It's curious to me, how the general consensus among others when it comes to Chise's curses are "bad; we need to get rid of it (we just don't know how.)" Which, considering they are both curses made of pain and suffering, makes sense why someone wouldn't want to keep those around.
We (the audience) know vaguely how the curses interact with each other. The dragon's curse: made from strong emotions of anger and despair, provides Chise with her strength and durability against both magical and physical elements, at the cost of her own strength one day tearing herself apart. Cartaphilus' curse prevents her from dying, but offers no protection against injury or decay. Together they "keep each other in check"-- Cartaphilus will keep her alive, the dragon will keep her strong.
A lot of things have happened in the past arc that make it easy to forget the fundamentals of the first season. When the series started, Chise was a few steps away from walking off a roof. Even after she arrived in England, it took a long time before she decided that maybe life wasn't so bad. Her entire life up until that point had been nothing but misery; abandoned and alone, she had no one to protect her from the constant targeting and harassment by both fae and humans alike. She believed that the only way to escape her torment was through death... I think its a facet of her character that goes unfairly unrecognized a lot (especially after the first arc).
When she's in England and is going through her mental/psychological character development, she is still facing the imminent threat of her weak sleigh beggey body constantly failing her. Using magic exacerbates her condition, causing her to be sick and/or incapacitated for significant stretches of time. It's painful, it's uncomfortable, it's frustrating. By the time she realizes she wants to live, her clock is already running quite short.
Her solution is handed to her on a rusted platter. To be "just like everyone else", for once. Finally.
Going to school, hanging out with friends, using magic without it killing her-- all things shes never been able to do before. All thanks to the curses trapped in her. These things that should be considered a horribly tragic fate have now become her salvation. Both physically and mentally, she's the strongest and most resilient she's ever been. Yet, when faced with the idea of liberating herself from her curses...
The curses only work the way they do because they're in sync with each other. Taking away either curse would leave her vulnerable to the other-- the dragon's curse would slowly overwhelm her into a brutally agonizing death, while Cartaphilus' curse would leave her to live and suffer through the constant breaking down of her sleigh beggey body.
When told about the reality of her curses and just how severe they are (not just to her, but to the people around her), she doesn't seem to completely understand what that may mean for herself and her future. Or perhaps, she just doesn't care. After a life where pain and suffering was her "normal", she finally has the means to create something meaningful and positive out of herself. How could that possibly be a bad thing?
She understands on some level that these curses were only ever meant to be temporary. Elias' original goal, to keep Chise alive in spite of her sleigh beggey curse, has not changed. Tacking on two more curses was not a part of the plan, and though they've offered a temporary solution and some time, curses are called curses for a reason. They cannot be relied upon. They've got to go.
But getting rid of those curses (both, or either) essentially puts her back at square one. Back to the pain, discomfort, and illness. She probably won't be able to use magic without hurting herself, too. She's gained freedom in both mind and body for the first time in her life. Sure, she encounters a few hiccups, but considering what she's used to, this is a big step up.
Something has finally given her the power and freedom to spread her wings and fly. Would she be able to clip her own feathers just because that power is "supposed" to be "bad"?
Could she? Could you?
Through it all, everyone she's come across has appointed her curses as a problem. Everyone, except...
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ARTISTIC BOYFRIENDS .ᐟ
✩ — in which you're their muse in their respective specialties in art.
✩ — includes: kazuha, albedo, xiao x gn!reader. fluff i think,, it's nothing sad dw dw. no cws. wc: 594. writer!kazuha, painter!albedo (this is canon i know i js wanted 2 tag), photographer!xiao. reblogs and feedback are very much appreciated!
kazuha — !
anyone would be astonished at the way kazuha makes literature. there’s just something about his writing style that makes you go crazy in his works. the way he describes things and makes people envision it makes your head spin in a good and addicting way. there’s one thing that’s very noticeable in his works, it’s the way it would always be dedicated to someone.
you were the greatest thing to ever happen to him. it wasn’t like his life before he met you was dark (in fact, it was decent). it’s just that when he met you— when he fell in love with you, his life became brighter than ever.
small dates in the park with you laying on his lap while he comes up with random haikus that’d describe you. you honestly wonder how he can never run out of those flowery words that spill from his lips every time he writes.
kazuha wishes for this to never end. but if he were to lose you then he’d never fall in love again after that. it will always be you.
albedo — !
from small doodles from afar, to sketches of you on a restaurant’s tissue, and now to a canvas where colors would show how they can express the way albedo views you. enchanting.
if the two of you had free time together you’d often hang out in an art studio. always bringing coffee together while you giggle quietly to each other on the way there. flowers in hand (that was picked up before you went to the studio, albedo said he had an idea for a painting).
“‘bedo?” you call him and he answers with a hum. “don’t you ever get tired of painting me?” you asked him. albedo put the paintbrush in hand down and walked towards you who’s sitting on a stool not far from him. he said your name softly while stroking your face and tucking a strand of your hair behind your ear.
“i’ll never get tired of painting you. even if my hands were to be bruised and tired, i’ll never stop painting you.”
xiao — !
late night walks around the city hand in hand, driving to visit views that no one has dared to see at night, that’s how you and xiao spend time.
polaroid pictures were your favorite. so xiao would always bring a polaroid camera with him. taking stolen shots of you, some shots with you posing in a silly way, and shots where you just looked… peaceful and pretty.
a polaroid love is what you have. making notes on polaroid pictures while hanging them around at your place, making cute little doodles on them which eventually turns into you and xiao running around trying to draw on each other.
he loves your smile, it makes him smile too. if you’d ask him “why are you smiling?” he would reply with “since i got to see you. you put a smile on my face.” although it was cheesy, for him, there’s just something about the way you smile. it’s comforting.
xiao was scared at first, because he realized that he loves you more than he thinks. he falls in love with you over and over again, as much as it’s a bit exaggerating to hear. the more he gets clingy, touchy, and affectionate, xiao knows he’s falling even deeper.
he scooted closer to you, arms on your waist and face on the crook of your neck. “i love you so much.” he murmured against your skin. “i love you more, xiao.”
“i love you most.”
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PLEASE PLEASE TALK ABOUT THE LEGENDS ARCEUS AU I'M SO NORMAL ABOUT IT <- LYING I AM NOT NORMAL
HI WE'LL BOTH BE NORMAL TOGETHER
(uhm warning for injury/blood/whump, parental death, uhhhhhhhhh fire? a lot happens (also idk if the read more thing has been fixed so let's pray. i refuse to smack these long ass paragraphs in front of innocent bystanders (this is so long. im so sorry)))
ok so reigen is the professor of the galaxy expedition team and u may be wondering how he got that job: lying :)! he claims he knows everything abt pokemon and that he's been studying them his whole life when in reality he's not even totally sure how many pkmn types there are. granted, the rest of the team doesn't either, so his ability to bluff himself out of any given situation is massively helped by their cluelessness
he just wants to sleep in a bed with blankets and eat food to survive and lying into the professor position was the quickest way he saw to get there. he'd been wandering in the wilderness for a while since coming to hisui before that and it kinda sucked. bro just wants a house in this crippling economy
mob n ritsu were originally from another village! they don't meet reigen until mob is 9 (ritsu 8). there's no powers in this au but mob's whole shtick is that he takes the,, extreme pacifist route i guess? he thinks pokemon r to be respected and loved and Not Bothered and he's against the use of pokeballs to store them and commanding them to battle each other, etc. essentially if he were in a modern era he'd think the way present-time people treat pkmn is, for the most part, cruel
anyway their hometown gets attacked by pkmn and the village is destroyed. their parents die protecting them, so 9-year-old mob was left to fend for himself n his little brother alone. they travel together kinda aimlessly for 7ish months until they get remarkably (unknowingly) close to jubilife village and come across that giant fuckin rapidash before the bridge
it's their first alpha pkmn encounter. neither of them have pkmn to defend themselves with (mob's reason: he ain't like that. ritsu's reason: He Is Eight and Scared). mob has always been able to empathize w pkmn a lot and sorta get a read on what they're thinking, so the vibes comin off that rapidash were rancid and he was worried abt it. mob has never been afraid of pkmn, not even the rly big and scary looking ones. so he approaches it with the intention of calming it down, seeing what's hurting it. he makes ritsu stay back in case things go bad
he's kicked in the head. if u forgot how big that rapidash is just google it. the hooves r the size of ur player character's head and ur player character is like 15. mob is 9. the fact that he doesn't die immediately upon impact is a miracle. the fact that he survives longer than 5 seconds after the fact is basically divine intervention
the doodle i made in the top left corner of ritsu screaming is this ^ encounter. he watches it happen, and then watches in horror more as the rapidash panics at ritsu's scream and rolls a flame wheel over his brother's limp form. ritsu manages to dive for him and run, but the kid is thoroughly terrified and traumatized
i'll spare u the horrid bits but long story short ritsu finds a cave to settle in and while he's rly inexperienced with medical treatment he does his best. his best isn't very good in the grand scheme of things but him being 8 is a pretty damn good excuse. he camps out there for Three Whole Days waiting for his brother to wake up or respond to literally anything but it isn't happening and the longer this goes on for the more terrified ritsu gets
mob's taught him how to survive pretty well all things considered, but ritsu is a lot more worried abt mob than taking care of himself and he ends up neglecting his own needs pretty fiercely. he feels too sick w guilt/fear to eat. he tries to stay up as long as he can in case mob stirs. by the end of it he's pretty worse for wear too
reigen finds them while out in the field doing research (wasting time). he sees a little kid half stuck in a bush looking for berries and when reigen tries to get his attention ritsu, who is extremely on edge and sleep deprived and scared, just straight up screams at him. reigen sees his dirty clothes and skinny arms and flushed face (fever. definitely fever) and alarm bells ring in his head to not let the kid go no matter what cuz he Will lose him otherwise
once ritsu gets his bearings and realizes this is a human (first one other than mob he's seen in forever) and not a pokemon coming to kill him he starts crying to him abt his brother and reigen feels his heart drop to his stomach bc if This kid is worried about a brother who is supposedly worse off,,, dear god
ritsu leads reigen to mob. the dressings around his arm where he was burnt are completely incorrect and most definitely horribly infected and ritsu didn't rly do Anything for the head injury other than clean the blood away bc well. again. he's 8. idek if eight year olds know what concussions are
reigen BOOKS it back to jubilife faster than he's ever ran and halfway through he realizes ritsu has passed out in his arms too (kid's probably exhausted beyond belief. reigen has no idea how long they've been like this but he guesses a while) everybody in the village is kinda horrified when the professor comes back with two hurt kids, one of which is on death's door. the medical team there does everything they can
it takes a while for mob to wake up, but thankfully he does in the end. reigen finds out thru ritsu that they've been alone for "a long time" (ritsu doesn't know. doesn't rly remember. reigen asks mob when he wakes up and mob says he stopped counting somewhere after day 140)
even though mob still isn't quite back to his old self and is still generally confused and Slightly Off, the doctors say he'll be okay after a few weeks and reigen has unintentionally gotten very attached to these kids. ritsu had told him their parents died during the attack on their village. they have nowhere else to go, and like hell is Any member of this village gonna be happy with simply throwing them out into the wilderness again. so reigen takes them in
anyway that's how they meet <3 GVEYAI mob is back to his normal self (the occasional Moment of Confusion comes around from the brain injury, but they taper off after a while) and reigen is very much surprised to see that mob, as ritsu has described to him, still very much loves every pkmn he comes across. he gets a bit nervous around rapidashes in particular, but other than that, mob is still just as caring and just as respectful as ritsu described him to be. ritsu is scared of bigger pkmn like any other kid is. mob is an exception, even after that experience.
reigen waits about a year so that they have time to settle and recover (and so that he has time to observe), and then he gives them each a pokemon. this might seem odd, but mob has never expressed any ill will toward Any pkmn, and ritsu still smiles at the smaller ones
he gives them a choice between the pla starters that have been hanging around his office. mob picks cyndaquil and names her cindy. ritsu picks rowlet and doesn't name him at all (this gives reigen pause, but ritsu seems to have a new fire in his eyes, so he brushes the worry away)
when they're of age (mob waits for ritsu to reach 13. they do everything together) they both join the survery corps, and mob ends up becoming reigen's assistant :]! reigen is admittedly a little worried abt this development, about his kids going out into the wild, but they both seem ready for it (ritsu seems ... a little Too ready for it considering his past) so he relents
mob has made his opinions about pkmn clear, especially to reigen, and reigen has ended up adopting some of his ideals since he met him bc they,, well thwy sound reasonable. they sound nice. mob doesn't ever put cindy in a pokeball, and cindy had never once been in a battle other than play fights with rowlet. mob treats cindy like any other normal pet, like a friend. he looks at those boxes of pokeballs in reigen's office with a frown. he finds the idea of fighting pkmn in the wild for sport despicable. he openly scratches out the pokedex tasks like "defeat 10 times" with disdain. reigen starts seeing another world that he never rly considered before, with mob
this is where reigen senses some,,, tension, between the boys. ritsu evolves his rowlet into a dartrix remarkably quickly since joining the survey corps, and not even a few weeks later he's a got decidueye on his side. ritsu catches pokemon left and right and if they're "not strong enough" he keeps them in pokeballs until he remembers they exist again. he works on building a team with no weaknesses, or as few weaknesses as possible. bro invents competitive pkmn
obviously, mob sees this and ,,, doesn't like it. he doesn't like how Distant ritsu is with his pokemon, with creatures that he wholeheartedly believes should be treated as friends or family. he doesn't name any of them, he spends nearly all his earned money from the survey corps on items that boost their strength, but almost no money toward items for comfort, or even treats, or toys. ritsu treats his team like they're tools. the relationship between ritsu and his pkmn is,, strained. mob can sense they aren't nearly as happy as they could be
but mob knows that he can't just,, police ritsu on how he should handle his own pokemon. he may not agree with how ritsu approaches the subject, or with how ritsu's first instinct for anything pkmn is usually "fight it," but mob knows ritsu Does like pkmn. ritsu's never hated pkmn, he's just,,, scared of them, sometimes. he thinks maybe this is his way of making himself feel protected. mob doesn't like the idea of taking that away from him, no matter how much seeing ritsu refrain from giving his team a break grinds on his soul
little does he know, ritsu's strictness with his pkmn isn't born out of a fear for himself at all. he's building a dependable team to protect his brother. that's the whole reason he's doing this, the whole reason he didn't name rowlet when he first got him. ritsu knew that if he were to do this, he couldn't get attached to them, bc losing pokemon in fights is a very real possibility. it's been drilled into each and every one of his pkmn's heads that they r to protect mob at all costs. if there's a repeat of That incident, ritsu doesn't think he can handle it (>:])
WOW THIS IS ALREADY SO LONG i haven't even gotten to the kleavor part yet. fuck. if ur still reading this can i have ur hand in marriage /silly
OKAY SO . The Game's Plot comes in, finally. took long enough. reigen starts getting reports of frenzied nobles and he's most worried abt kleavor bc it's rather close to them, and the village could very well be in danger if kleavor decides to say fuck you in particular. so reigen goes Hey This is an Actual Threat That Needs My Attention I Have to be Competent For a Sec and spends the next few weeks tirelessly searching for an answer for this kleavor. some of the staff have already gotten mauled by it. reigen cannot ignore this and put it on somebody else like he usually does
the whole town is getting antsy, and mob most definitely notices. ritsu's jumpy all the time anymore, like he expects kleavor to rampage through the streets any second now. reigen looks tired and worn down, and he's been coming home later and later. mob watches as reigen makes plans to use force against kleavor with a sour taste in his mouth. he tries to tell reigen that force isn't the answer here. reigen, bless him, doesn't know how to tell a kid that friendship and rainbows isn't always the answer
after another week or so, mob's had enough. they've gotten nowhere closer to calming kleavor and more people have gotten injured, so mob quietly writes a note and leaves it on his bed, makes sure he doesn't wake up ritsu or cindy, and leaves the house before reigen comes home. he sneaks out over the fence so the guards at the gate don't catch him. he sets off to go see kleavor
he fully and truly believes that force is not the answer. he fully and truly believes that if he goes up to kleavor with no pokemon to fight it with, no weapons or spears pointed at it, and just a calm voice and peaceful demeanor, kleavor will see there is no danger. the galaxy team's previous attempts have all centered around violence and scare tactics. nobody has recently come up to its territory without posing a threat. mob genuinely just thinks that kleavor needs calm
reigen finds the note. freaks the fuck out. immediately rounds up every person in the village that's capable of fighting and they march out of the village to save a kid who's in way over his head. reigen makes ritsu Promise him that he will not leave the village. he can see it in ritsu's eyes, the way he wants nothing more than the come with them, but reigen gives the argument that ritsu is their strongest soldier back home and they still need to protect the village from anything else while everybody's gone. it takes all of ritsu's self-control to not go against him (he's fully set on coming with them until reigen Grips him by the arms and says "i can't lose both of you.")
mob's plan does end up working in the end, but not quite perfectly and not at all in a good way. he steps into kleavor's territory and has it calm at first, but smth changes in kleavor's eyes and whatever Force that's corrupting it surges and kleavor snaps.
mob gets Fucked Up by that thing. sliced and thrown and clawed until he can barely stand up to run away, but it's the last blow that matters. kleavor comes down on him with a chop right to his middle and everything stops. there's a sizeable gash that cuts through mob's side horizontally and kleavor's axe is stuck in the flesh there, but once mob isn't moving anymore and nothing is making kleavor afraid, the fog in its brain clears and it sees what it's done
it also sees that mob is still awake, and despite everything kleavor did to him, he's still looking at it like he knows its capacity for gentleness. even through the pain mob looks at kleavor like he Knows this isn't what it's rly like. and as soon as mob sees the light return to kleavor's eyes he smiles, blood gurgling in his throat
kleavor hears shouts from the forest, sees torchlight and panicked yells for mob. it doesn't know what to do, don't like what it sees, what it Did to this poor kid. it winces when it has to slide its axe out from the gash in mob's side—the squelch it makes and the Noise mob lets out is the last thing kleavor needs to book it
u can only imagine how fuckin hysterical reigen feels when he sees mob on the ground like that. they brought half of the medical team just in case and reigen is rly glad they did bc if they didn't there's a good chance mob would've bled out right there within a few minutes.
he's in rly rly bad shape and is barely conscious by the time reigen grabs his face and tells him itll be okay. they bring him back to the village at record pace and every minute they take he looks paler. reigen is so scared the kid's going to die in his arms before they even get there
when they get to the gates someone from the medical team takes him from reigen's arms. reigen hears ritsu scream. the kid's shoving people away who're trying to comfort him and beelining his way to mob, but reigen catches him before he can fully see the damage bc he does Not want that bloody mess to be in ritsu's nightmares for the rest of his life
ritsu fights him and pushes him and shoves him away, screaming that he just wants to see his brother, but reigen holds him back and he ends up pulling ritsu close when the kid loses steam and just starts sobbing into his chest
to ritsu, he's failed again. to reigen, he's failed them both. to mob, despite holding onto the living world by a thread, he succeeded.
anyway that's the story so far VGEAYVUA I HAVEN'T .. FIGURED OUT TERU YET. or dimple. i know the gist of i how i want teru and mob's meeting to go tho. teru is just like ritsu but like . Worse when it comes to pokemon. uses them as tools and doesn't even rly think of them as sentient at all. until he meets mob that is :]
i'm thinkin he's the warden of sneasler! and yaknow what, just for shits n giggles and bc i love ingo too much to get rid of him, what if ingo is teru's unofficial teacher. what if. wouldn't that be fuckin hilarious and completely ruin any sense of consistency here. what if (it's happening)
i'm also pretty set on making dimple one of the wisps from the spiritomb quest that ends up following mob around. that's fitting i think
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