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darkstaranthology · 4 months

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'stardust' was the eighth fic posted for 'dark star - an izch anthology.'

Discussion of dark themes, transphobia, misogyny, torture, past rape/non-con, present rape/non-con, power imbalance in hero/villain relationships, abuse in the context of criminals and organized crime, courtroom drama, and other triggering content below this cut. There will also be spoilers for the fic, if you want to read it for yourself first.

Fic stats:

~81,000 words

11 chapters

E rated (explicit sexual content, hero/villain relationships, rape/non-con, torture, blood and gore, courtroom drama)

Archive Warnings (AO3): Graphic Depictions of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage

'Prototype' Canon Setting AU (loosely based on Hori's draft versions of BNHA)

There's something magical and terrifying about coming back from a long hiatus.

'stardust' is a long form canon AU multichapter fic, concerning a 'prototype' canon AU where Izuku Akatani is born with a quirk (in this case, 'Telekinesis') and a fraternal twin, quirkless Mikumo Akatani. Ochako Uraraka, a young high school student who failed the Yuuei entrance exam, meets Izuku during a blissful two week summer break in their first year of high school, where they have a brief but intense summer romance. Their lives become quickly complicated by a variety of issues: 'Izuku' Akatani later comes out as trans, and Izumi 'Ganbatte' Akatani becomes a pro Hero after graduating from Yuuei, while Ochako Uraraka becomes a villain known as 'Stardust,' operating on the underbelly of superhuman society. They are drawn back in for a collision course, like a missed orbit, a few weeks after Izumi graduates, and things quickly come to a head, to the detriment of everyone involved.

This WIP just about killed me. I actually wrote four renditions of it. The first rendition was about 35k words, and originally I wanted to hit on themes where Deku was more overtly neurodivergent-coded as a character. The idea of 'Midoriya twins' played into this, using the prototype BNHA template as a vehicle. Mikumo was the quirkless but broadly neurotypical twin, constantly trying to manage his brother's more esoteric habits as Izuku fell into a romance with a villain.

With this version, I got up to about five chapters into the WIP, then sent it to a friend. I said 'something about this feels weird.' My friend replied that 'it's not dark enough, you could just post this to your main account and no one would blink.' I agreed, so after despairing for a few days, I tossed it out and started over. The second rendition was about 9k words, and concerned izch having sex on a rooftop. The third rendition finally incorporated a kidnapping plot, and after scrapping those two, I realized that Deku should be a trans girl in this plot, and that this would pull a lot of the themes my brain was grasping for into something coherent.

Of course, 'Deku' isn't 'Deku' in this AU. Izumi uses 'Ganbatte' as her Hero name, which is a different sort of broad turn of phrase/cultural touchstone in Japanese that means 'do your best' or 'you can do it.' I'm almost positive that this is what Hori was trying to reference with 'Deku' in canon, truth be told. I'd never see this before in fic, but a different friend of mine suggested it when I was frustrated by what name to give to Izumi, and I came to really like it.

Mikumo in this AU never has his Hero name stated, because implicitly it should be Deku. The fact that he never met Ochako means that can't be true, from sort of a narrative/philosophical/thematic point of view, so his Hero name just doesn't appear. I really liked this idea, too.

The final rendition of this fic mostly contains all the original scenes I concepted out for it: Izumi and Ochako at the convenience store, Izumi and Ochako at a love hotel - a homage to the now famous 'When Walls Talk' by SevenRenny (@sevenrenny) - and Izumi and Ochako with this torture scene featuring a fairly simple OC villain. Some things got cut; in the original version, there was a sequence involving Izuku (who wasn't trans until the fourth rendition) catching Ochako in a getaway vehicle during a bank heist, as well as a scene involving Ochako trying to kill Izuku in a warehouse. But the sort of spirit of the scenes remains, and the bank heist is even obliquely referenced, even if they don't have sex anymore during that sequence.

This fic has kind of a deliberate fake out element to it. It's serving as a direct mirror of 'bound': where 'bound' concerns a villain Ochako dragging Deku through a corruption arc, 'stardust' concerns pro hero Izumi dragging Ochako through a redemption arc. As such, the fic opens with the cadence that 'bound' does, where each chapter has some kind of sex scene.

Then chapter five will hit, where I earn all the absolutely terrifying tags this fic has. Frankly, I've read back the torture scene in chapter five, and I didn't think it was that bad? Maybe it's because I know what's gonna happen. The feedback I was given was 'it's the meanest thing you've ever written, in terms of how nasty it was to read,' so perhaps I've just become numb to my own cruelty. Frankly, I have much worse things planned for izch for this series, 'stardust' is just a fucking warm up, so buckle up!

I've written villain Ochako before (in the very specific AU sense particular to BNHA fandom), rather famously in fact, but not under this anon pseudonym I'm working under now. You can consider this a Richard Bachman-type exercise. Of course, I did 'bound,' but that one is specifically 'traitor Ochako,' while this one is more 'villain Ochako who never goes to Yuuei.' I think these sort of fanon trope/genre distinctions are important. The last time I did villain Ochako, the outcome was something very MCU-esque, which was fitting for my influences as an author at that time. With 'stardust,' I wanted it to feel a lot more like a police procedural-type of grittiness, which is why the back half of this fic directly involves some courtroom drama.

One important plot thread in this fic that isn't prominent, but is important, is the fact that in school, Izumi had a sexual affair with Mandalay, one of the pro Heroes she interned with. This isn't intended to be character bashing against Mandalay, because frankly I think this is out of character for her. Rather, it's commentary both about 'unstable orbit' and the sort of general impulse the fandom has towards shipping Deku with adult characters, and the cavalier attitude people have about this.

Especially in cishet male circles, a lot of them will react negatively to Deku/Bakugou, but then will turn around and post Deku/Miruko or Deku/Nagant porn. Mandalay was a popular target for this, before Miruko and Nagant largely took over that side of fandom. Of course, this is basically just bald-faced homophobia, but culture in general doesn't view sexual assault committed by women as equivalent to sexual assault committed by men, especially if it's an older woman and a younger boy, and this is a problem. Izumi in this case is trans female, and Mandalay explicitly, although not graphically/on screen, is said to have invalidated Izumi's identity while they were sexually involved, objectifying Izumi as 'a young boy.'

Is that in-character for Mandalay, someone who canonically works with a trans man? Well, probably not, but she also works with Pixie Bob, a woman who flagrantly on-screen sexually harasses the boys of Class 1-A, and this is largely treated as a cutesy gag, not frankly fucked up like it is. This isn't me saying 'well discrimination against boys is equivalent to that against girls,' that would be asinine. Rather, if anything, I think a lot of discrimination that boys or people assigned male at birth experience is because of misogyny, and the way society categorically values femininity as lesser. The fact that Deku/[adult women in the series] is an enduring, popular topic of cishet male porn for BNHA is evidence of this, even if that premise is frankly kind of fucky.

Now, given that 'dark star' exists, I obviously don't mind people writing fucky content. Rather, I just don't think the people writing that particular genre of content understand that they're romanticizing something inappropriate, not fully. So I added this plot line about Mandalay as sort of a mirror to 'unstable orbit,' to show how that kind of relationship is usually cruel and inappropriate, and just because I wrote it once as a porn trope doesn't mean I'm not aware of this fact, and indeed I'm quite willing to show that, too.

The chapters in 'stardust' aren't all equal in length. The final chapter is a whopping 18-19k, serving as a long-form epilogue showing Ochako healing and moving on, that was very cathartic to write and read back. If 'bound' is me whispering into Deku's ear that he should just go crazy, 'stardust' is me reminding Ochako that even after she goes through hell, that doesn't mean she's unlovable or that she can't get better.

I think a lot of people take this subtly toxic attitude towards trauma and characters who go through trauma that 'their lives are over.' It's sort of bizarre, honestly, because in real life trauma is mundane and banal. Awful things happen to you, and you just have to move on, one step in front of the other, and keep heading forward with your life. There's a pervasive attitude that '[character who is traumatized] isn't ready for a relationship,' and maybe that's true in a very abstract 'ideal scenario' kind of way, but real people are messy, problematic, and damaged, and it doesn't stop them from finding love and forming real bonds, even with people they shouldn't.

Izch are so toxic in this fic, but not necessarily in the sense of ongoing abuse or cruelty. They so sincerely, deeply love each other, so earnestly, completely sure that they are the loves of each others' lives, and they shouldn't. It's actually really poignant and sad to me, how hard they're fighting to hold onto that red thread, and how obviously they should let it go. Ochako's epilogue chapter for this fic even shows how close she is to just moving on, to letting it all fall behind her, but she just can't bear to know that she was this close to her person, the person meant for her, and she walked away again.

But she's the one who hurts Izumi, in a very deep, primal way that goes even beyond the baseline manner that hero/villain relationships in BNHA are inherently problematic in terms of power dynamics. This Izumi isn't canon Deku, she doesn't have zero self-esteem. But she is a good person, despite making bad decisions, and she forgives Ochako knowing full well that Ochako hurt her, and electing to let that go to be with her.

It's beautiful and heartbreaking, one of the most meaningful things I've ever written. I've cried a lot working on this, and I hope it fucking rips your heart out and shows it to you.

There's a lot that I'm proud of in this fic. I was clearly taking a lot of inspiration and direction from Renny in this fic, which emulates a lot of their stylistic choices. I did this very subconsciously at first, but by the fourth draft rendition I knew what I had ended up with and leaned into it. Renny is a dear friend of mine, and I'm always proud to show them things I've written inspired by them, so that was fun!

It's also nominally a rendition of 'the prototype AU for BNHA.' That idea has actually shown up a lot in 'dark star,' with varying degrees of subtlety. This is the first one very directly set in that AU, rather than making oblique references to it, however. I went with a 'Midoriya twins AU' mostly because that sounded fun, and it was something different for me to write.

I imagined a Venn diagram with three circles: one circle is 'fanon quirkless Deku,' one circle is 'canon Bakugou,' and one circle is 'fanon Shinsou.' My conception of Mikumo was trying to rest in the middle of that circle. Implicitly, Shinsou actually doesn't exist in this AU. Mikumo takes on that roll, both the protege of Valiant (All Might) and Eraserhead. He doesn't have the super-fanon father-son relationship with Eraserhead; as far as I elected to portray, they are strictly mentor-student, in a way that is meaningful but professional. Instead, he has the more father-son relationship with Valiant, and both of them play important roles in Mikumo's life.

While Mikumo is not the POV character for this fic, he represents a lot of firm metacommentary about fanon surrounding Deku, 'dadzawa,' 'dadmight,' etc. Personally, while I like Aizawa plenty, All Might is and always has been one of my biggest faves in the series. His relationship with Deku is what kept me watching the first few episodes of the anime, while Deku's relationship with Ochako is what got me hooked forever. The fandom's, shall we say, distastefully childish relationship with All Might irks me.

There's also Bakugou, who in the prototype for BNHA was broadly nice. Bakugou doesn't have a lot of screentime in this fic, mostly because he's just not that important to the story being told, but his role is fascinating. In many ways, Izumi and Bakugou share the same role: two people with powerful quirks who could have become nasty, like canon Bakugou does, but their close relationship with Mikumo and each other prevented this. It changes so much about their respective dynamics with Ochako, each other, etc. I also alluded to Bakugou being romantically interested in Mikumo, who is implicitly aroace in this fic, although that's largely a background detail added for flavor/character drama.

Endeavor and Todoroki also have important supporting roles here, with Endeavor especially getting a significant scene that showcases the tension between 'Enji Todoroki, terrible father,' and 'Endeavor, good Hero,' and how these things may not even be in tension at all, but instead feed into one another.

'stardust' is a fic that felt like crawling over broken glass to write, it's one of the worst WIP experiences I've had in years for a fic that I still actually finished. But the finished product is something I'm immensely proud of. I know full well that it won't be popular, given that fandom doesn't like F/F relationships or transgender characters particularly much in fanfic, but I'm glad that I wrote it and that it exists.

There's a lot of fics planned for 'dark star' that exist in relation to 'stardust,' mostly as thematic mirrors. A recurring motif in 'stardust' is previewing other fics that the characters are watching as films or reading as books, which is actually a homage to this fic by the esteemed 'Tmalasia.' He was a very important part of izch fandom when I joined, and even though he left the fandom in roughly early 2021, his influence can still be acutely felt in the dozens of fics he served as editor for. I miss him, and I wish him well, whatever he has decided to do in the interim.

The characters reference a few upcoming fics intertextually, which I'll give a bit of context for here if you're dying to know what my WIPs look like:

'retrograde,' a fic which will center on the 'Dad for One' fanon premise, and serves as an izch role swap AU, where Ochako has One for All and Deku has Pyrokinesis.

'at liberty,' a fic that homages the famous 'I am [REDACTED]' by Titus621, and which will be one of my first takes on trans male Deku.

'infinity deep,' an izch mermaid AU loosely based on Atlantis: the Lost Empire and Tarzan, featuring a truly terrifying design for Deku that I'm very proud of.

'your grace,' an izchtg Game of Thrones AU, which is exactly as filthy and fucked up as that premise implies if you've read the books or seen the show, yes.

'back contamination,' an izch zombie apocalypse AU which will be my first take on trans female Ochako. This one began life as an attempt at cis male Ochako, actually, but I decided trans female Ochako works better in prose and I can still hit on most of the same queer themes I wanted to that way.

Originally, 'infinity deep' was going to be the next fic posted for 'dark star,' but for various real life context reasons, plans changed. I have so many fic ideas for 'dark star,' I could write this series forever, and that excites me! There's even one more rendition of 'the prototype AU with Midoriya twins,' which will be much raunchier and debauched than 'stardust' is, and which will center Mikumo a lot more than 'stardust' does. So if you do read 'stardust,' but you wish I made Mikumo more of a primary character, he has one more fic to appear in, and this time as the POV character!

'stardust' is a fic that I won't think of writing it very fondly, but I'm very happy with the finished fic overall. It's a fic which I had to pull out of myself like teeth, but I only hope that the handful of people that will read it end up enjoying it a lot. It's dark in a different way from stuff like 'bound' or 'unstable orbit,' much less sexy or cathartic and instead angsty and depressing. There's this longing in 'stardust' that wishes the world could be better, but we have to exist in the world as it is and keep trying. I hope that resonates with folks.

If all of this sounds as exciting to you as it is to me, I'd love to hear about it! So if you enjoyed 'stardust,' please let me know! Or if you didn't, I don't mind hearing why. I hope you have something intelligent to say, rather than boring pro-/anti- discourse stuff or 'your ship is bad,' though. These fics are for adults, and I expect you to engage with them like adults.

Have a nice day.

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darkstaranthology · 4 months

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'against type' was the seventh fic posted for 'dark star - an izch anthology.'

Discussion of dark themes, consensual non-consent, BDSM, and sexual roleplay, misogyny, the abusive ways famous people are often treated, and other triggering content below this cut. There will also be spoilers for the fic, if you want to read it for yourself first.

Fic stats:

~26,000 words

One-shot

E rated (explicit sexual content, consensual non-consent/BDSM/sexual roleplay, misogyny, mistreatment of famous people)

Archive Warnings (AO3): Rape/Non-Con

Modern Actor AU (No Quirks/Heroes)

'against type' is one of my favorite things I've written, insofar as it consistently manages to make me laugh when I reread it. It concerns an AU where Izuku Midoriya and Ochako Uraraka are actors, and they play Mikumo Akatani and Yuu Takeyama respectively in 'Boku no Hero Academia,' which in-universe is a live-action movie series adaptation of a comic book. Ochako is in love with Izuku, but between the social pressures of being famous, and the realities of their job and discerning what is 'real' about their relationship, she's not sure how to navigate such a thing with him. Once they do get together, she realizes she wants more from their sex life, setting off a fumbling attempt for them to learn how to be kinky together.

This fic has SO much going on. It's actually based on a discarded idea for the 2022 IzuOcha Big Bang that AO3 writer onierokinetic pitched during the concept stage. His version was very straightforward: that Izuku and Ochako keep messing up takes as actors on set because they're too mushy gushy in love with each other. He ended up going with a different idea for his bang piece, but he was gracious enough to let me adopt this idea.

His concept is used very loosely for the sort of intro/prologue of this fic, which concerns Izuku and Ochako getting together. It's a very meta piece, which takes direct stabs at the BNHA fandom, at fandom overall, and references what were at the time fairly topical issues in movie making. It was based on the then-recent manner that Tom Holland and Zendaya were being treated in the media when they publicly began dating, the way that Game of Thrones so spectacularly crashed and burned in its final season and the rumored drama on set during filming, and some other general film making horror stories and fandom tropes I wanted to use and riff off of.

Hilariously, I actually hadn't seen Game of Thrones when I wrote this fic, I just read a lot into the backstory of how it imploded due to some of my favorite YouTubers consistently using it as an example of bad writing and adaptation work. Having now actually read some of the Game of Thrones books and seen the show, this fic is even funnier, because the show really is an impressively botched adaptation that does a lot of the things that the director and producers of 'Boku no Hero Academia' in this fic do as described by Ochako.

But it was also based on the frankly fucking abysmal things the fandom for BNHA wants out of the series, the way they want it to be twisted and awful, and the way that series which were originally aimed at kids will become bad when they start chasing the disposable income of adult fans, instead. I find all this stuff immensely grating, and you can feel my absolute contempt for the fandom dripping from this fic. Even izch fandom, really, since frankly I can't fucking stand a lot of the people who ship my favorite ship, since so many of them are heteronormative as hell, or they just have a very bland, dull interpretation of the series and the ship that is of little consequence to me.

All that metatext aside, there's also my usual social commentary on display. Game of Thrones incidentally led in large part to the popularization of so-called 'intimacy coordinators,' which Ochako alludes to. This being set in Japan, a more conservative and misogynist culture than even the US in some respects, and the context of the fic being a film series originally aimed at kids becoming aimed at adults, Ochako suffers genuine trauma as an initially child actor, treated pretty terribly by both fans and the crew involved.

I think we lose sight of the fact that famous people are people with feelings and rights. The brazenly cavalier, sociopathic attitude people have about real-people fiction 'because they're famous' is a testament to this. This fic is in many ways about those ideas, interweaved with fandom attitudes towards fictional characters and how they exist in a particular cultural context.

But also, it's a romance story! A story about Izuku, in love with his co-star for years, too shy to admit it to her. A story about Ochako, feeling the same way, only for them to break under the stress of the final film releasing, with the help of a fair bit of alcohol, too. The way Izuku and Ochako pine, and the way they get together, was inspired by how I met and got together with my partner in real life.

Likewise, the bulk of this fic concerns entry-level BDSM, Izuku and Ochako fumbling through it, and sort of broad headcanons about what their sex life might look like. This, too, was informed by real life experiences of mine, but also a lovely fic called 'Rescue Me' by DaniDeservedBetter (@savetheirhearts-midoriya) which deals with sort of similar themes but in the canon setting (and also with much less gleeful malicious amusement and horniness than me, as Dani has self-respect). I think fandom sort of has two modes with izch and their relationship/what their sexuality will look like: either they are completely corny, sexless goofs who are too awkward for making out, or they are shamelessly horny, preposterous stereotypes, either as a product of Ochabowl writers trying to make izch look like Ochako/Bakugou, or harem writers trying to make Deku into a sex god, because they are fucking children.

Honestly, for as awkward as izch are at 15, I really doubt they'd stay that way. Lots of people are awkward when they're young, and it's not a sign of them having a complex or sex repulsion, they just need to be comfortable with someone. I think it's fine to assign those types of head canons to them, of course, and I've read a lot of different takes on izch. My sort of 'resting head canon' for izch is that Ochako is broadly demisexual and neurotypical, while Deku is broadly allosexual and neurodivergent in some manner. I think this tends to come through in most of my fics, where Ochako often muses how sexuality and romance weren't on her radar until she fell hard for Deku, whereas Deku has known he likes/loves/is physically attracted to Ochako basically on sight, he just doesn't know how to internalize/process/express these emotions.

Now, that being said, I'm willing to make izch basically whatever will make a fic most interesting. I'm not really married to particular sexuality/gender head canons for them. That is to say, while sometimes I'll make Deku trans, or Ochako clearly allosexual, or what have you, that doesn't mean I think this is always true of them. On the flip side, there's some things I can't really see with them. I firmly think Deku is largely a sub, while Ochako is more of a switch leaning dom, for example.

In 'unstable orbit,' they do very perverse sexual roleplay in the second half that I wanted to use to convey that they are extremely comfortable together, in a way that is arguably toxic and codependent. Deku is willing to be filthy and roleplay with Ochako in bed, but he's clearly an absolute mess in his general personal life rather than some sex god alpha male, while Ochako doesn't know how to approach this kind of tangled emotional knot, nor is she willing to just cut through it. Likewise, their sexual dynamic in 'unstable orbit' reflects the social power in their relationship, and Ochako clearly becomes the more dominant of the two as her social power increases over time. In 'against type,' by contrast, Ochako is a mess and a wreck, while Izuku is very ready and willing to offer her emotional support.

And one of the ways she desires this emotional support is via asking him to be dominant in bed, wanting to trust him to take care of her. He really struggles with this. Now, this version of Izuku isn't canon Deku, so he doesn't have the same kind of baggage from years of bullying and abuse. He clearly has more self-esteem, he's just awkward and nervous about hurting his new girlfriend. Both of them are terrified of screwing this up, but for Deku it's just 'working to please the girl I love a lot,' while for Ochako it carries a lot more varied, layered meaning. It's Ochako wanting to be vulnerable enough to admit that she wants Izuku to role play being really nasty to her in bed, trusting him enough to know that it's just a role, another acting job, and he'd never hurt her like that for real, only make her feel good.

I think 'against type' is very romantic without being a traditional romance story. I've reached a point personally as a reader where I'm really over slow burn writing where the main couple gets together in the last frame of a story. That can be good, and no shade to folks who like that, but I want to see how people navigate established relationships more. I still want a happy ending, generally speaking, but I want more to a story than will-they, won't-they. So much media in general, but especially romance media and fanfic, lives and dies by 'when my ship sails, the story ends,' and I'm just over it.

It's why 'against type' is primarily a story about intimacy issues, and why some future fics will be about more varied relationship dynamics. Things like 'knight errant' (lovers to exes to enemies to lovers again) or 'finite incantatem' (friends with benefits), or an upcoming fic called 'morphology' that will return to heavy BDSM themes but with Ochako as the truly dominant one this time, to a much more assertive degree than 'against type' portrays. Given that one of my core goals here is to deliver content for izch that otherwise just won't exist, since the ship fandom is largely not interested in stories with mature themes, this makes sense to me.

Personally, I'm very proud of 'against type.' It's a story where if you're as terminally online as I am and know a lot of fandom stuff, it'll make you laugh (or maybe not, if you're the target of mockery, but what can I do), and if you're not, it's still a more non-traditional romance and established relationship fic for izch that's pretty different and out there. I can't see myself writing another actor AU for izch, given that I said everything I'd ever wanna say about them, but I liked this one a lot.

One important thing that will eventually come up in more detail is the implication that 'dark star' is framed by novelist!Ochako from 'fantasies' writing her books. There will eventually be a fic (current working title is 'ghost stories') that returns to that AU and shows where they are about four-five years after that fic ended. One element I wanted to include is the implication that Izuku, after earning his degree, ended up becoming a mangaka, instead of an architect, and some variant of 'Boku no Hero Academia' is his comic series in that AU. Thus, its consistent appearance in Ochako's novels is actually cross-pollination, as 'fantasies' directly states that in-universe she's writing her drafts with Izuku and Ochako (and other people she knows) in them as placeholders, then changing the names later. I think this is such a pure expression of love between two creatives, and it makes 'against type' even more fascinating in its implied status as 'a book that novelist!Ochako wrote about her relationship with Izuku.'

But the beautiful thing about 'dark star' is that none of that has to matter to you for it to make sense and be enjoyable. I'm very proud of that aspect of its intertextuality, that it's fairly accessible. So if you enjoyed 'against type,' please let me know! Or if you didn't, I don't mind hearing why. I hope you have something intelligent to say, rather than boring pro-/anti- discourse stuff or 'your ship is bad,' though. These fics are for adults, and I expect you to engage with them like adults.

Have a nice day.

#izuocha #izch #dkch #izuku midoriya #ochako uraraka #bnha #mha #bnha fanfic #mha fanfic #dark star - an izch anthology #against type #fanfic #cw: consensual noncon #cw: sexual roleplay #cw: misogyny

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darkstaranthology · 4 months

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'photographs' was the sixth fic posted for 'dark star - an izch anthology.'

Discussion of single parenthood, past spouse death, canon-typical bullying and quirk discrimination, general misogyny themes as they relate to canon BNHA, and age-gap romance, and other triggering content below this cut. There will also be spoilers for the fic, if you want to read it for yourself first.

Fic stats:

~21,000 words

One-shot

E rated (explicit sexual content, age-gap romance, past minor character death and grief/mourning)

Archive Warnings (AO3): None

Canon Setting AU

'photographs' is a one-shot, concerning a canon AU where Izuku 'Deku' Midoriya is childhood friends with Ochako 'Uravity' Uraraka, after their respective mothers meet each other by chance. She becomes his inseparable companion for several years of his life, before she eventually moves back to the western part of Japan with her parents. Now, he is trying to work up the courage to ask her on a date. There's just two problems: Ochako Uraraka is twenty-seven years old, and Izuku Midoriya is twenty years old, and Ochako Uraraka is now Ochako Nakano, widowed by the death of her pro Hero husband a few years prior.

Bit of an odd duck, this one. 'What if Ochako had been Deku's childhood friend in addition to/instead of Bakugou' is one of the most enduring ship-specific AUs for izch fandom. It makes sense, it's a very obvious extrapolation of the themes of the series in my opinion. Despite basically never interacting, Ochako and Bakugou have a lot of thematic contrast going on, and the basis of shipping them, casting them as 'love rivals' for Deku, or casting Ochako as 'the good friend' in contrast to Bakugou as 'the bad bully' all are natural conclusions to draw from their writing in my opinion.

This particular rendition of it was inspired by a piece of fanart by a JP izch artist that has now unfortunately moved on from izch. They now largely draw Deku/Bakugou and 'Dekubowl' content, which I still follow them for! But all their izch art has been functionally obliterated from the internet, which is a huge shame. They drew a specific piece of art that showed Deku, seven years younger than Ochako, and the progression of their lives from him as a baby, to her with him as a young boy, to her in Hero school seeing him in middle school, to her seeing him in the 'Dark Deku' arc of the manga, to him finally coming to her to ask her out. 'photographs' is actually a blunt, direct adaptation, almost beat for beat, and I've been told by a mutual friend that the artist is flattered I enjoyed her work enough to write a fic adaptation of it.

There's other elements, though. At the time this fic was written, the now-famous 'loser Deku's idea of a good first date' manga panel, where he describes taking a girl to an amusement park to hold her hands and split a crepe, was a sensation in fandom. Of course, it was instantly cannibalized for basically any Deku ship, and this fic uses that idea in what I felt was a very thematically entertaining way given their age gap.

I wouldn't really call this fic problematic. It's problematic in the sense that if I knew Deku and Ochako as real people in the situation laid out by the fic, I wouldn't tell them it's a good idea to date. But objectively there's no express power imbalance - she's not his babysitter, teacher, or boss - and both are now adults. It's just a mildly inappropriate age gap between two people who've known each other for years. I think the way we react to age gaps depending on who is involved is very fascinating, and it's funny to me that I could've just posted this fic to my main profile, and I doubt anyone would've even blinked.

It's part of 'dark star' because I wanted people to consider the implications of it all, though. The way Ochako lived a happy life, had a happy marriage to a man her own age, and had a child with him, and now in the ruins of that comes Deku, being a little selfish as he asks her out. The way that Ochako was this incredible person for Deku, and she's never really seen him as his own person, now seeing him come to her 'all grown up,' and how she buys a little bit into this fantasy of his that she probably shouldn't.

It's a little bit inappropriate and toxic, isn't it? Yet it's also romantic. I think these things can be true at once. One goal I had for 'dark star' was for izch to feel 'messy.' Other ship fandoms routinely write fairly brazenly fucked up content of their own ship, often thematically nasty even in a way that mistreats other characters or even marginalized identities (i.e. misogyny, homophobia, etc.), and those ship fandoms will eat that stuff up. Now, personally, I don't really want to write 'thematically nasty' content, per se, but I do want to write thematically challenging content that is reasonably open to interpretation. I would find it very reasonable if someone read 'photographs' and came away thinking 'I don't think these two should've dated, probably.'

There's other things, too. The reality of 'the canon plot' sneaks in at points. Sometimes this fic feels like it has almost no relationship to canon at all, then One for All will creep in to rear its ugly little head. I say that, but I do love One for All and the canon plot of BNHA. BNHA's manga largely collapsed under the weight of bad calls on its side plots, but I think its main plot has generally always been pretty good. I think this shows in this rendition, where the side plots have been largely obliterated to laser focus on 'Deku.'

Without Ochako, there is no Hero named 'Deku.' This is a statement that I would like to tattoo to the forehead of most of BNHA fandom. In 'photographs,' there is a 'Deku,' in the positive sense, but his distance and emotional removal from Ochako has left him more damaged. He presents a strong front, but he eventually admits to Ochako that he hasn't lived a very happy life. He's only twenty, but he's gone through so much no one of his age should, while Ochako has lived a fairly normal, well-adjusted life for someone of her occupation.

There's a moment where Ochako is trying to convey to Deku that she must remain focused on her child, as she is a single parent now. She's successful enough that she can afford that, which is a luxury. And she's self-conscious of her age and of the sexism of Hero society, so acutely aware that 'her life is over' now that she's over twenty-five, a widow, and has a kid. Deku doesn't see her that way, but she sees him as naive, basically like another kid.

Through the date they go on, she sees another side of him. She sees how he's amazing, just like canon Ochako does, but in the transit of Venus-type of way where she goes from seeing him as the little boy she always loved, to a remarkable young man reshaped by One for All. This is both good and deeply inappropriate, and you can feel her fighting with herself through the fic to try and convince both herself and Deku that he should go for someone of his own age, a peer who will see him for what he is.

But nobody else cared about quirkless Deku. No one sees his value. They only see One for All. Only Ochako loves Deku for Izuku, not for One for All. So he clings to his love for her, up until the moment he's ready to let her go, and she finally pulls back, realizing that she can't possibly let him go when she needs him.

I think there's some really good romantic beats in this fic, which I was fairly proud of to read back through in editing this year. I've referenced the famous 'amusement park date' a few times since in other fics, but this fic ironically is the only on-screen direct rendition of it that I've written. It's a little bit perverse in that regard, but I think it's a very mature, textured, difficult take on the subject matter that asks the audience to think critically of the ship, while still asking them to root for them in the end.

Incidentally, this fic borrows a plot point and some general tone elements from ss3dj's (@marcuskay-ss3dj) famous 'Green Tea Rescue.' That fic is probably the most popular and famous rendition of 'izch as childhood friends,' using the common trope of 'Ochako transfers to Aldera Middle School in her last year.' 'photographs' does not use that format, but it does borrow my absolute favorite plot point from GTR (namely 'who is Hisashi?'), and it serves as a sort of soft homage to the early parts of GTR.

I think there will be a handful more fics in 'dark star' that are these sort of light 'breather' affairs. Some of them have very fucked up, dark conceptual themes, like sibling incest or teratophilia, but the actual tack and tone they take with those themes is comparatively light (i.e. as dark comedy rather than drama). It's necessary for me to write these 'breather' episodes, mostly because you can only make so much awful stuff before it begins to feel overwhelming, at least to me. Still, 'photographs' is part of 'dark star' and not just a regular fic of mine because I wanted the audience to think carefully about its theme and message, and to draw their own conclusions.

If you have thoughts about challenging themes, age-gap romance, childhood friend AUs, and other related material, I'd love to hear about it! So if you enjoyed 'photographs,' please let me know! Or if you didn't, I don't mind hearing why. I hope you have something intelligent to say, rather than boring pro-/anti- discourse stuff or 'your ship is bad,' though. These fics are for adults, and I expect you to engage with them like adults.

Have a nice day.

#izuocha #izch #dkch #izuku midoriya #ochako uraraka #bnha #mha #bnha fanfic #mha fanfic #dark star - an izch anthology #photographs #fanfic #cw: age gap #cw: minor character death #cw: grief

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darkstaranthology · 5 months

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Re: Binary Eclipse

I have an up-and-down relationship with this fic. When I first found darkstar I skipped Binary Eclipse entirely because of the date-rape stuff being triggering at the time. I came back round to it after I’d exhausted the rest of the series but it didn’t particularly click with me, so much so I didn’t pick up on the obvious parallels with Dragon’s Breath, my absolute favorite of the series thus-far.

(Incidentally I love how Dragon’s Breath is Ochako taking control of a fairytale, where Binary Eclipse is about her being cruelly torn away from one, shattering the fairytale completely, and izch being left to deal with the dark, jagged underbelly beneath)

I recently reread it again and it connected much, much better the second time around. Possibly because I knew what to expect and wasn’t gritting my teeth so much through both the SA and the violence: I think another big factor besides the queerness holding this one back from popularity is the horror. A lot of izch content (& its consumers) is very tame, fluffy, and rooted in canon. I know I’m a massive coward around horror, and so the prospect of reading my favs get repeatedly mutilated wasn’t appealing.

Thank god for creators like you, SevenRenny and a few others who aren’t afraid to push the boundaries of the ship and properly whump them every now and then.

My questions are:

(ignore this you like) the SA was the most difficult part for me to read and when I’ve attempted writing similar stuff I’ve never been able to. I was wondering if you have any rationale or strong opinions on using SA as a narrative tool, and how you write it (starting nice and light lol)

Your descriptions of the Moon as a living thing are so evocative and really stuck with me. Is there any specific inspiration you pulled from for that stuff?

You mention how fem!Deku izch is vanishingly rare, and I was wondering if you had any recommendations for ‘good’ (or well-written) fic featuring Izumi?

Similar question with horror fics

Also, re: the queer themes, back in 2022 this was the first fic I ever sat down and read front to back with a trans POV character. I've read more since, but retrospectively that seems kind of monumental, and I thought you might want to know it was a significant stepping stone for me in that regard. So thank you!

Well hello, Anon! We'll ignore that I completely forgot to flip the 'allow anonymous asks' flag until this morning, purely as a matter of my own forgetfulness.

Your sort of preamble here all makes sense. I'm glad it was better the second time. Very nice of you to give it so many chances! And you're right, izch fandom in general really doesn't care for things that aren't broadly fluffy and canon-oriented. My growing list of AUs for 'dark star' cries, I suppose.

To answer your questions in order:

1) For the sexual assault scene, it was actually modeled after other scenes I've read in BNHA fandom mostly, from a pure technical perspective. I've read some that were for ships the author actually focused on - teacher/student relationships, rarepairs, and sometimes just dark takes on popular ships like Deku/Bakugou or Deku/Todoroki - and some that were incidental or 'roadblocks' to the main ship. I used this largely as signpost material, to determine how a scene like this reads, and to try and modify from there.

One important aspect is that it's a date rape scene, to compare/contrast some of the varying takes on direct violent assault in 'dark star.' Izumi's narration doesn't shy away from the reality that she is physically aroused by parts of it, that she's too hazy to really properly articulate her denial of consent, and how she sort of just 'gives in' to it. This only magnifies her later feelings of worthlessness and violation, that she doesn't feel like she's allowed to really be upset by it. I thought it was important to portray these things in a fairly stark manner.

The use of Shindou for it is actually a nod to typical tropes in fujoshi fandom for BNHA, where he is the common choice for the 'obstacle' love interest in both Kirishima/Bakugou and Deku/Bakugou content. I'm not completely sure how this came to be, but my understanding is that it's because he vaguely looks like Deku from a design perspective.

It also, unfortunately, was inspired by a thing that happened to my real life partner about a decade ago, which I was not personally present for. I did describe this scene to my partner as I was working on it and asked for their opinions on the subject. It was an enlightening and emotionally fraught experience for us both, but my partner likes to read dark, graphic, emotionally complex fics with difficult themes, so they liked the ideas I had here, even if they personally declined to read the final fic. They were a big fan of 'bound,' though, even if they don't really ship izch like I do.

Sexual assault as a narrative tool fascinates me, because in some ways it's sort of fucked up and bad how we treat rape as a 'special,' distinct, categorical kind of evil onto itself. In some ways maybe it is this particularly cruel violation, but also in some ways it's not, compared to say, literal murder. It shows up in a lot of different ways in 'dark star.' I try to always center the victim's experience of it, and to be very aware of how sexual assault isn't experienced equally by people of all genders. It also fits neatly into common narrative language concerning 'giving' and 'taking' regarding sex and relationships.

'dark star' isn't strictly a series that is meant to be 'about sex.' There just isn't a lot of good plot with porn for izch, so that happens to be the format 'dark star' uses. But sex is just a part of narratives to me, same as any other type of scene. There's an upcoming fic in 'dark star' where I actually cut the two sex scenes the (otherwise fairly long) fic was slated to have, and it will likely be posted as an M-rated fic. So sex isn't some necessity to me, I just like writing it as a focal point of relationship drama.

Also, not to put too fine a point on it, a lot of fanfic is very heteronormative and misogynist. Even fic about same-sex couples generally defines things by top/bottom dynamics, who is the implicitly feminine sub and implicitly masculine dom, etc. Never mind the kind of abysmal pornographic content that straight men are writing for this fandom. I figure, it's worthwhile to have more serious takes on sexuality in something like 'dark star' - to ask people to consider what consent even means, or what it really means to be in a relationship with someone who hurts you, or how you grapple with choices and consequences - rather than the banal thematic writing typical of explicit fanfic.

Not that there's strictly anything wrong with just wanting porn or smut of your favorite ship, even heteronormative porn. I just think it's boring when that's all there is.

2) The Moon and Fate as a named character was specifically coming from 'Bloodborne' for 'binary eclipse,' which is my favorite video game ever made. I wanted it to feel like even though Izumi and Ochako exist in this very small, vertical slice of an urban fantasy setting, it's clear there are vast things just below the surface that they're trying not to be noticed by. That god and the devil are real, even if they're just bit players in a cosmic dance with so many other monsters.

One of my favorite conceptual settings is 'Delta Green,' a tabletop adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's work set broadly in the Cold War and later the '90s/early 2000s. It's very much so 'what if The X Files crew had to investigate Cthulhu?' aesthetically and a huge favorite of mine. That's not explicit to 'binary eclipse,' but you could easily imagine this whole secret world that exists that the characters will have to grapple with eventually, now that the immediate threat is gone. The inclusion of All for One as a background character was intentional to imply this kind of thing.

3) Truth be told, I don't have a lot of recommendations here. All of my favorite renditions of fem!Deku have been visual art pieces. Most fem!Deku fics tend to either be Deku/[one of the boys], and I really think making BNHA slash ships straight makes them really dull for the most part, or they aren't finished and never will be.

I can think of one finished sapphic izch fic that I can recommend, which you can read here. In this case, the izch is largely incidental to the plot, which is primarily about Deku being trans.

I like Deku/Bakugou as a ship, but I honestly think it becomes horrendous if either of them is made into a girl,* especially Deku. This will be the plot of one of the 'dark star' fics, actually, and if the sexual assault scene in 'binary eclipse' made you uncomfortable, don't worry, we'll come back to that.

(*I think it's fine if you make both of them into a girl, and if anything Deku/Bakugou is kinda more conceptually interesting as an F/F ship, but fandom never does anything meaningful with this premise.)

Conversely, stuff like Deku/Todoroki or Deku/Shinsou is just already unbelievably bland and dull in BNHA fandom with their fanon personalities, and making Deku a girl doesn't change anything about those ships to me. There's probably good gen fic about fem!Deku, I just don't trust gen fic writers to write Ochako without completely disrespecting her character, which they view as 'in need of fixing' because they are small-minded children.

That's why fem!Deku is something I love to see in art, and I love to write, but I am fairly distrustful of in fic unless it's by someone I already know to be good at writing.

4) My favorite horror fic for BNHA is actually a fairly light affair, which you can read here. This is tragically the only time ohmaka wrote izch, too far stuck in the Ochako/Bakugou hole otherwise. She's so good at it, though. Would love to see more. There's also this one, by Encyclopika and this one by HerMadnessMac, which I quite adore.

There's this one, which is actually a really impressive long-form adaptation of Stephen King's 'It' with BNHA characters. I have to disclaimer this one with 'izch has a happy ending in it' because it will feel like they won't as you read it. The author is doing a rewrite, which at the time of me answering this ask is not complete, but it does look promising!

Lastly, there's a couple by SevenRenny, such as this one, which will serve as one of the inspirations for a fic in 'dark star' called 'back contamination' later on.

That being said, there's not a lot of heavy horror fic in BNHA I can readily cosign. Besides the usual 'BNHA fandom hates my ship so finding decent fic for it/fic that just doesn't disrespect my faves even is hard,' I just don't think BNHA is particularly well-suited to horror for fanfic. Truth be told, my favorite written horror author remains Stephen King, and I would recommend his short story compilations for a starting point on his work. You'll get more out of that, as far as 'a good written horror experience,' than you will out of any BNHA fanfic.

On your last point, that's very lovely! I'm glad you could have that. 'binary eclipse' is in many ways a stew of my personal experiences, extruded and strained through a filter of my love of horror iconography. It's a piece that has a lot of emotional energy coursing through it - I put a lot of myself into it - so I'm glad it resonated with you.

Thank you for your question, and for reading!

#ask #anonymous ask #binary eclipse #cw: sexual assault #cw: horror

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darkstaranthology · 5 months

Text

'binary eclipse' was the fifth fic posted for 'dark star - an izch anthology.'

Discussion of dark themes, gender dysphoria and the discussion of the trans experience, date rape, past rape/non-con, mortal/immortal relationships, vampire and werewolf sex, including bloodsucking, torture, and other triggering content below this cut. There will also be spoilers for the fic, if you want to read it for yourself first.

Fic stats:

~40,000 words

5 chapters

E rated (explicit sexual content, mortal/immortal relationships, rape/non-con, torture, blood and gore, horror elements)

Archive Warnings (AO3): Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con

Urban Fantasy AU (No Quirks/Heroes University, with fantastical elements)

'binary eclipse' is a multichapter fic concerning a modern university AU where trans girl Izumi 'Deku' Midoriya is date raped at a party after already living a tough life to get as far as she is. Struggling with university life already, she spirals after her experience, only to meet 'Yuu Takeyama,' an odd-looking young woman who seems awfully familiar, spinning Izumi's world upside down.

So, it's funny really. Before BNHA, my special interests were generally superheroes (I was really into the MCU, I just wasn't into fandom in the formal sense before the pandemic) and horror films. If someone was at all familiar with my more 'traditional work,' I think this would be very obvious, truth be told. Horror themes appear sporadically in my work, mostly subdued as I try to write for a mostly teen-rated audience in a lot of it, and obviously, I love superheroes. You probably wouldn't think that I do, given how critical I am of superhuman society in BNHA in my work, but that's more just taking the themes to their logical conclusions.

'binary eclipse,' accordingly, was primarily inspired by a few horror-themed fics I read. I got to thinking about izch Little Red Riding Hood, actually, partly because one of the official Halloween costumes Ochako has been assigned in Hori's bonus sketches is as Little Red Riding Hood. Traditionally, Little Red Riding Hood can be interpreted as a rather heteronormative story concerning a predatory, broadly masculine wolf and a defenseless, often very young girl he preys on. Yet famously, in the original story, the Big Bad Wolf crossdresses to try and 'fool' Little Red Riding Hood, to varying degrees of success based on the particular retelling. This in turn got me thinking about gender roles, reinterpretations of themes, and the idea of 'fem!Deku' as a trope.

Now, conceptually, I have no problem with genderbending. I do think it's normally tacky to genderbend gay ships into straight ships. Fandom will crow on and on that 'M/F ships aren't inherently straight,' and that's true, but narrative framing is an important literary idea for a reason. However, I think genderbending a straight ship into a gay ship, as long as you take what that premise implies seriously, is an interesting writing exercise. Hence, 'sapphic izch' is my favorite version of the ship, and I think a lot about the thought experiment of 'what if BNHA was the same, except Deku was a girl?'

Of course, if it was as such, BNHA would've been cancelled after two volumes, and no one would ship izch no matter how bluntly obvious Hori made the romantic undertones, but I digress.

There were a variety of influences on 'binary eclipse.' One big one is an iconic horror film, 'Ginger Snaps,' a Canadian film from 2000. Another was SevenRenny (@sevenrenny) and their fic 'The Root of All the Poison,' which really stuck with me. Really, I'm not here to write a book about horror influences, there was a lot, 'cause I love horror films. Point was, I wanted to make Deku a girl, and I wanted to make her a werewolf. However, as easy as it would've been to make her a cis girl, I think making her trans was the more obvious choice; what are werewolves if not one of the classic pieces of trans iconography, after all?

I think this distinction is important when discussing genderbending. I think there's something fundamentally different and important between a character being trans and a character just now being 'a girl.' I think it's okay to just want to do that second thing, and not all fic has to be 'good representation.' That's fine! But how this topic is handled will greatly affect if a fic is good, at least to me, so I went into this one wanting it to write about the trans experience, especially as it pertains to my own life.

This fic is semi-autobiographical, albeit very blown out of proportion, of course. That's all I'll say about that.

For Ochako, making her a vampire was also an easy choice. It let me riff off of now-classic 'vampires vs. werewolves' iconography, it let me talk about the interesting subtext of Ochako and Toga as a relationship, and it let me make her 'magical' in a distinctly different way. Ochako/Toga is a ship that I used to really adore, and I still like them, but as the manga has progressed the fandom has become quite insufferable about how it postures about Ochako/Toga as another totem for migratory slash fandom to conveniently get female characters out of the way of their ships. I ship Deku/Bakugou, for the record! The fandom all around is merely aggravating, and as both the third act of the manga has descended into absolutely abysmal writing and the fandom has become acutely annoying, I now tend to avoid Ochako/Toga content, unfortunately.

That doesn't mean I don't enjoy writing them, though. It's one of those things where I only really like them if I'm writing them now. There's going to be sort of a gradient of portrayals of Ochako and Toga in 'dark star,' from the antagonistic, abusive relationships they have in 'bound' or 'binary eclipse,' to being friendly and supportive in 'dragon's breath,' to close, complicated friends in some planned upcoming fics, such as 'paths forward' or 'finite incantatem.' There's even one planned fic for 'dark star' that will involve the famous Deku/Ochako/Toga OT3, which will be set in one of the various planned fantasy AUs.

For 'binary eclipse' specifically, I was riffing off of a fairly direct transliteration of canon, except where Toga isn't 'saved.' It's meant to be tragic, where she is an abused person who has in turn embraced the abusive system that hurt her. A common theme in BNHA fandom is the notion that the villains are quasi-revolutionary, but really they just want to watch the world burn in canon. Toga in this fic is a very small-scale version of this, choosing to lash out because of how she was treated, while Ochako bears the brunt of that ire. It's not going to make the world a better place, but it's also sad and miserable, not uplifting, when she dies.

Her backstory is also a homage to 'Bloodborne,' the 2015 video game by FromSoftware, which was another influence on this fic.

There's a lot of complex themes in this fic, largely dealing with both Izumi and Ochako going through a rape recovery narrative together. For Izumi, her experience is raw and fresh, trying to grapple with being a trans girl and now experiencing what is unfortunately one of the more common 'girl' experiences: being date raped at a party. Meanwhile, Ochako is recovering from long-term partner abuse, walking away from her position as Himiko's 'pet' vampire underling, trying to grapple with what she was made to do while effectively in captivity. A lot of the queer themes intermingle with these fantastical elements, which I had fun with.

One sort of incidental element to this fic is that 'soulmates' are real, in the sort of blunt 'fanfic' manner. That is, two people are soulmates, they have specific soulmate 'markings,' etc. In this case, only 'special' people have them, people deemed important by 'Fate.' 'Fate' in the specific 'named character' sense will be a recurring element in these fics, also appearing in 'dragon's breath.' In the case of 'binary eclipse,' soulmates have been no promise of a happy ending, another queer theme in practice.

Bakugou is implicitly dating Kirishima in this fic. It's not made super clear, mostly because from Izumi's limited POV she is unsure what their relationship status is, she just knows the two are sexually engaged in some fashion. I imagined they are somewhere between 'dating' and 'friends with benefits,' although the specifics aren't important. What is important is that Bakugou's soulmate isn't Kirishima, it's Todoroki, a commentary on how certain characters revolve narratively around Deku, and how changes in Deku's narrative would send them all careening out of orbit.

(There's something to be said here, as an aside, about the prevalence of Bakugou/Todoroki in this series. I do sincerely ship Bakugou with both Deku and Todoroki. One of these fics will actually concern Bakugou/Deku/Ochako as a threesome, too, in fact! But Bakugou/Todoroki has progressively become my main ship for Bakugou, both because I like it a lot and because I think it narratively foils izch in really fucking fascinating ways. It makes writing fic about them a breeze. I used to like Bakugou/Kirishima a lot, and I'm ambivalent to them as a background ship now, but I have soured on the relationship largely because the fandom for that ship is... shall we say, intense. Many of them are not very kind to Deku or Ochako as characters, which is the quickest way to make me not like you in BNHA fandom.)

Meanwhile, Izumi and Ochako are soulmates, but Ochako was taken by Toga when Ochako was only fifteen. They were 'meant' to live out a fairy tale high school sweethearts romance, only for Izumi to come out to Ochako as trans later in life, putting them on track for something new. Izumi would have been afraid that Ochako wouldn't accept her, only for Ochako to embrace the change, always steadfastly supportive of her best friend.

Instead, Ochako was taken, Izumi collapsed into a deep depression and came out in high school, and everything is all wrong. Indeed, now it's Ochako who comes to Izumi afraid that Izumi won't accept how she's changed, only for Izumi to be thrilled to have her constant back. In the same vein, Izumi and Bakugou have something on the edge of a queerplatonic relationship in this fic; they're not merely 'friends,' but they aren't romantically inclined, either. They love each other, they're just not in love, and I thought this was beautiful, too.

'binary eclipse' is a very queer fic, or at least, that was my intent. I'm queer, personally, but I've come out as being queer relatively late in life. Some people think this makes my experience invalid, which is a shame. I try very hard to learn the ins and outs of queer culture as I go, and to write about it authentically. Sometimes I worry I don't portray things well, or as others might experience them. I only can speak for myself, of course. But I wanted 'binary eclipse' to be a very queer story, even if it's a bit of a shame that it means that relatively few people have read it.

Then again, it has absolutely terrifying tags, so that's understandable. It's also the first story in 'dark star' concerning transgender experiences, though it certainly won't be the last. There are (as of writing this post) two more fics regarding Deku as a trans girl, two regarding Deku as a trans boy, and one regarding Ochako as a trans girl. Each will approach these ideas in slightly different ways or contexts, but the broad points will rhyme, as you'd probably expect. There will also be at least one fic which concerns cis fem!Deku, though it'll be awhile before that comes back up. Sapphic izch remains my favorite version of the ship as long as it's written well, and I wish more people would write/draw for the concept.

Not to put too fine a point on it, a lot of fandom for izch trends younger and trends very cishet male. I feel like this shouldn't be a controversial statement to anyone who's even vaguely familiar with the fandom. Most of the relevant content is made by women, as with all fandom, but most of the constant crowing on Reddit and Twitter about how 'Deku is straight' comes from bland cishet men who contribute nothing and really don't even 'ship' izch, it's just a rhetorical tool for them. Personally, I mentioned earlier the notion that 'M/F ships aren't inherently straight.' That's true, but I think some people hold up sexuality head canons as a totem to avoid criticism, or to separate themselves from cishet men in fandom.

To be blunt, there's nothing wrong with just thinking that your ship involves two straight people. Fandom has become increasingly and exceedingly cringe about policing sexuality head canons, to its detriment. But if you don't think they're straight, then I think how they're framed is important. I generally have come to enjoy framing izch in broadly queer ways, trying to show versions of them that aren't merely 'a teenage boy and a teenage girl who are high school sweethearts.' There's nothing wrong with enjoying that - obviously, I do, since I fell in love with them - but I like to broaden my horizons, too.

So a lot of 'dark star' will contain heavy queer themes. Some will be set in 'the canon setting,' as it were, such as 'stardust,' 'at liberty,' or 'swallow the sun.' Others will be set in AUs, such as 'back contamination' or 'finite incantatem.' Not all of them will focus on transgender experiences; I would like to do at least a few involving cis fem!Deku, eventaully. I also took a crack at cis male!Ochako, but I feel that trope works much better in art than prose. I may eventually do something that is trans male Ochako, however. We shall see!

In this context, 'binary eclipse' served as an important test fic for me to see how I felt about writing dark queer themes, complicated morality dynamics, and horror elements for a story that I still broadly want to have 'a happy ending.' I'm pretty proud of it. I think the scene of Izumi transforming to fight the Nomu and Toga is one of the better action pieces I've ever written, even.

My overall thoughts are a little more muddled on 'binary eclipse,' not because I'm not proud of it, but rather merely because I just don't remember much of the concept phase of writing it. I wrote it very quickly, over the course of a few days, and most of that stuff has been lost to the ether. I'm happy to answer questions about it, though. It's a fic I wish was more popular, given its queer themes, but alas, what can you do?

If you have thoughts about horror stories, queer themes, or sapphic izch, I'd love to hear about it! So if you enjoyed 'binary eclipse,' please let me know! Or if you didn't, I don't mind hearing why. I hope you have something intelligent to say, rather than boring pro-/anti- discourse stuff or 'your ship is bad,' though. These fics are for adults, and I expect you to engage with them like adults.

Have a nice day.

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darkstaranthology · 5 months

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more bnha prototype drawings

#reference art #ochako uraraka #mikumo akatani #katsuki bakugou

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darkstaranthology · 5 months

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Commission Showcase! 2019: BnHA Prototype!Deku — Mikumo “Yamikumo” Akatani, Costume Gamma Edition (suit color taken from Horikoshi’s ‘Top-Secret’ Outlook on Three Prototypes)

*** Total Worktime: — Commissioner: @literallyjustaraven

#reference art #mikumo akatani

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darkstaranthology · 5 months

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Fanart Showcase! 2019 (colored): BnHA Prototypes — Proto!Uraraka Alternative Hero Name: Valkyuurie, the Astral Hero

She’s finally here, completely lined and colored! ( ` ∀ ´ )ﾉ Some details on Valkyuurie’s equipment can be found here, but an overview of Embi-Edition Proto!Uraraka’s hero suit can be found under the cut!:

Keep reading

#reference art #ochako uraraka #yuu takeyama

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darkstaranthology · 5 months

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Face Dump Showcase: Yuu Uraraka — Proto!Uraraka *** Please do not repost or remove credit! (´・ω・｀) If you wish to use these for any reason (banner/icons/etc.) request permission first & always provide credits to me, the artist! ***

Majority of the face icons made for my RP Side blog of Yuuraraka! It’s been a lot of fun practicing facial expressions with her, even if she’s depicted much more reserved than the bubbly Uraraka we know and love.

#reference art #ochako uraraka #yuu takeyama

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darkstaranthology · 5 months

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old doodle of the duo

#reference art #katsuki bakugou #mikumo akatani

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darkstaranthology · 5 months

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rewatching the movies so….STAR WARS X MHA

#reference art #izuku midoriya #tomura shigaraki #katsuki bakugou #ochako uraraka

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darkstaranthology · 5 months

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27th - Twins AU

(it took more time that I expected)

@protobnhaweek

#reference art #mikumo akatani #izuku midoriya

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darkstaranthology · 5 months

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'dragon's breath' was the fourth fic posted for 'dark star - an izch anthology.' As of writing this post, it is in-progress.

Discussion of dark themes, threatened and feared rape/non-con, mating cycles/in-heat elements and loss of control during sex for magical reasons, human/non-human sexual relationships, and other triggering content below this cut. There will also be spoilers for the fic, if you want to read it for yourself first.

Fic stats:

~49,000 words at time of writing

7 chapters at time of writing

E rated (explicit sexual content, human/non-human sexual relationships, mating cycles/in-heat/sex pollen elements, threats of and attempted rape/non-con, past torture and rape/non-con)

Archive Warnings (AO3): Graphic Depictions of Violence, Rape/Non-Con

Fantasy AU (nominally a rendition of the 'official' fantasy AU for BNHA shown in the popularity polls/anime ending theme)

'dragon's breath' is a long-form fantasy AU multichapter fic, based loosely on the 'official' BNHA fantasy AU which has appeared in popularity polls and one of the ending animations of the show. It concerns Princess Ochako Uraraka, a roughly nineteen-twenty year old woman with minor magical abilities, who is grappling with impending arranged marriage and the period-typical sexism of a vaguely medieval society. She meets Deku, a young, wounded dragon, and it changes the course of her fate. It also has... a bit of an odd history to its writing.

As of me writing this post, it's the only fic in 'dark star' that is ongoing, rather than completed. I began writing it in June of 2022, and I wrote the first five chapters before posting it. However, it actually began life in June of 2021, as an experiment in writing 'darker' and 'grittier' fic. It was originally inspired by a piece of Deku/Shigaraki art, where adventurer!Deku ran into dragon!Shigaraki in a cave, and the latter was quite menacing. I actually attempted to write that fic with that pairing, only to give up on it about four thousand words into things.

Deku/Shigaraki is an interesting ship, incidentally one of my real life partner's favorite BNHA ships. It's not so much that I dislike Deku/Shigaraki, personally. It's a pairing that fandom gets antsy about, as they have an age gap of roughly four-five years. I actually think that's totally fine, given that Deku is going on seventeen in the manga, while Shigaraki is just about to turn twenty-two, I believe. That's the least problematic thing about them, considering their canon context. Most of my issue with Deku/Shigaraki is that while they have a lot of cool subtext and themes surrounding them, their actual personal dynamic in canon is insufferable to me romantically. It's a more appealing idea in AUs, but that in turn shaves off most of their complexity, naturally.

Shigaraki in canon is, unfortunately, an annoying gamer dudebro shut in who yells slurs at teens over voice chat while playing ranked League of Legends matches. No amount of uwu softboi twinkification in fanon will change this reality, and I think it if anything makes him less interesting. But it also makes me very disinterested in shipping him with Deku, a character you have to bend over backwards to give him a personal relationship with. They have a good dynamic as a hero and a villain, but that's about it, really (to me).

So to make a long story short, I wrote about thirty thousand words of dragon Deku and witch Ochako with the same basic premise, instead. The original version actually played out mostly the same as what's now posted, Ochako just wasn't a princess. Instead, she was sort of a local hedge witch/healer/alchemist-type, and she ran into Deku in the cave while searching for ingredients. In this version, Deku was more straightforwardly 'sinister'/off-putting, and after they had their brief tryst in the cave, he flew off. The second chapter, of what was planned as a two-shot, involved him finding her several years later, coming back to apologize to her for treating her disrespectfully when she helped him.

This version in 2021 I clearly wasn't actually ready to write yet. The characterization wasn't consistent, I didn't know how to handle AUs so severely divorced from canon, and I wasn't ready to push dark concepts to the edge. I ended up hard scrapping it, then regretting it later when the Google doc was already gone. Such is life.

In 2022, after I began 'dark star,' I was writing 'fantasies,' and I started daydreaming about the formal fantasy AU that BNHA has. This was originally (to my knowledge) drawn by Hori for a popularity poll, then it was animated for the show for its second season. It's super cute, but of course, this is 'dark star,' so I started imagining this sort of broad feminist dark fantasy centered on Princess Uraraka of the Kingdom of Uravity overcoming her given station in life as the unlucky daughter of minor nobles.

When I was writing 'fantasies,' I had already written the first few chapters of 'dragon's breath.' I was writing a lot at that stage, often doing several WIPs at once, so this was pretty easy to do. That's how the implied framing device of 'dark star' happened, where novelist!Ochako was writing 'dragon's breath' as her in-universe novel. This will appear again down the line, with the broad implication that fantasies!Deku eventually wrote 'BNHA' in-universe as a comic book series, and that Ochako began to incorporate that into her novels as a sort of recursive element.

Now, regarding 'dragon's breath.' Other than that how I got here is very long and meandering, it's just an odd duck of a fic. What inspired me to revisit my abandoned dragon Deku concept was art by Twitter artist 'AroaKeyna' for her 'Dragon!izch' AU. She's a furry artist, and I really like her art. Wanting to do a homage/adaptation of her work, I incorporated the 'Ochako is a princess' angle, and I used her design for dragon!Deku, who in the original had more of an angular appearance to him. Popular izch author 'SevenRenny' (@sevenrenny) is a dear friend of mine, and their furry anthro AUs for izch have been very influential on me as well, so this served as a good gift for them.

Personally, I'm not very interested in furry content in the pure abstract sense. Not so much that I 'dislike' it, it just doesn't make me feel anything special. That is to say, I wouldn't characterize myself as a furry, per se. But furry AUs of izch are something I really like, which I find fascinating. I don't think this is any great, deep revelation about my sexuality or anything - and I have had those through my time in fandom, plenty much so - but it does interest me as a point of introspection.

So while 'dragon's breath' has some furry/anthro elements, I think it's pretty clear that I don't really 'go here,' so to speak. Still! I did my best. It will come up more as the fic goes on. Deku as a dragon is written with ideas about 'domination' and 'inequality' in mind, threading the needle on the feminist fantasy and the themes in canon of 'not all men are created equal.' It's significant that Ochako in this fic is surrounded by awful people who want to use her, and the one person she meets who categorically is meant to dominate her instead bends over backwards to please her. Of course, that's a very obvious notion, but I was very committed to making this idea work, and it will be explored more.

In practice, this means that Deku's magic involves aphrodisiac/sex pollen elements not entirely within his control. This makes having sex with him an inherently dicey prospect for Ochako, as it's sort of by definition consensual non-consent. This evolves over the course of the fic, and their dynamic will mature over time. I also just gave Deku a lot of bizarre, alien biology, like having a self-lubricating, nubbed cock, or the fact that he doesn't have nipples or a belly button, since he was born from an egg. Dragon's in this setting aren't 'evolved' creatures, more like traditional vampires where they are 'designed' a certain way by a higher power, and this element will come back, as well.

That brings me to the other elephant in the room: as of writing this post, 'dragon's breath' is unfinished. Indeed, where the story is at right now, there's no end in immediate sight. I actually wrote out the entire next chapter, and it's been sitting in my Google drive since last July. But it ends on a fairly substantial cliffhanger, and to be blunt... I didn't know what happened next after that.

I actually do know what happens next now. There's some important revelations to discuss regarding the 'true nature' of both Prince Shouto and Barbarian Prince Katsuki. Both of them have very unflattering portrayals in this fic. Bakugou in particular was modeled after a number of 'rape fetish' Ochako/Bakugou fics I was exposed to, where I was riffing off of that idea, but without making it something meant to be seen as 'appealing.' Of course, I think it's fine to write non-consent as a fetish thing, I just think the consistently awful characterization of Bakugou by fandom as this hypermasculine, dominant sex god is aggravating, to be honest.

Still, no point in standing on a soap box about it. The fic speaks for itself on the matter, I think. I broadly know what I want to do now. The next few sequences concern the introduction of some important characters: Chisaki, Dabi, Shigaraki, and Toga, primarily. They also concern some backstory mysteries being solved for the audience, such as what drove All Might's motivations, or the nature of Nana, the Lady of the Lake. I think this fic has at least 8-10 chapters to go, probably around 120k words when it's finished, but we shall see.

This fic is very Ochako-centric, which I think is fine. It's easy to write Ochako-centric izch fics for me, as Deku is my absolute favorite character, possibly of all time, but the series is already about him. Of course, I love Ochako, too, but it just works easily for fic, as she has a lot of space to work with as a character. One common criticism I hear of izch as a ship, which I actually empathize with, is that they aren't interesting in canon because Hori doesn't write enough about Deku's feelings for/about Ochako. I think people are selective with this criticism, as Deku has a lot of problems with his writing in general, yet they conveniently will forgive this with Bakugou or Todoroki, but the point stands, regardless. Consequently, I often receive feedback to the effect of 'I don't really care for izch, but I really enjoyed your fic about them.'

I take this as proof that people don't really dislike Ochako or izch on principle, they dislike Hori's poor planning in canon, and they probably dislike the insufferable cishet male fandom for BNHA that lurks on Twitter and Reddit. Can't really blame them there, even if they sound stupid insisting that their favorite generic anime boy that Hori wrote just as foolishly is somehow exempt from his poor planning. I digress.

I'm proud of how this fic has come out so far, insofar as I consider it a valuable learning experience. I really didn't know much about how to write fantasy before 'dragon's breath,' and I think I learned a lot. There are two more fantasy AUs planned for 'dark star' at the time of writing this post: one is an adaptation/homage to an existing izch fic by another author, and one is a direct AU of another mainstream media property, a sort of setting fusion. They will both riff off of 'dragon's breath' thematically, as 'dark star' has a lot of deliberate intertextuality, but neither will be expressly related as such, and neither will be based on the 'canon fantasy AU' for BNHA.

I think given the chance to do 'dragon's breath' over, I wouldn't have posted it until it was done. I learned valuable lessons about how to write and post ongoing, long-form fics from this experience, too. I hope the rest of 'dark star' won't have this problem, as I no longer plan to post fics for the series that are not already completed. I also plan to do a proper weekly release cadence from now on, rather than every other day or every five days, which I experimented with via other fics.

Still, 'dragon's breath' is a neat little fic. It's implicitly a take on 'Ochako has One for All,' or more accurately that izch share One for All, which is a common idea in izch fandom, but one which I feel the ship fandom often executes poorly. There's so much thematically necessary to touch on with that idea, and so much of izch fandom is consumed by juvenile power fantasies, instead. The curse, such as it were, of being into a ship popular with cishet men. If only that was not the case, we might be free of so much trash harem and 'overpowered Deku' fic that clutters the tag.

I plan to finish writing this fic sometime in 2024, as I meander through my ever-growing list of ideas for 'dark star.' It's the kind of series I can write forever and ever, as it's an anthology, not something that requires heavy linear reader investment. You'll probably enjoy it more if you read it in the order it was written, if only because that's the logical way to read nearly anything, but you don't have to.

I do find it curious that this was the most popular of the original few 'dark star' fics. It makes me wonder what about it is so appealing. Is it that people are craving 'izch fantasy AU?' In the time between when I first wrote it and now there have been several notable, popular izch fantasy AUs, mostly by the always wonderful Rainglows (@leahfrog), which I think you also ought to read. Perhaps people just have a mighty, unfulfilled need for izch fantasy, or perhaps 'dragon's breath' resonated with them specifically. It's hard to say, really; no one talks to me much about the things I write. I wonder sometimes if I am scary!

And don't worry. We'll come back to Rainglows' fantasy AUs for 'dark star,' soon enough.

But if you like BNHA fantasy AUs, I'd love to hear about it! So if you enjoyed 'dragon's breath,' please let me know! Or if you didn't, I don't mind hearing why. I hope you have something intelligent to say, rather than boring pro-/anti- discourse stuff or 'your ship is bad,' though. These fics are for adults, and I expect you to engage with them like adults.

Have a nice day.

#izuocha #izch #dkch #izuku midoriya #ochako uraraka #bnha #mha #bnha fanfic #mha fanfic #dark star - an izch anthology #dragon's breath #fanfic #cw: noncon #cw: misogyny #cw: arranged marriages #cw: teratophilia #cw: dubcon

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darkstaranthology · 5 months

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'fantasies' was the third fic completed for 'dark star - an izch anthology.'

Discussion of dark themes, unequal power dynamics, age-gap romance, sex between an adult and a minor, cheating/infidelity, and other triggering content below this cut. There will also be spoilers for the fic, if you want to read it for yourself first.

Fic stats:

~17,000 words

One-shot

E rated (explicit sexual content, age-gap, consensual underage sex, dubious morality and consent due to unequal power dynamics, cheating/infidelity)

Archive Warnings (AO3): Underage

Modern AU (No Quirks/Heroes)

'fantasies' is a one-shot concerning a modern AU where novelist and unsatisfied housewife Ochako Uraraka meets boy-next-door Izuku 'Deku' Midoriya, and they have a brief, intense summer fling together. There's just two problems: Ochako Uraraka is actually Ochako Iida, married to Tenya Iida, and Deku is seventeen, while Ochako is twenty-six.

There's a lot going on subtextually in this AU. Boiled down to its basic premise, you could call it 'the Stacy's Mom izch AU,' although Ochako notably is childless. It's also significant that even though she's playing Deku's 'older woman' fantasy, the fic is specifically from her perspective, so it delves more into her more mature, adult introspection, her acute self-awareness that the relationship is unethical, and how she struggles with the reality that she's unhappy in life and lashing out in the only way she can.

There's a lot of implicit politics to this story. Deku is seventeen, so he's actually legal in Japan. The most taboo element about their relationship in the appropriate cultural context is that Ochako is married, not that he's nominally 'a minor' by American standards. Of course, I'm American, so I had Ochako also be very mindful of the fact that he is a minor in every way that matters.

There's a subtle through line in this fic, where Ochako starts out merely fantasizing about Deku, enjoying the way he has a little crush on her. She actually lives next to the Bakugou family, which is another fun subtext thing: the fact that Tenya is rich, and the Bakugou family is also rich, while Ochako came from a poor background, and she feels deeply alienated and isolated by these facts. And the more she fantasizes about Deku, the more she realizes that she doesn't just see him as a sexual outlet.

I suspected a lot of people might read this fic and judge Ochako heavily, which in some respects is fair. People often take this sort of fascinatingly hard line with cheating when it is discussed in public, as if it's the greatest crime you could ever commit. I certainly wouldn't characterize it as a nice thing to do in almost any scenario, but I think people are uncomfortable admitting that our social reaction to cheating depends heavily on who is cheating and in what context they exist.

In this case, Tenya isn't an abusive husband, he's just a shitty husband. Ochako is his trophy wife, just someone to exist and serve as proof that he's doing what's expected of him as the son of wealthy businesspeople. I think that Tenya sincerely believes that he loves Ochako, but I don't think he does, and that subtle distinction is important.

I also feel terrible for Ochako, realizing slowly that Deku is this incredible person that she wishes so desperately she had met 'properly.' That's often an undercurrent that runs through AUs I write where izch meet 'out of context,' how they can feel so firmly that they were meant for more. It hurts to read Ochako realizing that this cute, unassuming boy who is friends with the neighbor kid might really be the love of her life, and the impossible things that feel like they stand between them.

There's some fun metatext and intertextuality in this fic. At the time, I was simultaneously drafting my take on 'the traditional BNHA fantasy AU,' which is now called 'dragon's breath.' In 'fantasies,' novelist!Ochako is writing a novel called 'dragon's breath,' and it contextualizes 'dark star' as such. You can reasonably infer that 'dark star' is a St. Elsewhere-esque fantasy, and all the fics we read are actually books that novelist!Ochako has been writing.

This idea goes in some interesting directions. Ochako mentions writing a novel about a brunette and a mermaid. This began life as a real WIP: another Ochabowl concept, wherein Ochako was the unsatisfied housewife of Tenya and spends a summer carrying on a series of one-night stands that became progressively stranger. She began by having a car sex fling with Bakugou, so that I could establish the fic wouldn't just be more rote 'Ochako/Bakugou with extra steps.' Then the people she met became more and more bizarre - Hagakure as a ghost, Toga as a vampire, etc. - and it culminated in Deku, her true love, as a mermaid who lives off the coast.

But that fic was meant to have an unhappy ending, where Ochako realizes that she can't have Deku, because the material reality of their lives is too great. Eventually, she moved back home, divorced Tenya, and lived a life more true to herself, but she lost Deku in the process.

That fic became 'fantasies,' and the idea for novelist!Ochako came from it. So instead, it's a novel that Ochako mentions writing, which I liked as a subtle reuse of concepts.

However! There will actually be a mermaid!Deku fic for 'dark star.' It won't really look like that anymore, but the idea did live on, and hopefully it will be soon, as I continue to work on writing them.

Another book that Ochako mentions writing is called 'freed,' and it is deliberately the inverse of 'bound': a canon AU for BNHA with quirkless villain Deku and pro Hero Ochako, where Ochako goes through a corruption arc and joins Deku in the criminal underworld. That fic will deliberately be the 'final' fic of 'dark star,' a kind of bookend if you will.

There won't expressly be any more of 'fantasies,' insofar as there won't be a second chapter of it the way that 'unstable orbit' got. However, the AU will come back in a subtle way for a future fic in 'dark star,' where it is more directly stated that all of the fics in 'dark star' are actually the work of novelist!Ochako. I think that's a really fun framing device, and it helps blunt some of the more emotionally heavy aspects of the series. While writing dark fiction is cathartic and fun, it gives me an out to say 'yes, they do really get their happy ending when all is said and done, don't worry,' which I think we all deserve. Real life is depressing enough, after all.

I would like to come back to 'Ochako is older than Deku,' though. In this case, 'fantasies' was the synthesis of two old WIPs: one was the 'housewife Ochako on a summer trip to a resort' Ochabowl fic, and the other was a WIP wherein Ochako was a university student, maybe 20-21. In this one, Deku and Bakugou were childhood friends, but Bakugou was a little older, which contextualizes their relationship better. Deku and Bakugou's dynamic doesn't make sense in a modern AU without bending over backwards, but if Bakugou is older, his hostility towards Deku makes way more sense.

In that idea, Bakugou dated Ochako, until he came out as gay and they split on amicable terms. Ochako met Deku through him, originally as a scrawny fifteen year old, but later as an in-shape, growing young man of seventeen, and the age gap between them was only four years. That fic culminated in a scene where Ochako fucked Deku at a house party, deciding that she liked the young man he was growing into, and you can see the vestiges of that idea in 'fantasies' still.

That version of izch - that is to say, sixteen-seventeen year old Deku and twenty-twenty-one year old Ochako - will come back in an AU that is neither a modern AU nor canon AU, but instead something a little zanier. They're gonna be pretty fucked up in that fic, with an emphasis on toxic relationships and unnegotiated kink as always, and I'm excited!

I'm excited for a lot of 'dark star,' honestly. I hope you are, too. So if you enjoyed 'fantasies,' please let me know! Or if you didn't, I don't mind hearing why. I hope you have something intelligent to say, rather than boring pro-/anti- discourse stuff or 'your ship is bad,' though. These fics are for adults, and I expect you to engage with them like adults.

Have a nice day.

#izuocha #izch #dkch #izuku midoriya #ochako uraraka #bnha #mha #bnha fanfic #mha fanfic #dark star - an izch anthology #fantasies #fanfic #cw: age gap #cw: underage #cw: infidelity

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darkstaranthology · 5 months

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'unstable orbit' was the second fic completed for 'dark star - an izch anthology.'

Discussion of dark themes, unequal power dynamics, age-gap and teacher-student romance, sex between an adult and a minor, and other triggering content below this cut. There will also be spoilers for the fic, if you want to read it for yourself first.

Fic stats:

~33,000 words

2 chapters

E rated (explicit sexual content, teacher-student romance, consensual underage sex, dubious morality and consent due to unequal power dynamics, mental health issues and how they are dealt with)

Archive Warnings (AO3): Underage

Canon Setting AU

'unstable orbit' is a two-shot, originally one-shot, concerning a canon AU where Izuku Midoriya is born with a quirk (in this case, 'Pyrokinesis') and incidentally is also ten years older than the rest of the cast. He meets Ochako, a student, as a relatively new Yuuei teacher, occupying the same basic position that All Might does in canon, and they initiate an affair together when Ochako is sixteen and he is roughly twenty-six to twenty-seven.

The second chapter concerns a time skip to ten years later, after the ending of the original one-shot. The first part is from Izuku's perspective, concerning his internal conflict, the moral ambiguity of the situation, and the realities of Hero society as he experienced it. The second part is from Ochako's perspective, concerning her view of meeting, falling in love with, and marrying Izuku, how she has internalized the moral ambiguity of it, and the realities of Hero society as she experiences it, including how Class A is fundamentally different without the influence of 'Deku.'

Originally written as a one-shot, it's inspired by and gifted to another very prolific author of izch content who I don't quite like very much. Most of his online internet presence has been scrubbed, and he's, shall we say, somewhat dubious in how he engages with fandom spaces. I wrote this fic almost a bit as an insult, a rare 'I took your concept and wrote it better than you' gauntlet throw, which was quite petty of me.

The actual result was really fascinating, though. Teacher-student romance is one of those forbidden topics that is generally not allowed in 'polite' fandom spaces for BNHA, and I would say this is for good reason really. Most fandom spaces for BNHA have a lot of kids, since it is ultimately media for kids, and normalizing 'it's okay for your teacher to make romantic overtures' in that context would be irresponsible.

However, I didn't write this content for kids, and it doesn't appear in 'polite' fandom spaces, so I made it pretty fucked up. Possibly the darkest aspect of this fic to me is the fact that what Izuku does is entirely legal in Japan, to my knowledge. It's not even statutory assault. Indeed, like the more conservative parts of the US, Japan probably would look the other way on a relationship like this as described, especially because they keep it hidden until Ochako is graduated and a pro Hero herself.

I explored this a bit more in the second part, which wasn't strictly speaking planned. I didn't intend to ever come back to this AU. But I was discussing it with a friend of mine and mentioned off-handedly that it would be funny to write 'unstable orbit, ten years later, when Ochako has become the dominant one in their relationship overall.' The wheels turned naturally, and here we are, with a part two.

It's fitting that the second half is twice as long as the original, as I think the premise needs more exploration from the 'victim's' perspective than it does from the older party. I put that word in scare quotes because it's an important element that Ochako doesn't view herself as a victim, and indeed burns important bridges in her life with people who try to force that label on her. I'm really proud of how I wrote both Izuku and Ochako in this fic, and I think they're very layered and open to interpretation here.

This fic was inspired by a lot of things, chief among them me learning in real life that a beloved high school teacher of mine had married a student of his right after graduation. I was pretty horrified at the time, but it was old news (this happened in roughly the '80s, but he retired two years after I graduated in the 2010s) and they had been married a long time, even having kids. They were divorced when I met him, but I did meet his adult child who didn't seem to consider it unusual at all.

It was also inspired by the tired trope on Reddit advice columns where women, almost always invariably 20-25 and presumably white, will ask for advice in the following format: 'Am I (22f) the asshole for not wanting to do [obviously stupid and fucked up thing] for my bf (34m) that I've been with for three years?' It's so consistently prevalent that I could set my watch to it, and I wanted to meditate a bit on what 'the successful version' of a relationship like that even looks like.

That being said, there's other fun things about this fic. There's a few people implicitly older by necessity in addition to Izuku: All Might, Bakugou, Togata, and Amajiki. This is because it's implied that some version of 'the OFA/AFO plot' occurred when Izuku was in school, he just didn't go to Yuuei and wasn't directly involved. Meanwhile, Mirio was All Might's successor, killed by Hori's reveal that only quirkless people can carry OFA, and they now live in a world without OFA or AFO.

The most significant aspect of this that appears as a background element is the fact that Endeavor was not an abusive father. All Might would have retired before he could get that far. Accordingly, Touya appears in the background as a pro Hero, even taking Endeavor's Hero name when he retires, while Shouto's daddy issues have shifted to 'I want to be daddy' instead of 'All Might is my real daddy.' It's never directly stated to the reader, but Shouto doesn't have his scar in this fic.

Accordingly, Shouto is quite a prick in this fic. That was deliberate, partly because Shouto was just more interesting when he was mean, as opposed to fanon uwu softboi 'I'm so sad about my mean dad' Shouto we're usually saddled with in fic, and partly because it was a meditation on the nature of Hero society. Without the Hero named 'Deku,' Class A aren't a found family shaped by trauma. They're just privileged kids training to be pajama cops at the top school in the country, and accordingly, their portrayal here isn't very flattering.

Only Ochako has had the influence of 'Deku,' in her unique, inappropriate relationship with Izuku, and that's why she's the greatest of them. Because in canon, Ochako is already a good Hero when she meets Izuku - arguably, the only one in the class actually - and she just has a lot of internal issues to work through. Because this fandom doesn't respect Ochako, even though they certainly should.

Never mind the implication that Bakugou is actually Touya's ex-boyfriend in this AU (as he would be of the same age roughly), and that the two Todoroki pro Hero brothers and Bakugou are engaged in some kind of obscenely dramatic love triangle/emotionally intense relationship despite Shouto now being ten years younger than Bakugou.

My two primary ships besides izch are Shouto/Bakugou and Yaoyorozu/Jirou, and both of them appear in this fic being very messy just as izch was. This felt thematically appropriate and adds to the sort of melancholy nature of the fic. It's the way they can all feel how they were meant to meet under better circumstances, to love and be friends in a manner more socially acceptable and less emotionally destructive, but they still reached out and snatched their chances at happiness anyway. I think that's both romantic and tragic.

And let's not put too fine a point on it: this fic has some pretty intense sex scenes in it, especially in the second part. I did some experimental stuff here. I've been reading smut for other ships and it struck me how there's often good ideas there, but they're often not contextualized enough for me to get into it, or the way the author writes the character is asinine for me.

Or in other words, I read a fic where Ochako has a daddy kink for Bakugou the first time they have sex, when he's assaulting her, and I was like 'y'know, this is hot, the ship and writing are just trash.' So I wanted to work backwards from that and ask 'could I make this satisfying for me personally?' That appears in the second half of this fic, and all the test readers I sent it to were quite surprised I wrote it, as it's atypical for me.

But that's the goal of 'dark star,' to write atypical, out there ideas and get myself pushing the limits of what I'm capable of as an author! So if you enjoyed 'unstable orbit,' please let me know! Or if you didn't, I don't mind hearing why. I hope you have something intelligent to say, rather than boring pro-/anti- discourse stuff or 'your ship is bad,' though. These fics are for adults, and I expect people to engage with them like adults.

Have a nice day.

#izuocha #izch #dkch #izuku midoriya #ochako uraraka #bnha #mha #bnha fanfic #mha fanfic #dark star - an izch anthology #unstable orbit #fanfic #cw: age gap #cw: underage #cw: teacher-student romance

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darkstaranthology · 6 months

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'bound' was the first fic completed for 'dark star - an izch anthology.'

Discussion of dark themes, non-consensual sex, and other triggering content below this cut. There will also be spoilers for the fic, if you want to read it for yourself first.

Fic stats:

~27,000 words

7 chapters

E rated (explicit sexual content, sexual assault, partner abuse, kidnapping, dark themes, canon-typical violence, political themes and acts of terrorism, off-screen/referenced character death)

Archive Warnings (AO3): Rape/Non-con, Underage

Canon Setting AU

'bound' is a multichapter fic, concerning a canon AU for BNHA where Ochako Uraraka is the traitor and kidnaps Deku immediately before the 'Paranormal Liberation War' arc of the manga. This results in much of the rest of the cast suffering unhappy endings. Meanwhile, Ochako struggles with mental health issues from her time as a villain, which was not initially by choice, and Deku experiences a descent into darkness spurned on by his desire to save the girl he loves from herself.

It's an unusual piece with an unusual development history. The root origin of this one was a WIP I had in early 2021, involving Ochako as the traitor to Yuuei. It was meant to be Deku/Todoroki/Ochako, with complicated themes of polyamory and Ochako feeling rejected/not important enough to the boys.

That got slowly scrapped as I found I'm no longer particularly invested in Deku/Todoroki as a romantic relationship. As I began to feel the BNHA manga was going downhill in late 2021-early 2022, I became frustrated with Hori and the general direction. This led me to slowly concept out my first idea for a so-called 'Ochabowl' fic.

'Ochabowl' is sort of a silly premise, the way it's actually generally implemented in our fandom. It's basically just 'Ochako/Bakugou, but with extra steps' typically, which I find terribly dull. But I wanted to write a version where Ochako is the traitor to Yuuei, and as an act of catharsis, she rapes and murders her way through a good chunk of the relevant cast, Jennifer's Body-style. It was going to end with her and Toga kidnapping Deku together, spiriting him away after leaving Yuuei unable to protect Japan from Shigaraki's impending attack.

The problem is that I don't really care about most of that, it just felt fun and good to think about as an act of anger at the state of both canon and the fandom. The fandom has a very tiresome attitude towards Ochako and her writing, primarily because it is terminally illiterate.

Eventually, what I settled on was writing just the final scene of Ochako raping Deku. I say that word, 'rape,' and use it in both its modern and historical sense, because she also kidnaps him from Yuuei. I wrote the scene, using a piece of art that was at the time recently posted as a convenient reference, and realized that I really enjoyed writing that kind of dark content.

I had attempted to write some dark content in 2021, but none of it really resonated with me. This time was different. After posting 'bound,' originally as a one-shot, I then began to write a follow-up story. I had no real idea where it was going, but I cobbled together a plot on the fly and wrote it in about three days.

For what it is, I am moderately proud of the fic. It has coherent themes, you can feel me absolutely seething through the text at both Hori and the fandom, and I think it's even a little sexy, which I don't normally feel about the porn I write. It's unspeakably dark in most izch fandom circles, which is fine with me. I'm proud of the fact that it says something, though.

Originally, I was intending to write a few more one-shots in the same universe. For a brief period of a few days, a different series was on 'bound,' which I can no longer recall the name. It was meant to contain these follow up pieces.

In the fic, a key element of the divergence is that Overhaul's quirk bullets survived that arc. Ochako uses them to take Bakugou, Todoroki, Aizawa, and Hatsume's quirks. She leaves the last one with Toga, in case Toga wants to live a life without her quirk, an act that is both so full of love and so cruel at the same time.

An important element of this AU is that Ochako was broken into being a villain. She begins as psychotic, bordering on manic, but it becomes apparent through the fic that she's disturbed and hurt, damaged both by the cruelty of Hero society and the brutality of the villains it creates.

The following one-shots were meant to focus on:

Toga (not) coping with Ochako leaving her and taking Deku, and Toga (not) coping with AFO taking over Shigaraki. This one had some Toga/Shigaraki elements, as a parallel to izch, and ended marvelously with Toga getting the last laugh on AFO by hitting Shigaraki with the last quirk destroying bullet, which allows Star and Stripe to defeat him for good. This is the one I'm most sad I didn't finish, and I wrote about 7k words of it, too.

Bakugou and Todoroki, trying to cope with being quirkless in a world gone mad, and slowly making the connection that Ochako was the traitor and Deku was still alive. They were meant to fall into a deeply unhealthy relationship together.

Jirou and Yaoyorozu, surviving after the battle and struggling to make sense of the world. Jirou lost her quirk as a consequence of injury, and both suffered severe trauma. This one was about them thinking they'd found peace after moving to France, only for the ending of 'bound' to make them realize that nowhere would be safe again.

I eventually settled on doing 'dark star,' instead, primarily because I'm only really invested in writing izch. I love all three of the previous ships I mentioned, sincerely so, but I am not invested enough in them to write a heavy fic focus on them. However, I was overflowing with thematically challenging, dark, sexually-oriented fic ideas for izch, so I shifted towards focusing on an anthology series.

'bound' is a good entry point for 'dark star' because it effectively filters out anyone not on board with the premise. Of course, you can skip ahead; they're not generally related directly, with a few notable exceptions. But anyone who reads them in the obvious 'intended order' will either realize they're not built for this content, or realize they've found their new favorite thing.

I received a lot of lovely commentary from people who had always wished for this type of content for izch, and I'm grateful for that. I reread and did some light editing of 'bound' to write this post, as well as reorganizing the tags. I'm proud to say that it's still fairly similar to my style now. I write a lot, and my style has shifted drastically in the past, but I think I've settled in a lot of ways.

'bound' in many ways is me wishing someone said to Deku, 'Don't you just want to stop being nice? Don't you want to go a little crazy?' And I chose Ochako, because Ochako is one of the most important people Deku has ever met, and I stand by this.

And just as easily as Ochako created Deku, the Hero who can do it, and who always does his best, a darker, meaner Ochako could create Deku, not a Hero but a force for change in Hero society... whether they want it or not.

There are also fairly overt political themes in 'bound,' from discussions of class disparity and quirk discrimination, to the perception of women and women's sexuality, to even Deku trying to work through having been raped but feeling like his body responded, so he's not allowed to feel as betrayed or violated by it as he should. Both Deku and Ochako struggle to navigate a relationship built on domestic violence and partner rape, and the way they eventually do so is meant to be tragic and depressing, not uplifting or romantic.

I think this fic is probably one of the most important ones I've ever written and posted. It's one of my most popular fics, although metrics mean little when posting anonymously and in general. I think it secretly resonated with a lot of folks, even if there's not really a venue to discuss it in 'polite' fandom.

But if you enjoyed 'bound,' please let me know! Or if you didn't, I don't mind hearing why. I hope you have something intelligent to say, rather than boring pro-/anti- discourse stuff or 'your ship is bad,' though. These fics are for adults, and I expect people to engage with them like adults.

Have a nice day.

#izuocha #izch #dkch #izuku midoriya #ochako uraraka #bnha #mha #bnha fanfic #mha fanfic #dark star - an izch anthology #bound #dark fic #dead dove do not eat #fanfic #cw: noncon #cw: toxic relationships #cw: kidnapping #cw: underage

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darkstaranthology · 6 months

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Hello. I am the anonymous author of 'dark star - an izch anthology,' lowercase intentional.

I am an adult. You may refer to me by they/them pronouns. This blog will contain unmarked spoilers for BNHA. I am open to questions in my ask box regarding my writing. Please do not ask me questions about myself, although I know many people reading this blog will be aware of who I am already, and that's okay.

I began writing this series in May of 2022, with a broader writing hiatus from August 2022 to now. But as I plan to return to it and fill out what remains of the series - and there's a lot! - I wanted to create this side blog for discussion and archival purposes.

Please understand that under this cut, there will be discussion of dark, triggering, and NSFW content.

'dark star' is an attempt by me to write content for my favorite ship that wouldn't otherwise exist.

'IzuOcha,' or 'izch,' often referred to as 'dkch,' 'dekucha,' or 'dekutea' in the Japanese fandom, is a ship from Boku no Hero Academia, a popular Japanese Shounen manga. It is between the main character, Izuku Midoriya, and his close friend and primary canon love interest, Ochako Uraraka. I am describing this in fairly neutral terms because both the subject of this blog, and the works I'll be writing about them, are moderately controversial in fandom.

Fandom, broadly, does not like izch. This is mostly for all the normal reasons that fandom doesn't like 'canon' M/F ships, and that's fine. But given that BNHA has one of the most popular fandoms in history, and izch is my favorite ship, I try to create the content I want to see for it, knowing full well that others won't if I don't.

That brings us to 'dark star.' I began writing it largely as a therapeutic exercise for myself, though it's also just interesting and challenging to do. The first fic in the series, 'bound,' began life as a dark fic centered on a different concept, before becoming a one-shot, before then becoming a multichaptered fic centered on izch. I was originally going to write more fics in the same AU (which is about a hypothetical Traitor Ochako Uraraka as a fanon conceit), until I decided I wasn't invested enough in that.

So it became an anthology series about my favorite ship, instead. izch, as written in canon, is not really a particularly 'problematic' ship. It concerns two high school students who have a fairly typical relationship, albeit one that exists against the backdrop of Shounen superhero action and drama. 'dark star,' by contrast, is pretty grim, often touching on subjects of age gaps, non-consensual sexual acts, where the line between non-consent and consent blurs, unequal power dynamics, the interplay of sex and violence, unconventional gender and sexuality roles, and how two people who are otherwise fairly 'typical' deal with being put in these scenarios.

I won't claim that it's meant to be 'high art.' It contains graphic sexual content, as well as graphic violence, that is as much meant to be thematic as it is entertaining. I like my ship, and I think they deserve to be a little dark and sexy, as a treat. Popular fanon doesn't blink at stories like this for typical fanon ships, and I'd like for them to exist for izch as well.

I am not very interested in pro-/anti-ship discussions. I am also not very interested in ship or character bashing debate. Some characters or ships may be portrayed negatively in my work, and I'm happy to explain why that is, but this is not debate club, and I'm not here to change your mind, or for you to change mine.

This blog carries a blanket content and trigger warning for character death, graphic depictions of violence, sexual assault, unequal power dynamics, large age gaps and abuse of power in relationships with minors, blood and gore, and abusive relationships. I will try to include more specific warnings as I go.

Broadly speaking, you can expect izch to get happy endings out of most of these fics. If your fave is someone else, read with caution.

My ask box is open. Have a nice day.

#izuocha #izch #dkch #izuku midoriya #ochako uraraka #bnha #mha #bnha fanfic #mha fanfic #dark star - an izch anthology #dark fic #dead dove do not eat #fandom culture #fandom meta #blog intro #pinned post

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