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zurajanaizurakoda · 4 months

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So, I decided to write the Katsura side of Big Spoon, wrote like 8k words in one day, and then crashed.

A week later I had a discussion where I realized I was sleeping on Katsura's unhoused period. Like, the onigiri thing is probably food insecurity, right? That fucks you up as a kid. He must have been using his own resources to make food, even as a poor orphan, because he knew what it was like to starve and have no one care enough to feed you, and he does it without prompting because he's got his pride and it's humiliating as shit to beg for food so he wants people to have the food without having to ask. And of course Gintoki the corpse robber would pick up on that shit immediately and understand "hey, this kid's seen some shit."

and I wrote this sequence, and I didn't like it, and I crashed again and stopped writing. I think it's interesting, though, I don't know how unhoused people were treated in ye olde Japan so it's more based on modern outlooks and prejudices, but it encapsulates what I think about that period of his life. Vaguely Ginzura, but they're kids so it's nothing really. And canonly his classmates did complain he reeked of poverty.

One last thing animals seek warmth do you think he ever woke up with random strays curled on him on cold mornings. Do you think that's part of why he likes them so much FEEL SAD ABOUT BLORBO

If you think about it his obsession with the umai sticks could also be food insecurity

One day Gintoki sat down next to him out of nowhere when he was resting by himself on a log far behind the school, just thinking. It was a favorite pastime of his, and normally he would be annoyed with the company, but Gintoki was Gintoki and you couldn’t expect him to behave like other people. The other boy just flopped down like he’d been specifically summoned and pulled out a parcel wrapped in bamboo leaves. He untied the string around it to reveal two onigiri, offering one without comment. Katsura looked down at it, and then back up at the boy. “What is this?”

“Onigiri, with plums. You like those, right?” he asked without making eye contact. “I don’t like plums. You eat this one.” He shoved half of the other one in his mouth messily. “Don’t worry, there’s nothing weird in them or anything. We just got them from the lady next door.” He shoved the onigiri roughly in the other boy’s direction. Katsura looked at it again without taking it, and Gintoki sighed. He looked down like he was trying to gather courage, or maybe just keep from losing his temper. “You were homeless, right? When you were young. One of the other boys was laughing about it. How was it?”

Katsura considered the question and the boy asking it. He was no stranger to being ridiculed about his life situations, but somehow he felt like Gintoki was being sincere. He knew enough about Gintoki’s past to understand that the silver haired boy’s life had been much worse than his own. It wasn’t something he was fond of talking about, but it was more out of a sense of privacy than shame. It wasn’t something other people readily understood, they responded with disgust or sympathy and Katsura wanted neither of those things. With Gintoki, however, he felt like there would be genuine understanding. He stared straight ahead and explained like he was reciting an old tale: “I lived with my grandmother, out by the graveyard. There was a bamboo grove nearby where people threw trash, and we stayed there most of the time. People didn’t care about it so no one made us leave. For a while there were tatami mats thrown out by a local restaurant, and we slept on those. I always associate the smell of sesame oil with the bamboo grove. Other times we slept on the ground.” He stared down at his feet, and felt warm. They were difficult times, but he hadn’t been unhappy. He’d had his grandma, and they had visited his parents every day. He’d had people he cared about to talk to. “Sometimes there were other people or families, but if there got to be too many of us together the authorities would run everyone out.” Gintoki nodded without comment. “I didn’t mind living there, though, there was a river nearby that we could wash at. It wasn’t so bad. Not like it was with you.”

“The town burned the tatami mats because you were sleeping on them, didn’t they? It was unhygienic, they probably said.”

“How did you-” Katsura stopped. Of course he knew, he’d lived the same way. “Yes they did. I had a few books I’d left behind and they burned those too. You had to keep things with you if you wanted to keep them. Books were so hard to get, too.”

“Where did you steal food from?” Gintoki asked in the same bored voice.

“We never stole!” Katsura replied, eyes wide. “I would never! It goes against bushido! I could never!” He was surprised that Gintoki would even suggest it. Had he given the impression of having such loose morals?

“Whatever. Bushido is bullshit when you’re hungry.” Gintoki said with a frown. “What did you eat?”

“We… we got food from some of the local houses, or sometimes from a nearby temple.” Katsura explained. “There was a monk who would give me buns if I recited scriptures. Sometimes there were leftovers behind some of the restaurants. Sometimes…” he paused, remembering how shameful it was that they had fallen to such circumstances. “Sometimes my grandmother would ask people for food. She had always said that the head of the Katsura household shouldn’t be reduced to begging, but sometimes… she would.”

“Bet the restaurants dumped the food in the dirt to keep people out of them.” Again, the other boy wasn’t wrong. “What did you do when no one would help?” Gintoki seemed even more angry, for some reason.

Katsura furrowed his brow. It would be useless to deny that it happened, not with someone like Gintoki. “We went to bed hungry sometimes. It wasn’t uncommon. Sometimes life is like that.” Gintoki was silent, and he leaned forward. “But there were a lot of good people. Didn’t people give you food when you were homeless?”

“Hell no, people were assholes. I was a demon, remember? They’d throw stuff if they caught me hanging around. I never asked anyway. Why should I care? They can live without a little. I stole every day, and I’m as strong a samurai as you are now.” he nudged the other boy. “Did they throw things at you?”

“Not… very often.” His hand went to a spot on the back of his head where there was a small ridge of scar that hair never quite grew back around. He chose to see the good in people, but he would never forget that there was bad.

“But they did, right? They called you names? Ran you out like you were stinking up the place?”

“Sometimes, Gintoki, but most people were nice. And when they weren’t… it was okay.” Okay was perhaps a bit of a stretch, but he’d long since made peace with those days.

“It wasn’t okay, Zura, and you shouldn’t have starved. You should have taken what you needed, and when people called you things, you should have called them things right back. When people hurt you, you should hurt them back. You shouldn’t have to have someone else get angry for you.”

“It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura, and that’s not how a general should behave. How I behave reflects on more than just me.”

“That’s stupid, and you’re stupid.” Gintoki replied in a huff. “That’s why you’re always getting picked on. You should fight.”

Katsura looked down at his feet again, and this time he felt a little lost. He didn’t need Gintoki’s support in the matter, but it was something that he would have liked to have had. He felt strangely alone, knowing the other boy disagreed with him. “We deal with things very differently, Gintoki,” he finally said.

There was a long pause. “You need to take care of yourself, you won’t always have friends…"

"I've spent a lot of my life without friends, I don't need you to tell me I won't have them. I'm okay on my own." Katsura didn’t even try to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

"That's not what I meant," Gintoki protested, and he genuinely sounded a little hurt. "I meant you need to stick up for yourself. I know you’re strong enough to do it. I bet even Sensei would look the other way.”

“It’s not something I’m interested in doing.”

“Fine. Look, getting bullied is one thing…” Gintoki said, and then dropped his head back between his shoulders as if making a decision. “But being hungry is something else. If you’re hungry, come to me. You don’t have to steal if you come to me. I’ll get you food, I promise. So don’t let yourself starve.”

Katsura turned, “why are you-”

“-It’s because you know what it’s like to be hungry. That’s why you do the onigiri thing. Because you know what it’s like to go to bed hungry and wake up hungry. People tease you because they think you’re such a crybaby, but it’s because you’ve known what it’s like. Those jerks think hunger is missing lunch, they’ve never chewed on scraps of leather just to have something in your mouth. They don’t get when you’re trying to trick your stomach into thinking it’s eating because you know there’s no food today. You don’t have to worry about what they say because you’ve been there and they haven’t. That’s why you’re stronger than they are, Zura. That’s why you should fight and not worry about being proper. You’re better than them.”

"Sometimes I would chew on twigs, just to have the taste of something in my mouth." Gintoki nodded encouragingly. "But I don't let people bully me because I think they're stronger than me. I know I'm stronger than them, that's why I should be the one who shows restraint."

"I still think it's stupid," Gintoki muttered, but then he smiled. "But I guess if you're too stubborn to fight back, that's better than being too mopey to fight back. You're weird as hell, but you're not weak." He reached over and tucked a stray strand of hair behind the other boy's ear. It seemed natural, but after a second Gintoki flushed slightly and slapped his shoulder. "Your hair is stupid, too." He crossed his arms, looking straight ahead.

There was a long silence, and then Katsura hesitantly reached for his hand. “Before Sensei found you…”

“I don’t remember,” Gintoki returned, looking away and picking his nose.

“You at least remember what it’s like to starve.” Katsura pressed.

“-And someday I won’t. I’ll forget everything bad that ever happened to me. I probably won’t remember this conversation next week. I definitely won’t remember the onigiri. There’s nothing you can do about the past. Someday we may not be friends anymore, and maybe I’ll forget all together that there ever was a mopey kid named Kotarou Zura. But while we’re here, I won’t let them hurt you, and I won’t let you starve. You're my friend.”

Katsura’s hands clenched on Gintoki’s hand on the trunk beside him. “I’ll never forget you, Gintoki. You’ll never be alone again, because you’ll always have me. Even if we move on, and even if you forget me, I’ll always remember you.”

Gintokii chuckled. “You stupid sap,” he said affectionately, smacking the back of his head. “You’ll find someone else’s wife and you’ll have a dozen kids and do wherever the hell generals do. You’ll be someone too important to worry about little demons.”

“Even then, I won’t forget, I promise.” Gintoki just looked away, but in that moment, Katsura made a promise to himself. As long as he was alive, there would be at least one person who believed that Gintoki Sakata was a good person. One person who knew.

He heard yelling from over the hill. “And that’s my cue to leave!” Gintoki called lightly, slipping off the log. “I’d get out of sight, just in case. And eat the onigiri, they can’t pin anything on you once the evidence is gone!”

“Did… did you steal these?!” Katsura screamed in disbelief.

“Outta the way, Zura!” Gintoki yelled, escaping in a flash. Katsura blinked a few times in shock, then hid under a bush as the other kids rounded the hilltop.

“Gintoki went this way, right?”

“-He punched Ito out cold! One blow!”

“Sensei is so gonna kill him!”

“It was like they were laughing like always, and then Ito said one thing about Katsura and he flipped! I didn’t think they were even that good of friends!”

“Boys, boys!” Sensei called. “Fighting is bad, but gossiping doesn’t help! Gintoki will receive the punishment owed to him, so why don’t you all just wait back at the dojo?” Sensei stopped a little too close to the bush Katsura was hiding behind for it to be accidental. “And we can all see this as a lesson, right? The circumstances of Katsura’s birth are nothing to laugh at. Neither, I think, are Gintoki’s.” He led the group off in the other direction.

Katsura looked at the onigiri in his hands like it was a bloody knife. In all his years, he’d never stolen anything. If he’d found a wallet on the ground, it would never occur to him to check it for money before he turned it in to authorities. It went against the fiber of his being. Gintoki must have realized that… but it was a gift from Gintoki, and it wasn’t like he could give it back without admitting his complicity in things…

Corruption tasted surprisingly good.

#gintama #katsura kotarou #sakata gintoki #ginzura #just a little though #the overall fic is very ginzura

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mystery-moose · 10 days

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Chapters: 4/7 Fandom: SPY x FAMILY (Manga), SPY x FAMILY (Anime) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Loid Forger | Twilight/Yor Briar Forger | Thorn Princess Characters: Loid Forger | Twilight, Yor Briar Forger | Thorn Princess Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Mutual Pining, Blood and Injury, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst Summary: The first time they meet is a coincidence. The connection they make is incidental. The relationship that follows is a rarity. How it ends (or doesn’t) isn’t up for debate.

A spy and an assassin, together? Stranger things have happened.

#spy x family #twiyor #my writing #it's time for things to get a little more Serious gang #just a little though #(for now)

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tongues--and--teeth · 7 months

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Fuck i fucking love your art smmmm

Berserk boi

QUICK GIVE ME ALL YOUR BERSERK CACAOO HCSSS

Oh my god! Thank you so much! This totally made my day <33333

I'm so sorry this took so long, I've been really busy lately :(

(TW for gore mention)

So actually I headcanon that his berserk form is connected to his soul jam. Kind of like a little side effect. Y'know what use is a sword if not to harm others? If not to shed blood? (and also this sword hurts its owner too!) and it's the soul jam of resolution which is also dictionary definition, literally a firm decision that you're unwavering in. If Dark Cacao ever goes back on his decision to take the sword, guess what! He goes berserk until it consumes all of his life force and kills him. woo.

He used to be able to control the berserk form a little, being able to turn partially into it to fight and stuff. He did lose the power to do so as he got older. Turning into his half-form and full form basically torturing him every time he tried to use it. It also completely removes pretty much all mental capacity for intelligent thought, so he can't use it in a "productive" way even if he wanted to. Basically just blind destruction with no distinction between friend or foe.

(^that's actually the concept for the drawing you saw)

Personally, I have his berserk form more or less as kind of an allegory for illness, a physical manifestation of internal pain. He was making it a fuel to keep going instead of actually confronting the “bad stuff” that happened. He was taking how it hurt him and using that to keep going, instead of confronting it head-on and getting it to stop hurting him. Eventually, he couldn't keep doing this, it was destroying him and he was losing control. So now, he couldn’t use it for anything, aka, his pain isn't useful anymore. Anyway, he does still transform into his berserk form (albeit unintentionally) but only during times of extreme stress and triggers like certain sounds, textures, and tastes. It's also triggered through more physical means, if he stands too long his legs start turning to smoke, if he fights too long his eyes glow white, it's torture every time. In very special cases (Pomegranate Cookie) he goes full berserk, it usually takes him out for weeks, unable to do much, hardly able to take care of himself, much less able to make himself useful as a king or as a warrior.

Actually, after he stopped going berserk back in book 14, I think he was cut open pretty much everywhere underneath his armor. His guts were spilling out, and were barely contained by his armor. It basically cut him almost completely in half. He still managed to fight afterwards, obviously at great personal cost, but he was still able to fight. Weeks after, he could barely move, he was stuck in bed, and even small things like sitting up were a huge struggle. The only reason he's not dead is because of his soul jam, the same reason he was cursed in the first place. His immortality at the cost of eternal suffering and the like.

After book 14, he forces enough energy to attend the council of heroes (AKA Cookie Odyssey chapter 1) but the smallest things keep setting him off, turning him slightly berserk every time. He is spending every second he can lying down in his tent. It prevents his wounds from healing, and it also keeps him from thinking clearly. When he tried killing Clotted Cream the, admittedly very little, healing that was done was immediately reversed. He ended up barely functioning, with the only reason he was able to continue with the council was because Hollyberry noticed him limping and had Pure Vanilla heal him. Which only did so much, because it’s…A curse that's both caused by and stopped by his immortality, and you can't just fix that without probably killing him instantly. So, he doesn’t have a permanent solution, and he’s stuck with this until the end of time.

Thank you again for the ask. It was really fun to do! Sorry again for taking so long to finish it :(

#gore mention tw #death mention tw #Just a little though #dark cacao crk #dark cacao cookie #dark cacao kingdom #Crk #cr kingdom #cookie run au

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inotart · 4 months

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Pretty bananas if I say so myself

#art #oc #blood #just a little though #reptile

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cissa-calls · 1 year

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Countdown to Coven of Chaos: Day 372

*Wanda, Y/N, and Agatha: *watching the oscars*

Y/N: “Hey Wanda…that actress kinda looks like you!”

Wanda: “Nah, I don’t see it…maybe a little bit”

Agatha: “It’s kinda scary actually, you sure that’s not your twin?”

Wanda: “As far as I know, I only ever had one twin, remember?”

Agatha: Ohhhh yeahhhhh, I almost forgot! The one that I tried to resurrect but couldn’t because his body was halfway around the world so I made Fietro!”

Wanda: “…I sure didn’t fecking forget”

#anyways Lizzie looked GORGEOUS tonight #absolutely ethereal stunning babes #anyways I screamed when I saw her #just a little though #agatha harkness #wandavision #house of harkness #agatha all along #house of harkness counter #hahndavision #marvel #wanda maximoff #agatha harkness x reader #wanda maximoff x reader #wagatha #wanda x agatha #coven of chaos #coven of chaos counter #incorrect marvel quotes

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delisae · 1 year

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As much as I love friends to lovers Julieta and Agustín, them being enemies to lovers is just making me feel things.

#encanto #julieta madrigal #agustín madrigal #julieta x agustín #agustín x julieta #i re read planetundersiege's fanfic about it and i had butterflies #i need a full story of it #like they hate each other for some reason #but i know damn well they'd be looking for each other in a room full of people #he surely teased her all the time but the second someone else did it he would get jealous and tell them to leave her #my man hated them partners of hers #Julieta is obv jealous too but she hide it better him #just a little though #because my girl had competition #or any other context but like enemies to lovers 🤭

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nexthenecromancer · 6 months

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Happy ace week to the best character to ever grace the audio drama community

Art by @aro-cecil-kanagawa :)

#insert Aster screaming that their asexual #also the one time she screamed about pronouns #live laugh aster folt #i want to hug them #and also claw off her face #just a little though #asexual #ace #aster folt either #either podcast #audio drama #aster folt

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ddrqoyote · 7 months

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people keep saying gear 5 is bad cause it turns luffy from a regular guy who made it this far with hard work into another chosen one. ignoring that that was never really true (related to garp and dragon, chosen by shanks and trained by rayleigh, has the will of D, etc), it makes me think of one of the biggest tensions in shonen.

there isn't really a thesis to what you're gonna read, i'm just rambling on something i think about a lot lately.

people want a self-made man for the lead that anyone could see themselves becoming. people also want a world-beater who can stop established, global evils with nothing but a small group of friends, and it needs to happen relatively quickly cause no one but hindu monks wants a story 5000 chapters long. and honestly, it doesn't feel real to have both. anyone who's been around the block a couple times knows that's not how the world works. it's not that easy to dismantle, no one can just stomp through the world like godzilla and knock all the bad stuff down. even kings and dictators can't do that.

i think most older shonen fans know all that, we're not dumb, we just don't like it.

there's this book of wwii superhero comics called "the great comic book heroes". the writer, jules feiffer, grew up on them in the 30s and worked on them* during the 40s and 50s. he talks a lot in the book about how he saw the earliest superheroes growing up.

*assistant to eisner on the original spirit run and wrote the last couple years. though he's probably better-known as a pulitzer-winning cartoonist, author and playwright. also illustrated the phantom tollbooth.

"The problem in pre-super days was that, with few exceptions, heroes were not very interesting. And, by any realistic appraisal, certainly no match for the villains who were bigger, stronger, smarter (as who wasn’t?), and even worse, were notorious scene stealers... Villains, whatever fate befell them in the obligatory last panel, were infinitely better equipped than those silly, hapless heroes. Not only comics, but life taught us that. Those of us raised in ghetto neighborhoods were being asked to believe that crime didn’t pay? Tell that to the butcher! Nice guys finished last; landlords, first. Villains by their simple appointment to the role were miles ahead. It was not to be believed that any ordinary human could combat them. More was required. Someone with a call. When at last appeared, he brought with him the deep satisfaction of all underground truths: our reaction was less “How original!” than “But, of course! The advent of the super-hero was a bizarre comeuppance for the American dream. Horatio Alger could no longer make it on his own. He needed “Shazam!” Here was fantasy with a cynically realistic base: once the odds were appraised honestly it was apparent you had to be super to get on in this world."

the rest of the essay is here if you want to read something about superheroes that isn't "they're the modern mythology (for the 1% of people who read comics)!" or "superheroes are shit even though i make a living writing them, because i'm british!"

but basically a big reason these superpowered characters exist is because real people CAN'T do the things they do. we can learn from them, we can strive to have as much integrity as them, but we can't enforce decency on the world or save everyone from the bullshit that happens to them, even the people we care about (i've tried saving people, believe me, it doesn't work).

i'm not trying to crap on shonen or superheroes, i'm just less and less sure what to do with them these days cause they're a huge part of my life and now they feel less real than when i was younger. i know they don't have to reflect reality for me to enjoy them and it's pretty silly to expect that, but... i don't know. sometimes i feel like i've totally run away from reality and i don't like that about myself. it feels like my life's empty sometimes. and i don't like how socially acceptable that's become either. every time i hear people talk about irl "character development" or "i'm in my [x] arc" or something similar, or some youtuber says "here are the characters in this story [that really happened]", i don't like it. call me a boomer but it worries me.

#one piece #shonen #battle manga #jules feiffer #i feel like there are more relevant tags but idk what they are #young man yells at cloud #just a little though

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