.

You looked back up at him. For a moment, there was a sense of normalcy between the two of you as you smiled at each other.

“Y/N, I-”

You cut him off. “Yeah, so atomic structure, right?”

#peter parker #peter parker imagine #tom holland #peter parker x y/n #peter parker x reader #peter parker fanfiction #tom holland x reader #tom holland fanfiction #peter parker x you #spiderman #spiderman imagine

89 notes · View notes

web-novel-polls · 3 months

Text

Five Love Languages of Danmei: Pining Bracket

Mingqian from Liu Yao: the Revitalization of Fuyao Sect

Characters: Yan Zhengming and Cheng Qian

Liu Yao Carrd Link

Submission:

"A hundred years, Cheng Qian! A mortal's lifetime would've passed just like that" Poor single mother Yan Zhengming keeping the family alive because SOMEONE couldn't stay alive... The way Han Tan was able to recognize Cheng Qian because YZM kept drawing portraits of him... The fucking. slappy ring. Anyw yeah Yan Zhengming be pinin'

Wangxian from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation

Characters: Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian

Lan Wangji was prepared to spend his life in mourning until Wei Wuxian came back to life around 13 years after his death.

["Anti-Propaganda" that attacks other characters is NOT allowed. Please only give reasons to vote FOR a character/ship.]

#mingqian #liu yao #priest #wangxian #mdzs #mxtx #polls #danmei #danmei love languages tournament #danmei pining bracket #danmei pining bracket round 4 #queue

32 notes · View notes

wingodex · 1 year

Text

it’s been two weeks since 1079 but i’m still thinking about kid and just spinning him around endlessly inside my head. he sucks so bad but he compels me so much anyway. truly terrible. the thing about kid is that he’s a character told through contrast. we only learn things about him by comparing him to other characters, and I love that, I find it so fascinating. the other two members of the captain trio are the ones he’s usually contrasted against, with luffy being the most important one to the understanding of his character because he’s literally in the story to be luffy’s foil

kid’s not luffy’s only foil in the story, with blackbeard clearly being set up as a foil as well, but both kid and blackbeard serve different functions in the story. while blackbeard is supposed to be the worst kind of pirate, the opposite of everything luffy stands for, kid is more like the evil mirror version of luffy. he’s the kind of pirate luffy could have been, if things were a little different. he’s a pirate captain going after the one piece and aiming to become the pirate king just like luffy, and he’s the only captain with a crew member who is also a supernova. they’re brash, impulsive, a little stupid, and loud, with unbreakable wills and crews who will die to protect them and their dream. they're both competitive and voracious eaters. kid even apparently grew up in a scrapyard, not unlike the gray terminal. on the surface they’re almost the same, but with one crucial difference; luffy is kind and draws people together, while kid is uncaring and unwilling to work with others.

now admittedly, we don’t actually know all that much about kid even though he’s been in and out of the story for 500+ chapters, but most of what we do learn is specifically to highlight the difference between him and luffy. as i mentioned earlier, kid is meant to be luffy’s foil, to show the kind of pirate luffy could have been. the most obvious contrast between them happens at the end of their first encounter in sabaody after luffy declares that he’ll be the one to find the one piece and kid calls out to killer instead of responding to him.

it’s a callback to luffy’s first encounter with bellamy in mock town, when luffy very deliberately didn’t fight him for mocking his beliefs and dreams, which was already referencing how shanks handled the bandits in foosha village. when compared to kid, you can see a version of luffy without shank’s early intervention. luffy tried to fight the bandits to defend shanks’ pride as a young child, and he easily could have turned into the type of pirate who would always be willing to do that, always getting in worthless fights against people without the guts to believe in anything. he could have been the kind of person who jumps to violence first, every single time.

kid’s aggression and tendency to pick fights is actually the way we’re introduced to his character. he’s trying to kill apoo for staring at him? i guess? huge asshole behaviour, for sure (in contrast to kid and killer fighting the other supernovas for no reason, law’s introduction involves him watching a fight without intervening and then taunting the person who does intervene). it’s not even just that kid won’t back down from a fight though, he and his crew clearly go make problems themselves. shakky reveals that the reason kid’s bounty is higher than luffy’s is because his crew attacks and raids civilians.

while the strawhats aren’t interested in being heroes themselves, they also don’t go out of their way to harm people. in fact, they often make it their problem to keep civilians out of harm when they’re fighting antagonists, like when luffy stopped the mayor from fighting buggy, or the villagers from fighting arlong’s crew in cocoyashi village. luffy, sanji and usopp even got mad at conis for putting herself in danger to tell them the truth. it’s because of this kind of behaviour that the straw hats often end up leaving an island with everyone considering them heroes anyway, despite not purposely seeking that recognition themselves. i’m also reminded of roger not allowing his crew to attack civilians either in chapter 966.

kid’s crew is obviously not like that at all, seeming to be more like typical pirates, stealing and pillaging villages, and attacking without provocation. while we don’t know any details about the kinds of trouble the kid pirates got into before sabaody, i think it’s probably safe to say that kid and his crew tend to leave islands worse off than they found them. their actions are never to the benefit of the people living on the islands they stop at, and they certainly don’t have parties and banquets thrown for them before they leave. with one notable exception... wano. but i’ll come back to that later.

one of the big things that kid and luffy have in common is that both of them hate people who abuse their power. kid’s presence in the auction house is marked by his comments on how distasteful he finds the whole thing. kid is a character who we have seen directly criticize the world government and celestial dragons, both here and during marineford.

what sets kid apart from both law and luffy is that kid doesn’t care. he doesn’t get involved until he has to, despite how much the situation pisses him off. because it’s not his problem. he calls it a farce when saint charlos purchases camie, but makes no move to do anything about it, where luffy jumps in and punches the celestial dragon immediately. we even see law freeing jean bart, but kid spares him no such sympathy. similarly, while law heads for marineford when the broadcast shuts down, kid does nothing despite expressing disgust at the situation. he feels for things and understands things in a way that luffy doesn’t but he doesn’t care enough about others to do anything about it.

in similar situations, we often see kid responding with ruthlessness while luffy responds with kindness and empathy. when kid encounters a weak pirate crew in the new world trying to flee, he crucifies them for being cowards, apparently brutally murdering all of them. when luffy encounters brownbeard on punk hazard, a former pirate who had given up on that after being defeated, luffy shows him empathy and protects him from ceasar. he even eventually calls him a friend. what’s especially telling about this moment though, is that kid seems to echo words we’ve heard luffy say before but in a situation that places him in the opposite position from when luffy said them. it reveals them as harsh and sinister when being reflected upon by the person who is victimizing others rather than the one risking everything in the face of their potential destruction.

now, i need to take a brief moment aside to talk about kid and his crew killing people. he almost certainly kills people. it’s definitely implied that he kills people. i’m mostly inclined to believe that he does kill people, but you can’t fucking trust oda to kill anyone in the story so... you’d think his partner and best friend being named killer would be a clear indication of the fact that the kid pirates murder people and yet. i would say that that’s another way that kid’s shown to be different from luffy, law and their crews because they all allegedly don’t kill people, but i think it’s insane and makes no sense that they don’t kill people, so i consider this a very weak contrast. still, it’s there. i guess.

when law makes an alliance with luffy to take down kaido, kid makes a similar alliance with apoo and hawkins to take on shanks. luffy and law come together relatively easily, but kid clearly enters his alliance without any real desire to do so, and is completely distrustful of his compatriots. it’s only because of killer that the alliance happens at all, while luffy joins up with law despite protests from his own crew.

the way their alliances play out are interesting points of comparison too. kid is hung out to dry by hawkins after they’re both betrayed by apoo and sold out to kaido. law doesn’t betray luffy outright, but he does hide his intentions, mislead him, and try to use him to accomplish his own goals. And yet, luffy’s alliance still manages to hold out, despite law’s attempts to end it, with both luffy and law being fully and completely committed to each other and their final goal at the end. the way kid and luffy react to people who want to work together with them to accomplish their goals is vastly different too. even before being betrayed, kid was reluctant to work with others, but afterwards he is completely unwilling to even consider an alliance with luffy, even though he knows how reliable luffy is. kid considers the very act of trusting others to be the reason his crew had to endure so much in wano and he views his refusal to form another alliance to be his way of protecting them. His temporary alliance with law against big mom is only made under duress.

Whereas luffy is basically always down to work together with anyone who asks him, including his enemies, teaming up with buggy, galdino and crocodile in impel down. luffy even knows that buggy is gonna ditch him as soon as he can and doesn’t really care. he accepts help from anyone who offers it to him, and often actively seeks out companions who will provide aide in some way. luffy bonds with people quickly and easily, needing nothing more than to witness a kind action from them to throw all of his fighting power behind them. he connects with enemies and allies alike, placing his complete faith and trust in them, and earning their respect and admiration. his very presence inspires others to go above and beyond what they would normally be willing to risk for someone else because of the trusts he affords them

the contrast between kid and law is honestly not as fleshed out as the one between luffy and kid, but it’s still there and worth mentioning. the reason their interactions are so funny and combative is because they’re meant to be opposites in terms of personality. they both have lofty ambitious of turning the whole world on its head but they approach it very differently. law is a schemer, working on plans for years, and preferring to set things in motion and watch the fallout. kid dove right into the new world with nothing but his own ambition and violent tendencies to get him by. he has never planned a single thing in his entire life, and while he’s capable of strategizing in battle just like luffy is, that’s best described as a last resort. law is reserved, often trying to remain emotionally uninvolved, and secretive, keeping his cards close to his chest until the last possible moment, while kid is reactive, honest, and entirely sincere. both of them are so fucking angry, but while law’s anger had been sharpened and directed, kid’s anger is explosive, unable to find any direction at all and being thrown towards anything that gets in his way. in a funny way, the thing they have most in common is that they’re both shit disturbers who like to pick fights, although kid seems to be the one usually throwing the first punch, while law’s the one taunting his opponent into making the first move.

their fighting styles are completely different too. while i’d say that both are pretty versatile in terms of their range, law definitely seems to keep his distance from his opponents more than kid. he’ll usually play defence until he can spot a good opportunity, moving quickly in to strike and immediately pulling back after. kid will get up in his opponents space and stay there, often making himself and his metal creations the target of their attacks. law spends time analyzing his opponents and coming up with strategies to use against them. he takes advantage of his environment and his allies to get the most out of the very diverse utility of his devil fruit. kid is way more of a brawler, throwing himself into a fight without any forethought, and letting his fists lead the way. i dunno if this is an intentional character choice, or specifically an aesthetic decision, or if oda decided he didn’t want to learn anything about physics (extremely based if true) but if kid’s powers can actually do what oda claims they do, then kid is not using them as effectively as he could be, instead deliberately seeming to use them in a way that caters to his own interests in weapons and fighting style. their opposite personalities cause them to clash constantly, but their opposite fighting styles work together extremely well. law’s generally cautious nature reigns in kid’s more impulsive tendencies and protects him from unnecessary danger, while taking advantage of the opportunities they provide to move in and strike. kid’s aggressive approach forces law to make the bigger swings that are necessary to take down an emperor. it’s good synergy.

kid does have one saving grace that prevents him from being a complete villain, and that’s his commitment and love for his crew. this is actually one of the things that luffy specifically recognizes and acknowledges in him, and there's no doubt in my mind that he proposed the alliance to him because he witnessed kid's care for killer in udon. the thing that has set the supernova captain trio apart from the pirates they’re up against is their driving desire to protect their crews, and their utter devotion to them. law differs from kid and luffy in the way he chooses to protect his crew, which usually involves sending them away from the danger he places himself into. kid and luffy seem to be of one mind, understanding the dangers they’re placing their crew in, but choosing to believe in their abilities and strength to make it through because they would rather fight alongside them. the biggest testament to kid’s faith in his crew is the way he relies on them to protect him while he collects metal for his big confrontation. one of the weaknesses of kid’s devil fruit is that he needs to amass a lot of metal in order to fight effectively, and during that time, his crew protects him. kid also throws himself into danger for the sake of his crew. he allows himself to be recaptured after escaping udon just to reunite with killer again, and the driving force behind his desire to fight kaido is revenge for what was done to his crew. as misguided as his refusal to ally himself with luffy is, kid makes that decision under the hovering fear of betrayal after his devastation and fury at what had been done to killer. he’s also oddly sweet and supportive in the way that he makes his crew handle killer eating the smile fruit? like, he just obviously cares about them a lot, and killer in particular.

kid’s devotion is also reciprocated by his own crew, who allow themselves to become orochi’s pawns in order to protect him. killer goes above and beyond for kid, eating a smile fruit and even offering his own life in kid’s place on multiple occasions. kid's crew steps in to protect him from big mom and from the beast pirates afterwards. while kid is absolutely willing to put his life on the line and die, his crew cares anout him such that they're not willing to take that same risk with his life. we see them begging shanks to spare him, even handing over their poneglyph rubbings despite kid's clear desire to die for his pride.

kid’s second encounter with the red haired pirates on elbaf epitomizes the consequences of his unwillingness to work with others and his own violent temperament. if the straw hats had won the coin toss and gone to elbaf, they would have been welcomed. there would have been happy and tearful reunions with dorry and broggy, and maybe with saul. even if they would have eventually fought shanks and his crew, it would have played out so differently because they have so many friends there. kid has never been interested in solving conflicts diplomatically and he definitely hasn’t left a trail of friends behind who would be willing to step in and defend him in a tense situation. there is likely no place that the kid pirates could go where they’ll meet a friendly face. and beyond all that, shanks knows what luffy (and by extension, his crew) is like. even if the straw hats had come in swinging for whatever reason, he wouldn’t have been concerned about the safety of the crews in his fleet enough to demolish the straw hats without a chance to save themselves. where the straw hats reached out their hands in friendship to the people they’ve met during their adventures, kid and his crew have attacked without remorse, leaving nothing but devastation. shanks dealt with kid the way he did, without a shred of mercy when kid’s crew begged for his life because giving kid any leeway at all would have put the fleet under his protection in danger. maybe if kid had ever shown compassion to an enemy or a bystander, then shanks could have felt comfortable enough to let kid fight him one-one-one or even let his crew take him away to safety. but kid never has. so why would shanks extend mercy to someone who has never shown mercy himself? to someone who has never once considered offering that kindness to someone weaker than him? and that’s why the kid pirates couldn’t win. we don’t know why kid wants to find the one piece or become king of the pirates, whether he understands being a pirate in the same way luffy does. but the reason he won’t be the one to do it, why a character like him isn’t the main character of this story instead, is because he can’t see value in other people. he refuses to reach out to others, to accept them as they are and to truly care about anyone outside of his own crew. he’s lacking in luffy’s ability to draw people to him and make them want to help him and believe in him. as mihawk points out in marineford, this luffy is greatest power. that's what’s gonna get him to laugh tale. and kid doesn’t have that

so where do we go from here? shanks destroyed kid’s ship and drowned him and his crew. is that it? well, maybe? we all already knew that kid was never gonna accomplish his goal in the way he wanted to because luffy has the same goal, and i never really thought he had a chance against shanks. as we get into the endgame, oda is juggling a lot of characters and storylines so maybe this was a way to cut out some of the extras, and this really is the end for kid. i hope not, because it would suck if his role in the story was just to hype up the abilities of another character. I doubt oda would kill all of the kid pirates outright because he never kills anyone, so they’ll just stop being in the story, fading into obscurity because they couldn’t keep up with luffy.

if kid and his crew do survive and continue to play a meaningful role in the story, then that means something about kid is going to have to change after this defeat. he can’t keep tearing through the new world in the same way that he’s been doing up until now because it’s not viable anymore for him or his crew. the way i see it, there are two options here, but one of them seems way more likely than the other. the first option is that he could go fully evil and become a real antagonist for the straw hats, aligning himself with blackbeard or something stupid like that. as much as i love how kid is a huge bastard, I think this option sucks, and i don’t think the set up is there for it. kid’s function as a foil for luffy wouldn't exist anymore because his role would fold under blackbeard's, making him redundant. I also don’t think this option is very likely to happen because of how luffy reacts to both blackbeard and kid. luffy and blackbeard are immediately set up to be completely diametrically opposed and incompatible in every way right from the start, and their final clash has been in the making for 900 chapters now. while luffy bickers with kid, he actually seems to actually like him a lot? and we’ve been shown time and time again that luffy is a remarkably good judge of character and extremely emotionally intelligent, so it would just feel kind of out of place. plus, like luffy, kid is very anti-authoritarian and i can't ever see him realistically falling in line with anyone without compromising a critical element of his character.

The other option is that kid decides to make some friends and allies, but for real this time. other people have pointed out the similarity in the wording between the ending of chapter 1079 and 513 in sabaody. since I’ve spent the first part of this post talking about how kid is luffy’s foil, let’s consider luffy at the end of sabaody, and try to extrapolate what this means for kid and his crew.

that moment for luffy is where he finally hits the wall that he cannot overcome. in the east blue, luffy is easily the most powerful person around. east blue arcs go out of their way to prevent luffy from immediately jumping into combat, because the moment he does, the fight's already over. that changes when the crew enters the grand line. luffy starts to really struggle against opponents, only just barely scrapping a win in his fights. sabaody is the first point in the story where luffy is just not strong enough to overcome his opponents no matter what he does. he can’t protect his friends and he loses in a way that he can’t bounce back from. this remains true for the rest of the story before the timeskip. The summit war saga is luffy’s lowest point emotionally but also in terms of his relative strength to other characters. he shows signs of his future potential, like his use of conqueror’s haki in amazon lily/marineford, but he can’t rely on that in any meaningful way. From sabaody onward, luffy is powerless in a way we’ve never seen before. he has plenty of fights, but he doesn’t defeat any of the major antagonists of the summit war arcs. the only reason he survives is because he finds powerful allies to support him. luffy’s ability to make people want to help him protects him when his strength isn’t enough, but even still, it’s not enough to save his brother. that’s why the timeskip happens in the first place, to give luffy the time to recover and become stronger, and to fully harness the potential we know he has.

so now back to kid. In terms of power, kid should be at the top of his game. he’s just awakened his devil fruit, he’s defeated one of the four emperors, and he’s got one of the highest bounties in the world.* unlike luffy in sabaody, kid isn’t powerless at all. the real problem is that he’s a loose canon, a literal fucking railgun aimed at hundreds of people who never stood a chance against him. and despite that, he still hits a wall that he can’t overcome. when you step back and compare him to luffy pre-timeskip, it’s clear kid’s in a similar situation. while both luffy and law waited to enter the new world, kid jumped right in and he’s been scraping by, but only barely for a long time and it’s cost him and his crew. he’s managed to beat down the weaker pirates by being bigger, meaner, and more violent, but every time he’s tried to go against an emperor, it hasn’t worked out. the first encounter with big mom’s crew presumably went badly for him, he lost his arm to the red haired pirates without even fighting shanks, and kaido wiped the floor with him. when you compare what kid’s managed to accomplish in two years to what luffy manages to do in a month after he enters the new world, it’s laughable. it took him two years to increase his bounty 100 million berries, while luffy breaks 1 billion almost immediately. so then what is kid lacking? it doesn't seem like he's hit the limit of his power yet. but you see, i’ve already answered this. the thing kid is lacking is luffy’s ability to find allies and friends. the first real win he snagged in the new world was when he finally made some new friends to fight with. and the second he ditches them, he loses so badly he basically gets a death scene. in wano, kid gets a taste of his own potential, of what he could accomplish, just like luffy did during the summit war saga. kid has the ability and the drive to take on emperors! ...he just can’t do it alone. i hate to say this, because it sounds corny as hell, but the wall kid’s up against is the fact that his power of friendship isn’t strong enough. but it could be! maybe! if he put even a little bit of effort into it. we know that kid has the capacity to care about other people because he is fiercely devoted to killer and his crew. and he can inspire people to follow him and support him because his crew is equally devoted to him! they follow him into battle because they believe in him. they’re willing to subject themselves to slavery and misery or even death just to protect his life and his dream. so he could try to make some friends. i do not want a kid redemption arc, i don’t think he really needs one, like i wanna be clear that i don’t think kid should suddenly become a good person or anything like that. but maybe he could, I dunno, be a little bit nice to someone for once. make a new friend maybe. trust someone. believe in someone. you know. character development and all that. anyway, i’m interested to see where kid’s story goes from here! i really hope oda’s not done with him yet because it really does feel like he’s been laying the groundwork to do more with him despite the ending of chapter 1079

*you could absolutely make a power scaling argument about how he really seems to need to work on his haki because both him and law are kinda lagging behind luffy and zoro, and kid’s somehow even worse than law at using haki despite having conqueror’s haki. so he does still have room to grow and improve. but that’s not the point i’m making, so like, why would you? The point is that kid should’ve been flying high after taking down an emperor of the sea but shanks didn’t even give him the opportunity to fight because kid’s a piece a shit

#manga spoilers under the cut #op blogging #eustass kid #egghead arc spoilers #wano arc spoilers #he's just... on my mind. thinking about him #he's so. he just sucks so bad #he's such a jackass #but also he loves his friends? and i think he should make some more friends? you know?#this is for river bcus i doubt anyone else who follows me will read it

24 notes · View notes

steak-n-popotoes · 7 months

Text

FFxivWrite '23 - 30

Eryna sat with her back against the sole tree at the island's edge. An easy breeze sighed through the branches, stirring the violet canopy into a calming whisper.

As she gazed up into stars long dead, thoughts of her own long journey drifted upon waves of memory.

Before long, she was greeted by the sound of footsteps softened by the grass. The slow, steady beat of his pulse was as a soothing balm.

"This seat taken?"

"I'm afraid I'm saving it for someone." Eryna said with a curled smile as she reached out for his hand.

Caranar took hers in his own as he sat down beside her. "Must be someone special if you're waiting for him in a place like this."

She didn't tease him further; simply leaned into him.

It wasn't the first time they had relied on Argos to ferry them to that place, a nameless speck of land floating along the outskirts of Elpis. With the business in Pandæmonium concluded, the facility had settled into a peaceful state.

"How are they?" Caranar murmured.

So dear, how quick he was to concern. Already a doting father. "It's as we feared. Ameliance was all too willing to care for them."

Eryna felt Caranar shake against her with a single light laugh.

"She said that, 'after all the time we spent watching over her twins, to care for our own was simply a favor owed', but I think she just finds them as darling as we do."

"She doesn't owe us anything." Caranar said. "Besides, they don't need us to babysit them any longer."

"They certainly don't. So much time has passed in the blink of an eye."

"You think that now, wait 'til they actually get taller."

Then it was Caranar's turn to feel Eryna's laughter against him.

They sat like that together in silence as time passed them by. She shifted her hand to interlink her fingers between his, and leaned closer to curl her other hand around his arm. Her center slowly became suffused with his abundant warmth.

"And Beef?"

"I found him pressing wildflowers outside Ala Gannha again." Caranar replied. He had disappeared earlier in the day, but no one at any of his usual haunts had seen him stop by.

"If he's not sketching at Paglth'an, he's there." Eryna remarked. "We ought to grow some at the house for him."

Caranar was quiet for a while. "I think it's something more than the flowers that keeps drawing him there."

"You know he's taller than Popola now?"

He looked down at her in disbelief. "No shit?"

"By an ilm. I'm not sure if he's realized it yet, but she did."

"Hunh. I can't believe I missed it."

Caranar watched the leaves sway overhead.

"You know, it's good that he has places he can go if he wants time to himself." Eryna said.

It seemed no matter where the two of them tried to find retreat they would instead find distraction. Even with Etheirys in a state of relative peace and amity, there was always someone who needed the Warriors of Light. Thankfully, in a far less desperate capacity than in the previous year, but needed nonetheless. Should they seek a private getaway in the Cieldalaes, they instead found a push for industry and development. Should they seek solitude on the moon's surface, they instead found the ever-constant duties of The Dreaming Ways, and Loporrits were ever so difficult to refuse face-to-face. Even at the edge of existence were they expected to bus tables.

This place, this moment frozen in amber, was one where no one knew them. A love letter in a bottle.

Caranar was tracing a design along the side of her hand with his thumb. A perfect dichotomy they made together, the dawn to her dusk; the light to his shadow.

She tilted her head to look at his face.

"I think we've earned a vacation."

He gave a soft snort through the nose as a smile graced his features. "Us, a vacation? If we go someplace new we'll just find new ways to be busy."

"Maybe so. But it would be for us this time. Ameliance would love an extended stay with Khojin and Cirina. And don't pretend Beef wouldn't love to see someplace new."

"I don't need convincing. You know I'd love to go anywhere if it's with you."

He looked down to see her smiling expectantly as their eyes met.

Their lips met soon after.

#FFxivWrite2023 #FFxivWrite #Eryna Spellgrave #Caranar

5 notes · View notes

garoumylove · 2 years

Text

An excerpt from the beginning of the smutty part of my slowburn ♥️GarouxReader♥️ 'In the Dark' which you can read in full here :)

You gather all the papers, all the notes. Ah, he forgot his blazer. Well, it doesn’t matter. You can return it some other time. He didn’t seem to be in any great need of it tonight anyw-

There’s an impatient knock on the door. You were wrong. He seems to be in terrible need of it.

You fold it over your arm and go to open the door.

He’s soaking wet, angry...You look closer, no, on second thought, it’s not anger.

“Here,” you hold the black blazer out to him.

What is this? Oh, right. His blazer. Fuck the blazer. He takes it out of your hand and throws it to the side.

“What’s-” you don’t get to finish your question because his hands are suddenly on your waist, pulling you against him through the doorway and his lips meet yours. This kiss is urgent, wanting.

He has no idea what he’s doing or why. But it’s as if time is running out. His time is running out. He remembers your fingers on his face, wiping away that drop of blood. Your drawing. Everything flashes randomly through his mind. Those things. Those things are warm. You. You are warm. The kiss deepens and you have no choice but to grab on to him.

This feeling is new to you. Or maybe it was there all along. You have no desire to push him away. Why? Not only do you have no desire to push him away but you actually want to pull him closer. You don’t want him to go back out there into the darkness, into the rain.

The kiss only stops when you both feel you’ll suffocate if you don’t take a breath.

You look up at him, his hands still around your waist. You look at those eyes. Why does he insist on tormenting himself so much?

#night kisses #garou #opm #one punch man #garou opm #one punch man garou #garou fanfiction #garou x reader #garouxreader #reader insert #opm fanfiction #one punch man fanfiction #x reader #xreader

4 notes · View notes

m-kyunie · 2 years

Text

revamped icon for October!

#sora #kh sora #kh #kingdom hearts #anyws this will be my icon for the month but Zack will be back after promise!#weird to see how much my art has changed n also how fast I can draw smtg like this now! neat

118 notes · View notes

outofcontexturi · 1 year

Text

Mon 7th feb 2023 journal 7:11am

The sky is a nice light blue this morning. I’m thinking about life right now. I keep thinking about whether I’m good enough for things. I’ve lost a lot of self esteem recently and I just can’t seem to find it or a reason to be doing the things I’m doing. It’s like I make myself cringe whenever I do things. Apparently this is a habit that can be changed and I want to change it cause it’s ruining my livelihood and I can’t live like this. It’s far too volatile and more time depressing like this. I’m being mean to myself. I don’t really know why I’m struggling to love myself the way I want to. But it’s to do with the fact that I think too much about what others think. I can’t help it. I put a massive spotlight on myself all the time. It’s like I’m super conscious of myself and my movements in the world. I sometimes listen to people and how they get things done and have achieved the things they want and I think to myself “am I even doing this thing right?” cause I feel wrong and I feel like I’m doing the wrong thing. It’s like I’m a prisoner trapped in my own golden cage of negative self thoughts where every thought is negative but the mind of this cage looks well presented. Life is going whether I like it or not. I can’t stop it. This is actually what I wanted to talk about actually : control. I need control and I need to not need control. I want to control the outcome of things into my favour cause I believe that’s how you live a good life. I just caught myself in the act of internalising something and how subconscious it is. I finally know what subconscious is. I’m deeping how much I think about myself. It’s like 98% of the time I’m just focused on me. Because i care about what I think but too much. It’s 7:29am. I’m on the toilet just thinking will I ever make it? It’s been a wild ride and don’t get it twisted I’m good but am I good enough. I’ve managed to change the font of their text. I’ve been trying to be the perfect person for 10+ years now and it’s not working. But idk if I know myself enough to be myself or if I am myself but just can’t accept myself. I just thought about the height of my human consciousness is someone else praising me for my work. I know more people alive than I know dead and I’d like to keep it that way. I thought that sounded cool. I think the reason I’m awkward is because I think too much. I’m listening to Beyoncé’s Renaissance album. I wanna see how this makes me feel. It’s 7:59am. I went outside to feel something and look at the sun. I questioned why I didn’t feel good about myself I just have low self esteem and want control. I need to believe in myself again. I feel like I’m ugly. But I know I’m not ugly. Like I can’t be ugly but you know when you just feel it so you can’t fake confidence man. You can feel when you’re confident and when you’re trying too hard. Cuff it is such a feel good song. What a beautiful funky song. This is an amazing album. The production on this is crazy! I’m looking for something that lives inside me word to B! But I feel like my soul is broken. Going back to the drawing board. I feel like this is a constant feeling I feel though. I feel like I’m always failing at things and it’s making me self conscious of the fact that I may not be as good as people say I am or I think I am at times and it’s ruined my love for performance and creating. I can’t control these things. I can’t control these things I can’t control these things they are not in my control. How can I be honest with you when I’m lying to myself? Oh my god im just deeping that I’m lying to myself or am I convincing myself I’m lying to myself? questions plague me everyday. Every single day I’m here a question about myself plagues me. It’s 8:24am. I’m in bed. The room is a nice temperature. I think my conditions are nice but I’m not happy with myself. I’m not accepting this though cause fuck not being happy for yourself. You need to happy yourself nigga. Feel the fear and do it anyways. I need to get that shit tatted on me somewhere cause that should be the way I live. I spoke to Reba yesterday. SOT: 8:28am.

#journal

0 notes

web-novel-polls · 2 months

Text

Five Love Languages of Danmei: Pining Bracket

Mingqian from Liu Yao: the Revitalization of Fuyao Sect

Characters: Yan Zhengming and Cheng Qian

Liu Yao Carrd Link

Submission:

Liushen from The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System

Characters: Liu Qingge and Shen Qingqiu (Shen Yuan)

Submission:

Want Desperate Pining for a Long-Ass Time in spades? LQG not only spends ✨five years✨ daily fighting to get SQQ’s body back and lay him to rest, he’s also on full on Be SQQ’s Uber and Return All Fans to him before that little temporary human mortality hiccup for ages before that

["Anti-Propaganda" that attacks other characters is NOT allowed. Please only give reasons to vote FOR a character/ship.]

#mingqian #liu yao #priest #liushen #svsss #mxtx #polls #danmei #danmei love languages tournament #danmei pining bracket #danmei pining bracket round 8 #queue

17 notes · View notes

luffysbasement · 2 years

Text

once upon a time, a young musician fell in love.

you've heard this tale before.

[ dnf as orpheus and eurydice; requested by @sahara4k ♡♡ ]

#dnf #dreamnotfound #dnf fanart #dreamwastaken #georgenotfound #my art #in todays episode of messy hates backgrounds #also sorry for taking long on this one! heatwaves been faking me out #jk but fr its so damn hot i couldnt do anything!!!#hope yall like it tho esp to the beloved hari <33 #ok bit of ramble abt why the arts the way it is: i thought of drawing the same old running away from the hell not looking back and whatnot #but i thought its too common for orpheus and eurydice #so ye i changed it up like 3 times before i was satisfied xd #ukno those two r idiots if they just covered eurydice's eyes then theyd be fine smhhh /j #so thats why gnf has a cover on his eyes theyre having a date at the gates of hell #i tagged dream and gogs on twt bc fuck it dream that filthy dnfer have been too bold lately anyw #oh ye hari i hope u dont mind me using the lines of ur fic's summary ajdghs i rly liked it

2K notes · View notes

strawberryswirlix · 6 years

Photo

beep beep i’m a sheep

#fire emblem echoes #pokemon #genny #flaaffy #i actually finished this a while back but then i was like #let's leave this until tomorrow in case i end up wanna changing smth #and then i got rly sick for like a whole week and didnt get to do anyth lmao #anyw im still not totally happy w/ this bc i started it months ago then stopped then i wanted to switch styles when i picked it up again #so basically #it's a mess lol #anyw i felt bad abt not drawing for like forever so i wanna start again but nothings rly going right rn :/#art

1K notes · View notes

lambowverde · 2 years

Text

His Sightless Angel

Pairing: Ran Haitani x Blind! Reader

Content warning: Nothing but fluff, first meetings and mentions of a stab wound

Word count: 2.6k

Summary: In which Ran meets a sightless angel, who would later on become his wife

Note: This was supposed to come out before Reflected in her Eyes, but this proved to be quite difficult to edit :0

His brother was an idiot.

“I told you to be more careful.”

“That was me being careful.” Rindou fires back, his face set into a grimace as he bleeds on the bourbon colored seats of the LaFerrari.

It was a bad day, Ran decided. Everything that could’ve gone wrong, went wrong. They suddenly got assigned a mission, one that should’ve been under Sanzu’s jurisdiction, at ass o’clock. Then they had to drive to the middle of bum-fucking-nowhere, to pick up some shipments from Hong Kong, only to get jumped.

And the cherry on top? His brother getting stabbed, of course.

Sighing, he continues to speed down the highway. He was gripping the wheel much too tightly, but his body was tense with the thought of not making it to the hospital in time. “More. Be more careful, Rindou. It would be a sad end if you were to die from a knife wound caused by a nobody.”

“Shut up. This is barely a scratch.” Rindou says that, but by how hard he was clutching at his shirt, and the way that his eyes were slowly closing, Ran highly doubted it.

So, he drove faster than he ever had. Praying to a god that he’s long abandoned and forgotten, to not take away the only thing he loves and matters in his life.

By the time that the sun had come out, they had managed to reach the hospital safely. Safely as in, Rindou has not yet walked through the gates of the afterlife. Immediately, the nurses tended to his brother, and left Ran forgotten. He only talked to the doctor for a second, but it wasn’t long until the elderly man had to go too.

This wasn’t a hospital they had ever visited. Bonten has most of them in their pockets, for it was a usual occurrence for someone in their line of work to get injured. This one, however, was not. But he’ll let Takeomi handle it. Considering that they were only here due to Sanzu’s lack of appearance to his duties.

Big brothers must clean up their little brother's messes after all, right?

As he attempts to wash the blood off his hands, and the little splatters on his face, he realizes there’s little to nothing he could do about the ones on his clothes. It was a bad idea to stay in the hospital and draw attention to himself, so he decided that going out would be the best. Rindou most likely wouldn’t be up for a couple more hours anyway, and he needed to report to Mikey. The doctors also confirmed that his menace of a brother would be perfectly okay, so it allows him to ease up a little.

Talking to the nurses gave him three pieces of information. One, the most secluded spot in the hospital were the rooftops. Two, if you flash a smile and throw in a little compliment, you can get a key to said rooftop. Three, say that the blood on your clothes was from your brother, who you saved from an attack, and the nurse is even more then happy to give you an update on when Rindou wakes up. So with a spring to his step, Ran makes his way up.

The door to the rooftop was made out of pure metal, but to his surprise, the door wasn’t locked. Strange, considering that he remembered the red nurse saying, “The doors are locked, but here are the keys. No one should be up there, it's restricted. You’ll have all the quiet and alone time you want.”

Hm, maybe he can simply ask whoever it was up here to leave. And if they refuse…well, he has other methods that comes to mind. With that thought, he opens the door to feel the rush of morning wind hitting him. It’s early, much too early. And if he didn’t feel the immediate urge to report back to Koko, then Ran would’ve been long asleep by now. Probably in a chair next to his brothers hospital bed, but something tells him that he would’ve been too worried to sleep anyways. Not that he would ever, ever admit that to anyone. Much less Rindou nonetheless.

As he steps out some more, he hears humming. It’s melodic, and whoever was singing it had a lovely voice. A name of a song pops up in his head as he ties it to what was being hummed, Amazing Grace, he remembered his mother playing it on their record, every time she got ready. It was how he knew that he had to grab Rindou and get out of the house, a sign to not be back until nightfall.

Due to his memories associated with it, he grew a certain distaste and repulsion towards the song. But whoever was humming it made it sound like angels were singing, like the song could start representing something good. Curious, he turns towards the direction of the voice, walking only a couple steps out to find…

You.

Sitting on a bench, wearing a white, flowy hospital gown and holding a sketchbook, was you. For a second, Ran wonders if he was the one who died. Because what was an angel doing here, in this dirty place called earth? You should’ve been up in the heavens. A place that was supposed to be serene enough to hold someone like you, right?

Is he hallucinating? Was he so tired that he imagined the woman of his dreams? Or did the near death of Rindou scar him so much that he was actively imagining something that he’d want to see?

He’s hypnotized, never once has he ever been speechless quite like this. You continued to hum, mumbling out words here and there, but you were enjoying your time. Sketching on the book that he couldn’t quite see, your hands glided across the paper like your voice traveled in the wind. Ran had to remind himself to breathe, with how awestruck he was.

Enchanted, was one way to put it. But before he could say anything, much less move, you stop. You stopped singing, you stopped drawing. He flinches, with the thought that he disturbed your peace. Completely forgetting his purpose of coming here himself.

“…I’m sorry. Did it bother you?”

Ah, your voice was euphonious. As captivating as you were. But it seems as though you mistook his silence for annoyance, for your next words were, “My singing, did it bother you? I’ll stop, normally no one comes up here. I wasn’t expecting you.” Chuckling to yourself, you made a move to get up, instantly, Ran stops you.

“No, not at all. If anything, I was just taken away. You have a voice of an angel.” Deciding to be honest, he nearly sighs in relief when he sees you sit back down.

A tint of red flashes on your cheeks. “O-Oh, thank you.” Why did you react that way? Someone like you must’ve been used to compliments such as those, surely.

“You're welcome, doll.” For this entire time, you had not opened your eyes. He’s happy about it, because this way, you wouldn’t see the blood stains on his clothes. And he wouldn’t have to give you an excuse as to why they were there. You simply stared straight, a gentle smile on your face, with red tinting your cheeks from his earlier compliment.

“Can I ask what you’re doing here? It’s rather early.” 6 a.m, actually. That’s what his watch tells him, once he swiped the blood off.

Letting out a soft chuckle, you gestured to your sketch book. “I’m just enjoying the morning sun. What about you, sir?”

“Ran.” He says, and for the first time since you two met, you looked towards his direction. Your eyes remain closed. “Ran Haitani. Not sir, I’d like to think I’m not that old.”

You chuckle at his joke, it makes him absolutely joyous. “How old are you, then?”

“26.” He replied.

“Ah, so you’re only a year older then me. You sound very mature, Ran.”

His name never sounded more pleasant, more right. “I am very mature, beautiful.” He says jokingly. Rindou would say otherwise, Sanzu too, most likely. Even he himself was shaky on that at best, but it earned him a smile from you. So it was beyond worth it.

You tell him your name, before adding on, very quietly, “You don’t have to call me those types of nicknames.” Looking down, he doesn’t miss the way you nervously twirl your fingers. You’re shy, he’s figuring out now. Good with your words, but shy.

“What an enchanting name, it suits you.” Then, his brain circuits to catch your few last words. “I'll gladly use your name from now on, if those pet names make you uncomfortable.” He offers, but with the face you're making, he doesn’t think that that’s really the case.

Shaking your head, you gently deny. “No, it doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable at all. I’ve just…never been called by those nicknames before.”

Unable to stop himself, he asks, “What nicknames?”

“The ones reserved for lovers.”

And ah, that does something to him. The realization that a pretty little thing such as you weren’t used to being called what you are—beautiful, stunning, an absolute doll.

An angel.

“You make it sound as if you’ve never had one.” Ran was just confirming what he was suspecting. He didn’t want to jump to conclusions too fast, especially ones that seems so out of pocket.

You—gorgeous in all your glory, never having any one to admire it.

“Probably because I haven’t.”

Have mercy, he thinks to himself at your words.

It was like stumbling into a gold mine, like Ran had just found something that everyone would’ve killed to get their hands on. You were a jewel in every right, and an undiscovered one at that, and somehow, someway, Ran had found you.

He’s never been the one who’s obsessed with the thought of purity. In his eyes, all women are pure. No matter how many hands have touched their body, no matter what they’ve done, to him, women will be, and will forever remain, one of God's greatest creations. Heavens know that if the world was full of only men, the earth would’ve rotted and burned a long time ago.

It’s one of the few things that his mother taught him, and she couldn’t have been more right.

“Such a shame.” Approaching closer, Ran wants to desperately sit down on the bench with you. A little part of him wants you to open your eyes, wants you to see and look at him. He wants to know what you think, wants to know if you would be pleased with what you find.

But then he remembers that he was covered in blood, and he found himself switching mindset instantly. Now praying that you wouldn’t look, because he truly wouldn’t know what excuse to pull out.

Just as he was thinking this, and as if the entire universe was mocking him—you open your eyes.

And he’s breathless, because they're white.

What your original eye color was, he doesn’t know. It was as if a heavy fog had covered your pupils, because there’s color peeking from within, but just barely due to how dense the fog seemed to be.

Instantly, all at once, like a light bulb, everything clicks.

Why you didn’t open your eyes until now, why you didn’t even bother to really look in his direction, why you tend to look down as if there was nothing to really miss in the first place.

“Ah—I’m sorry, you must be shocked.” A trouble expression makes its way to your face, before you quickly shut your eyes again. “I didn’t mean to open them, uh—I just heard you walking closer. I’m sorry.”

He has not a clue why you’re apologizing, and he doesn’t like that you are. “There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Ran says, sitting himself on the spot next to you successfully. “They’re beautiful, your eyes.”

His last sentence lacked class, one he strongly wished to display in front of you. But your anxious expression told him of an insecurity—an insecurity about your eyes. So before he knew it, Ran had been quick to try to ease.

If he had misread, then that’s an embarrassment saved for him.

Though, with the way you brighten up, he knows that he didn’t. “…Thank you.”

Your little blush sent an arrow straight to his heart. Making him nearly topple over from the sheer cuteness of it. God, you were so—

A turn to the doorknob cuts off his train of thought, a new voice rings out. “Sir? Ah, so you are here!”

You flinch at the other voice, and so does Ran. He’s been so absorbed with you, that he completely missed the footsteps of an oncoming person. Something that rarely happens to him.

It’s the nurse from earlier, he realizes with a certain prick of annoyance. She, on the other hand, looked ecstatic. “It’s your brother, he’s woken up. He said he would like to see you.”

At the mention of Rindou, all irritation disappears. He immediately stands up, straightening his clothes. “Alright, thank you for telling me. I’ll be right down.”

The nurse nods, closing the door with prep.

Rindou, he’s woken up. He’s okay. Doctors will guarantee you a lot of things, but life isn’t something that you can promise. It was strange how beings such as complicated as humans could die from blood loss, or a wound too close to a certain area—hell, they could even die from the weather being too hot or cold.

So as much as Ran would’ve liked to believe in the doctor, he seemed like a nice gentleman enough, he knew damn well that human lives were as fickle as a cat. They come and go.

“So you have a brother.” Jolted by your voice, Ran looks down. You’re staring up at him, a soft smile on your face—serene. “He must be anxious to see you, I’m sure you are too. You should go.”

Ran doesn’t.

As much as he was surprised to hear himself admit that, it was the truth.

Never once had he ever been so…enchanted, with a woman. There was not an aspect of you that didn’t catch his attention, and a little part of him is scared of that revelation.

But, he doesn’t let himself think too much into it. Not now, at least—he’ll have to go see Rindou first.

He finds himself saying this anyways, just right before he leaves. “…Will I find you up here, when I come back?”

When, because Ran will, immediately after his brother. After he knows that Rindou is okay.

You seem surprised by his question at first, but your expression quickly shifts into one of fondness. “Of course, I’ll be here.”

On that day, without knowing it, Ran Haitani had met his future wife. The one that he would later on have three kids with, the one that he would spend an eternity with, buried in caskets right next to each other.

But before all of that, he had to find you first.

Because when he came back up, after Rindou had kicked him out…

You were gone.

And in your place, was a feather.

Ran couldn’t help himself from wondering if you really were just an angel, an angel that he would never see again. Perhaps one that flew from the heavens to give him a sneak peek of a place that he knew he would never reach. Considering that after dying, Ran would most likely be going under, and not above.

But when he looks a little to the right, he sees a piece of ripped paper. It blended a little too perfectly with the white bench, and so tiny that he nearly missed it. On it, wrote, “‘My nurse came to get me, but I’m in room 104, if you would still like to see me, Ran. :)”

Your handwriting was…almost non-eligible, but the cute little smiley face you drew next to the sentence was adorable—and undoubtedly you.

He makes his way to room 104.

From that moment on, his story with you began.

#tokyo revengers x reader #tokyo revengers x y/n #tokyo revengers x you #ran x reader #haitani ran x y/n #ran haitani hcs #haitani ran x you #haitani ran x reader #ran x y/n #ran haitani x you #ran haitani x reader #ran haitani x y/n #tokrev x reader #tokrev x you #tr x reader #ran x you

989 notes · View notes

thevindicativevordan · 2 years

Note

What do you think of Snyder's Superman?

I seriously considered skipping over this. I've ranted a lot about this topic elsewhere, and that horse has been beaten to death by everyone, not just me. Can't resist a post for the record so here it is: I consider Snyder to be the worst caretaker of the Superman character ever, and his Superman to be godawful.

youtube

God I will never forget the excitement I felt the first time I watched the third trailer for Man of Steel. "Finally," I foolishly thought to myself. "We are getting a movie that can nail Superman's character AND deliver badass fight scenes." The third trailer used lines from All-Star Superman for God's sake, clearly this was the work of people who knew what they were doing. Can't begin to describe how wild I let my imagination run in the lead up to Man of Steel's release: a whole new era was going to begin. I pictured a Superman video game announcement following shortly after, a new cartoon, spin-off movies for Supergirl and Steel, in short I thought Superman was going to actually be back on equal footing with Batman. Superman fandom's decades long nightmare ushered in by TDKR and Superman III & IV being garbage was at last coming to an end.

Instead what followed was a trainwreck that simply grew more and more corrosive to Superman.

Now to be clear, there are some facets of the DCEU Superman which are worthwhile and interesting. Snyder's depiction of Superman's powers gave us some of the most jaw-dropping scenes to ever hit the big screen, and have been copied by numerous other movies and TV shows including Superman & Lois. Conceptually having Superman struggle to be a hero in a world that doesn't immediately fall over to fawn at his feet isn't a bad idea. Zod in the DCEU was the best incarnation of the character, and I'm glad that writers seem to be drawing more on Shannon's portrayal these days over Stamp's. Hans Zimmer gave us beautiful music that evoked Superman wonderfully, I still listen to that First Flight track to this day. Bits and pieces of Snyder's portrayal of Superman are actually good!

Except for the actual characterization of Superman himself. Good God he is so boring in these films! He's not charming or funny or even possessing much in the way of a personality at all. That can be blamed on Snyder's choice to not bother to explain why this version of Clark Kent decides to be Superman. What drives this man? What keeps pushing him to help people even though it keeps blowing his cover? Certainly not the Kents as is traditionally the case, Pa and Ma advocate for self-preservation above all else, even if it means other people dying. So then what's the reason? Only real answer is that DCEU Superman helps people because that's what Superman does, hardly the "realistic" justification you would expect from a franchise that takes great pains to establish how hard it is to become Superman, and how much it sucks to be Superman once you actually do don the cape.

Cavill himself is just meh. Yeah he has the physique to sell himself as Superman, I think that's part of why so many have latched on to him as the One True Superman. But he certainly doesn't offer anything performance wise on the level of what Chris Reeve or Tyler Hoechlin show us. There's no effort to differentiate between the two identities on Cavill's part, and his portrayal of both identities is rather stoic, missing an opportunity to let Cavill explore different facets of Superman's psychology or personality. The "romance" between Cavill and Adams is terrible, much like how there isn't any effort to justify why Clark becomes Superman, there's barely any justification for why Clark and Lois hook up other than "well Superman and Lois always get together right?" and then doing that. While it was ruined by the awful CGI (and everything going on behind the scenes), Cavill's best portrayal of Superman is when he interacts with the kids at the start of Whedon's JL. That was the only time Cavill got to play Superman anywhere near to what I would like to see from a film Superman.

People complain that Snyder's Superman isn't "hopeful", that he's not an optimistic character and they are correct. In and of itself that's not a problem, there are many takes on Superman - some not evil - which I wouldn't describe as optimistic or hopeful. Superman is not always sure of himself, of his place in the world. What kills this take is that Snyder wants to have his cake and eat it. He wants to deconstruct the parts he doesn't like or thinks are dumb, like the no kill rule, but he also wants to just lean back on the cultural assumptions and perceptions of Superman to do the emotional heavy lifting for him. Take Ma and Pa Kent for example. We're supposed to view those two as the same saintlike parents they are everywhere else, and we're supposed to like them. But they're both selfish pricks under Snyder and all their advice to Clark just gets in the way of him helping others. Pa teaches Clark that if helping someone else inconveniences or threatens your standing in life in any way, you shouldn't do it. Maybe let those kids die if it means revealing your secret. Definitely let your dad die because otherwise you'll be exposed, even though you can save him. Ma meanwhile tells Clark he doesn't owe anyone else a damn thing, and he's under no obligation to use his powers to help others. Forget what terrible moral advice that would be for a regular person, what kind of advice is that for your invincible man-god son who could easily crush the entire world beneath his heel? You're telling me, in this "realistic" take, that Pa and Ma never considered the damage Clark could wreck to others, and only ever thought about the danger others could pose to him? Sorry I don't buy that one bit, and it just makes the Kents seem stupid in addition to selfish. Yet Snyder can't seem to understand why so many people rejected his take on the Kents or on Superman himself.

Snyder either doesn't realize, or stubbornly refuses to acknowledge, the way people react to his portrayal of Superman. Sometimes the gap between how Snyder wants us to feel about his Superman, and how the creative choices he makes evoke the exact opposite emotional reaction will give you intense whiplash. We're supposed to feel sad in BvS because Superman died, and we're supposed to understand that everyone else feels sad Superman died too, because Superman is good!.. except Snyder completely undercuts that by teasing evillllll Superman! Why would I feel bad about him dying when you're telling me that Batman was right about him? DCEU Superman is a threat! He's the greatest liability to our planet! He brought Zod to Earth when he activated the Arctic ship! His failure to limit the destruction fighting Zod caused Batman and Lex to go off the deep end, and his failure to properly clean up the damage after the battle left Kryptonian technology where Lex and the military could access them! Of the entire Justice League he is the only one weak-willed enough to succumb to the Anti-Life Equation when his girlfriend dies. All the other Leagues go through hell and lose loved ones in the Knightmare, but they don't succumb, only the so-called "greatest" hero. This ties back into the trend of overdoing "evil Superman" stories: when that is all you can think to do with the character, it really makes it hard to buy that this guy is the paragon who sets the example. He can't be the greatest hero if he's the one who is constantly breaking when shit gets hard, especially when everyone else isn't succumbing. Even more so since we've barely seen him do regular Superman stuff that would make us view him as the leading light!

Furthermore you want to know something truly depressing? Snyderverse Earth is a place where the world would be better off if Superman's pod had just crashed into an asteroid and he had died out in space. Zod would never have come to Earth and killed all those people. Lex and Batman would have never gone insane. The Mother Boxes would never have reactivated - and how shitty is it that the one actual emotion Snyder makes sure to show his Superman evoked was despair so great it caused the Mother Boxes to wake up - and thus Steppenwolf and Darkseid would never have come and destroyed the world. At every turn Superman made life worse, and Batman has to clean up his mess. Even in the end Snyder's plans for Superman have him inspiring jack shit, "Bruce Kent" goes on to be the next Batman, making Batman the one who inspires the next generation and sets the benchmark for everyone else to live up to. All that bullshit about how Superman "made us see the best part of ourselves" is exactly that: bullshit. Snyder's washed out gray wasteland of a world is the same miserable place as when Superman started, he's inspired no real change in the setting whatsoever. The world sucks and he can't make it better besides killing the shit out of a few monsters and rescuing some people.

Finally this supposed "arc" Superman was going through: what was it supposed to be? Learning killing was wrong? He killed Zod twice! He brutally mutilated Steppenwolf and expressed no emotion at Diana cutting his head off! Finding his place in the world? Where the hell does he end up at the end of Snyder's "arc"? The same damn place he started! No friends or loved ones outside his mom and Lois, except for fucking Batman because even when their first major interaction has Batman brutally torture him in the lead up to murdering him, having moms with the same name means they're best friends now. Snyder's "arc" fucking sucks and leaves us with a dogshit character who has to:

Catastrophically fuck up his debut and leave thousands of people dead

Kill off the only surviving members of his race because they're all intrinsically evil

Get his ass whipped by Batman and told how much he sucks, then go kill Zod again

Die

Get brought back and mutilate Steppenwolf

Turn evil after failing to stop Darkseid

Get rebooted by Flash so that he doesn't completely suck and doesn't turn on everyone

Kill Darkseid

Go raise his wife's son with the man who tried to fucking murder him, which she had sex with while his corpse was barely cold, so that his wife's son can one day take up the mantle of the guy who tried to murder him

Fuuuuuuuuck that "arc", if I had to choose between letting Snyder finish his arc and never seeing Superman on the big screen again, I'd kill Superman's film chances permanently in heartbeat. If you thought the DKR damaged Superman, this shit would've been the finishing blow. How the hell do you come back from being turned into a cuckold? Especially when ALL THE OTHER MAJOR SUPERMAN ADAPTIONS OUTSIDE COMICS MAKE HIM LOOK BAD TO SHILL BATMAN?

This take has been one long nightmare for me that just doesn't seem to end. Hopefully the Snyder Cut was the last of it, Cavill seems to be finished in the role and for that I'm grateful. I'd rather wait as long as I have to in order to get a proper Superman adaption over seeing someone try to build something worthwhile out of the ashes left from Snyder torching the franchise. Goodbye and good riddance to bad rubbish, that's my feelings on DCEU Superman.

#superman #dceu #zack snyder #henry cavill

33 notes · View notes