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obsessedtomone · 3 months

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Unravel Yourself Before Me ⛓️ Chapter 13 - New Itinerary▸Shigaraki x femReader

Chapter Summary:

◤Nothing would make you happier than to wipe his smug ass grin off his fucking face, but alas.

For no other reason than to be a brat, you pick a seat that leaves exactly two spots empty between the two of you and slam your bag against the desk. It works and his arrogant face momentarily drops into one of annoyance, but to your dismay, he quickly recovers.

“Move your ass next to me or you’ll regret it.”

“Oh, yeah? Try me,” you say with a ragged voice and drop on your seat, completely done with the world. ◢ Setting: University AU - No quirks (unless degenerate personalities count) Tags: Slow burn, Eventual Smut, Very Unhealthy/Toxic Relationships, Humiliation, Mentally Ill Reader, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to ??? Warning: Dead Dove – Do Not Eat | Mind the tags TW: Implied Su/Self H, Dubcon, Past Child Abuse, Bullying, Reader has a super shitty past like actually, Shigaraki Tomura is his own warning.

AO3 Crosspost | Chain Divider by firefly-graphics

Chapters: One • Two • Three • Four • Five • Six • Seven • Eight • Nine • Ten(ko) • Eleven • Twelve • Thirteen • Fourteen Updates every Monday!

Chapter 13 - New Itinerary

Everything seems to bother you nowadays.

No matter how hard you try to take some of the heavy load off of your shoulders, things only seem to stack up for you.

They stack and stack, continuously falling on top of each other, until there’s a tower of them, reaching well into the sky, beyond anyone’s reach and thus rendering it impossible for you to manage.

Days were getting cold.

The air pollution was hurting your nose.

The traffic on the main street was loud and obnoxious.

Parents are screaming at their kids and blocking the sidewalk.

Your sneakers were squeaking against the wintry dry pavement.

Shigaraki was fucking holding you in a hostage relationship.

Assignments were piling up and you were falling behind.

The hangover was causing waves of nausea.

Your body was feeling heavy.

You’re used to it, knowing full well this won’t be the last time shit goes wrong in your life.

The remainder of last night was spent puking your guts into the toilet and crying until thin blood vessels formed on the surface of your sclera, creating webbings that were now burning your eyelids every single time they closed.

You’re used to it but fuck if you weren’t tired. Really tired.

Yet you keep walking ahead, surviving ten seconds at a time and letting the late morning air wash over you. So how long will you be able to keep this up? You blow your warm breath over your cold fingers, thinking about ordering a new pair of cheap winter gloves soon.

There are only a few weeks left until the holidays and—surprise, surprise—you really hated the holidays.

Taylor, whom you haven’t texted since you got home from the party, would eventually be gone to visit their family. You wished you had the courage to ask them to invite you too, but you don’t wanna be rejected—or labeled as that one clingy orphan friend.

You realize that once again, your life really fucking sucks.

In your front pocket, your phone vibrates, making a weird distinct noise.

It was the sound of Omen’s voiceline saying ‘Die.’, the one you set up somewhere between you warming up to Shigaraki trying to redeem himself, and the time he thought his confession would magically make you fall in his lap with hearts in your eyes or something.

You didn’t realize how fucking annoying it would sound when he’d actually text you. You didn’t realize it, because at the time you didn’t expect him to force you into another weird slave-owner relationship you’d rather die than be part of. What was that saying? Life's a bitch and then you die?

The deep dark rings around your eyes tell the world that you would love being literally anywhere else but on the way to class right now, especially after the party last night and the rough aftermath of feeling like your life is actively falling apart.

But you’ll recover, you always do.

You’ll recover and save whatever’s left of yourself over and over until you’ll fully break, the perfect little victim that you are.

Get Run Over By A Fucking Car Please — ur late where r u [Sent 9:26 AM]

Yeah, you really are half an hour late. Getting out of bed is kind of a bitch when you’d love nothing more than to shop for a gun and blow your—

Get Run Over By A Fucking Car Please — hello? [Sent Now]

Get Run Over By A Fucking Car Please — i know you can fucking read this and ur not that fucking stupid to ignore me barely a night after [Sent Now]

Get Run Over By A Fucking Car Please — if you dont reply in the next 10 seconds i swear to GOD [Sent Now]

Who would come to your funeral, you wondered. Taylor and friends? Maybe even your manager if you’re lucky?

You — leave me alone, I overslept. Im omw dick [Sent Now]

Get Run Over By A Fucking Car Please — bitch [Sent Now]

Get Run Over By A Fucking Car Please — hurry tf up before i get mad [Sent Now]

God was he disgusting and insecure.

You — wouldn’t miss spending time with you for the world <3333 [Sent Now]

Get Run Over By A Fucking Car Please — fucking gross just hurry [Sent Now]

You — asshole [Sent Now]

Get Run Over By A Fucking Car Please — whore [Sent Now]

“Tsk.” You roll your eyes and stomp the rest of your walk to the college of your nightmares.

Despite your best efforts, the trip doesn’t take you long and sadly, you do make it to your dreaded computer science class—if walking a little slower just to spite him.

From the back, Shigaraki turned his head to you, the moment you entered the lecture hall, watching the professor call you out in front of everyone for being late. You shrugged the nosy teacher off, because you’d be damned if you could find it in you to care about disrupting the class right now.

You know you probably should, your flimsy fucking scholarship depends on it, but maybe a life outside of college didn’t sound so bad anymore. You think you’d rather mop fucking piss-dirty bathroom floors of dingy corner bars for less than minimum wage, than spend another fucking second breathing the same air as this crazy cancer-inducing shit-stain of a human being.

Nothing would make you happier than to wipe his smug ass grin off his fucking face, but alas.

“Move your ass next to me or you’ll regret it.”

“Oh, yeah? Try me,” you say with a ragged voice and drop on your seat, completely done with the world. You throw your head back, eyes screwed shut and not feeling like pulling up your laptop to work on your assignments right now. You open them again to watch the back of the room upside down, when the asshole spoke again, his grit-laden voice having the tone of a radio broadcaster.

“Did you know! Word on the street is that your friend’s mom is paying for their whole ass tuition! Isn’t that fucking neat? How sweet.” He grabs the back of the empty chair next to him and pre-emptively pulls it backwards for you, the way a dollar store gentleman would.

You scrunch your nose, wincing at his words.

Of course he’d stoop so low. Didn’t he say so? He’ll pull just about anything to get you to listen.

“Now, I also heard, coincidentally, that their mom is quite the conservative businesswoman. So let’s assume a pretty printed picture from their private social media gets unexpectedly…leaked. Mailed perhaps to their little bigoted parents’ doorstep, postage stamp and all. What do you think will happen when their mom finds out that—” Shigaraki doesn’t get to finish his cheap threat before you stand up, kick your chair angrily and drop on the one next to him.

God you’d want nothing more but to fucking strangle him to death.

He flashed you a crooked smile. “There we go, wasn’t that fucking hard now, was it?”

Fuck, maybe you should strangle him.

You roll your eyes, take your laptop out and do what you do best, opting to ignore him completely and distract yourself with the piling assignments that you have to plow through even when you wanna die.

It doesn’t really work, because he places a hand on the edge of your seat and it startles you, causing you to glance at him with visible disgust. Shigaraki notices it and takes that as an invitation to reach his fingertips over your thigh, digits splaying apart as he slowly slid his hand up your thigh. A shiver runs through your spine and you immediately tense up.

“Don’t.” You glare at him sharply, slapping his hand away.

He clicks his tongue disapprovingly—like you’re the one annoying him—and fucking does it again, gripping your thigh so hard this time, the blunt fingernails pressing into the fabric of your pants will definitely be leaving purple bruised half-moons.

“It really fucking hurts, stop that,” you growl at him quietly, your jaw clenching and foot pressing hard against the surface of the floor to keep you grounded.

“No, you don’t like me being nice, so I won’t be.”

“Nice?! You’re fucking insufferable!” you spat at him in an angry whisper. “Was last night not enough for you, sick fuck?” Shigaraki squeezes your thigh once, eyes narrowing and grin widening in response. “I already am fucking black and blue all over from—”

You try closing your mouth quickly, catching yourself but he smiles knowingly, the scar on his mouth stretching.

“Yeah? Let me see what I’ve done, I’ll be more mindful,” he lies, softening his grip, thumb brushing your leg in small soothing circles, knowing he wants nothing more but to paint your skin with reminders of him, wherever he touches you. “On that note, maybe you should start wearing skirts again.”

“What? I never wear skirts, you delusional creep.”

“You did for that scumbag.” Shigaraki casually drops yet another piece of information there’s no way in hell he could’ve had access to. He then shrugs, toying with the fabric of your pants between his thumb and his pointer finger. “It worked though, you looked hot.”

“The fuck? How would you know that?!” you shout at him pretty loudly, earning you a few glares from the row in front of you.

He couldn’t fucking know that, because you stopped wearing them long before you met your ex.

“Maybe I guessed. Or maybe I’ll tell you if you stop being a bitch one day,” an unexpected giggle claws itself out of his throat.

So never, you figured, clicking your tongue and rolling your eyes, quickly losing your interest as you look back at your screen. His hand resumed sliding up your thigh.

“Fucking stop that or I’ll seriously fucking scream,” you threaten, but he’s calling your bluff and takes it as a challenge. Your mouth opens, his smug expression egging you on to go ahead and do it, but you close it again, feeling dumb, feeling defeated.

The anger and shame made your cheeks burn, as students occasionally looked back at the two of you, whispering and making faces, utterly ignoring how uncomfortable you felt.

He’d tell them to fuck off, but sitting back and drinking in your frustration and helplessness outweighed the need to monopolize your attention right now. He’d have time for that later.

You think by the amount of times you’ve acted like hallway band kids together, half the fucking college assumes you have an exhibitionism kink. You don’t—at least not like this, but your train of thought is interrupted by his free hand appearing in your field of view, two fingers casually tapping at the side of your laptop, signaling you to get your work done.

Like you could fucking focus with him brazenly sexually harassing you in broad daylight.

Nonetheless, you roll your shoulders and once again take your chances, swatting his hand off of you and scooting away from him.

He narrows his eyes, demeanor now turning cold.

“If you don’t cut that shit out, I’ll take these off of you and force you to walk half-naked ‘round campus mid fucking december,” he spoke in a low monotone voice, signaling he’s reached the ends of his patience with you, then pulls your chair closer to him than it was before.

“Maybe you’re into that, freak.” He snarled, wrinkling his nose. “I’d suggest you go on and finish your fucking assignment, miss honor student.” Shigaraki leans in, nuzzling into your ear and making you physically cringe.

You have no choice but to let him.

And once you give up, once your shoulders slump and you’re halfway through biting the first layer of skin off of your lips, Shigaraki smiles triumphantly, burying his nose into the junction of your sensitive neck and deeply breathing your scent in.

You watch the students stare, look away and feel yourself burning up with shame.

“Fucking asshole,” you cuss to yourself softly.

Shigaraki snorts. ─────────

Perhaps the most surprising part was that Shigaraki did not end up going too far the days after the awful night at the party, not really.

He does keep feeling you up whenever he has the chance to, but never pushes it beyond critical. Enough to piss you off, to let your college know you’re his plaything now, but not enough for you to actually freak out—well, freak out more than you already do.

He’d ghost his pale slender fingers everywhere on your frame and you noticed his hands twitching every time they passed by your curves, leaving them completely unexplored.

He’d inch closer to your neck sometimes, hooking a finger around your winter scarf and pulling it down to examine—admire—the fading bruises that he’d left that night.

He’d sniff your hair like a degenerate whenever he was in a particularly bad mood or someone pissed him off, then he’d tell you to keep buying that brand of shampoo, that he’d even fund it for you if you ever ran out of money.

Like you’d ever go seek him for financial troubles.

You couldn’t help but wonder what stopped him from taking you somewhere dark and secluded, to bend you over and fuck his sick fantasies into you, but you wouldn’t dare to ask—lest you give him ideas or imply you’re thinking about anything of the sort.

So you deal with his weird fucking obsession of being as close to you as humanly possible, not leaving inches apart when he’s anywhere around you throughout the day.

You’ve become his human stress-relief toy, you realize. A fucking Shigaraki branded fidget spinner.

Taylor would laugh at that joke, but you still haven’t opened any of their messages or seen them on campus lately.

Shigaraki makes you—no, forces you to take the same fucking breaks as him, eating together at the cafeteria whenever he fucking feels like it, making you miss most of your own lecture blocks because they didn’t match his. Something for which you’d have to draw a harsh line very soon.

Blackmail or not, you doubt he’d want you to fail and drop-out, as depraved and unhinged as you thought him to be. But then again, you were wrong about many things in the past.

There are eyes on you wherever you go, you suppose being the campus’ villain’s toy would do that to a person. He now lets them linger for only half the time, though, easily losing his temper (what temper?) glaring back at them and scaring them off whenever he’s had enough, after which he proceeds to tell you “Don’t worry, you’re mine” as if that was somehow reassuring to you.

You finished your classes for the day, but he eventually gets the bright idea to make you attend his own as well, his professors either not giving a fuck or too scared of his family crest to mention a literal stranger sitting in their smaller group lectures.

Coincidentally, you’d also found out what he was majoring in—a very pretentious masters in Data Science. Not that you cared, but you did notice his schedule was packed. You had half a mind to ask him why he had double the amount of your classes, but you bit back. You weren’t that curious.

A (barely) positive side to this whole arrangement was that being in class from morning until late afternoon somehow gave you a buff on your ability to study, the same way studying in a library would. You were less likely to procrastinate on your assignments as you often did at home, and actually ended up getting a lot of work done, whenever Shigaraki was too busy with his own material to make your life a living hell.

His hand would still be placed somewhere on your body, whenever he didn’t need to actively write or research, as if he would crumble into dust if he didn’t feel the blood pumping from under your skin.

Thankfully, his last break of the day finally rolls around and the two of you sit together in one of the wing’s common rooms.

He hasn’t laid a finger on you while you were typing away at your laptop, choosing to play some game on his handheld instead. You’re not only thankful for that, but also wonder if he’ll maybe get tired of you quicker than you thought he would.

And if he does, what then?

Would he just leave you be?

You pressed your lips in a tight line.

“What.” He raised a brow, his signature rasp making you realize you’ve stopped typing away at your projects for a while now and ended up watching the way his fingers clicked on every button with the precision of a professional gamer.

You wince, snapping your head back to your own screen.

“Nothing,” you mumble, “Just surprised you stopped acting like a damn monkey for a second.”

His eyes widened and he grinned, hooking one elbow around your neck and pulling you in close enough for you to smell a hint of his expensive cedarwood cologne. “Just tell me you miss me next time, instead of being a bitch,” Shigaraki coos, ruffling your hair up and making you scoff.

“I think I’d rather offer my ex to blow him for a pack of weed again.” You roll your eyes.

It’s been a while but you finally said the wrong thing again, so he gives you an unimpressed look, shoves you away from him and goes back to playing on his handheld, unpausing his game and now mashing the buttons.

“You’re so fucking stupid sometimes, I swear,” he scoffs. “Piss me off again and maybe I’ll make you crawl around and bark like a dog in front of everyone. I’m nice because I choose to,” Shigaraki says quietly and you make a disapproving noise, feeling a weird twinge of hurt for—disappointing him…?

What the fuck?

He curses under his breath. ”Never say shit like that again. You belong to me now, fucking get used to it.”

You considered disobeying him again, hurting him further, making him angrier, but all you could do was shrink in your seat and turn away from him defensively.

The rest of the days were more of the same, you following him around, letting him do whatever he wanted to. Whenever you zoned out or pushed his buttons too hard, he’d either get pissy and threaten you with some detrimental piece of information he shouldn’t have access to, or dare to sneakily slide his hand over the curve of your ass and squeeze it to get your attention.

And boy did that get your attention.

─────────

Friday finally comes around—thank the fucking lord—meaning you won’t have to see him for another two and a half days.

You think you’ve spent enough time together to last you three fucking lifetimes—so much so that you started enjoying working your part-time job in comparison. At least that fucking paid.

Your dreams of easing in into a quiet weekend are cut short when Shigaraki opens his mouth on your way out of the building and fucking goes “Are you free this afternoon?”

You stop dead in your tracks and turn around to face him.

He just stood there, hands in the pocket of his black overworn jacket, tousled white hair and with the strap of his old college bag threatening to snap and fall off his shoulder any day now.

Shigaraki stares back at you with an unreadable expression, one hand reaching to scratch at his neck— something he hasn’t done in a while now.

By the way, since when is he asking you for permission to waste your fucking time?

“No. I’m busy,” you deadpan, turning around and avoiding his eyes.

“No you’re not. You don’t work today.”

“Yes, I am, I have plans. Why the fuck do you care?”

“Change your plans then,” he grunts and you want to pull the hairs out of your head.

“No.”

He gives you an exasperated sigh, walking up to you with a clenched jaw, forcefully wrapping his hand against the back of your neck and pushing you to walk with him. You cross your arms and let him walk you like a fucking dog.

“Why ask anyway if you’re not going to fucking listen?” you question, feeling deeply frustrated. He considers ignoring you, giving you side-eye from behind his messy bangs, but mumbles a quiet reply anyway.

“To be considerate.”

“Ha! You? Considerate?”

Shigaraki tightened his grip and shoved you forward, making you stumble and almost eat shit on the floor. You luckily catch yourself.

“Yeah, you’re right, what was I thinking?” He rolls his eyes and walks away, leaving you behind. “Follow me. My car is off campus.”

“Your car?”

His car.

You struggled to keep up with his stupidly fast pace, but you managed to get there—if a little out of breath.

“Get in.” He opens the door to the driver's side of the car and slams it closed.

What did you expect? Of course he owns a red fucking sports car.

The passenger door opens for you and you suddenly feel very uncomfortable being in the presence of such a luxurious fucking object.

You simply stare at him and nervously fidget with the hem of your shirt.

“What the fuck are you doing? Get in, it’s cold.” He drummed his fingers against the wheel.

Seeing you being uncomfortable makes him snort, but he doesn't say anything otherwise.

You reluctantly take the bag off your shoulder, get inside and place it on your lap. Then you look at the raised door like you’re trying to figure out rocket science.

“H-How do you close it?”

“With your hands, moron. You pull on the handle like any other normal car, now hurry.”

You make a face, leaning in to grab the handle with your sweaty fingers and pulling it down. It really doesn’t take a lot of force and the door slides down in a smooth motion, closing easily with a satisfying thud.

Relief washes over you, glad that he didn’t trick you into slamming or damaging anything, because if you did ruin his car, you could only imagine the amount of debt you’d have to spend your entire life paying back. Or have another fucking thing he could hold over your head.

He’s patient, letting you settle in and observing you getting flustered over his car of all things. His dry lips slightly twitch upwards.

“A-A McLaren, really?” your voice wavers when you don’t want it to, mentally cursing yourself for sounding like such a pussy.

“Yeah, it’s my errands car.” Shigaraki seems like he’s pondering something, but reconsiders it and holds back.

“This is your errand car?! A goddamn sports car?!” you gasp and it makes him fucking chuckle. You’re visibly taken aback by the easy-going reaction, but luckily he chalks it up as further astonishment. “It’s a supercar, not a sports car, idiot. Maybe I’ll show you the others someday soon.”

“Others?!” Your nose crinkles and makes him snort. Then he presses one fucking button on the dashboard between the two of you and starts his car ‘supercar’ up, engine purring like a metallic kitten.

Fucking rich people.

Frankly speaking, you semi-anticipated for him to pull up to his scary criminal friends, a hotel or worse—his own house. But instead, he parked in the underground garage of your city’s largest mall and opened the door for you.

He opened the fucking door for you.

You watched him skeptically as he reached out a hand for you to grab, as if you were Cinderella and he was going to help you out of the half a million dollar carriage.

You smacked it away, making him roll his eyes while mumbling an ‘always so fucking difficult’, and you get out of the car on your own.

Unlike his usual behavior at college, Shigaraki is considerably tame in the unknown public. Maybe even a bit more fidgety than usual. He doesn’t grab or grope you, the only contact is the brush of his arm against your own while you walk side-by-side, and the occasional nudge to steer you in whichever direction he wants you to go.

While he’s distracted, you secretly observe his side profile, glancing at the mole on his mouth, his dark circles and his cracked skin, noticing how the scar on his eye matches that on his lips.

It feels like the moment you ran your fingers through his fluffy-looking white hair, back when he came back from the convenience store for you was now ages ago. It feels like ages ago, but the memory—the sensation itself—is burned deeply in the ridges of your fingertips. Buried deeply together with your strands of DNA, together with the rest of you.

You frown, turning your head away.

If only he’d been nicer. If only he wasn’t a crazy lunatic. If only—

Then what?

You let out a deep exhale, a shudder running through your body.

“Quit whining, we just got here,” he grunts, taking your sigh as a form of protest against him dragging you around instead of letting you go home. You’re thankful for that.

“Shut the fuck up.” You aim to kick him in the shin but he dodges, softly shoving you to the side and you could swear you saw the ghost of a smile on his face.

Oh, the things he made you do.

First, he fucking managed to pull you into the biggest arcade in the city, cashing in gross amounts of money on his play-card for the two of you to literally waste.

The machines you played at were mostly competitive co-ops, where you had around a 20/80 odds of winning against Shigaraki, despite your hardest efforts and despite the fact that you already had played a lot of them before.

For a rich basement-dwelling redditor, he was pretty good.

Significantly better than you, even, never failing to shove it in your fucking face every time he’d won and clicking his tongue disapprovingly whenever you reminded him that it was your first time playing or that you’d also destroyed him at some of the ones you’d picked (even if it was really close).

Tomura ended up letting you have your petty cake, opting to not reveal the fact that it’d also been his first time playing the games you won at and keeping to himself. After all, wouldn’t it be more fun when you realized you were no match for him yourself later on?

‘Next time’ , ‘Later on’. He caught himself feeling giddy at the prospect.

It was fun to watch you act so animatedly, to see a different side of you, one he never gets to see at school. You’re bouncy, talkative. A massive fucking nerd. You probably haven’t ever spoken to him as much as you’d attempted explaining the lore of some random game from the 90’s. You get so obsessed with trying to beat him at every single game, asking for a rematch a boring amount of times, brows scrunched and hyper-focused. He decides he really likes it.

And you’re a pretty decent player. So decent, in fact, that he’s never been able to really take it easy with you, lest he’d give you more opportunities to be petty and inflate your gamer ego.

Winning less than half the time probably annoyed you, but he knew right from the start. None of his friends were as good as you were, which was and was not surprising at the same time.

He’d never expected to be close to any female gamer though, especially not with the amount of prejudice he held against them, and him being as toxic as an entire Call of Duty lobby. If he was being truly honest—something that rarely happened—he’s never really had IRL gamer friends besides Spinner at all.

Spinner.

His mood soured in record time and he briskly pulled you away from the crane game before you could finish another unsuccessful run.

“Hey! I almost had that!” You pout, but he was dragging you out already.

“Don’t care. Come.”

“Ugh! You impatient asshole!” You smacked his shoulder with your free hand.

“Yeah, yeah, can it.”

After the arcade, the two of you went to several game stores, looking at games and merch you’d never actually buy.

What was really surprising to you, was hearing him ask for your opinion on not one, but several games you told him you’d played before. He’d even offered to buy you the ones you had in your backlog and had planned to get eventually, asking—insisting—to get your steam ID after you gave him the standard ‘I don’t collect physical ones’ answer.

When you figured that he wouldn’t drop it, you started getting annoyed.

“Tch, like I’d wanna owe you shit now, too,” you spat, beginning to ruin his mood as you usually did.

“Dun’ matter, I’ll do what I want, idiot. Live with it.”

“Then go ahead and buy it for me, if you wanna see me speedrun throwing it in the closest trash can,” you provoke, eyebrow twitching and a smug grin on your face.

He runs his free hand through his hair irritatedly and proceeds to chuck the expensive deluxe case at you, hitting you square in the shoulder.

“Hey! That fucking hurt you asshole!” you shout at his back, but he only flips you off and goes ahead to exit the store without you.

The remainder of your time together is spent eating at his favorite food place, where you find yourself yawning and getting bored after what was your tenth extremely weird gaming argument with him—over whether or not they should nerf Solid Snake’s ass because it’s distracting the player too hard when he’s crawling.

No, in your opinion they fucking shouldn’t because who the fuck cares, but he wouldn’t have it and you’re now like, ninety-eight percent convinced that he’s the owner of half of reddit’s weird fucking gaming-related posts.

And thus—you realize you’d rather vomit your whole meal than admit it out loud, but if you literally strip away your entire history with him and only boil it down to the two measly days you two got along in the past few months, going out today with him was actually really…not that bad.

You just hope he doesn’t end up somehow skewing this day to be some weird type of date in his twisted little mind, but soon enough you’d have other things to worry about, because as if on cue, Shigaraki opens his fucking mouth and proceeds to ruin your entire day. “Grab your shit, we’re going back to my place now.”

#shigaraki x reader #shigaraki x y/n #emotional hurt/comfort #shigaraki tomura #unhealthy relationships #dead dove do not eat #trigger warnings #shigaraki tomura x reader #shigaraki fanfiction #shigaraki x you #tenko shimura #tomura shigaraki #college au #reader is female

26 notes · View notes

starrynightarchive · 5 days

Note

19, 6, 42, 22, 38, 33, 47, 50, 92, 90, 72, 75, 70

answer them all

demanding. hello to you too anon

19. what's been keeping you up at night lately?

your mom.

ok just kidding. uhhh not much. maybe the mistakes I need to fix and this distinct feeling of wrongness that lingers.

6. what role do you play in your group of friends?

let's ask them shall we

42. how did you meet your best friend(s)?

aha i actually wanted someone to ask this one! I'll give you three stories

sri: when i was in kindergarten i remember very clearly seeing this fucker in the restroom. she pulled out her handkerchief and made a banana out of it? i was not impressed. but she then proceeded to eat it/put it in her mouth. which I was impressed with. and then she saw me when I got stuck on the very top of this giraffe thing which you can climb. a teacher had to come up and get me down. bitch was just staring at me the whole time. didn't move a muscle. i love her so very much.

vhas: ok so. i had (have. love her very very much she's a menace and we met in a whole other way) a best friend and I got them into wattpad when I was 13. or 12. idk. then that friend in turn went to a classmate and made them join wattpad. so now all three of us started writing very bad very cringe stories. i was writing a straight romance paranormal story and vhas was writing some tragic yaoi godbles. i read it and fell in love with his writing. so one day, without warning, I just went up to him and said "hey! i love your writing!" and fucked right off. no intro no how are you no nothing. we ended up talking in hangouts (rip) and I made covers for his stories and shit. and then the rest is history.

sree: this is the menace friend. she lives really close to my house. first way we met was through our school bus (we took the same one and I sat next to her one day). she was reading harry potter and we figured that we both loved books. i introduced her to a few. and the very same week I went to my classical music class and they were there. i was like ??? but we became quick friends. proximity, similar interests, orange slices and stupidity. yeah. they're pretty neat.

22. how old were you when you joined the internet?

around 12, i think

38. what is your love language? i'm very expressive about my love for people, but the main ones are: physical touch, words of affirmation and gift giving.

33. have you ever thought about changing your name?

nope! i love my name very very much :D

47. how well-decorated is your bedroom?

not much. at first i had a sticky notes wall filled with quotes poetry etc etc but then had to take it down because it was getting dusty. then there's this huge ass micky mouse sticker stuck on my wardrobe (my dad bought it when I was a kid). skk chibi figurines and iwaoi standee both from my lovely friend vhas. then books. a few magnets stuck to my wardrobe. that's all

50. what do you consider most important in a romantic/platonic partner? being ready to put in work in the relationship. must be an open communicator/must be willing to try. oh, and a good sense of humour (this is very specific btw. i have a type. i will not elaborate).

92. who's in your dream blunt rotation? great question. idk if I'll ever smoke weed but. if I do tay will be my go-to person (@spiderbends)

90. weirdest habit?

i bite people. is that weird? idk

72. which is more important when it comes to clothing, comfort or style?

comfort all the wayyyy

75. how would you describe your favorite person?

icarus. burning wings. the kindest smile. the bravest man. lover, healer, believer. object of all my sweet dreams and sweetest nightmares.

70. when it comes to affection/intimacy, do you prefer to stick to one person or are you more open about it?

intimacy/affection to me isn't strictly connected to romance. and I'm a very affectionate person by nature. i love fiercely. all my loved ones will be bombarded with my love. get loved, loser.

#vi talks #ask game

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powertripblog · 9 months

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Comics, USA Style

Did you know that the United States of America doesn't really have any interest in standardization? You probably did, but sometimes it smacks you in a really annoying way.

Case in point, I have been doing research into comic page sizes to get an idea of what I should follow for Powertrip once I am properly drawing the comic. This might seem like a pretty pointless thing to do for a webcomic, and it really is in the digital realm. However, in the very unlikely circumstance that this comic ends up both popular, and with a significant demand to be printed out physically for people, doing this comic page work in advance could potentially save me hundreds of hours in having to manually fix every page to be printable. So it's not a massive deal technically, but just a concern worth noting if you are ever getting into drawing comics for no one on the internet.

Anyways, the first place I started was simply by looking up "US Comic Page Size". I was aware going into this that US comics are not printed at the same size that other regions are. I want my comic to be as close as possible to something you'd find on a shelf in a comic book store in format, so I need to match them. The weird thing is though, when I was looking up comic page sizes, there was NO consistency. Every single site and template I found had slightly differing measurements. It wasn't even something dumb like a rounding error, these sites all just fundamentally disagreed with each other on the exact size of a comic page. It didn't help that they were giving the size of a PRINTED comic page, which as I found out is not the same as what artists work with when drawing a comic. It's like some really stupid version of House Of Leaves about a comic page that measures bigger on the inside than the outside or something.

So here is the actual deal. When drawing a US comic page, artists will generally start out with an 11 inch by 17 inch piece of paper. In the physical realm they use a heavy, high quality piece of paper called a Bristol Board. As I mentioned before this size is not what you will see on an actual printed comic page. When going to print, the page size is actually quite a bit smaller, roughly around 6 inches by 10 inches (that is rounded up by the way the actual size has like 4 decimals on every number).

Now the second thing to note is how the paper will be cut when going to print. Even though the comic page is reduced in size, there are further cuts made to the paper before it prints. There are three areas on a comic page where this cutting business occurs, those being the Safe Area, the Trim Line, and the Bleed Line. The Safe Area makes up the largest part of the page, and is where most of your art will go. This area will never be cut out by a printer. The Trim Line is where the printer will generally trim your comic. Something to note is that different printers can vary in how they cut this area slightly, so the Trim Line is not an exact point, but a small area instead. Finally, the Bleed Line is where the page WILL be cut off. This area exists for the times you draw full page art. If your art needs to go to the end of the page, you will want to draw it all the way up to the end of the Bleed Line. The Bleed Line is also a small area that extends to the edge of the page, but the distinction from the Trim Line is important.

So with all this knowledge in mind now, we know what we need for our comic. The only thing left is the measurements themselves. Remember this is a US comic, so that means we get to deal with Imperial measurements! So, starting from the edges of the page, the Bleed Line will be 1/2 inch on the sides, and 13/16th inch on the top and bottom (like I said, Imperial). The Trim Line will be 5/8th inch on the sides, and 1 inch on the top and bottom. Finally, the Safe Area begins at 1 inch on the sides, and 1 and 3/8th inch on the top and bottom.

Cool, we got our measurements all measured. The only thing left to mention is that if you are wanting to print out a comic page ever, check your DPI. This is a big deal, and CANNOT BE CHANGED once you start drawing a page for the first time. DPI stands for Dots Per Inch, as in how many dots a printer will spend in ink on every inch of your drawing. 72 DPI tends to be the default in most art programs, and while this is fine for online publishing printing it out is going to leave your comic looking like soup. 300 DPI is the minimum recommended for printing, and most printing companies consider 600 DPI to be the requirement for a high-quality print. I personally am choosing to work in 600 DPI, but depending on how much hard drive space you have this may not be realistic for you to do. Large DPI images will make for large file sizes, and while I am lucky to have a fat 8 TB hard drive, some may not even have 1 TB to work with.

Basically, the moral of the story for all of this is to do your own research. Looking into all this comic page stuff taught me quite a bit about the needs and expectations of physical releases, and will help to standardize my own comic pages going forward.

Oh right, before I forget. The reason I have kept mentioning US Comic sizes is because different regions of the world tend to use different sizes. Europe uses the standard A4 paper for their comics. Manga in Japan are also a different size. I didn't do research into these different sized papers because they weren't relevant to what I am looking for, but if you are in these regions or trying to imitate their comics then it would definitely help you out to look into it!

Anyways, thanks for reading all of this technical, boring rambling. I will go back to more vague concept art for my comic Powertrip after this post now.

#powertrip comic #powertrip dev #comics #webcomic #writing

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philcoulsonismyhero · 10 months

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I'm having a weird brain week because the old family shit has been stirred up, so I guess I'm rambling about it on here.

So (bear with me) I reinstalled my old LEGO HP games because I was getting bored of the superhero ones I've been playing and LEGO games are pretty much the only video games I can ever be bothered with, and hoo boy. (And I don't even mean the whole issue of 'the creator of this thing I still can't help but care about hates people like me now', I can mostly deal with that these days by just not putting any money anywhere near her direction and not engaging publicly with her work.)

Sometimes there's that one fictional character that was really important to you when a bunch of shit was going down in your life and so they end up intrinsically linked to that shit in your brain, and for me that's Lupin. Every time I go back to HP, I end up going back to obsessing over that guy, and more often than not it dredges up everything that I used him as a coping mechanism for. And this time it very much has.

Long story short-ish, I was 15 when my parents sat me and my sisters down and told us they were getting divorced. It was November, and that was the year that I was sitting my Highers, which at that point were the exams that your uni application would depend on the results of, i.e. the exams that at a private school obsessed with academic results you end up believing are going to determine the rest of your life. I was doing six, you're usually supposed to do a maximum of five, so I had no free periods and a reputation as Probably The Smartest Kid In My Year to uphold. So my parents told me they were getting divorced and I dealt with that by just putting my head down and Getting On With Things, because school was the thing I was good at, and had to be good at. (I got straight As, three subject prizes and Dux of School that year. Fuck you, circumstances.)

To be completely honest, despite the myriad of new stresses it caused, the divorce was kind of a relief because it had been inevitable. I have a very distinct memory of being quite a bit younger that 15 and standing in the kitchen by the doors through to the dining room and listening to my parents shouting at each other in there, and turning to my younger sisters and saying "This is going to end up in divorce." I can only remember a fraction of what went down in the years that led up to it, and not even half the reasons for them splitting up, but there was a lot of shouting when I was a young teen/pre-teen. I spent a couple of years being the shoulder that my mum cried on, and the person that my dad complained to about my mum, and I was about 13 and knew fuck-all about anything except for the fact that someone had to be the sensible one around here and try and mediate a bit. I was the oldest, the younger two shouldn't have to deal with All That, and the last thing we needed was anything or anyone introducing More Drama into the situation. I got bullied at school and I don't think I ever mentioned it to my parents. I do remember emailing one of those support services about the bullying, though, which I have to remind myself every time I think back and I'm like 'but it wasn't That Bad, was it?' I got deliberately tripped on the stairs once. Fortunately both of those assholes grew out of it in a year or two, and I finally stopped being in classes with one of them, although I never managed to get rid of the other guy. Trounced him in the final year physics exam, though, and boy did that feel good after years of "girls can't do physics".

Anyway. Being fifteen sucked, but I was good at school. And I was Sensible, and I didn't get into any of that Teen Drama that fiction and society both seemed convinced was inevitable, I did well in my exams, I didn't make a fuss about anything, I kept my head down and Got On With Things, and then two years into uni I crashed and burned dramatically because turns out I'm autistic and don't deal very well with new situations and never learned how to ask for help *jazz hands*

All this to say, 15 year old me took one look at Remus Lupin, designated Sensible Adult In The Room who was always the one helping other people and being Understanding and never complaining too much about his own situation despite everything always seeming to collapse around him and went ah. That one. That character would Understand. Plus, he was an adult who treated the teenagers with respect while also always being clearly aware that they were still kids and there were some things that they shouldn't have to deal with, and. I had emotions about that. I was never hugely interested in the fandom version of the guy as a teenager, I never got particularly invested in stories about teenagers because I never felt like one myself, but the adult version? He was the crutch that got me through Being Fifteen.

And now I'm 27 and most of the time I'm Fine but every so often (often in November, but not always) this stuff comes back to bite me and I look at all the characters that I care about the most and they're folks like Obi-Wan or Lupin or Hotch or Ironwood, people who are stuck being Sensible or In Charge or both and sometimes end up cracking under the weight of it all and it's like. Yeah. Yeah, I guess all that did fuck me up. And at least now I'm engaging more with characters who get to be angry about their situations. I'm still really bad about being angry about things, it's an emotion I really struggle to express because I associate it so much with a whole lot of shouting that just makes a mess and takes forever to actually achieve anything. I think I'm angry about a lot of things, but part of me is always like 'yeah, but what's The Point, it's not like getting angry now will change anything that happened'. So I just don't. I stall out before I get anywhere. But the characters that I write, both in fic and my own original stuff, are starting to get to Lose Their Shit. I'm getting a little better at secondhand catharsis. It's a baby step, but it's something.

I don't think I'm going to write any of it because engaging to that degree with HP isn't something I want to do anymore, but I could write so much fanfic where Lupin gets to actually get mad about his situation. Where he gets to shout about all the shit he's been put through, all the friends he's lost and all the prejudice and injustice he's faced and how he's tired of being the calm and sensible one who helps everyone else and never gets any acknowledgement from those people about his own struggles. Some of it would be projecting, some of it would be just having an outside perspective on the story that he's in and the way it treated him and how it was bullshit and how that makes me mad because he Deserved Better. How his story ended up being about his own insecurities and how he should just get over them rather than the colossal injustice he'd faced his entire life and the fact that he shouldn't have to be just resigned to it, he should be allowed to get angry and to try and do something about it.

I don't think I'm going to write it, but thinking about it has helped a bit, even though thinking about Lupin was what landed me in the Brain Weird place in the first place. Sometimes you've just got to get angry on behalf of a fictional character because that way you can sidle up to getting angry on your own behalf. Try it out a bit. I don't know. I don't know if any of this is productive or just an exercise in being maudlin, but I guess I'm having the yearly breakdown about Family Shit a bit early this year and it probably doesn't hurt to dust off an old coping mechanism and see if it helps at all.

And at least this time I've gotten another original fiction idea out of it, so I guess that's something. I'll probably talk about that a bit soon, it's a fun one, and I'm slowly working out how to properly use it to get into the fact that to me werewolves are almost always a metaphor for repressed anger and being scared of the mess that you'll make if you let it out. They're a lot of things to a lot of people, but to me, thanks to Lupin and all the personal shit from my life that he got tangled up in, they're that.

And speaking of dealing with repressed anger, I should probably go and rewatch the scene from the penultimate Ted Lasso episode that absolutely wrecked me, which was the one where Ted finally has a proper go at his mum. Because I felt that one in my bones, although in my case it's my dad that I could do with repeatedly saying 'fuck you' to. Blargh. That was definitely the thing that primed me for the descent into Lupin nonsense, that's for sure. Fiction, man. It'll do things to you.

It's nearly 6 in the morning and I should probably attempt sleep, I guess. Thanks for reading if you got this far, this was just a brain dump because sometimes you just need to Put The Thing In Words, whether it's coherent or not, and throw it out into the void.

#personal stuff

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getallemeralds · 2 years

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the KG masterpost

aka "icarus and pat collectively lose their minds"

the core concept here is basically like. what if all the AUs of somebody were literally the same person? in the sense of like... you bump into somebody in one universe, hop to the next one over, and when you find them again they recognize you even though there's no way you met before-- or you're just minding your own business when somebody runs up and claims to know you and, when you press them on it, they get embarrassed and say "sorry, i mixed ya up with the other you". slightly different appearances, vastly different backstories, different nicknames, but still the same person.

side effects of existing like that: easily overstimulated, memory constantly scrambled because of remembering Literally Everything From Every Version Of Themself, extremely confusing to be around. depending on the setting, either they mask it or they just don't give a shit because This Is Already So Goddamn Weird

tl;dr: local teenager breaks reality and now exists in several dimensions at once. this is a problem. (or, we tried to make all of our old rp self-inserts canonically the same character, ran into Several Issues with logistics, and somehow exploding the fabric of spacetime was the best solution we could think of)

(individual KGs in vague chronological order under the cut because this post is MASSIVE)

KG / PRIME: human, usually. (sometimes a catgirl?) they/he/she. the "original" KG, template for all the others, and the core of this mess. goofball with phenomenal cosmic power. got isekai'd into the original version of our long-running RP multiverse and then oops! all KGs! a side-effect of the Isekai Incident is that Prime kinda is just vibing somewhere outside of reality and is basically just in noncanon scenarios for comedy reasons, which they are very aware of. they're the reason why the other KGs are fourth-wall aware because they're kinda clipping through it and just have to deal with that. does not like shoes because they're hard to draw

SELF: Persona 3! she/her, is so old that all of my art of her was in mspaint. is the reason for this mess because initially i didn't make any distinction between Self, Plus/Minus, kh!Katie, and Prime despite them all having different backstories and powersets. persona was Nekomata i think? the "SI" literally stands for "Self-Insert", so uh.. she's Self now. this is the first time i ever drew her in a reasonable outfit. was, unfortunately, a Fucking Weeb because i was 13. there's info on her out there somewhere but i don't want to look for it or else i'll explode

PLUS and MINUS: Mega Man Star Force! she/her (individual), they/them (plural). basically "what if Gemini Spark was me" except.. i didn't know i was a system yet.. so this specific iteration of KG is very weird to look back on lmao. absolutely horrible plural rep but they were somehow instrumental in me figuring myself out so they get one (1) rights. there's also a version that has a fan FM-ian partner instead but then they got reworked into an unrelated oc. has lightning powers even when not wavechanged i think? Plus is harmless, Minus is teenage angst and a boatload of trauma incarnate

kaoticGenome: homestuck! human, she/her. breaks the mold and has different initials (not counting chumhandle)! originally thought her last name was Grant but it got revealed to be something else when she learned about her session's ectobiology stuff. which included "one of the genetic samples for her and her brother was the past self of the first guardian before he turned himself into a FG", it was ~2010, it was a Whole Thing, she's very disappointed that she didn't "inherit" any powers from it (and then i realized she's biologically related to Ninten and had a 404 error). was the Scribe of Dawn before we knew what the canon classpects were, probably a Heart player nowadays. very good at being the goofball but was usually the straight man. was like the only KL-era KG that wasn't interchangeable with the others but HAHA NOT FOR LONG

KATIE: Kingdom Hearts! human, she/they/he. this design was "ica wanted to draw a smash sona that's 'KG but ica's mains put together' like how Spark is pat's mains put together" and then i realized the sora half of the equation is Basically the Kingdom Hearts KG that never got a unique design so uhh. she's them now! design liable to change. is the weird outlier of "doesn't have a unique nickname" because even Katie A. has her chumhandle, but also her Nobody is named Teixak so uhhhhhh. speaking of, she kinda got upstaged by her Nobody lmao. keyblade wielder solely because i was playing Days, had a crush on Roxas (i was 13).

LANDIA: Minecraft! catgirl, they/he? last of the "original era" but they predated us knowing minecraft storytelling was a thing so they didn't have anything going for them besides shitposts until we brought him back a literal decade later. kinda part of their own sub-group of KGs because there's like 3 Landias running around. predates the existence of dogs. leans hard into being a comic relief background character. currently planning to fling themself into the deep dark for fun and profit (there will be no fun and no profit). resident self-proclaimed memelord

FOXCAT: Sonic! Outsider foxcat, she/they. shapeshifter and realitywarper due to being an entity from another dimension masquerading as a normal mobian. has made it her life mission to bother as many au Tailses as she can (mostly bothers T1 because he's Their Best Friend). has Klonoa's hat because Zephyr exists. may or may not know blood magic because of a one-off joke. is difficult to place chronologically because this design is new but got retconned into taking the place of proto-SK in a specific RP arc, which KINDA makes her the first KG (besides Prime) but not really..??

KAY GEE: Stickmin! they/them, first fully "new" KG after establishing the bizarre convoluted multiverse stuff. older sibling to a CCC agent while also being somewhat on the run from the CCC itself because of having similar time anomaly / "retry" powers as Henry. does not take things seriously at all because of just being able to rewind and try again. keeps getting reminded their actions do in fact have consequences. is in SO much trouble

ZEPHYR: Klonoa! four-eared cabbit, she/her, lovable pest. grew up in breezegale as one of the various phantomilians you can rescue. she's friends with Klonoa and causes problems on purpose because it's funny. Dream Traveler status debatable. also difficult to place chronologically because despite being VERY old she got retconned into being part of this mess wayyyyy later (which is why she has a fully unique name). currently Fucking Haunting Me because tying her in to the KGs ended up being an accidental explanation for Foxcat's hat and then i went on an unhinged rant and started this masterpost

..this isn't even all of them, i just hit image limit

#leo chirps #leodoodles #leos ocs #oc: KG #this took FOREVER. holy hell #im not even done! there's even more of these guys!! fuck!!!!!!!!!#ill reblog this later with everyone else hrk

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valeffelees · 10 months

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13) I mean, I mostly want Carry On hot takes, but I'm open to all fandoms! 26) WITHOUT SUN All of your posts on it have been so freaking good! I struggle to imagine anything giving you pause!! 36) I NEED NEED NEED to know more about Simon Snow is not a Vegetarian! The chat fic. The artists in love. I need to know where it goes! 41) We're minor character stans in this house. Okay! Enough questions. Thank you ^__^

13. Who is your least favourite character to write for?

ok, the wording of this question is tricky for me. because i don't dislike writing for any of the characters, but my least favourite is actually Penny. AND NO, LISTEN, i can hear you fucking white lady math meme reacting through the wall right now, Lia. i love writing about Penny. but i love writing about her from SIMON'S perspective. i don't know how to get into Penny's head at all, i wouldn't even know where to start.

26) Which part of [Without Sun] was the hardest to write?

i had trouble with a few diff scenes in this fanfic, ngl. i knew some of them would give me hell as i was plotting them, but one that caught me off guard with how difficult it was for me is that scene in the Magic Words classroom with Miss Possibelf and Madam Bellamy. by the time you'd read it i'd trimmed a lot of my orig draft out. in the first version of that scene, Simon was actually meant to go into Magic Words and sit in on the end of the lesson, but i didn't like how silly it made the scene feel. i had a hard time figuring out where to end that scene, too, because there is obviously a LOT for Simon to process by the end, but so much of it is able to be done comfortably off-page that i didn't know where to draw the line.

i didn't think i'd have so much trouble with the Mage's first scene either, but motherfucker kept getting all Snidley fucking Whiplash villain-esque on me while i was writing it, and you know how i feel about that, LOL. Baz's main scene in that fic was hard, too, but in a different way than the other two; it is such an extremely emotionally charged scene, and it's so important to the story, i just had a really hard time with the pacing of it and figuring out how to make it give the impact i wanted. i'm still fussing around with it.

36) Can you give us a spoiler for one of your WIP’s?

i can't fuCKING BELIEVE you just asked me for Simon Snow is Not a Vegetarian SPOILERS, i'm going to fucking bite you. i don't even know if there's anything about this fanfic that you don't already know, like. i kill one of Baz's pet rats and he cries-cries over it? Malcolm and Daphne are getting a divorce?? Baz Pitch has a dick, AND knows how to use it???

41) What’s you favourite minor character you’ve written?

we both already know the answer is Niall but i am fucking delighted you asked because i will take any and every chance i can get to talk about him. i'm so weird about Dev and Niall, as you are very well aware. i've written about and drawn them so many times, i think about them almost as much as i think about Simon and Baz, which is just so fucking funny when you really think about it. they've just turned into such extremely distinct characters in my head, i've given them the full RK900 treatment. i'm attached to all the little things i've thought up about them, y'kno? like, my headcanon for the reason Niall spells his eyes blue is because he has a twin sister named Signe and, as children, the two of them were always being mistaken for one another, to the point that they started to resent each other. and even though it hasn't happened in years, Niall is still deeply insecure about looking too much like her. but, he doesn't like the idea of colouring his hair or straightening his curls, because Niall is really close to his mother and he shares those things with her, too, so instead: he spells his eyes blue. i always write him as the oldest of all the characters, too, because another headcanon: he and Signe started Watford a year late, so he's 12 turning 13 in first year instead of 11 turning 12 like everyone else. but it all works out for the best 'cause if he hadn't started the year he did, he wouldn't have been Dev's roommate, and if he wasn't Dev's roommate he wouldn't be friends with Baz, and i am going to stop right there because if i start talking about my headcanons for Niall's friendship with Baz we'll be here all fucking night. but yeah, i really, really like writing Niall and Dev.

click here to see the list of questions!

#THANK YOUUU for coming to ask me things 💛#ask game #fragmentedblacksoul

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godsbutterfly · 1 year

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My heart hurts bad today Lord. I miss my father. He drove me crazy sometime and could work my last nerve, but I never loved anyone like I loved him. And I never wanted anyone to love me, pay me attention, protect me, guide me, invest in me, and adore me like I wanted him to.

Dad wasn’t able to fill my heart with what I needed from him. Most time when he did reach out to me, that was because he just wanted something for himself. How can I help him or how was he going to try to get over on me today. I learned how to not trust men first because I was not able to trust my dad.

I learned how to be abused by men and people because I was abused by my dad. I learned how to walk on egg shells and what anxiety was from being around my dad. I didn’t know those things weren’t normal or healthy. I just knew that’s what my life was.

When I experienced the misery of my parents marriage was when my dad was around, I remember telling my mom that I didn’t want to live. I didn’t want to be around. I was sad when he was around.

It’s weird because I wanted his love and attention so bad. We all did actually, me, mom and Tito. But when he was around me, mom and Tito, it was awful. It was abusive, anger, and stressful. We were all on edge. I’m hard pressed to find sweet or loving memories with my dad, mom, and brother growing up when my parents were married. Maybe one Christmas time when we got scooters, that was a good time. But that is pretty much it. From birth until I was 13, when we left the house and mom filed for divorce, sadly, I don’t have loving memories of my father.

But I do remember seeing how fun, charismatic and charming he was when he was around his friends or family. That was enjoyable. I craved that version of dad. Like when he heard salsa music playing, or he was “hablando mierda” with his boys. He has the most distinct and unforgettable laugh. It was such a crazy loud laugh it just instantly brought you joy because it was something you never heard in your life.

Dad was a character. When he was in a good mood, an that happened mostly with his friends and family, he was the life of the party. 🥰. But when Evaristo Quiñones, Sr. was in a bad mood, stay out of the way if that tornado. He would come in the house like a tazmanian devil causing chaos and he would be angry criticizing what was wrong with everything from the moment he stepped foot in the house. It was a very brief moment I was happy to see him when he came home on the weekends from Jersey City. Our normal, healthy, peaceful, and quiet suburban Puerto Rican life was about to get tossed upside down once Evaristo entered the building. Buckle up familia, we are about to going on an emotional rollercoaster that won’t stop until he is asleep or on his way back to Jersey City. Either couldn’t come fast enough. If I was going to see my dad, I much more preferred it was with his friends, his family, or outside the house doing something he liked like the flea market. Because in those situations, I got to see the fun, likable, charming and charismatic Evaristo.

I especially loved seeing my dad with his mom, my Abuelita. He would always bring her food (I don’t remember him buying us groceries when my parents were married ever). Dad was very loving with Abuelita and sometimes affection 😃. He would be silly with her and goof around with her. Thinking back, he turned into a little boy with his mom. I saw how he showed love and kindness and adoration to her. It was sweet and it felt safe and warm. I wanted to feel that way with him alway, safe, loved, protected, adored, and enjoying silly moments. Sadly, we didn’t have as many as I would have liked.

After my son was born, I welcomed my dad back into my life. I was about 12 years old when mom took me and Tito and left my dad. We left the beautiful suburban house when I was about 12 and my mom filed for divorce from my father. I saw him on an extremely limited bases until I graduated college and had my son. At 22 is when my dad began to come back into my life. By that point, my parents divorced has been a long done. My mom was remarried and I’d began my own life. And that’s when life began to really get complicated for me. To be continued.

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feltpool · 2 years

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Whatever happened to Dogma?

Dogma executed a Jedi.

No matter the good reasons he had for doing it he couldn't simply be given a slap on the wrist and return to active duty with the 501st afterwards. So what happened to him?

There’s a good chance that he was 'decommissioned', whatever that actually means in TCW terms.

Fans have wanted to know what happened to him ever since, and maybe we're going to find out.

Because, and this may seem a bit random, but bear with me.

Hunter could be Dogma.

Or, more specifically, that’s who he might have been before he was 'enhanced', rebranded, and reassigned to CF99.

And before you start coming for me with the argument that the Batch were enhanced as babies so that can’t possibly be the case I’ll remind you that that’s

Only a fan assumption based on the Kaminoan’s being known primarily as cloners

That they escaped from Nala Se’s lab in full grown adult sized tubes, not baby sized ones

And Omega is likely 13 years old at most. How could she possibly remember them being in the lab if they were tortured and experimented on enhanced that long ago?

Anyway,

It could explain why he's always been professionally friendly towards Rex, but also seems cautious around him and never lingers, nor encourages Rex to. What if he says the wrong thing and Rex puts two and two together exposing his past to the rest of the team, exposing him for being a Jedi killer, exposing him for blindly following Krell and contributing towards so many of his brothers being needlessly killed.

It'd explain how come Cody knows him. Because he'd know what happened to him even if no one else did. I doubt you can make a soldier with that on his record just vanish entirely and Cody is Marshall Commander of the GAR. Krell pitted the 212th against the 501st - Cody's own men. And he isn't going to forget that it was Dogma who put an ultimate end to that. He refers to Hunter as a good man, maybe this is why. But Echo had been lost prior to Umbara, so Echo is safe. A reminder of his old battalion, but without the risk of exposure. But why the 'reg' hate? Because he’s bitter and wracked with guilt over the life he used to have? Because none of his brothers stopped him being decommissioned? Because he sees them as having turned their backs on him? Because they remained loyal to the Jedi afterwards even though Krell was a Jedi and he sees them all as betraying him because of that? Or is it just a part of his reconditioning for his new life, to make sure he doesn't want to hang around with the others and inadvertently expose the truth of who he used to be? For all his talk of disobeying orders he still appears to follow them pretty damn blindly, taking Tech's word as gospel, and doing we have no idea what on whatever dubious mission they've been assigned by someone he isn’t willing to admit to knowing the identity of when directly asked about it. Is he scared (has he been threatened) that if he doesn't follow through on their missions that he'll lose everything he has for a second time? He has long hair, just like Tup did. And Dogma growing his hair out as a way of remembering his brother is a common post-Umbara fan theory.

Dogma had a very distinctive hairline, and Hunter never takes that bandana off. It’s never clear if that’s his natural hairline, or if it’s shaved that way, (does the V-shaped tattoo mirror the hairline, or the other way around?) but there’s no sign of stubble on his head like there is on his face so it’s a possibility that he just has a really odd hairline.

We do see a variety of hairlines within the clones, they're not all the same. So it is possible (if unlikely) that his hair does just grow like that.

And if it is natural, if unusual, it’d explain why there’s no sign of him missing any hair post chip surgery. Because Dogma’s hairline goes waaaaaaay back at just the right point. (The lack of missing hair is still weird though.)

In the finale Crosshair told him to stop pretending to be someone he isn't. Maybe that was a lot more pointed a comment than we're supposed to think it is.

And his tattoo. Presumably they have the SW equivalent of laser tattoo removal for any clones who live long enough to regret the tatt they got in their first year of service and want to get rid of it before slapping a new one on where it used to be. Hunter has a half skull, thick and dark like a lot of coverups are.

Skulls often symbolise death, or change. The loss of the man he used to be, the 'death of Dogma', him becoming someone new but still remembering the person he used to be, even if not entirely? So half a skull, because he's a dead man, but he also isn't. Coming back to the whole two-faced thing, but for a totally different reason. The CF99 logo skull is a totally different design to the one he has on his face, the shaping is all wrong.

But tattoo removal, in our universe at least, isn’t 100%. Even after several treatments you often get lingering remains. Like this:

(Courtesy of ‘G-Lasers laser tattoo removal services, Leicester’ website)

Where the original tatt has been broken down, but not removed entirely, and has then been covered up.

Dogma’s tattoo as seen in ‘Plan of Dissent’ ^ (although the design does tend to move about a touch in different shots, which is understandable because it’s a complex design to keep mapped on the model exactly)

Hunter’s tattoo as seen in the mess hall fight in Ep 01 ^

Or, with a very short amount of time roughly scribbling on a screenshot:

A very bad illustration of how Hunter’s tattoo would cover up Dogma’s partially removed tattoo

All of the purple-ish area would be hidden under the skull tattoo, and his ever present bandana would hide almost all of the rest. Only the area above and beside his right eye would need to have been completely erased for this to work. The narrow strip above his left eyebrow is far too narrow for anyone to notice any trace discolouration unless they were really looking for it, and knew what they were looking for.

You can see a ‘darker than his skin tone’ mark on his nose underneath the main darkly tattooed area where the lingering remains of the original nose tattoo may still lightly show.

There. I hurriedly coloured him in for the full... appreciation? of how covering up Dogma’s tatt with Hunter’s would work. If you want art you’re looking at the wrong person. I only do rushed and ugly scribble.

And what of the ID barcode in his left arm? Those haven’t been mentioned since Gregor’s was scanned all the way back in Season 5 even though Echo conveniently managed to keep the arm which would confirm his identity if he ever needs to. Can those ID’s be reprogrammed, or if Hunter’s was scanned would it confirm his birth identity and number instead of the one most recently assigned to him?

We don't know what they might have done to him to 'enhance' him, how he might have been reprogrammed, or how his potentially questionable loyalties might have been reinforced. But I can't rule out the possibility that Hunter hasn’t always been Hunter. Like it or not.

#tbb #tcw #hunter #dogma #clones #hiding in plain sight #the bad batch #the clone wars

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shihalyfie · 3 years

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Regarding Konaka’s influence on Tamers (or how much he actually didn’t have)

(Rest assured that if you’ve had a conversation with me recently about this issue, I’m not vaguing you; this conversation has come up a lot in the last few weeks, especially in my private chats, so this is just me deciding that I should write something about this for once since it’s been weighing on my head lately.)

I think, right now, with what happened regarding the DigiFes debacle, a lot of people are having complicated feelings about how to feel about Tamers, and this is completely understandable. I think there are also some things that may be inevitably unavoidable, such as starting to second-guess certain nuances in the series and what they might lead to. All of that is perfectly reasonable, and in the end, it’s going to be up to everyone to decide how they feel.

In light of this, a lot of people have been bringing up the fact that, while Konaka was the head writer, he was by no means the only person working on it. This is very much true, but I’d like to add something else to the equation: this is an issue that goes much deeper than the usual claiming death of the author for the sake of sanity. The full picture is that Konaka has always had much less influence on the series than the fanbase tends to attribute to him. Official statements have been very clear as to not attribute the entire series to him, and, among all the other controversial statements he’s made, Konaka himself has at least been very active about crediting the other staff members as far as their influence on the series! The idea that he was the only person who ever did anything substantial for Tamers is something I’ve been warning against since long before any of this happened (if you want proof, I have a post from April with this sentiment in it), and right now we just happen to be seeing what’s basically the worst possible outcome of the fanbase constantly worshipping him like the only real creative heart behind the series to borderline cult-like levels...when that’s never been true, and has resulted in unfairly taking credit away from people who deserved it.

I’ll go into detail below, and I hope this can help people understand the situation better and sort out how they feel about it.

Note that I make references to his infamous blog in this post, which I’m deliberately refraining from directly linking for obvious reasons, but all of the information is still there, so it should be verifiable if you decide to look for it yourself.

Personally, I’ve always found it really bizarre how there’s been this obsession with portraying Konaka as some kind of auteur whom the entirety of Tamers depended on. I’m not saying this out of spite towards him, because, again, even he himself was very insistent on disclaiming credit for things he wasn’t actually responsible for (he was quite humble in this respect, actually). Not to mention that I think it’s a mistake in general to constantly pin a single person in a multi-person production as the sole heart behind it, and the Digimon fanbase has historically had this strange double standard behind it when it comes to uplifting him as the only heart behind Tamers when nobody says that about any of the head writers for...anything else. (How many times has Nishizono’s name ever popped up when talking about Adventure? People are usually more obsessed with talking about Kakudou or Seki.) Konaka’s work is certainly distinctive, but Tamers had a lot more going on besides just that.

In fact, based on his own statements on the matter and all of the other official information we’ve gotten about Tamers production, while you can’t really quantify such things, it’s generally been estimated that Konaka was responsible for something like only a fourth of the series. Which is an incredibly low amount compared to what the fanbase would have told you before all of this happened, because of this fixation that he must be the genius mastermind behind the whole series. Not only that, this “brilliant auteur” image of him was so inflated that people were attributing way more of 02 to him than he deserved; 02 episode 13 was the only thing he contributed to the series and he was specifically brought on as a “guest writer”, and the overall plot of the episode was determined by the rest of the production staff and not him -- but ask the fanbase and they’ll tell you stories about how he invented some grand planned arc for 02 that got cancelled, or even that Tamers exists because of a “writer revolt” from him and other writers not being allowed to do what they wanted. (You know, as much as I understand 02′s a controversial series, it would be really nice if people didn’t make up completely baseless stories like this just to scapegoat it...)

I honestly cannot emphasize enough how much of the problem we’re in right now has been horribly enabled by the weird pedestal the fanbase has been putting him on. This is to the point where there’s even been a double standard where some of the more unpopular/criticized elements of Tamers must not have been the fault of a brilliant writer like him, and in fact was forced on him by the executives (this excuse had always been brought up anytime someone doesn’t like something about Tamers, just to make sure the image of him as a perfect writer was maintained). Turns out, as per his own admission on the infamous blog, while he wasn’t the one who initially had the idea of putting Ryou in, the part that rubbed the fanbase the wrong way -- that he came in as an accomplished senior who was better than everyone and played up by everyone in the cast -- was unabashedly his idea (he apparently was enamored with the idea of having someone like Tuttle from the movie Brazil). Again, this is a weird scenario where even Konaka himself has been more humble about this issue than the fanbase’s perception of him; he fully admitted whenever he had trouble writing certain parts. For instance, he doesn’t actually like writing about alternate worlds, felt they were out of his comfort zone, and only wrote in the Digital World because the franchise needs one; he’d stated that if he’d had his way, the Digital World arc wouldn’t have come in as early as it did, which might be a pretty shocking statement for a Digimon fan to hear.

If you want even more specifics, here are some extremely major parts of the series that Konaka was not actually the one behind:

The character backgrounds. Konaka stated on his blog that he wasn’t interested in going too much into character backstories because he felt it was too plot-limiting to say that a character is the way they are thanks to something in their past or background (basically, he cares more about plot than character for the most part), and that he’s also not into worldbuilding. Certain things like Ruki going to a girls’ school were supplied by Seki, who infamously loves worldbuilding, family backgrounds, and character settings.

Certain nuances of Ruki’s character, especially the part where she’s pigeonholed into uncomfortable places due to being a girl, were informed by Yoshimura Genki, writer from Adventure and one of the head writers of 02 (who eventually would go on to create an entire career out of feminist cinema).

According to the posts on his blog, Impmon’s character arc didn’t have much input from Konaka himself and was largely written in by Maekawa Atsushi (also a writer from Adventure and one of the head writers of 02).

The whole concept of Yamaki being redeemable in the first place was something Konaka didn’t originally plan for; he’d initially intended to make him a straightforward antagonist, but, of all things, his Christmas song, combined with the input of the other writers (especially Maekawa) humanizing him, led to the development where Yamaki eventually changed sides and became sympathetic. (This makes Konaka’s recent stunt revolving around Yamaki a bit painfully ironic.)

The director, Kaizawa Yukio, was deliberately picked because he didn’t have experience on the prior series, for the sake of changing things up, and he spent Tamers as a period of studying what Digimon should be like. Based on what he’s hinted, it seems Konaka's writing style and choices were able to have as much influence as they did because Kaizawa approved of them -- that is to say, Konaka’s detailed imagery and descriptions were extensive enough that Kaizawa could go “sure, let’s go with that.” But in the end, nothing Konaka did would have gone through unless Kaizawa and Seki (among many others) didn’t also approve of it or provide input. Moreover, Kakudou Hiroyuki (director of Adventure and 02) has also been stated many times to have been a valuable consultant on invoking Digimon so that the new staff could understand what to aim for and how to get the right feel (and also assisted with providing stuff for the mythos, such as the Devas). Nevertheless, Kaizawa also seems to have had his own strong opinions and input on the story; he especially seems to get passionate when it comes to the topic of making the story something the kids watching it could relate to and imagine. (He would eventually go on to direct Frontier and Hunters, along with several episodes of the Adventure: reboot.)

So in other words, looking at this, a lot of these things that people emotionally connected to and loved about Tamers are things that literally were not his personal creation, and were largely contributed by the other writers! Of course, Konaka’s “creator thumbprint” is very obvious -- he was the head writer, after all -- and all of this had to go through his own vetting to make sure he personally liked it as well -- but nevertheless, you can see that this very much was a collaborative effort from head to toe, with him being very open about this fact himself. Insisting on making sure that this fact is well-known isn’t just a coping mechanism to try and remove his presence in the series, but rather a desire to get people to seriously stop giving him credit that really should be going to others (especially since, again, even he himself was very diligent about assigning that credit).

In the end, I’ll leave you with another thing to keep in mind: Konaka doesn’t get paid anymore for Tamers work (unless they make something new like the DigiFes thing), so continuing to buy Tamers merch and supporting the series through fanart and such will probably end up going more towards the Digimon IP as a whole. Basically, if we’re just talking about Tamers specifically, what degree this is going to matter is only really relevant to the content in the original series, which is now twenty years old and remains unchanged. By Konaka’s own admission, he wasn’t into all of these conspiracy theories until 2010 at the earliest, so while it’s understandable to be a bit wary about the themes in Tamers having traces of the base sentiment, the original series itself does not seem to be an outlet for alt-right propaganda, and it’s probably forcing it a bit much to read into it that way. Konaka’s also repeatedly insisted that all of his attempts at a Tamers sequel have been rejected and that he’s been doing increasingly strange swerves to get around members of the original cast not entirely being available, and the Japanese audience has turned out to not be very fond of the contents of the 2018 drama CD and the stage reading for reasons entirely separate from the politics, so it’s also unlikely we’ll be getting a Tamers sequel from him or something in the near future.

So -- at least for the time being -- what’s done with him is done, and the remaining question is how all of us feel about Tamers. I think everyone will have differing feelings on it, and that’s perfectly understandable. Personally, given everything I just said above, I’m going to continue treating it as a series very important to me, and one that many people (including, as it seems, a very different Konaka from twenty years ago) worked on with a lot of effort and love, although you may see me getting a bit more willing to be critical about the series and its themes thanks to my concerns about some of the sentiments in it and what they imply. I also completely understand that there are probably people whose associations are going to be much more hurt and who will have a much harder time seeing the series the same way ever again, and I think that’s reasonable as well. But at the very least, going forward, I hope all of us can understand the depth of this situation, give credit where it’s due, and not force credit where it’s not due.

#digimon #digimon tamers

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tyrantisterror · 3 years

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The ATOM Create a Kaiju Contest 3-D: Entry Roundup

You’ve been patiently waiting for the results of the ATOM Create a Kaiju Contest 3-D, and now... you have to wait a bit longer, but at least you’ve got an entry roundup with lots of sketches and a good bit of feedback for all the entrants! My goal is to get the finalists illustrated in a week or two, and after that, the grand prize winner will be announced. But, for now, the official entry roundup! After the cut:

I should note that while I sketched these in the order they were submitted, my scanner saved the documents with random names, so they’re a bit jumbled. You know, just in case you’re like me and would get confused noticing that it’s almost in chronological order but with some entries jumbled around.

@bugcthulhu’s Obsideban was designed as a counterpart to Rohobaron - the Black King to Rohobaron’s Red King, if you will. Or, well, Black Queen in this case, as Obsideban also takes her personality from the “delinquent girl” archetype in Japanese media. Bug’s designs always ooze personality, and I had a lot of fun translating this big, gnarly retrosaur into my own style.

@toothlessloveshiccup‘s Argonox is the first - but far from the last - monster in this breakdown that brings in a bit of fantasy influence to ATOM’s roster. A golden-fleeced ram with a vicious streak, this sheep is both treasure and dragon at once. And while it wasn’t written in the monster’s profile, given the Yamaneon-rich nature of its wool, Argonox might be able to replicate the healing power of the golden fleece too! A very fun mammalian kaiju and excellent entry.

@highly-radioactive-nerd submitted Gunmetal Jeeves, a robot butler who can gigantomax temporarily create a holographic/hard light version of himself to fight kaiju. That detail was a late revision added to the entry before the contest’s deadline, made after the creator realized that ATOM allows for some truly ludicrous bullshit, which is something everyone should exploit when making entries for this in my opinion. Also, this is a robot butler who can size shift. Revel in its awesome absurdity!

Ultranerd submitted Rajasaurus, a dimetrodon-like synapsid kaiju with electric powers. His origin specifies that the electric powers are a result of the volatile nature of the Yamaneon deposits he mutated under, which is an interesting idea. That’s another theme that cropped up a lot in this contest’s entries, actually - people really wanted to play with what Yamaneon can do.

Case in point, @polygonfighter’s Yamaneolith takes the Monolith Monsters homage at the heart of Yamaneon even more apparent. I like the implication that there is a second mineral-based lifeform at the root of this Yamaneon cluster’s anomalous behavior - a parasite, perhaps? It brings up some interesting possibilities.

@ariccio50 submitted Kukulkuzana, and damn is this a cool spin on the body plan of my martians. I made a few changes here and there (splitting its tail into two is probably the biggest one), but tried to keep true to the original design, because holy hell is it gorgeous. The idea that this is a mountain-dwelling creature is really intriguing to me, as it looks like a sea creature, but at the same time, that flexible and low-slung build WOULD work pretty well in mountains, and it’s just the right mix of plausible weirdness that makes for a fun alien design.

@akitymh submitted Aramzados, a Venusian monster that’s basically an organic hot rod car. I like the idea of organic machinery being the gimmick for Venusian kaiju, and Aramzado’s does it subtly enough to not feel like that gimmick is the sole thing going for it. I especially love this monster’s stange, apparently mouth-less blade-beaked face.

@virovac submitted Rurzar and Zar Rider, a Beyonder kaiju and mecha (respecitvely) that were both modified and repurposed by humans reverse engineering Beyonder technology to make, like, a motorcycle-saurus essentially. It is a delightfully absurd concept, and a very, very detailed one (13 pages of description). There’s a dark undercurrent beneath the sillyness, though, as this pair show that humanity might still be following the same path as the Beyonders before them.

@dinosaurana brings us Krangor, a humanoid monstrosity of living kelp! The goal here was to create a Jack Kirby-esque monster dude, complete with the gibberish name and all. He’s also made out of kelp, which feels very classic 1950′s monster-y despite me not being able to think of any monsters that were explicitly made of kelp. I love him.

@kiryuthechimera submitted Genkakurah, a psychic retrosaur with some draconic features. Though his substantial powerset is probably the biggest distinguishing feature of this kaiju (given that most ATOM kaiju pretty much have the same standard powers), what really draws me to him is that reptilian pseudo-beard. It’s just a fun detail!

@glarnboudin submits Tiratola, and see, there’s that fantasy influence again! Even more explicitly dragon-y than Kraydi, Tiratola still manages to toe the line between sci-fi and fantasy enough to fit ATOM as is while still cementing its ties to my own slice of fantasy fiction. Man it’s good I’m doing a Midgaheim book next, huh?

@dragonzzilla submitted Scuttlebutt/Argonautilus, a hermit crab kaiju who lives in/with a hollowed out mecha. That’s a twist I can’t recall ever hearing before, and the idea of a kaiju and a mecha having an equal partnership that doesn’t involve one being grafted to the other is really intriguing to me. A very unique concept!

@evolutionsvoid submitted Fleagor, an enormous flea who has no idea what to do with itself now that there’s no creature large enough for it to parasitize. I love that concept - it takes the core idea of the giant bug kaiju archetype (i.e. unsettling the audience by showing how terrifying small, “insignificant” creatures would be if our sizes were reversed) and really turns it on its head. The name also plays on the Universal Monsters, who were a huge part of 1950′s pop culture thanks to their movies being re-released in that era, so all and all this one is very on brand for ATOM!

@skarmorysilver submitted Lilacorn, another entry that plays up that Midgaheim/ATOM connection. Reinterpreting the mythological unicorn as an Cenozoic wooly rhinoceros-inspired monster gives it a very unique look, both in ATOM and in the general world of unicorns, and she has a bad-girl with a heart of gold personality to boot!

dracosaurus-rex submitted Florasaura, a two-headed plant/retrosaur hybrid monster. I love me some plant monsters, I love me some retrosaurs, and I love me some rhyming the word “flora” with other words that contain similar vowell sounds, so this one has me written all over it!

@downtofragglerock submitted Sauroguana, a delightfully odd flying retrosaur. There’s a great deal of charm to the original illustration that this sketch doesn’t quite capture - it’s a deceptively simple design with a lot of personality in it, and with those unique leg-wings it really doesn’t need a whole lot of frills to stand out.

Draxi submitted Brakan, an unimpressive burrowing retrosaur kaiju whose mastery of illusions allows it to convince other kaiju it’s actually a big, super-powerful badass that’s the ultimate fighter in the universe. It’s a delightful parody of the concept of a fan self-insert god-mode character, with a really fun story built into it to boot!

@quinnred submitted O.N.I.A.C., a mysterious cocooned kaiju whose chrysalis has been turned into an organic computer of sorts by the people studying it, and seems to possess a fairly advanced intelligence for a kaiju. It’s a really bizarre and ominous idea, with built in intrigue given how vague its nature is. Is it just a kaijufied butterfly/moth who got stuck mid transformation? A relative of the Mothmanuds? Something else, perhaps equally alien? Good story potential here.

shadyserpent submitted Vespilitor, a bat/retrosaur hybrid made by the nefarious Spooks Organization. A mercurial prankster whose tendency to stir up trouble never crosses the line into maliciousness, he’s the kind of monster who would make a great foil to a lot of ATOM’s cast. I’d especially like to see him in a prank off with Ahuul - it’d be like Bugs Bunny fighting Daffy Duck, but on a kaiju scale.

@multiversefan submitted the Yamaneon King, a nomadic kaiju whose refusal to settle down causes problems as he stirs up trouble at kaiju sanctuaries all over the globe by showing up unannounced and stirring up the locals. He was basically designed to be a monster that the kaiju sanctuary initiative would struggle to deal with, which is a good idea for a post-ATOM Volume 2 story conflict.

Sir K submitted Jadeera, a kirin kaiju that can actually forcibly convert most of its body to Yamaneon to enter a dormant, statue-like state in a loose homage to King Shisa. Though the fantasy elements are far more present than I usually prefer for ATOM kaiju, I think it should be noted they’re pushed that far for a purpose - a theme in Jadeera’s entry, which continues where its creator left off with their submission to the previous ATOM create a kaiju contest (Yokaigon), is that the world of kaiju is more complicated and challenging than many are willing to accept, which is a theme in ATOM itself. Yokaigon’s more supernatural/occult powers are based on the ghost parascience of my setting, which ATOM has delved into a bit (Pathogen being the big example), so it’s not as out of left field as some might think.

@cerothenull brings us our final entry (unless some got lost thanks to tumblr’s shitty tagging system), the flying spider Naeranti. She’s a kaiju spider who uses silk to make complicate hot-air balloons, more or less, and that’s just delightful. ATOM could always use more spider-monsters, and with a really unique gimmick backing up a wonderfully distinct look, Naeranti is sure to stand out among her fellow giant arachnids.

Well, that’s the roundup! In a week (or two, depending on how much my hand cramps) we’ll have the five finalists, and sometime after that, the grand prize winner!

#The Atomic Time of Monsters #The ATOM Create a Kaiju Contest 3D

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longitudinalwaveme · 3 years

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Worst Flash Storylines and Plot Ideas of All Time

As you’ve probably ascertained from the general contents of this blog, the Flash is my favorite comic book series. I love the characters and most of the stories. However, just like any series that’s been around for eighty years (counting the Jay Garrick stuff), the Flash does, unfortunately, have some truly terrible stories and plot ideas.

In terms of terrible plot ideas that didn’t completely ruin the surrounding stories:

1. Barry Allen uses the Mirror Master’s mirrors to manipulate Iris into agreeing to start dating him again (Flash #109). Creepy, Barry. Just creepy. The story is great Silver Age fun otherwise.

2. Iris West: meanest woman alive. Iris was, by and large, incredibly awful to Barry up until maybe about a year before their 1966 marriage. Almost every time she shows up in an early Silver Age issue, you will admire her daring and independence (this is good) and be bewildered as to why on Earth Barry would want to spend time with a woman who is constantly calling him slow, lazy, and ambition-less (this is not good). It doesn’t really affect any one issue too much, but when read in a conglomerate, she starts looking really awful. Although as bad as Early Silver Age Iris seems as a romantic interest, she’s got nothing on Silver Age Superman and Lois Lane, the most dysfunctional couple in the DCU.

3. Wally West’s zero-effort code name and costume (Flash #110). It really could not be more obvious how little effort the writers were putting into creating this character. The duplicate origin is also pretty cheesy, but there are enough differences from Barry’s origin for it not to frustrate me. But the name “Kid Flash” and the fact that his first costume was literally identical to Barry’s just feel incredibly lazy. Barry and Wally do have an adorable dynamic in the issue, though, so it’s by no means all bad.

4. Barry Allen waiting an entire year after his marriage to tell his wife that he’s really the Flash. Frustrating and unnecessary; especially since Joan Garrick had been in on her husband’s secret since the 1940s.

5. Iris Allen is FROM THE FUTURE. I both love and hate this idea. It’s so perfectly comic-booky, but at the same time, it opened the floodgates for the Allen family being a confusing, time-displaced mess.

6. The Trial of Barry Allen. This one’s weird. I like many of the individual issues in this arc, and I actually think the last two issues are really great as an ending for Barry Allen’s original run, but this storyline dragged on for waaaaaay too long. There’s a reason I call it the Arc that Never Ends. Also, the titular trial is actually the least interesting part of the entire storyline. His battles with the Rogues and Kadabra are far more interesting.

7. Wally West’s borderline creepy, chauvinistic attitude towards women under Mike Baron (and, to a much lesser extent, William Messner-Loebs). There’s being a hormonal twenty-something, and then there’s going through girlfriends at the rate other people change their socks. Messner-Loebs mostly avoided this issue by making it clear that Wally was under intense psychological stress that was negatively impacting his behavior, but under Baron and in some of his JLE appearances, he comes across as a real creep around women.

8. Kadabra overkill under Mark Waid: I like Kadabra, but when he’s the main villain in like four distinct arcs, it gets to be a bit much. It’s like modern Eobard. He is legitimately written well, though, so he doesn’t drag down any of the stories too much.

9. Pointlessly Dead Rogues: Killing off the Rogues in Underworld Unleashed for no good reason (the rest of the story is great, especially the Trickster).

10. Pointlessly Dead Rogues 2: Electric Boogaloo: The Golden Glider’s pointless death to build up a character who was himself killed two issues later. (The rest of the story is decent.) Also, the treatment of Lisa in general post-Crisis is frustrating, since she becomes considerably more unhinged than she was before.

11. Any time Waid tried to write McCulloch, with the exception of Flash vol. 2 #105 (and even there, he seemed off). It’s like he forgot Evan wasn’t Sam.

12. Apparently, the Top trying to blow up both Central City and half the world makes him a loser? Also, he suddenly hates Piper for no readily apparent reason. (At least the story had some good Piper and Wally bits.)

13. BARRY ALLEN HAS A SECRET EVIL TWIN! DUN DUN DUN! (The rest of the story, where we get to meet a whole whack of interesting future Flashes, is actually pretty good, but whoo boy, the Malcolm reveal feels like it came straight out of a soap opera.)

14. In order for Captain Cold to ANGST, the Golden Glider’s pointless death remained in place for over ten years. It did give us a really, really good Capt. Cold story, at least...but it’s still fridging.

15. Rainbow Raider’s mean-spirited murder by Blacksmith. Poor Roy.

16. Albert Desmond becomes Hannibal Lecter, only twenty times as rude, for a Gotham Central arc that would’ve been terrific without him as the main villain.

17. Owen Mercer is an idiotic child murderer and gets killed by the Rogues. Why was this necessary? (The rest of Blackest Night: The Flash is pretty good.)

18. Josh Jackam-Mardon’s murder. The murder of small children for shock value is pretty gross. Especially since nothing was ever really done with it.

19. Barry’s PARENTS ARE DEEEEAAAAD! (Okay, it’s really just his mom, but still. This is a very frustrating retcon, since originally his parents were alive and well until after his own death.)

20. Albert Desmond was Barry’s jerk coworker; which never impacted the plot or led to anything. As a result, it’s just another frustrating retcon.

21. Sam Scudder murdered someone before becoming the Mirror Master. Yet another Johns retcon that never went anywhere and only serves to darken the Silver and Bronze Age stories after the fact.

22. Flashpoint (a decent story) wiped out a whole bunch of characters I really liked from existence for several years. Evan McCulloch’s still not back.

23. Giving the Rogues metahuman powers doesn’t suit them, on the whole. They work better without them.

24. Roy’s second pointless, brutal death in (I think) Forever Evil.

25. IT WAS MEEEEE, BARRY! After serving as the main villain for like six arcs in eight years, I’m glad that Eobard finally seems to be getting a rest. The level of bad things he was responsible for was getting ridiculous.

26. Sam/Lisa. WHY? (The only time it even kind of worked was in Forever Evil.)

In terms of entire storylines I didn’t like:

1. The Flash: The Most Terribly Written Man Alive. Poor Bart is aged up with no adequate explanation, loses all the traits that made him a likeable character, fights some awful villains, and then is murdered by the badly OOC Rogues. Meanwhile, Inertia goes from an at least somewhat sympathetic villain to a complete psychopath with little explanation, a murder is retconned into one of Captain Cold’s reformed periods, the Pied Piper and the Trickster completely forget that they’re supposed to be reformed, Abra Kadabra inexplicably teams up with the Rogues despite generally being a solo operative, and all of the Rogues act like total morons, willingly following a teenage speedster for no adequately explained reason. UGH.

2. Countdown to Infinite Crisis: Even though Piper and Trickster were probably the best part of Countdown, that isn’t saying much. Both of them are uncharacteristically stupid (especially James), and James is a grade-A jerk to Piper for no reason. Also, both of them continue to forget that they reformed, and then James gets brutally murdered and Piper almost loses his mind. Also, the other Rogues cameo, and continue to act like idiots. Countdown: it really does ruin everything it touches.

Superboy Prime will kill you! He’ll kill you to DEATH! And after you read Countdown, you’ll wish he had killed you to death.

3. The Identity Crisis Tie-In Retcon: So, you know all that awesome character development the Rogues have had over the years? Well, forget all that, because it was all just Roscoe brainwashing them! Which was something he could definitely do before this story! And why did he do this? Why, because Barry Allen, one of the most upstanding men in the DCU, brainwashed him! Also, apparently, the Top had a huge bodycount that we never heard about back in the Bronze Age, because we need even MORE grimdark retcons for our cheerful Silver/Bronze Age history! I like Geoff Johns’ work, I really do....but BOY HOWDY does he need to lay off on the retcons sometimes.

4. Identity Crisis: With the exception of Owen’s introduction and the establishment of the relationship between him and Digger, this story was pretty awful all around. More specifically, as far as the Flash was concerned, it was responsible for Digger’s second pointless death. It also killed off poor Jack Drake and poor, mistreated Sue Dibney, who deserved MUCH better. And the Justice League, including Barry, are A-OK with brainwashing, apparently. Comics are fun!

These last two stories are pretty recent, and they did have some parts I liked, but on the whole I felt they also belonged on the list.

5. The Trickster finally returns! Hurrah! Except it turns out that he’s way more like the Joker now than he ever was before, and he mind-controls the city in a super-creepy way. A very disappointing return for the character, especially since it was set up really well.

6. Forever Evil: Captain Cold becomes a murderous dictator with a stupid Santa Beard, all of the Rogues get horrible costumes, and Sam completes his mutation into Evan-in-all-but-name. There are some good characters bits in the story (even for Cold), but on the whole, I found the story to just be unlikeable and depressing and thought Cold was pretty out-of-character. Poor Commander Cold....

So, what are your least favorite Flash storylines and plot ideas?

#flash comics #flash rogues #dc comics

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black-rose-writings · 3 years

Text

Reading Siege and Storm because I hate myself

To begin, I’d like to state that this is my first read-through and I only have vague idea of the plot I’ve gathered from fanfics and tumblr posts.

Long post ahead

Chapter 1

So... at first I was like - huh, this isn’t as bad as I thought, but the moment Alina gets introspective, it all goes to hell.

Like, she’s being physically made sick by not using her powers, which is making her feel useless - like, she says, pretty much verbatim: “The only thing I was ever good at was being a Sun Summoner and I’m not that anymore.”

I’m gonna beat those paragraphs over the head of anyone, who says Alina got a good ending.

I’ve also noticed just how often the like “I pushed that thought away” is used and more often than not, it’s used on thoughts that should probably not be pushed away.

Ah, yes, here he comes, my boy Darkles, being the dramatic bitch he always is. We get it, you’re the hot villain, tempting the good and pure heroine away from being good and pure.

And I’m just now realizing how many times in this chapter has Alina lamented their lack of privacy. We have to ensure the reader doesn’t hink she’s *gasp* sleeping with Mal.

Chapter 2

What?

Alina is tripping balls while being put under by a Heartrender, got it.

Darkling is being the voice of reason, but I’m getting the distinct feeling it won’t last.

Ivan gets one point, because Alina is in fact a traitor, but he’s also being a cunt, so it doesn’t really count.

Alina at Sturmhond: Do you even care about Ravka?

Me at Alina: Do you?

Chapter 3

“Mermaids are not real”. I’m pretty sure they are in the Grishaverse.

My boy Darkles is still making sense, but Alina is dedicated to being against him just for the hell of it, it seems.

Did this bitch just throw a tantrum, because he told her, what we can assume is the truth? Okay. Like, I get that she’s at best 18, but still. Not exactly the type of protagonist whose head I like being in.

And in that moment, dozens of smut fics were born.

Chapter 4

Wow, that was quick.

Aaand. What had just happened?

Chapter 5

Sturmhond is a funny bitch, I’ll give him that.

And this entire conversation, it seems like Mal’s entire purpose is to stand behind Alina threateningly and repeat what she said, lol.

I’d like to remind Alina (and LB) that a king in an absolutist monarchy (which is what Ravka appears to be) is very much a tyrant. Don’t make it sound like Ravka didn’t have a tyrant before. And at the very least, my boy Darkles seems pretty competent.

A man calling himself a Storm Dog likes dogs. No shit.

Chapter 6

I hate Mal. Dude, this is your girlfriend, maybe like... listen to her? Don’t bludgeon her with the one other guy she was kinda-sorta with, when you are a well known manwhore?

I don’t know man, I don’t like him.

Everyone: You can’t have more than one amplifier, it’s dangerous.

Alina: Haha, sparkles go brrrr

Chapter 7

In other news, pirates are funny.

Holy shit, they have a plane.

That was... a lot. And we’re crossing the Fold again, yay.

Chapter 8

You feel bad for the Volcra but not for the people you’ve left for dead in the Fold last time? Okay.

Baby Volcra. Am I supposed to say “ew” or “aww”? If I tried doing both at the same time, it would probably sound like one.

Jesus fucking Christ this book is a ride.

Did Alina really just have an “oh no, he’s hot?” moment? *sighs*

Puppy boy has a title longer than Daenerys, jesus.

Alina, my dear, you could have waited for a bit before doing that. There’s like thirty soldier with guns around you and you’ve just punched a prince.

Then again, you’ve never been smart, have you?

Chapter 9

For once, I completely agree with him. I know you two have lost your one shared braincell on that first crossing of the Fold but still, that was very dumb of you, Alina.

I’m starting to get why people were calling Nikolai “Darkling light”. Definitelly seems appropriate.

Mal, calm the fuck down, that was the least romantic proposal I’ve ever heard and you know it.

You two didn’t even let Alina get a word in for the last page. What right do you have to her, Mal, huh? Nikolai is making sense and you’re being an idiot.

What’s your deal Mal? What the fuck do you want?

And why in the hell are you the endgame love interest?

That’s an awful lot of guilt-tripping you’re doing there, Mal. No need to be pissy about it.

Chapter 10

The bones thing is definitelly yikes.

Saints, Mal, are you on your period or something? Alina doesn’t belong to you. Alina can make her own choices. Get a grip.

“You think I’m like the Darkling?” Yes. The Darkling isn’t all bad. You’re at war. No need to get your panties in a twist over a few fingers.

Oh, look, Alina has a cult now, nice.

Chapter 11

Your “dad” is a rapist, Nikolai. Quite possibly a pedo. He got exactly what he deserved.

I’d go for the second option. Especially after that stunt. Jesus, you could have asked her beforehand.

At least Darkles had the decency to make out with her in private.

Also like... why is every single person in this series so far an asshole?

Chapter 12

We meet the King again, unfortunately.

Alina gets Darkles’s old job.

This should be a total disaster, but let’s see where it goes anyway.

Chapter 13

Alina’s nuts, yay.

(I know they have a Force-bond-thingy. I also know they did it before Reylo did.)

Chapter 14

Oh boy, Alina’s not doing as bad as I thought.

For the 100th time in this book, I wish I had Nikolai’s confidence. Though it is getting a bit too much.

Puppy boy is dropping some truth bombs. Nice.

But he doesn’t realize that my boy Darkles has very good reasons to not align with Fjerdans - a) they think he’s a demon and b) they want Grisha dead.

I’m not gonna say she was, but like... the monarchy is very much corrupt.

Oh, boy, Baghra. This one’s gonna go well.

Yep, Baghra’s as pleasant as ever.

So... Baghra’s plan in book 1 really had been to just have Alina run away and hope for the best? Jesus Christ, lady. I’m not saying she deserved to have her eyes taken away, but she is definitelly a trash person and I’m not surprised her son turned out the way he did.

Also, I’m fairly certain that Baghra is literally slowly killing herself - that the reason she looks so old and frail is because she’s started to supress her power and it’s literally killing her, because, you know, she’s bonkers old.

Chapter 15

Nerd Alina > Self-pitying Alina

Also, I’m just saying, Alina comments on Zoya being attractive a whole lot - I get that she’s meant to be insecure, but I’m interpreting it as her being gay, because I need some happiness in my life, okay?

Just kill the sleazy old Rasputin-wanna-be. There’s plenty of them to go around in this series.

Chapter 16

Vasily takes after his father in creep factor.

Why not the Darkling being courted by a horny prince? Be a bit creative.

Chapter 17

Nikolai has big ADHD energy and I love him for it. Fits right in with the heavily autism-coded Fabricators.

*sighs at heteronormativity again*

*sighs at improper gendering of titles*

Date night with Mal. This is gonna be a disaster, isn’t it?

Chapter 18

Fun night of cultural appropriation, yay.

I hate cultists.

LET. ALINA. GO. FERAL. Please.

You two are going to give me a headache, I swear.

Darkles cockblocking Alina. And Malice threw a tantrum. Nice.

Chapter 19

You’re way too harsh on Genya, Alina.

Horny Alina rights.

They have a laser, now. Cool. Or, well, enormously hot.

Mal is being a drunk a-hole. Great. When does he become likable? Does he ever?

Banter between Mal and Alina? Kinda weird, always somehow comes back to either of them being insecure.

Banter between Alina and Nikolai? I’m all for it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a Darklina trash, but like... Nikolai is fun. I could see him and Alina having an arranged political marriage and ending up falling in love years into it, that’s all I’m saying.

Chapter 20

Just let this one go, Alina, please. You two are not working out. Please, end it with him. You’ll both probably be happier. (I’m saying this with the full knowledge that Malina is endgame).

Jesus Alina, get your shit together. You have every right to be mad, because you two didn’t actually break up, you didn’t kiss Nikolai and also, I don’t like Mal.

Sooo... when is Alina going to realize her manchild of a boyfriend is an amplifier?

Chapter 21

Alina has the horny sickness, lol.

Jesus Christ, girl, I don’t want to read your vaguely suicidal thoughts.

Mal, you fucking idiot.

Alina, stop defending Mal.

Chapter 22

Alina has a logical thought? Impossible.

Finally, some action.

Chapter 23

Oh, boi, this is going great.

Oh, boi, Alina’s having another martyr moment.

And, we’re done.

Finally.

That was a ride. Nothing really happens for like ten chapters and then everything happens in one and a half.

#shadow and bone #grishaverse #siege and storm #review #darklina #anti mal #I guess #reading binges like this yeet me right back into middle school

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demonslayedher · 3 years

Text

An Attempted Timeline: Kochou Shinobu

Very open to feedback, because canon is as spread out as Muzan after his first date with Sun Breathing. Instead of tracking the year or distance from current timeline, we shall track this by Shinobu’s age (roughly, in most spots). Despite being centered around Shinobu’s life events, I’m also diving into Aoi’s life, the other Pillars’ timelines of life events too, and doing some conjecture about Shinobu’s deceased Tsuguko. Should be obvious, but spoilers ahead.

Childhood: Raised by kind parents who possessed medical knowledge. Sometime around elementary school age (at the oldest, I’d put her at 11, but probably younger), parents are killed by a demon, house is demolished, and she and Kanae are rescued by Himejima (who was maybe around 20 or younger at the time), who hands them off to the Kakushi. After the funeral for their parents, she and Kanae seek out Himejima for training, and after a little time with them he sends them to separate cultivators (according to the light novel chapter “One Winged Butterfly.”) Training under cultivators usually takes about a year. She and Kanae perhaps passed the Final Selection when Shinobu was around 12-ish, give or take. (For setting and comparison’s sake, Kagaya and Amane have long since already been married and Kiriya is already born.) Whether Kanae becomes a Pillar first or they establish the hospital at the Butterfly Mansion first is unclear, but these events happen relatively quickly. I suspect they might have had access to a lot of savings from their parents. Furthermore, this makes Kanae one of the many Pillars in the recent generation who blows that “it usually takes five years to become a Pillar” Taisho Secret away. (As an aside, maybe the reason the Corp as a whole seems to be full of weaklings is because the current Pillars have sucked up all the amazingness, but I digress.)

The Butterfly Mansion’s hospital was established long before Sanemi became a Pillar (according to the light novel chapter “Signpost of the Wind”). Sometime after Kanae becomes a Pillar, Sanemi becomes a Pillar. Giyuu was a Pillar before Sanemi was; the three of them were the same age. My guess is that Shinobu was around 13 when Kanae became a Pillar, putting Kanae and Sanemi around ages 15ish~17 when they would have had chances to interact. For comparison, Giyuu and Sabito were 13 at the time of the Final Selection, so Giyuu would had already been in the Corp longer than Kanae and Shinobu.

The following events either happened very quickly or unfolded over the course of a couple years:

Aoi (likely the the same age as Kanao) comes into their care (she preceded Kanao since she was there for Kanao’s naming, according to Taisho Secrets and second fanbook)*

Kanao (two years younger than Shinobu but much smaller, and given how petite Shinobu is, I can only assume this is because of how malnourished Kanao was) is adopted as their little sister on some May 19 (the anime seems to put the event in winter, but I assume it was already in production before the first fanbook was published with that detail)

Kanao has ample opportunity to observe Kanae’s Flower Breathing and learn by watching

Kiyo, Sumi, and Naho come into the fold (separately or all at once, though not as relatives)

Kanae is killed by Douma (Shinobu is age 14, one of the only pieces of this timeline we can be certain of). As she wished in her dying moments for Shinobu to live a normal life, she may or may not have had Shinobu as her Tsuguko, or had any Tsuguko at all.

Shinobu, age 14, becomes the head of the Butterfly Mansion household, where she already has five adoptive/pseudo younger sisters. At this point she takes on a cheerful personality, as well as probably set her heart on becoming a Pillar as soon as possible and becoming strong enough to defeat the demon that killed Kanae.

*Aoi’s circumstances are important (and curious) because the second fanbook tells us both that she practiced Water Breathing and that she passed the same Final Selection as Muichiro. Since Muichiro became a Pillar two months after taking up the sword, that means he went almost straight from sword to Final Selection to Pillar. We don’t know how much recovery time he needed after losing Yuichiro at age 11, because he wasn’t among the Pillars in the Rengoku Gaiden, so he perhaps only started practicing the sword closer to late 12 or age 13 (putting Aoi around 14, 15-ish when she passed the Final Selection, and presumably quit the sword right after that). It’s interesting to note what a different relationship Aoi has with Shinobu than Kanao does, especially since Aoi was there first but Kanao was adopted as a sister in a more all-encompassing sense. I suspect (and am putting this in italics for conjecture): Due to whatever circumstances with her Water Breath cultivator (possibly difficulty in housing a lone girl among a bunch of male students), Aoi needed to live elsewhere during her training. The Butterfly Mansion was a good spot, so Kanae and Shinobu agreed, like sponsoring a junior, and in exchange Aoi helped out around the house and hospital. Aoi kept her own last name, as she had her own family to avenge. When Kanao came in, it was purely out of wanting to help an orphan who wound up staying with them instead of being adopted out, which is why she was given a family identity and an opportunity to take the Kochou name if she wanted to (or even Aoi’s family name). They were probably treated differently because of the nature of how they came in and an assumption that Aoi would leave as soon as she entered the Corp. As Kiyo, Naho, and Sumi came in, it was a weird middle ground of whether they were just looked after until something better for them came along or if they were adopted as sisters as fully as Kanao was. Ultimately, they still retained a lot of their identities from before they were orphaned, and it was more of a pseudo-sisterhood, which Aoi had sort of fallen into as well. But, once Aoi entered the Corp and then quit the sword, she probably didn’t feel she could turn to her cultivator for any help, so at that point Shinobu took more full responsibility for her as a permanent household member.

Moving back on to Shinobu’s timeline, if I’m remembering the Giyuu Gaiden correctly (it’s been a while since I read it so I don’t recall exactly), that story took place shortly after Giyuu sent Tanjiro and Nezuko to Urokodaki, and it was also shortly after Shinobu became a Pillar. Since Tanjiro took two years to train after that, that would put her at age 16. Since Kanao joined the Corp in the same batch as Tanjiro, that means Shinobu would have had about two years between becoming a Pillar and taking Kanao as her official Tsuguko (I stress ‘official’ because it comes with distinction Tengen respects, it’s not casual “sure, I’ll look after you” thing). In that time, she had (at least) three other previous Tsuguko, all girls given butterfly hairpins, and who were all killed by demons in that two year period.

Conjecture about Shinobu and these Tsuguko:

Knowing how likely she is to be killed before she has an opportunity to avenge Kanae, Shinobu was likely in a hurry to train a Tsuguko and started trying to pass her knowledge on right away. It’s possible they were even closer in age to her than Kanao, maybe even older, and quite possibly physically stronger. It’s possible they were trained under Flower Breathing cultivators and still used that Breath, which would have given Kanao opportunities to learn by watching. That said, Shinobu doesn’t mention or think back to her Tsuguko often, and they never appear in Kanao’s flashbacks, though their deaths are some of the little pieces that strengthen her resolve to slay demons (she seems to care more about how her pseudo-sisters’ families were killed by them). My guess is that Shinobu made a clear divide between family and work, so as to protect the little girls from getting attached to more people who were likely to be taken away from them. Likely, her Tsuguko and the Butterfly Mansion girls resided in separate spaces and had very little interaction, and their Pillar/Tsuguko relationship was kept very formal so they could all focus on their demon slaying goals (albeit they were probably fond of each other anyway, signified by the butterfly hairpins).

In that two year period, the following events occur in roughly this order:

Rengoku become a Pillar (around age 18 or 19, and since he was raised practicing Flame Breathing he probably finished the Final Selection around age 12 or 13, so it clearly took him a more normal period of time to become a Pillar. But, despite being naturally gifted with strength his mother recognized, this drives home how hard he needed to work to overcome a perceived lack of “talent.”)

Iguro becomes a Pillar (around age 19 or 20, so he likely had worked at it a long time)

Aoi passes the Final Selection and quits the sword (thereby leaving Shinobu able to leave most of the hospital and household work to her since she’s no longer training), Muichirio becomes a Pillar (around age 12 or 13, genius-level speed at attaining Pillarhood)

Mitsuri becomes a Pillar (around age 18 or 19--a friend, yay! Also someone who became a Pillar way faster than normal.)

On these note, please also me to jump backwards a few years to when Kanae was still alive. Uzui had to have been a Pillar by at least age 18, but given the state of Ubuyashiki’s illness, probably a lot earlier than that, and he probably didn’t take very long to become a Pillar after entering the Corp. Since Giyuu was already a Pillar in Sanemi’s flashback, then he attained Pillarhood by, at the very oldest, age 17, so it took him four years or less. Interesting that in all these four or more years he’s been convinced the position is vacant, there’s no one else who performs Pillar-worthy achievement in the Corp’s most widely used Breath style. That really drives home the difference between the Pillars and the average cannon fodder. (Also worth noting, the Kamaboko Squad’s progression seems to fall somewhere in the middle; right to the very end the Taisho Secrets state how Tanjiro was still far from mastering Hinokami Kagura.)

At late 17 or age 18, two events occur:

Shinobu begins filling her body with poison for the sake of exacting revenge, knowing she will likely be eaten (she began about a year before the Pillar Training arc)

Kanao sneaks out to the Final Selection of her own will and with self-studied Flower Breathing, officially becomes a member of the Corp. Shinobu worries Kanao was just doing this because it’s what everyone around her does, as Kanao cannot express that she’s built her own hatred for demons.

Shinobu makes Kanao her Tsuguko almost right away, making the following changes (conjecture in italics):

Teaching her proper Breathing and sword technique (and the little girls witness her quick progress with blowing up gourds)

Instructing her very simply just to focus on cutting on demons’ heads so that she doesn’t get caught up in indecision on the battlefield

Censuring Kanao a bit for her choice to go against her sisters’ wishes and take up the sword, for now she risks death and giving the other pseudo-sisters yet another person to grieve. Given the risky nature of their work, Shinobu feels forced to treat her the same strict way she treated her Tsuguko instead of treat her as a sister. Kanao accepts this and goes from treating Shinobu as her sister to treating her as her master (calling her “Shihan” instead of “Shinobu-neesan”).

Over the course of the events of canon, Tanjiro and company spend a very large portion of their time in recovery at the Butterfly Mansion (even if a large portion of that time is spent unconscious), they might as well be pseudo-adoptive little brothers. But, I suspect Shinobu bonds more readily with girls. Also in that time, Kanao speeds up the ranks (she attains Hinoto rank, the 7th of 10 ranks, while Tanjiro & co attain the one above that, Hinoe). Furthermore, thanks to Tanjiro’s influence, Kanao also makes leap and bounds in being able to express herself, like something finally broke through. This at last leaves Shinobu somewhat relieved, after maybe five years or so since she first adopted Kanao. By that time she is getting anxious about the impending final battles (and her death, which she has deemed inevitable but purposeful), and she tells Kanao the plan. And then Oyakata-sama is like, “heeeey, so I heard you want to be friends with demons, I got you one, her name is Tamayo.” (It’s possible he already told her he was planning to get Tamayo’s help and wanted her cooperation, but he didn’t actually approach Tamayo about it until after Pillar Training started (though by Kimetsu logic, it’s highly possible that the crow talking to Tamayo took place much earlier than when it was presented). I gotta wonder how quickly they worked to combine their research and if the other girls in the mansion had any idea who Tamayo and Yushiro were.

And then, at age 18 (or likely 19 given the progression of the series and very lengthy recovery periods, heck maybe even 20), Douma. Shinobu dies, Kanao switches back to calling her Shinobu-neesan instead of Shihan, Kanae’s butterfly hairpin which Kanao wore breaks in battles, Shinobu exacts her revenge on Douma while her efforts against Muzan are also in motion and then she reunites with Kanae and her parents in spirit, and Kanao wears Shinobu’s butterfly hairpin in the final showdown and then she makes Shinobu the surprise hero in the surprise final battle to save Tanjiro. It was a really long night, and a really short, busy life.

#Kimetsu no Yaiba #Demon Slayers #Kocho Shinobu #Kochou Shinobu #KnY fandom theories and meta

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generalchelseamayhem · 2 years

Note

1-85

1: Describe myself.

I look like Some Guy. Blue eyes, brown hair, very pale skin, not amazingly tall or short, a beard which refuses to grow out to any impressive length OR stay as stubble. My most distinctive physical feature is probably my gait.

2: If I could to on an all expenses paid vacation for a week, where?

Germany. To visit @myflawedfairytale . I'd probably continue the vacation longer if I could pay for it.

3: Do I have siblings?

Practically, no, but technically yes. I have 2 half-siblings and they're both much older than me, like they were pretty much already adults by the time I was born, so we never really developed a sibling dynamic in the traditional sense.

4: Favourite constellation and why.

The Southern Cross because I'm Australian.

5: Favourite colour.

Dark blueish green. Followed by vivid orange.

6: What kind of music do you listen to?

Whew. I bet you weren't expecting this to be an armour-piercing question. The answer is I don't know. I actually listen to a lot less music than I used to - practically had to throw out an entire supergenre, every metal song I've ever owned, as well as my entire Two Steps from Hell collection, because they all reminded me too much of my ex. I still listen to Duran Duran but more often than that I just don't listen to music at all.

7: Favourite flower.

Marigolds cause they're super orange, or nasturtiums cause you can eat them.

8: If I could do magic, what is the first spell I would learn?

I don't know if I can choose, i think I'd be too thrilled at the prospect of doing magic to worry about practicality, and after the novelty has worn off practicality is all I would care about. Something boring like a spell of Create Food and Water, or a spell of Purge Pathogens or something. Maybe a spell of Rearrange Nucleic and Amino Acids to help with my career?

9: Favourite childhood memory.

Probably that time I spent with a friend of mine in that sweet spot where we as kids still did video games and imagination-powered meatspace games in equal measure. I have several years of those memories, and cherish them all.

10: Have I ever been cheated on?

No.

11: If I could describe my perfect room...

Like a man-cave sort of situation? I guess it would be set up as a really cosy entertainment room, like with sofas, bean bags, pillows, mattresses, then a TV with attached consoles/computer as the centrepiece. If you can actually feel the carpet underneath you, something has gone terribly wrong.

12: Favourite animal.

I love dogs in all their forms, but capybaras are a close second.

13: What was the last photo I took?

The whiteboard in my area at work. There's a weird call-and-response going on where someone writes some seemingly utterly random expression on the board, and I draw a picture or something to match it. A few days ago it was "EAT OR BE EATEN" (I drew Pac-man being chased by a ghost), then it was "SHOOT FIRST, ASK QUESTIONS LATER" (I drew the American flag), and finally "DO NOT LICK FINGERS" (I reworked the KFC slogan to just say "It's... good")

14: Do I believe in soul mates?

Not at the best of times, and even less nowadays.

15. Do I hang toilet paper over or under?

Over. Possibly because I've never had a house pet.

16. My go to place to eat & my favorite thing to get there.

Surprising nobody, it's Nando's, and lately I've been partial to having chicken ribs and chicken tenderloins with a large chips. Comfort food.

17. do I believe everything happens for a reason?

Yes, but not in a fated kind of way, which is usually the original intent of the question, so... no.

18. guilty pleasures?

The aforementioned Nando's I guess? I get depressed a lot in the summer, so I find it hard to quantify the threshold between 'path of least resistance' and 'actual pleasure'. I have a lot of guilty paths-of-least-resistance.

19. favorite mythical creature, why?

I don't really have a favourite creature, I like the myths around them. I suppose for sheer concept I'll say the Phoenix, because it's a bird made of fire which symbolises and embodies the concept of death leading to rebirth in a natural cycle.

20. something most people don’t know about me.

Not my proper answer, but for some reason people always take a long time to notice that I'm left handed.

I am also a chronic oversharer, but most people still don't know that I have an entirely useless 1-year Diploma of Arts degree in Ancient History to go with my 2 Bachelors of Arts and Science, respectively.

21. where did I grow up and what was it like?

Literally the best house in Australia, in one of the best suburbs of the city of Sydney. If that sounds extraordinarily overprivileged, that's because... it is. :/

It had a park on one side, a heritage landmark building on the other side, and a bit further over was a fantastic garden all planted by one woman. Any more information than that and I may as well just give you the address. We had the best New Year's Eve parties there; apart from the complete lack of anything resembling neighbours with kids my age, it was about as idyllic as an Australian upbringing can possibly get..

Why my parents sold the place, I will never be able to rationalise.

22. do I believe aliens exist?

Only as a matter of statistical probability; I can't claim to ever have seen one.

23. what was my last google search?

"Age of Mythology Atlanteans". For the mythical creature question above actually, just to remind myself if I ever had a favourite mythical creature from AoM.

24. what did my last relationship teach you?

All sorts of unhealthy lessons I probably shouldn't have learned. The healthiest lesson is probably that... sometimes people just aren't compatible.

25. would I relocate for love?

No. Only if relocating there is actually better for me than remaining where I am. And I'm not just tricking myself into believing it's better just because I'm so in love.

26. do I hold grudges or forgive easily?

I tend to hold grudges when I'm in a bad mood, and forgive easily when I'm in a good mood. Some days there's just nothing you can do that will make me lastingly offended, but to be fair, most of those days are depression days.

27. favourite book.

Existentially Challenged by Yahtzee Croshaw. Subject to change depending on my mood.

28. do I consider myself an extrovert or introvert?

Introvert all the way. But I like company with other introverts.

29. have I ever kept a journal, and do I now?

No. I might start if playing D&D absolutely required it.

30. top 5 favorite movies.

In no particular order, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit; Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Hot Fuzz, The World's End, and weirdly enough, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. (I am aware that Edgar Wright is over-represented here)

31. do I believe that everything happens for a reason?

...No, but I'm a big believer in Deja Vu.

32. what is my greatest fear?

As in existential fear, or everyday phobia? Everyday phobia is needles, for sure. I hate injections of every single kind.

I would say I'm pretty afraid of dying; I am not in any way equipped to handle the concept of my own non-existence, but if I had to choose an absolute least favourite way of dying, it would probably be drowning, in the sense that in my more anxious moments I can actually imagine what that feels like.

33. favorite alcoholic beverage.

I don't drink alcohol. Lemon Lime and Bitters is classified as a soft drink but wins on a technicality (Angostura Bitters!)

34. most embarrassing thing I've done.

There are some stories I would rather not share with the internet.

35. do I believe in ghosts?

Nope, and I can't fathom why some people do.

36. what is the best and worst part of my personality?

Well the worst part of my personality is that I take absolutely all external stimuli and try to twist them into something that sounds definitively self-deprecating (related to learning all that unhealthy stuff about my last relationship that I mentioned earlier). For this reason I can't really think of a best part too often, but I suppose I can be considered a good friend to people when they need it.

37. should you split the dinner bill?

Yes.

38. am I a good liar?

Oh heck no, I am such a bad liar that in Mafia/Werewolf type games the only way I have a chance to succeed, ever, is if I deliberately do a sub-optimal or bonkers stupid play, involving no lies whatsoever, that makes the other players second-guess their first instincts.

39. what keeps me up at night?

My feet get overly hot due to some kinda circulation issue I haven't figured out. I also get anxious wondering if my friends secretly hate me sometimes.

40. would I rather go without my phone or music?

Music. That's the depression talking again, but there you go.

41. do I believe in god?

No. Never have.

42. how do I relax when frustrated?

Bury my head in my pillow and scream until I run out of oxygen or the softness of the pillow encourages me to take a nap.

43. what’s something that offends me?

Political and wealthy elites stirring up the ire of the masses by saying things and encouraging views that they 100% do not believe in at all, but conveniently the belief of the masses nets them a healthy amount of money and reputation. Like that's bad enough by itself; if they don't even believe in it themselves that's even worse somehow.

44. favorite food

Gotta say, dumplings are at the forefront of my mind right now, thanks to a Polish fine dining experience featuring pierogi and kopytka.

45. if I were on a 10 hour flight and could sit and talk to any person the entire time, who would it be?

This just sounds like a nightmare for the other person.

46. when do you feel the most confident?

After somebody compliments me on literally anything. I'm still flying high on a compliment I got from @adhoption like 4 or 5 days ago.

47. what do you do on your free time?

Video games, these days. Mostly Pokemon and Minecraft, and just starting this week, Stardew Valley.

48. is there anyone who has completely lost your respect

My ex-roommate, who shall remain nameless but who left behind a mess and a smell that would make the local landfill say "Wow, that place is a dump."

49. have you ever broken someone’s heart?

Yeah. :(

50. did/do you play sports in school?

It was mandatory so yeah. I did like playing cricket, but I wasn't any good at it.

51. when are you happiest?

I could really stand to cuddle someone for hours at a time right now. I think that would make me the happiest.

52. coffee or tea?

Neither. If I must, tea because it can come in all sorts of fruity flavours if you need it to.

53. what is one possession you own you wouldn’t want to live without?

My phone, I guess.

54. what is the first thing you notice about a person?

Eyes, hair, and if I'm feeling pervy, lips. In that order.

55. what is your favorite season, why?

Season 2. It's usually the point where a TV show peaks, having established its conventions, tropes, and character dynamics, but the execution feels fresh and it feels largely unconstrained by the weight of popularity- oh, that's not what you meant. Uh, winter. My birthday is in winter. No bugs either.

56. what makes you laugh?

Puns. Love me a good(bad) pun.

57. are you a clean or messy person?

Messy, but there are 1000 reasons why that's not my fault right now. Trust me. :P

58. what is important for a successful relationship?

Don't do what I did.

59. what was your upbringing like?

Very privileged and comfortable, but also very... helicoptery. I think it was just this past 6 months that I've come to terms with how much of my life my mother had planned out.

60. favorite holiday?

Easter.

61. what is the first thing you’d do if you won the lottery?

Pay taxes on my winnings (presumably 😑) and split the rest between me and my friends.

62. what’s the best pizza topping combination?

Pepperoni and mushrooms.

63. favorite outdoor activity.

What's an "out-door"?

64. how are you? honestly.

I am not fine. The pandemic and various other things combined with it have sent me into the worst depression spiral I've ever been in. I'm trying to dig myself out, but it's hard work. After I post this I'll probably need to take a mental health break from Tumblr and see how that affects me.

65. would you rather go camping in the woods or stay at a beach resort?

Beach resort probably.

66. what is the most beautiful thing in nature?

Sunrise.

67. favorite type of candy?

There's this candy store in The Blue Mountains, and I only rarely get to go there. The highlight is the jelly babies - not like commercially packaged gummi bears, proper sugar-dusted British-style jelly babies. They're so good they make you realise why Tom Baker's Doctor was offering them to everyone.

68. if your life was a book, what would be the title?

A biography called Wait, We Got The Wrong Guy: The Story of a North Shore Up-And-Comer

69. what movie quotes do you use on a regular basis?

Nothing is coming to mind right now. If I do quote something from pop culture these days it's usually Doctor Who or Discworld. Or occasionally The Wheel of Time. No movies though.

70. what was cool when you were young but not cool now?

3 1/2 inch floppy disks.

71. what’s the craziest conversation you have ever eavesdropped on?

All the gossip I've ever eavesdropped on has been very mundane and inconsequential.

72. what’s the most interesting documentary you’ve ever watched?

There's one about how the U.S. is responsible for the breakup of Yugoslavia, ostensibly because it wanted a base close to a USSR that wasn't really there anymore, and also because it couldn't stand to see communism work on even a small scale (though they were seemingly helped out a lot by Tito dying at the beginning of the 80s). Very biased of course, but almost all documentaries are in some way so it's better to recognise that and roll with it to get as much actual info out of it as possible.

73. what’s the worst hairstyle you’ve had?

The one I got for free where the hair stylist in question swore a lot. Swearing while cutting hair is usually a pretty good indicator of turning out badly.

74. what do you like to cook?

Still partial to spaghetti bolognese, but if I'm honest my current place is not conducive to cooking, like, at all.

75. what’s the coolest animal you’ve seen in the wild?

Wild horses roaming a mountainside in scenic Hrvatska.

76. what’s the funniest tv show you’ve ever seen?

There's a special breed of satire comedy which is the funniest thing ever but slightly too real to actually laugh at. I need to watch Yes Minister, but there's also an Australian equivalent called The Hollowmen which is a little more recent. Frontline, by the same production company, is in the same vein but for current affairs news shows.

77. do you usually follow your heart or your head?

Neither. I'm not brave enough to follow my heart and not sensible enough to follow my head.

78. what is your favorite quote?

The Discworld City Watch subseries has the famous Boots Theory of Economics, but my personal favourite is:

"The common people? They're nothing special. They're no different from the rich and powerful except they've got no money or power. But the law should be there to balance things up a bit. So I suppose I've got to be on their side."

- Sam Vimes

79. what’s the weirdest crush you have ever had?

I have so many crushes that come and go it's hard to tell what's weird anymore. Maybe they're all very normal.

80. what’s your love language?

Generosity. Literally sending someone money if they need it.

81. do you ever feel alone?

You're asking me this now? In a pandemic? While I'm living alone??

82. ever been bullied?

Yep. By a bunch of girls who hated me for reasons I still can't fully understand to this day.

83. are you usually early or late?

Early. I hate being late to things.

84. what kind of art do you enjoy most?

Art that's lowkey superior to what your average gallery puts on display from the ""visionaries"" of decades centuries past. It's only gotten clear to me recently how many of the more recent artists were rich people whose true artistic talents were getting high, holding orgies, and networking. Dying young also helps. This is a callout post for a particular guy suddenly.

85. what do you wish you knew more about?

Molecular biology. I don't know nearly enough about my own field.

#ask meme #long

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fangqueen · 3 years

Text

Fic Rec Tag Meme

@sitp-recs, I’m terribly late, but this looked way too fun, so I had to join in. Fair warning, y’all, not everything here is Drarry, or even HP (I am a prolific rarepair shipper/multi-fandomer, and Dron is my OTP 😂), so I’ve added the fandoms and pairings below as well. All of these (and many more!) can also be found on my ficshelf! It was so hard to pick these as it was, I couldn’t help but point you in the right direction for all the ones I (sadly, unfortunately) had to cut from the list, lol.

Anyway, thank you so much for running this tag meme, @sitp-recs! It’s been amazing seeing everyone’s recs and discovering new fics! 🖤

• A fic you love without knowing the source material: He Was a Punk, Pete Did Tabletop Roleplay by @mscaptainwinchester Marvel | Peter/Wade | NC-17 | 7.5k

• A fic with a premise that shouldn’t work but it does: Anthony J. Crowley, Retired Demon and Airbnb Superhost by @theoldaquarian Good Omens | Hints of Aziraphale/Crowley | G | 3k All fics are valid and work!! That being said, I had no idea just how much I was going to fall in love with a fic about Crowley being an AirBnB host when I first opened it. 😂

• A fic you’ve reread several times: Department of Magical Creatures Case 62637 by @mscaptainwinchester (under RonsPigwidgeon at the time) HP | Draco/various, Ron/OMC, Ron/Draco | R | 121k How could I expected to only pick ONE?! 😂 I’ve reread everything you’re seeing here - I’ve reread nearly every fic I’ve ever recced at least once. But I couldn’t make a favorites list without this fic, so might as well put it here, haha!

• A fic you still remember many years later: Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble by Sushi HP | Severus/Severus | NC-17 | 8.9k I remembered it so well (and fondly) that after 12+ years, I went scouring the Wayback Machine to find it. And yes, the pairing is correct. Don’t look at me. If you’re still interested in reading after knowing that, hit me up, ‘cause it takes a bit of instruction to find it now.

• A comfort fic: You and I by @shiftylinguini HP | Scorpius/Albus S. | NC-17 | 32k

• A cathartic fic: The Conformity Conspiracy by shrink South Park | Michael/Pete (or Ethan/Dylan, as this was written before they had names in canon) | R | 71k I really struggled with this entry. I came to the realization that...I don’t know if I’ve ever actually felt catharsis from a piece of media before??? Well, I have with music, for sure, but not really with anything else. Anyway, I chose this fic for this slot because every time I read it, I’m transported back to being a goth teen. I can feel every word, every action, like I’m going through those years again with them...Which isn’t necessarily what cathartic means, but fuck it, it works for me, haha. ***As always whenever I rec this fic, I do just have to warn that it’s not properly tagged on AO3, and there is definitely some potentially triggering content in it. If you’re interested in reading and would like to know more (so you can be better prepared), feel free to DM me!***

• A fic you’d print and put on your bookshelf: In Flight, Two Boys by lobst_r HP | Marcus/Oliver | NC-17 | 29K Again, how I could possibly pick only one for this one?! I would print out ALL of these fics if I could, and many more! But this is such a beautiful fic, it definitely deserves a spot on the list, and what better spot for it than this? There’s actually a sequel currently posting as well! I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet, but I’m sure it’s just as amazing, if not more so.

• A fic you associate with a song: You Do Your Body Work, I Feel My Pulse Working Overtime by @veelawings HP | Draco/Harry | NC-17 | 1.6k I mean, it’s in the title. 😜 But also this is just a truly inspiring fic that I absolutely had to include! (I realized I somehow haven’t queued a rec post for it yet, and I will make sure to fix that soon!)

• A fic that inspires you: dirtynumbangelboy by @magpiefngrl HP | Draco/Harry | NC-17 | 39k

• A fic that brought you onboard a new ship: Lumos by birdsofshore HP | Draco/Harry | NC-17 | 41k Some people may be surprised to know that Drarry was, uh.......once my NOTP. Yes, really. 😂 You wouldn’t suspect that nowadays, would you??? LOL. It’s all because of this wonderful, beautiful fic. I saw it getting recced everywhere at the time and said fuck it, I’ll give the pairing another try - and I never looked back!

• A fic you wish could be a movie: Midnight in the City of a Hundred Spires by @shiftylinguini HP | Draco/Harry | NC-17 | 25k

• A fic that led to you making friends with the author: A Weasel in the Hamptons by @peachpety HP | Ron/Draco | NC-17 | 15k I don’t quite know if this counts, because I believe we’d already been speaking before this??? 😂 But of course, being that I’m the mod for Ron/Draco Fest, I knew who was writing for this prompt of mine, and thus we dispensed with the formalities in private, haha! It was a great experience, and I was so overjoyed to see the results in the end. So happy to have met you, love! 😘 Hope you’re well!

• Free Space: The Pizzaria: A Sordid Tale of Destiny, Evil and Garlic by Mad_Maudlin HP | Ron/Draco | PG-13 | 36k A Dron/crack!fic staple, honestly, and I just couldn’t make a favorites list without it!

• A fic you’ve gushed about irl: Runway by @candawrites HP | Ron/Draco | R | 15k

• A fic you associate with a place: Archipelago by Mad_Maudlin HP | Ron/Draco | NC-17 | 18k I just have a very distinct visual memory of reading this fic for the first time: sitting on the couch in my mom’s living room, the sun setting outside. (I was visiting for her bday, I believe???) I think of that moment every time I see the title.

• A fic that made you gasp out loud: clutched your life and wished it kept by @glitteringvoids HP | Ron/Draco | R | 110K

• A fic you found at the right time: Howlr by @partialtopotter HP | Draco/Harry | NC-17 | 47k I got really sick in summer 2018. I know I’ve talked about it on here a million times at this point, so I won’t dwell. But I ended up finding and reading this fic the following March, and it reawakened my love of fic and fandom that had been lost over the previous months while I was dealing with everything. I hadn’t been reading or writing at all in all that time, and I ended up reading this whole thing in one sitting. I couldn’t put it down! It just made me feel so good, after a long time of not feeling anywhere near good.

• A fic that you would read fic of: In the Garden After Dark by @the-starryknight HP | Draco/Harry | R | 3.5k I just need more of this universe and Draco’s Illusion magic. 😍

• A fic that made you laugh out loud: Why Parvati Patil Must Die by hull1984 HP | Ron/Draco | PG-13 | 39k

• A fic with a line (or two) that you’ve memorized by heart: Hail to the King by Mad_Maudlin HP | Ron/Zacharias, Ron/Zacharias/Draco | NC-17 | 5k

• A fic that gave you butterflies: The Electric Fizzing Prick Pistols, or Whatever by whitmans_kiss HP | Sirius/Remus | PG-13 | 3.8k

• A fic that embodies something that you value in life: Luna Lovegood: Wank Coach for the Long-Since Deceased by yrfrndfrnkly HP | gen | PG-13 | 9.8k This was another difficult category to choose for. Not that I don’t think any fics I’ve read display good values! Of course they do! But I have this weird issue where I don’t, like...project? at all??? So sometimes it’s hard for me to recognize these things in what I read. But eventually I realized it had to be this fic, because I just love the carefree way Luna lives her life here, her job helping people (well, ghosts who could use some sexual release, specifically, but you know), and the wonderful friends she surrounds herself with.

• A favorite AU: Quibbler Unsolved by Leontina HP | Draco/Harry | PG-13 | 17k More of a fusion than an AU, but it’s just fantastic!

• A fic you stayed up too late to finish reading: Grounds for Divorce by @tepre HP | Draco/Harry | NC-17 | 122k

• A fic that made you feel seen: Taste the Rainbow by @maraudersaffair HP | Ginny/Pansy | PG-13 | 639

#fic rec tag meme #fangqueen recs fics #fangqueen speaks

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