#and I've been compared to non-human things before a lot as well so like him being called these things makes me scream | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

orionsangel86 · 10 months

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I think part of the reason Morpheus is often headcanoned as asexual in this fandom is a combination of people projecting (which is totally valid) and that there's a significant portion of the fandom who hasn't read the comics and only has the show to go off of. In my opinion, in the show he does have strong ace vibes. Much less so in the comics, but it's a lot easier to headcanon a character as ace when your first introduction to them gives you strong ace vibes. So there's probably a good number of people who still headcanon him ace even after reading the comics.

Personally, I just headcanon him as queer. My reason being that if you have a being that is basically the subconsious of all humanity averaged together, the odds of that person being straight is probably low.

As for there being discourse on his sexuality in the fandom: if there is discourse, I've missed it. Though there very well could be discourse on a side of the fandom I'm not in.

This is an interesting viewpoint bearing in mind I have been discussing the exact opposite opinion in a separate post in which we theorised that the show has played up Morpheus' sexual allure...

Without wanting to overspeak here, as someone who is not asexual and therefore cannot speak for that community, I think it is part of a wider cultural thing within fandom that people who are queer and in particular asexual and/or aromantic, tend to relate and imprint rather heavily on characters who tend to be non-human. I think there is probably an interesting psychoanalytical reason for this but its probably a bit too deep of a topic for me to tackle on a Sunday evening.

Dream is just the latest in a whole batch of non-human characters that often get depicted as asexual in their fandoms. I'm thinking characters like Aziraphale and Crowley from Good Omens, Castiel from Supernatural, The Doctor from Doctor Who, Spock from Star Trek, to name a few.

I can therefore understand why fandom may view Dream this way, even though canonically it isn't technically the case. I don't think there is any harm in it persay, though I think fandoms need to be careful about constantly headcanoning non human characters as ace because what does that say about real asexual humans? Asexuality is a human characteristic at the end of the day, and I wonder if this is just the latest in the trend of queer people in general being made inhuman and "monstrous" which goes all the way back to old hollywood monster movies.

I personally don't pick up any ace vibes from Morpheus in the show. I'm not really sure what I would be looking for regarding "ace vibes" anyway because its just simply a lack of sexual attraction, and I think both episode 6 and episode 11 make it quite clear he experiences sexual attraction, at least in my opinion and interpretation. If its his inhuman element that makes him appear asexual I'll be honest I find that a bit problematic, and I would ask asexual fans to also look internally as to the reasons why they associate inhuman qualities as asexual qualities. Of course if there are qualities he is presenting that can be compared to a lived asexual experience which don't relate to his inhuman nature at all then that is different, and I would like to know more about that since it is an interpretation I do not see and would like to read about.

My viewpoint is that he is quite a sexual character even in the show, and I thought this before I threw myself into the comics and audiobook. Other than episode 1, in which the show does a wonderful job of not sexualising or objectifying him outside of maybe Alex's gay awakening, even though he is completely naked throughout, once he has his clothes back on the show leans into the sexual chemistry he has with every single cast member to the point that its basically an in-fandom joke that Dream is a bit of a slut (affectionate).

Even in the cast interviews, this "Dream is a slut" viewpoint was already known about and acknowledged (thank you Kirby and Mason) so its not exactly a secret that the show is playing up the sexual elements even if currently they remain in subtext. Personally I doubt they will remain in subtext for very long and I think future episodes will quite likely lean into Dream's sexual allure and bring it more into the forefront. I am very curious about how they will adapt Tales in the Sand for instance, which is the only time in the comics that Dream has sex within the panels rather than "off the page" and since that version of Dream won't be portrayed by Tom Sturridge, I do wonder if maybe the show will decide to give us more Dream sex scenes - there is certainly an opportunity to bring Calliopes praises to life in the "show don't tell" manner, and we have yet to discover what they are gonna do with the Thessaly situation, or whether the intense sexual chemistry he had with Johanna Constantine will come to fruition.

I also can't not bring up Dreamling fandom here, because if my experience in Dreamling fandom has taught me anything about the general fandom opinion of Dream, its that the show has clearly encouraged an interpretation of Dream where he wants to climb Hob Gadling like a tree. Fandom hasn't giffed that particular smoldering heated gaze from 1789 20million times for no reason. They giffed it 20million times because it is fucking HOT and sexual and arousing and is the first indication we have in the entire show that Dream himself experiences sexual arousal - because he sure as hell looks aroused in that scene.

As always YMMV and everyone is gonna have different opinions and interpretations and they are all valid in their own ways. I dunno if there is actual discourse I just saw a few comments and wondered if there was. If it helps I also headcanon him as queer, because I think heterosexual is a much smaller limited box to try to shove such a grand and unknowable concept into. I doubt a creature such as Dream would ever limit himself to only one specific type of being, even if that is all the comics were willing to show us of his sexual and romantic history.

#dream of the endless #the sandman #sandman meta #sandman analysis #my opinions #ymmv #asks

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kariachi · 8 months

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Kevin got the Omnitrix au- in which Kevin in OS era was the one to find the Omnitrix

Oh gods, this one could go so wrong or so right depending... And there's so much shit you can go with with Kevin, so many doors...

It starts when an alien device crashes through two apartment buildings and a convenience store, leaving a crater where the snacks used to be. This would normally be very interesting, but it's letting off a serious weird glow and also a lot of shit is on fire so the people who aren't evacuating are mostly just ignoring the whole mess as not their business. Excepting one small child who can taste some serious energy coming from the crater and really has nothing to lose

You know I had a whole thing here about how I couldn't decide what I wanted as far as the backstory here regarding why the fuck the Omnitrix latches onto him- because yes I could have him just carrying it around but it's more fun to put it on the kid- but actually I've made my decision.

Back during the period of gathering DNA for the Omnitrix Myaxx was sent to a backwoods mudball. Knowing her appearance would be frightening to the locals, and having not been granted an ID Mask because her employer is an asshole, she decided to approach some small, seemingly unaccompanied children, working on the assumption that children of most non-prey species tend to be better at rolling with such things than the adults. Things were, she believed, going well, right up until she got essentially kneecapped (if she only had a skeleton) by a young human female wielding a shovel. The young woman got in a good number of blows, relentless comparatively-little thing, and made it clear that whatever otherworldy beastie Myaxx was if she wanted with the kids she'd have to go through her. Myaxx backed off, kind of scared in the same way a bear is left scared by a bold cat, and tried to explain herself, but found 'I just need samples of your dna in case you die out' only enraged her further. Having already gathered some samples, Myaxx decided to call it good enough and fucked off the planet, reporting the encounter back to Azmuth as well as noting that one donor has been far more similar in appearance to the woman than the others and was likely her kin.

Fastforward to the period just prior to OS, when Azmuth was deciding where to send his watch for safe keeping. He thinks to himself that Earth, a backwoods mudball nobody ever thought about, may well be a good location. He thinks about Max Tennyson, whom he met years back, who with his partner stood against Vilgax the Conqueror and won. And in the midst of this, he remembers Myaxx's report. Of another young human, smaller, weaker, with none of the training or tech that Max had laid claim to. One who had, despite this, fearlessly chased Myaxx off a planet with nothing but a shovel and an attitude. Not realizing how fast time passes for humans, that Max is an old man now, that this woman was dead of age before he met the man, he programs the Omnitrix to Donor #2's dna.

And lo but the great-great-grandchild of the first human woman to meet a Chimera Sui Generis gains the Omnitrix.

But this isn't supposed to be about her this is supposed to be about Kevin, so let's get to Kevin, who at this point has an energy addiction, is a lot more wary than Ben as a result of *gestures at his life*, and damn sure knows enough about tech to know it shouldn't be jumping up an grabbing you. He does not, as Ben does, immediately get into the sort of fiddling that turns you into an alien. He gets into the sort of fiddling that involves hiding away somewhere and trying to take this thing apart to see how it works.

He doesn't make any real progress but he does manage to work up an appetite which is mostly tied in with needing a fix due to his whole situation and the Omnitrix is right there and has so much energy coming from it and we all know what happens when Kevin pulls from the Omnitrix-

Congratulations, our boy spends the first chunk of the original series stuck as different species. Between absorbing so much energy at once, and absorbing DNA for the first time, and the Omnitrix's shapeshifting tech coming up against his natural shapeshifting abilities, shit gets kind of wild. The Omnitrix is only half registering him as him so it's not entirely functioning properly (because he transformed using another's dna without using the Omnitrix to do so so his dna doesn't match any on file anymore), he's never had cause to even try to do this before so he has no clue what he's doing, and worst of all much like with the canon time he can't use his other powers this way. It saves him when Vilgax drones find him, but beyond that, not a great ending

As you can guess he's not happy and the first several episodes of season one consist of Kevin trying to survive in these new shapes he keeps switching between with only information off the watch and his own experimentation to work with, dealing with withdrawal, and avoiding scientists who have been wandering around the city trying to figure out wtf is going on

Every honestly feels relatively chill for the first few episodes, there's a small sense of escalation, thing seem to be getting harder, more people are showing up to investigate and shit. And then Hunted hits like a brick to the face, with trained professionals who know what they're doing suddenly coming out of the woodwork.

As you can guess Kevin and Tetrax don't get on, and they don't come out of this on the same side. Kevin still has no actual control over his shapeshifting, and little clue what he's doing, though he's a better fighter than Ben. The advantage he does have is a brilliant mechanical mind and this is the episode where it first gets put to proper use and displayed in full. He's able to turn their tech against them and figure out how to shield the Omnitrix's signal, both making him harder to find and trapping Kraab and SixSix himself before vanishing off. Tetrax ends up leaving with the other two but at best only a slight bit of confidence in this tenacious little brat.

The rest of season one stays in NYC, and most of it is a slow escalation as more people and more powerful people figure out there's something Very Interesting going on there. Kevin is much more hunted than Ben at the start. The only real exception is the episode that replaced Kevin 11, which I am tentatively calling Max the Mule. I don't know if it's the only encounter with the Tennysons, but it's certainly the first, and consists of Max realizing there's a group of aliens committing crimes around NYC while there with his grandchildren and trying to, without alerting them, hunt down and stop them. Kevin runs fucking rings around him, it's entirely a comedic 'breathing room' episode, where Max is increasingly stubborn and increasingly made the fool until he finally has to head off with the kids.

'Secrets' also goes very differently. It's a two-parter that includes 1) Vilgax and Kevin finally meeting; 2) Kevin finally starting to get a firm hold on his shapeshifting; and 3) the Saturdays enter the scene

Remember how Ben and Kevin got this whole episode to make friends? Yeah similar thing with Kevin and the Saturday Boys except Kevin is like ten different species, Doc, Drew, and Beeman are trying to figure out about this sudden rash of cryptid/alien/whatever encounters, and also a good chunk of the run time is a case of calamari gone colonial.

In order- Kevin figures out utilizing multiple species traits at once and uses this to great Vilgax-biting heights, with the Saturdays' and Beeman's help Vilgax is sent very much packing, the Saturdays don't manage to adopt him but they do manage to slip a cellphone to him and also Komodo runs off with him because just because he hasn't realized it yet doesn't mean he's not their brother, and Kevin looks over the destruction Vilgax wrought and decides to leave NYC for other peoples' safety

The Saturdays get him in the end, and show up a lot more between those two points, but it takes a while. Boy is feral. Also adopts a Kwarrel and an Argit at some point after joining the Saturdays but that would be a sequel series, maybe roll it into Secret Saturdays, maybe a midquel, who knows.

The first half of season two involves him getting control of his shapeshifting, shifting back, and beginning to figure out the Omnitrix itself while he and Komodo deal with ever more bullshit on their travels.

The shit with Zs'Skayr goes... interestingly. Because the the absorbed one can't do anything while he's tied to Kevin due to how Kevin's powers work and how his powers work not really aligning well. More specifically the first few times he turns to Ghostfreak there's a lot of Zs'Skayr's dna there but he's getting his bearings, but as time goes on it becomes clear that even when Kevin isn't shifting into the relevant shape his repair function is slowly rewriting the dna there to be closer to 'Kevin but an Ectonurite' and in doing so is slowly killing that incarnation of Zs'Skayr. Zs'Skayr's shit is more desperate as a result, and therefor a lot more impactful on Kevin's mental health both as a result and because the Zs'Skayr still in the Omnitrix is doing the same thing. At least one manages to escape, but any attempts to possess Kevin like is tried with Ben in OS don't work. Due to the way his powers store dna he functionally is part Ectonurite- is part all the species he gets dna from- and they're immune to their own bullshit. However many Zs'Skayrs are running around, between the trapped, the near death, the immunity, and Kevin being both shorter tempered and more begrudging than Ben? The antagonism between them is palpable.

Due to Kevin's powers slowly altering the dna he absorbs, the species he transforms to under his own power end up looking very much visually distinct from the ones he turns into using the Omnitrix. The Omnitrix ones are created via essentially averaging all available dna samples for a given species, but Kevin's are essentially alien dna altered to match his own as closely as equivalents allow.

I haven't decided but the above may open more powers per shape? Because what a mutant can do varies from species to species and similar dna markers between a human and, say, a vulpimancer, may produce entirely different results. It would take time to happen while the whole process was ongoing, but...

There must be a Ken 10 equivalent but with Devlin. I have no idea what it would be, but there must be one. It is law.

#'achi these are supposed to be just a few headcanons'#i know #'achi you outlined a good chunk of a season and some backstory'#i am aware #'achi you have a whole new badass character in all this'#if you didn't want this you shouldn't have given me an opening for cool kevin stuff #i had to drop the list format because tumblr was giving warning messages

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aghhtdraws · 1 month

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22!!

Thank you for this ask! What an interesting question :D

22. What's something you'd love to draw but haven't yet?

Hmm... I feel like of all things I haven't drawn, I'd definitely like to start on the ones I plan to draw! Like for one thing, all my unfinished and unstarted comics (both original and fancomics) but also, more generally, I'd like to draw more quiet scenes because I feel like those subtle and calm scenes can be really hard to do compared to action! I'm so used to practicing action that it would be interesting to practice more of the opposite as well haha :D

Also maybe talking scenes. Those are hard to picture for me in comics, but feel easier to imagine as animation (because of the one camera), so maybe I should practice more of those too.

These are old comics, but I'm reminded of these ancient fancomics from 2016. The sparring comic was fun to do (even if it looks old and unclear now) but in comparison, this talking-heads page from the same year feels more boring to look at, even if the planning was sorta the same (I was more focused on trying to figure out a good and easier way to letter and speechbubble the comic and left the layout really simple)

Maybe one thing I'd like to draw more, is just these looser and more energetic pages, like this newer comic from around 2020

more stuff like this, even if it's much sketchier, it feels more clear because the intention is stronger here than the older comics, where I often fumbled around with the lines a lot and redrew things as I kept looking for the "right line" instead of just going with the flow.

so i guess, lol, just more comics? more fancomics on day!!

uhhh, but these are all sorta things I've already tried drawing so.... of things I haven't drawn yet... yeah, maybe comics with non-human characters, like robots or aliens. or maybe something easier to draw, where the moments between the panels, the flow of the story become a bigger part than the drawings alone. that would be interesting to draw if I get there one day :P Maybe I should pick something more realistic haha! of general work, I'd definitely like to one day animate more animals. I actually have a dragon animation in the works right now that I'm still doodling along and thinking about.

of general fanart topics... I wanna draw Yamato from One Piece right now this past month!! I've been wanting draw him for a long time but just haven't found the moment to sit down yet, so I'm looking forward to it haha xD What a cool guy! I think he'll be fun to draw. I definitely put too many expectations on myself, even with fanart, so that's why I never finish or even start some drawings... I'm just imagining something bigger than I can draw at that moment!! but lol I'll definitely get over that hesitation now, I've been in the mood to draw much more as of late than before. I'll just think of the fun moments of drawing!!

What about you? you don't have to answer it, but I'm curious now xD

#aghhtdraws askbox #okenki #thank u this was interesting to think about #fancomics #aghhtdraws

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sharkfish · 2 years

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Ace headcanons for cas are actually. Kind of bad because they’re rooted in ableism, he’s coded as autistic before any headcanons come into play and people just LOVE to make every autistic character asexual.

if you’re not autistic and coming onto an ace persons post about how they don’t like ace headcanons about a queer autistic character you’re not the hero you think you are

Sincerely an autistic ace person who hates the way neurotypical aces write ace cas and wish you’d stop because it’s clear y’all hate us 🫠

i'm a little stoned so bear with me while i try to arrange vaguely coherent sentences to think through this. edit: i'm so fucking sorry for the disaster that follows. my brain is working about as well as my electric fence is rn, whose charger is currently in the red and says "CHECK FENCE" (because i guess the dial in the red doesn't make it clear enough i've got a problem). despite that... i hope someone out there has some idea wtf i'm trying to say and can help me out here.

this is literally the first time i have ever heard anyone express something like this, and i've seen a whole lot of talk from autistic people, ace people, autistic ace people, etc, about how much cas (& their reading or hc of cas as autistic and/or ace) means to them.

—background info: i am neurodivergent, but not autistic. i'm also ace.

—sidenote: thank you for bringing the ace autistic stereotype to my attention. i'm legit not sure how honest this ask is in general, but thinking back on autistic characters i've seen in media, i can see that being a thing. there's a long history of seeing people with a variety of disabilities* (*i know there's some nuance and conversation around whether or not autism can/should be actually considered a disability) as uninterested (even undeserving!!!) in sex or romance, as if PWD aren't fully-fledged humans with rich interior lives just like everyone else. that's not ok!

—sidenote 2: i made a mistake in my OG reblog of that post by even bringing canon into it. it's like pointing out bible contradictions to christians in an attempt to deconvert them--it's irrelevant because the bible isn't a real story. i don't fuck with canon. the author is dead. etc. BUT that doesn't mean the way people interpret a character can't be Problematic (for lack of a better term) when we compare it to canon. i just shouldn't have brought canon into it because i don't actually care about those specifics.

so -- i'm not doubting the validity of a character being "-coded," because that has been the only way for many people to see themselves represented in media (see: hays code, etc). i think there might be a convo to be had here though about how we define "-coded." ugh i'm struggling to articulate what i mean, but i guess... when is it "-coded" and when is it "i see myself in this character, regardless of authorial intent" and when is it "i will make this character x thing because i damn well want to and not even god himself can stop me." smarter people than i have talked about this i'm sure. i'm just not sure the threshhold where a character is "-coded" (or "similar to" or whatever) where it is canon to the point where representing a character otherwise is erasing a marginalized identity.

i'm trying to suss through in my head.... ugh, something about cas being non-human without any understanding of human mannerisms, culture, etc, in-universe. i understand people seeing themselves there. i see myself there — i often feel like an outsider, like someone who can't show my true self to any of the people around me, even the ones i love, i often feel lost in a world with rules i don't understand or agree with (some of which are around sex!). but i guess as an allistic person, i would feel really uncomfortable declaring a character autistic when the mannerisms/etc that tend to lead autistic people to seeing themselves in him are literally caused by him being non-human. to me that feels like some sort of implication that autistic people are not quite human.

if i'm understanding what you're saying, it sounds like it would have to be clear to everyone that he is autistic, and representing him as anything else would be ableist (bc erasure). maybe i'm totally totally off-base here. but i guess i'm asking myself if making him allistic is erasure, or if deciding a not-human character is autistic because of their alienness is a little hinky in itself.

—it is worth nothing that the OG post that led to this ask did not say anything about cas being autistic. maybe you're OP and you just forgot to include the most important part of your "cas can't be ace" argument (i would tend to think "it's ableist" is a better argument than "he's horny"), or maybe we're just moving off on a tangent, or whatever.

as an autistic ace person, i imagine you know how little (respectful) rep there is out there for autistic people and ace people, much less autistic ace people. do you legitimately not want to see someone like you in stories? do you legitimately want to put a ban on ace autistic characters?

because you're certainly not alone as an ace autistic person, and other autistic ace people deserve to see themselves. art exists so we can see and be seen. (art is also discovery, which is another reason representation is so important!) and i have cried, actual wet tears on my face, from seeing characters who look like me. i cried the first time i heard a character identify themselves as ace in popular media. shit, i'm old enough that i still get emotional seeing queer couples in media and just existing out loud. that shit really, really matters, not just to reduce stigma but to tell people they aren't alone. (i also cry when someone leaves a comment on one of my ace stories or trans stories or stories with mentally ill characters saying it made them feel less alone.)

i have bipolar. the optics on bipolar are not good and there are a lot of fucked up representations of people with it. people fuck it up more often than not. but banning people from writing bipolar characters is moving in the wrong direction. we have to be thoughtful, and we have to examine ourselves and others, and we have to do it right. there's just no way to do it right if you can't do it at all.

ultimately i'm just not sure how it's fair to say a character can't be ace if they are also autistic(/adjacent). hell, you're going to have a hard time convincing me it's fair to say a character can't be ace for any reason.

—sidenote: is this like the anti thing where you have to declare your traumas and diagnonsensicals so everyone knows it's Acceptable for you to write a certain topic? like, if it turned out i was autistic, would it then be ok for me to write ace autistic characters? as mentioned before, the OG post didn't say anything about autism and neither did i. or did you 100% know i don't have autism because i think it's ok to hc cas as ace? anon, are you allowed to hc a character as ace and autistic?

honestly this came so out of left field. the idea of "i am both x and y, but it is Wrong for a character to be both x and y" is so strange. it brings to mind people who are like "GOD you WOKE IDIOT SNOWFLAKES, i'm so TIRED of you forcing diversity in my face, WHY is this character black AND a wheelchair user?!" and of course the answer is... because some people are black and use wheelchairs? i think this is one of those situations where we go so overboard trying to do the right thing (e.g., not create disrespectful representations of autistic people) that we end up with the same result as the people who want to do the wrong thing (e.g., no one is allowed to write characters with multiple marginalized identities).

sincerely, a person who is sincerely confused by an autistic ace person saying characters are not allowed to be both autistic and ace

ps: just for funsies i was looking to see if there was an autistic ace mash-up pride flag (saw one someone suggested on reddit but there doesn't appear to be one widely used) and learned a fun fact! a survey of 2400 autistic adults found they were 3-9x more likely to identify themselves as asexual, homosexual, or bisexual than the general population. the article mentions that folks who answered the survey were specifically 8x more likely to describe themselves as asexual than the general pop. this is completely irrelevant to the actual discussion in this post, just something to say when mom asks if you learned anything on tumblr dot com today.

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overx · 10 hours

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Raz

Do you think there’s life after death?

If you were reborn as someone/something new, who or what would you want to be?

If you do believe in the afterlife, what kind of afterlife do you think awaits you?

If you are immortal, do you ever wish you were mortal instead?

Could you kill someone if it meant protecting yourself or someone else?

If you could meet someone who has died, who would it be?

Have you ever seen a ghost/spirit?

What’s the last thing you remember before death?

Do you wish you were alive and mortal again?

What have you learned since your death?

Ask My Muse About Death | Accepting!

Do you think there’s life after death? & Have you ever seen a ghost/spirit?

"Oh sure, and a lot more than that too." Easy enough to answer when you know it without any uncertainty. "I've known for a long time. My whole life, actually. I've seen spirits for as long as I can remember which was..." he looks a bit sheepish.

"...sometimes comforting and sometimes. Well. Some ghosts are little gruesome."

If you could meet someone who has died, who would it be?

"I've met a lot of dead people. I never really thought about meeting someone particular." He shrugs. "Sorry it's not a more interesting answer."

If you were reborn as someone/something new, who or what would you want to be?

"...to be honest I never gave it any thought either." An easy shrug from Raz, hands slipping into his jacket pockets. "When I was younger I just wanted to be a normal kid, but you grow out of that when you realize there is no 'normal', really. Just expectations. Even if I was a uh..." an awkward laugh. "... a pretty weird kid."

If you do believe in the afterlife, what kind of afterlife do you think awaits you?

"Oh, uh. I mean I know what's out there for a lot of people but I guess I just always assumed..." he looks a bit embarrassed to say it.

"....I just presumed my uh. That Mor would um. You know?" Raziel gestures vaguely with his hands as if that's any help. "He'd sorta. Keep me? In whatever way is most convenient for a deity and a uh, disembodied soul. Yeah." That's.... weird to explain, moving on.

If you are immortal, do you ever wish you were mortal instead? & Do you wish you were alive and mortal again?

"It's funny that I've been.... both of these things." This admission is the first time the machine's demeanor wavers. Raz's posture almost seems to curl, as if he's shrinking into himself.

"When I was alive I wanted to be anything other than... fragile. Not that I was afraid of Death, no. Immortality just seemed so amazing to me, especially because of my health." A simple fact. "Knowing I'd live a fraction of a human lifespan," Raz resumes "...and even less compared to all the non-humans I know...." it felt like a curse. A burden to everyone who passed through his blink of an existence.

"...it's not a problem anymore." He offers a smile, but it feels hollow. Something else unspoken at the edge of his thoughts. "I have a lot less to worry about, but I... definitely outlived people." Will outlive more. "It's hard to adjust to when it always seemed like I was going to..." die first.

"...I mean I guess I did die. Am dead? Just. I'm not, either." Haunting a body that is and isn't his own. A sort of living purgatory. "I'm not sure I have a preference, exactly. I'm just... grateful for more time while I have it. Especially because I get to share it with Morozko. We... had to limit our visits a lot, before. So I'm trying to enjoy the perks, you know?"

Could you kill someone if it meant protecting yourself or someone else?

".......yes." A simple answer, like the flip of a switch. There is no more doubt, no more flightiness to him. Perhaps he's picturing a specific person, or perhaps a memory has found its way to the surface.

"I would prefer not to, if I don't have to." He affirms, but the air is different. He is different.

What’s the last thing you remember before death?

"I'm not going to answer that." Curt, to the point. Raziel's lack of patience for this line of questioning is crystal clear. "Don't ask me again."

What have you learned since your death?

"...life is still precious, even if there's more after."

#;winter's star #{raz}#[schematics]

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kinetic-elaboration · 11 months

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June 8: MSCL 1x15 So-Called Angels

Finally watched the Christmas ep, which I've been putting off for 2+ weeks because it's just so intense and I haven't felt up to it or like I'm starting early enough (I obviously did not start early enough but I also took a nap and that's why so....)

It is really good, it's just... the emotion of it doesn't ever really let up so every time I watch it, I start crying right off and basically don't stop until the end. It's definitely a rather maudlin episode in a way, like it is trying to make you cry for 40 minutes--and it does every time for me!!--and there are a few parts of like extreme non-subtlety. But it holds a special place in my life regardless.

I always forget that the Chases talking to the police is what leads to something of a 'happy' ending, that the warehouse is cleared but its inhabitants are taken to a church, which is maybe a little unrealistic or overly optimistic. But at the same time, other aspects of the story show that there aren't happy endings or easy solutions for a lot of people like Rickie. And it matters a lot to me that his story continues and remains front and center in the next episode. It's not just one very special episode and then we assume everything works out for him.

Another thing that's interesting is that it's not clear which of the two categories of abandoned children, which the officer does explain in so many words, Rickie falls into. I like this choice because it ultimately does not matter. Whether he was scared to go home or was told not to, the result is the same; when the officer delineates the difference, his voice trails off and all that's left is the photo of the angel as a human girl.

I think the episode makes a clear and concerted effort to show that there is no clear line between good, or lucky, or "normal" people--who have homes and security and simply never have to worry about losing any of those things--and bad, or unlucky, or "other" people, who are simply inscrutable to the first category of people. Abandonment can take a lot of forms, like Brian's family leaving him at Christmas, and one bad fight or bad moment can spiral and become serious very fast, as with the parallels between Angela and the angel. The Chases even compare Brian and Rickie--what would you do if Brian came and asked for help? And in a way he does! And they help him, without thinking twice, in part because they seem him as one of them.

Of course, Brian and Angela are fine, and their lonely or scary experiences are much more temporary than Rickie's. I don't mean to say, well, it's all the same! Just that it all sort of falls into the same continuum, and the situations are messy and unpredictable. I mean, Jordan is housing insecure too, even though he does appear to have a house that he lives in at least some of the time (where Angela visits him in Pressure). He says his father doesn't hit him anymore, and yet when he lights the candle, he doesn't seem to be at home. And he has up to date information on where unhoused youth stay the night. Rickie and Jordan are both central characters, and they're both defined by more than a 'tragic backstory.' There is no clear dividing line between them and Brian or Angela--the biggest difference is that Angela has a home with a warm and caring family who will go after if she leaves.

It's interesting how people's apparent disbelief that anything really bad could happen to Rickie--because he's Rickie! he's "normal"!--could have so easily contributed to him dying, too. Like Rayanne knows about the abuse but she also knows he's always dealt with it before and he has his cousin, etc. And Patty and Graham see his bruises but they just assume that it's better to follow social rules and not involve themselves in something that isn't their business. Versus Jordan and Angela, who have maybe limited means at their disposal but they still try to do something, take some sort of action. Was the warehouse good for Rickie? I mean no, but it was better than the sidewalk. Angela wanted to give up her shoes and share her Christmas Eve dinner--fairly small gestures, but they're something, they're a reaction that isn't just 'well it will work out because it always does.'

I noticed the shoe motif more this time as well. Angela's boots are shown prominently early on. Later the angel tells her that her own boots have holes, and Angela swaps their shoes. So all that is pretty obvious: they could easily 'walk in each other's shoes,' Angela's deed was selfless and giving. But I wonder also if the holes in her shoes were part of why she died. She froze, because she could not walk any longer in the shoes and because the cold came through them. Does Angela's act of giving her new shoes allow her to move on? Also, something I noticed this time, Rickie mentions his own shoes at the beginning. Patty notices that he tracked in mud and he says his shoes must be leaking. If Rickie didn't have the Chases, if he didn't have just a few moments of good luck instead of bad, would he have died too? Is that what the shoes are an omen of? Is that why this girl is HIS angel, because their trajectories could be so similar?

I obsessed about the situation of the angel as well. At first I thought she perhaps had not been dead long if her picture was still up. But then some of those posters do stay up a tragically long time. Patty saw the poster and later understood the girl was dead. Because she just knew or sensed it, or because she saw the date on the poster and knew that if the girl hadn't aged, she also hadn't survived?

Yet, even dead, the angel still exists in a human body, feeling human sensations. She even sleeps! She needs to, in order to connect to Angela, and of course the idea is that she's simultaneously human and angel, that the celestial is found in the poorest and most downtrodden. But I just kept thinking about it from her point of view. She's dead but she's still suffering; the idea that she's stuck on Earth is really upsetting. I don't think it's the best reading though. Maybe she's in a sort of purgatory: she moves on when she saves another kid, or when she receives her shoes. Or maybe she chooses to return on Christmas; maybe, as with the other characters, there's a certain pleasure or warmth that come from doing the right thing or helping others; maybe, in a Christ-like way, she takes on a human form and human suffering in aid of others.

And finally, love the one (1!!) moment of levity with the help line call. Rayanne wasn't even wrong! Disrupting negative thought patterns is like a therapy technique.

#the year 2023 #2023: my so called life #2023: fandom thoughts

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evenstargws-attic · 2 years

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Interview, the result

After we posted about the interview we planned to do with Damian, we were contacted by Kaitlynn Pancakes and she shared her never published interview with Damian with us. At the time she did this interview with Damian she decided not to publish it because there seemed to be a rise in vampire deaths just before. Now she contacted Damian and asked if it was alright to give me the sheet with Q&A, and Damian agreed that that would be OK. I would like to point out that its been 3 years since these questions were answered by Damian, though that probably does not matter because what is 3 years for someone who lives forever? Anyway lets get to it:

youtube

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INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE

by: Kaitlynn Pancakes

Q: Who is Damian Argeneau?

A: I'm a man, with a little extra *grins*, but a man just the same. I'm a brother to a wonderful woman, and an uncle to her children. I'm a very proud father to two beautiful children whom I love very much, and… I'm also a husband to the most beautiful man that roams this planet, I do love my Stefano to bits and he knows that. I have feelings and aspirations just like anyone else, and truly if you look at it , I'm quite boring and average. Aside from the fact I don't consume grilled cheese, but plasma and I've probable known your ancestors personally. *Damian sports a fond smile here* My my that was a very strange couple, Bob and Eliza Pancakes, I do miss Bob's stomping about the city and grumbling about what Eliza had done to him that time.

Q: Are you immortal?

A: As long as I chose to be, yes I think you can consider me immortal.

Q: What do you mean with "as long as you chose to be"?

A: It means that I can die, if I chose to, though the methods are significantly different from how non-vampires can die.

Q: Can you elaborate a little more on that ? A: No. Honestly I don't want people to know how I can die especially not with vampire hunters still out there, sorry Kaitlynn...

Q: Can you turn other people into a vampire?

A: Yes.

Q: How exactly is one turned into a vampire?

A: By ingesting the plasma of a vampire that volunteers it to you. Hush, I'll explain that one more before you have to ask… Vampirism is caused by a combination of an bacteria and a certain enzyme in your sires blood. For you to be turned you have to ingest both. If I were to turn you I would offer you a sip of my plasma which would contain the bacteria and the enzyme. To protect vampirekind from being hunted down for their plasma the enzyme is only present in plasma I volunteer. How that exactly works you'd have to ask someone else, as I'm not a scientist, I don't know…

Q: Have you created any vampires?

A: I have, I will not tell you, however, who was embraced by me and considered my offspring. If they want they can do that themselves, I assume the contact information you gave me will be valid for longer?

Q: Can vampirism be cured?

A: Yes, it can be cured with a cocktail of rare ingredients that can be made by a skilled mixologist.

Q: If you had a chance to be human again, what is one thing you would do?

A: Wow that's a tough question, I've never really wanted to be human again and thus never thought of it. I guess that's my answer right there : "I don't ever want to be human again"

Q: Is “live” plasma more beneficial than Bagged plasma?

A: Sometimes it seems so, it is certainly financially cheaper and a lot faster. Imagine this : If I don't eat for 3 days, my hunger, or thirst if you will, gradually becomes worse. If I have to sate this amount of thirst I would have to consume nearly 30 bags of plasma, where as if I sated that with live donors, I would be done with one, maybe two donors, provided I don't drain their life spirit.

Q: Is your thirst for plasma ever sated?

A: Sure, well it depends how you look at it though. You know you can compare a vampires thirst with your hunger in terms of satiation. Can you eat so much that you can't eat even one bite more… yes,… but a few hours later you could go for a snack or desert. That is the same with us really. We can't eat human food. Or at least the older of our kind can't, it doesn't do anything for me except make me violently ill and puke up my guts, due to my age i have what they call a "withered stomach", which can only really digest plasma.

Q: Do you have a reflection in the mirror?

A: Nope, I don't … and before you ask, I can't see another vampires reflection either in a mirror. I don't know why this is, if you can tell me , please do. Now before we had camera's and photos this was always a pain in the ass, because after crawling out of a tight space, like my coffin, my hair would always be messed up and I would have no way to fix that myself. Stefano used to check my appearance all the time, and I for him.

Q: Is it true you have to be an old vampire to fly or teleport?

A: Why do you think we can fly or teleport at all ? We can change forms and are very fast, but we can't fly in our human form, I assure you. Bat-form, and mist-form, is a different story all together though. And changing form is not without a cost either, it takes a great deal of effort and a strong will to do this, besides that it will also drain a vampires energy, which is not limitless.

Q: Do you burst into flames when you are out in the sun?

A: No, I am old enough and have certain ways to avoid damage from the sun. (No I wont elaborate on that either, gotta keep some secrets secret *winks*) The sun merely gives me a terrible itch. But the young of our kind have more problems with that accursed fireball in the sky. But in modern years mixology has helped us a lot, nowadays skilled mixologist can make a cocktail that protects against the harmful rays of the sun for a limited time. I would thank the mixologists for helping my kind, for making it possible for them to see the sun once more and not be closed indoors until nighttime!

Q: Are you evil?

A: Am I ? What is Evil ? What is Good? Isn't it true that everyone has a little bit of both in them? Seriously tho, I don't believe I am more Evil then anyone else without that specific trait. Sure a vampire tend to lean towards that trait more quickly, but one doesn't have to give in to the beast, and that becomes more difficult to older I become but resistance is possible. I certainly take no pleasure in anothers misery like some of us do, regardless if they're a vampire.

Q: Does Garlic hurt you?

A: Nope, it does not. It stinks mightily and thus is uncomfortable in that sense, but otherwise… nope. For the young once again it's different. A vampire's nose is one of the things that gets super sensitive when a fledgling has just turned (helps vampires be good hunters, stemming from the time before plasma packs, like night-vision) Over time you learn to deal with the stronger impulses this gives you, like the stench of garlic becomes easier to ignore.

Q: Which bloodline do you belong to?

A: Nowadays bloodlines are not so important anymore, except for the aristocracy, they tend to cling to things outdated and antiquated. But I was embraced by Ventrue, one of the oldest bloodlines/clans in existence. And that's all I can say about that because we vampires are not without law or rules either. We don't talk about our bloodlines, and their weaknesses, in public, or with outsiders so to speak.

Q: Can you feed on other vampires?

A: I could but it would hardly sate me. Vampire blood contains little of the nutrients I need. It does make me unbearably horny tho, so that's very inconvenient if you do that out in public. *laughs* especially with these pants on (he refers to his very tight leather pants which look very good but not very comfortable). You know Stefano will come checking now if everything is alright since you made me think of times I drink from my lovers vein.

Not long after he said that the door opened and Stefano came waltzing into the room with a very visible… yeah lets just say they needed the room for some private time. Stefano looked at me and growled "OUT!" at which point Damian started to giggle and I didn't know my legs could carry me out of the room that fast. Damian did send me a message a little while later that if anyone still had questions they were welcome to send them to me and I could ask them anytime, just send him a list…

#sims 4 story #damianstefano #Youtube #the sims 4 #ts4 #TS4 gameplay #TS4 vampires

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galactic-glamour-girl-posts · 3 years

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In celebration of the Animaniacs reboot's second season coming out soon...

I'm going to list a few things I think the reboot does better than the original show so far (not including technical things like animation quality or sound quality, that's not a fair comparison). Here we go:

1. There's a "Here's the show's namey" variant every episode now rather than re-used lines (like "Pinky and the Brain-y"). I totally get why the original show re-used lines (although by season 3 they do so way less), but it's just really cool the a new and unique one every episode now.

2. Yakko's role as big brother seems more apparent now. He was always the leader in the original show sure, and he clearly did care for his siblings, but there wasn't really a sense of authority there. The Warners, either alone or together, always did their own thing. The fact that they weren't all (physically) the same age didn't really matter in most episodes, and often only apparent due to their (kind of inconsistent in the original-I SAID I WOULDN'T TALK ABOUT THE ANIMATION) height differences. Now, in addition to him being the leader, there's multiple episodes where Dot/Wakko will ask Yakko for permission to do stuff, like keeping the bunnies as pets or to watch TV.

It's a cute touch, a nice little reminder that "Oh yeah they're not triplets".

3. The PG rating has allowed for edgier jokes/language. Characters can say "Hell" now, Pinky almost said "bull-(you know what)" and Wakko almost said "motherf-(you know what)", then there's these:

It's dark but I think it's funny darn it 🤣.

4. Less mediocre segments. I've said it before, I'll say it again, the Warners, Pinky and the Brain and Slappy carried the original show. I also enjoyed Rita and Runt and Minerva Mink segments, but they were cut from the show after season 1, so that sucks. Every other segment on the show I consider kinda okay/mediocre/bad 🤷‍♀️. A lot of characters would've worked better as recurring characters within segments where they're not the stars. Honestly their absence is a positive in my book, while watching the original show I often found myself thinking "Man I wish this show only had the Warners, Pinky and the Brain and Slappy segments in it". I know Slappy isn't in the reboot but that's not a deal breaker for me (the other two segments are a lot more popular so I understand prioritising them). If no Slappy also means no Katie Kaboom, I'm good.

5. More heartfelt moments - outside of the Rita and Runt segments (as in there's a higher ratio of them, not trying to compare how heartfelt they are). In the original, pretty much the only segments that had heartfelt moments consistently was Rita and Runt (Rita's song about humans, "Smitten with Kitttens", "Puttin' on the Blitz", etc). This is fine, it's a comedy show; but it would have been nice if some of the characters that got a lot more screen time than those two (the Warners, Pinky and the Brain, etc) had some too, especially since there are no Rita and Runt segments past season 1 anyway.

I know before the reboot there were quite a quite few heartfelt moments related to Animaniacs-the climax of the Pinky and the Brain Christmas special, Dot's fake out death (spoilers for a movie from over two decades ago-yes it's that old get over it) in Wakko's Wish...basically all of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo Clock". But most of those aren't actually in the original show, only one of them is. Wakko's Wish is a non-canon (I swear "Animaniacs" and "canon" are two words that don't mix but you get my point) movie and Pinky and the Brain series is a spin-off. If we're talking exclusively about the original series that ran from 1993 to 1998, then only "One Flew Over the Cuckoo Clock" counts really.

Maaaaaybe that one moment in Taming of the Screwy when Scratchy tells the Warners to leave...but it was really quick and not taken that seriously (it kinda just felt like build up for a punchline) so I think that one's a stretch (although it was a little sad).

Meanwhile the reboot already has caught up to it (in only 13 episodes as well) with two moments; Brain's backstory in "Roadent Trip" and Yakko's panic attack in "Fear and Laughter in Burbank". They're both taken seriously, last over a minute and say something pretty interesting about the characters involved. It's just nice to see characters other than Rita and Runt be allowed to have emotional moments (again, within the actual show). It's on-par with the original in this regard despite having 86 less episodes. And there's probably more heartfelt moments to come!

6. The Warner's fangs:

They make them look a little more feral! 😁 Very fitting, I wish they had them originally now. I also appreciate that they (usually) don't have gaps in their teeth anymore. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE their TMS designs, but I honestly prefer the Warners with no gaps in their teeth.

7. The PatB segments. Just in general, overall I like them more than in the original show (I'm comparing them to the ones in the original Animaniacs, I'm not talking about the PatB segments in the spin off series, Pinky an the Brain). Not only are they more creative, with ideas like Future Brain and Julia, they also do the running gag thing less. What I mean is, in the original show their segments sometimes would have a running gag they do over and over within a segment, to the point where it becomes obvious that gag is how/related to how the plan is gonna fail. Some examples of segments that do this are "Bubba Bo Bob Brain", "Spellbound" and "Brain Meets Brawn". Now of course we know they're gonna fail, but trying to guess how they fail or the surprise how how they fail is one of the fun parts of their segments. Their segments are already quite formulaic, so why add to that? The reboot so far pretty much only did this once in "Close Encounters of the Worst Kind", so that's good.

8. More variety in terms of musical genres. Most of the songs in the old show are of the old-school Broadway type of music. There's a lot of orchestral music, a bit of jazz. Many songs just add lyrics to pre-existing music. Which is good, 'cause those songs are good. But I appreciate the reboot adding some other genres in there, like pop and hip hop. They're NOT what you'd expect an Animaniacs song to sound like, but they're still amazing! (like The Cutening song or Yakko's rap).

9. The Warners' morality. This one's really important. Ideally, the Warners should act like karmic tricksters. Yeah they can be annoying to anybody, but are generally harmless and actually pretty friendly if left alone/aren't being mistreated. Once someone actually provokes them though, they won't hesitate to humiliate, harm and drive insane their "special friend". This is explained well in "The Sound of Warners" (credit goes to clownmoontoon for the video):

https://va.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_qnxp2bDmlE1r1jfup.mp4

Sometimes the Warners don't even need to be the ones being provoked for them to go after someone for being a jerk, like in "Morning Malaise", where they call out a radio show host for being rude to their guests, or in "Dot's Entertainment", where they call out a parody of Andrew Lloyd Webber for placing blame onto his actors.

But then in seasons 4 and 5 of the original show they start bothering people and legitimately harming people who literally weren't being rude to them at all. Some examples of this are "Anchors Awarners", "Acquaintances", and "Back in Style":

I guess I can understand in "Back in Style", they were mad about being sold off to other studios against their will, but they took it out on actors who probably had no say in the matter.

Thankfully, in the reboot they seem back to normal, once again only intentionally humiliating and/or harming people who actually provoked them, be it hunters ("Good Warner Hunting",) cocky athletes, ("Gold Meddlers"), rude conductors ("Here Comes Treble"), etc.

...and I think that's all I got. There are other things too but they're smaller points not really worth mentioning. I do like both series the same but wanted to praise the reboot specifically given that I have done multiple posts analysing the original show.

Season 2, here we come!

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shinidamachu · 2 years

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You're a fantastic writer! ✏️ I'm curious before the whole Yashahime disaster, what was your ideal post canon ideas for Inuverse?

Some examples would be how many kids did Inukag have and do they look more human or demonic? What are the next gen kids personalities like? Did the well reopen? Is Sessomaru a good uncle/brother to Inukag and kids? How are Mirsan, Shippo, and Koga doing? Do you imagine the Inugang having more slice of life adventures or going on another serious adventure like Horai Island?

Sorry, that this is a lot to ask, I really enjoy your writing, anyways keep up the wonderful work! 🌟

.Well, thank you, first of all. You're very sweet for saying that about my writting.

And honestly? In my opinion, Inuyasha had a very satisfying, very definitive ending. The main characters have all earned their happily ever after and a continuation wasn't at all needed unless you wanted to mess this up. Sometimes the healthy thing to do is just let the piece of media you love go and revisit it or explore fanfiction if you miss it.

Which doesn't mean an official Inuyasha sequel couldn't have been done right. I know that because over the years, this fandom has written absolutely mind blowing post canon fanfics.

I'm talking about stories that have engaging and interesting plots, flawless characterization and actually fit right into the world of Inuyasha, not only respecting the lore and rules of its universe but expanding on it and adding substance to it, filling in the blanks the original left instead of creating more.

There are many, many examples of that, but to me, the ideal post canon, non next generation universe is the one written in Light Me a Lantern by @inuyashasforest (and I still can't believe we got this masterpiece for free). Compare it to Yashahime and you'll see the difference between writting with passion and love for the original story and writting so you can make money. It's disconcerting.

That being said, I talked about how many kids I'd like Inuyasha and Kagome to have here. As for their personalities and what do they look like, I expressed my thoughts about it here, but was specifically talking about Moroha since she was the one thing Sunrise did right.

Any children Inuyasha and Kagome eventually bring into the world would have to be only 1/4 demon as opposite to Inuyasha's 1/2. This means less demonic features and more human characteristics. I like the idea that their children would be a perfect mix of them, just like Moroha, only with a few outstanding demonic attributes here and there. Like, Moroha has the fangs, her brother could have white hair, her other sibling could have dog ears and so on. But never all at once.

I enjoy Moroha as a big sister and I like to picture her baby brother as a mama's little boy. He would be sensitive, shy, smart and very talented in artistic ways.

As for the Mirsan kids, I love the concept of the twins being huge flirts so Miroku pays for his sins. One of them having his spiritual powers while the other takes after her mother and becomes a great demon slayer also amuses me to no end. And I adore the name Hisui for their babyboy. Only I think instead of being a demon slayer he could grow up to be the leader of the village or have an equivalent position of political power.

The Well never opened again (I've talked about this before, but couldn't find the more in dept post I made, so I'll just summarize it here): the Well reopening greatly takes emotional weight away from the narrative. it diminishes Kagome's final choice, it annihilates the "bittersweetness" of her return, it keeps the story from circling back from Inuyasha being a lonely half demon being despised by everyone to the same Inuyasha now having someone willing to sacrifice everything for him. And it also leaves no room for Inuyasha and Kagome to figure it out how this sacrifice affects their relationship and grow from it as characters and as a couple. Of course you can interpret the ending in a different way, but I'm personally very passionate about this one.

Sesshomaru treats his nieces and nephews the same way he treated Rin and Kohaku. He grows to respect Inuyasha in his cold, silent way, but he's still closer to Kagome. One, because Kagome makes him. Two, because there's just too much story between Sesshomaru and Inuyasha, both of them deciding things are good the way they are, no reason to force it.

Miroku and Sango are doing great. They rebuilt Sango's village, their kids and friends are the joy of their lives. They often go on missions together when Inuasha and Kagome are free to babysit and or when their kids are old enough. And just like in Yashaime (because that part was actually interesting), Miroku feels a bit useless without the Wind Tunnel so he does his best to get stronger in different ways (ways that do not unclude basically abandoning his family) and he achieves that goal with a lot of effort and Sango's constant support.

Shippo becomes a very famous figure in the kitsune community because his tricks improve greatly and he grows up to be one of the greatest names in the story of transfiguration. Koga runs the rebuilt (and thrieving) Wolf Tribe with Ayame by his side. They're now human friendly thanks to the Inugang, with whom he regularly keeps touch.

I don't really have a preference as for if they would have more slice of life adventures or another serious quest when I'm reading fanfic. But if we're talking official content, I'd go for a new life or death mission in a heartbeat, because as much as slice of life is pure and cute and wholesome, I'd be waiting for something to happen all the time, then get frustrated and bored once it doesn't.

It's one thing to deliberately search for slice of life content, which I often do. Another one is being fed nothing but slice of life while Sunrise makes easy profit off it without any real effort to give us something that actually can be categorized as a sequel, not just another epilogue.

If we're paying for a whole show with at least two seasons, we should get slice of life and a real adventure while we're at it. Unless it's, like, a very compact list of episodes (half a season tops) made to be nothing but extra content to rise founds for charity or something of the sorts, in which case it would be acceptable.

#Thank you for asking #Inuyasha #Inukag #Kagome #Kagome Higurashi #Mirsan #Sango #Miroku #Moroha #Koga #Ayame

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minty-malfoy · 3 years

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“would you still love me if I turned into a worm?” | blurbs

🌱 pairings: reader x blaise zabini, cedric diggory, draco malfoy, fred weasley, george weasley, harry potter, hermione granger, luna lovegood, neville longbottom (sorted in alphabetical order)

🌱 warning tags: language, probably

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Blaise Zabini

“A what, now?” your boyfriend asks, halting the movements of his quill to look up at you; brows furrowed as if it’s the most absurd thing he has ever heard in his entire life.

“You know, those wiggly things that—”

“I know what worms are, (y/n). But what the hell?”

“Dunno,” you shrug. “I’m bored.”

“So you thought about what it’d be like to turn into a worm?” his eyes narrow out of pure bewilderment, blinking once, twice, as he finally turns back to his unfinished essay. “Sometimes I wonder what goes on in that head of yours.”

“Not my fault you’re taking so long with that assignment,” you grumble as you begin to shift on the puffy couch, feeling somewhat annoyed by how cold and empty it is without the other boy in it. “And besides, you love me.”

An amused chuckle escapes his lips. “Can’t say that I don’t.”

“Even as a worm?”

“Will you stop asking if I said yes?”

You nod happily, giving him the answer he needs— or well, wants, really. Even though Blaise couldn’t quite understand the pointless question, he knows it’s significant to an extent.

“Yeah, alright. I would. Now give me five minutes and we can get out of here. Deal?”

A glint of satisfaction flashes through your eyes as you give him a hum in return, thinking to yourself that maybe the silly questions could be more useful than you thought.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Cedric Diggory

The moment the words leave your mouth, Cedric's first reaction is to laugh. He didn't mean for it to come out in a condescending way. He hadn't even meant to laugh, to begin with. But judging by the way you pout with both arms crossed, that might just have been how it came accross.

"I'm sorry," he offers sheepishly. "you were saying?"

"You heard me. I said what I've said," you grumble, despite not being genuinely upset at the hufflepuff boy you've grown to love.

"Wait, I need to get this straight," he takes another breath of air. "You're serious?"

"What do you think?" you pout once again, turning away slightly from your boyfriend. This only seems to ignite his amusement as much as it does his guilt. A second or two later, his arm finds its way around your shoulder, the other brushing a few strands of hair behind your ear.

"You really haven't figured it out yet?" he asks with a genuine grin on his face. You begin to eye him curiously, appreciating the charm of his pearly white teeth as you wait for the boy to go on. Soon, he pulls you into his lap where his arms craddle you lovingly.

"Sunshine," he begins. "I'm surprised you still have to ask. But if that's one way of putting my love for you, then yes. You'd be my favorite worm in the entire world."

"Promise?" you present your pinkie finger as a final means to seal the deal.

With one last chuckle, he wraps his fingers around yours. "Promise."

Everything that happens next is a flurry of innocent pecks and kisses planted along your skin, coupled with the security of two warm arms holding you in place.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Draco Malfoy

"And what exactly do you expect me to say to that?" comes his first response after a long moment of trying to figure out just how in Merlin's name your mind came up with that question.

You, on the other hand, can't help but giggle at the slytherin boy's confusion. "Whatever's on your mind right now will do."

"Well, to be honest with you, I can't quite stomach the idea of my own girlfriend turning into a bloody worm." he nearly spits the words out, softening his edge only when your eyes meet once again. "If you were expecting a different answer, I suggest moving on to the next bloke."

Draco wasn't lying about that first bit. Worms have always been an insignificant, unseen creature in his world; wiggling in the muckiest of places where they could easily be stepped on. Hence, he doesn't like to imagine you—someone so perfectly ethereal and quintessential in every single way; the only source of light shining into his pathetic excuse of a life—to be compared to a dirty worm, of all things.

"That doesn't mean I don't love you, though," he adds in a bit of a guilty tone; voice much, much softer this time. He brings your hand to his lips, dropping a few kisses on its skin. "I just much prefer having you as you already are."

You snuggle deeper into him, indicating that you already know exactly what he means.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Fred Weasley

“A worm!” Fred exclaims, nearly forgetting the food on his plate altogether. "What a brilliant idea!"

A few seats away, you can already see Ginny clamping her mouth shut as to not burst into fireworks of laughter. You mirror her gesture, eyes now on Fred once again, watching him announce this idea of yours to your entire group of friends.

Ron, who's not that thrilled to see his brother's public displays of affection, lets out a groan. "Wouldn't have asked him that if I were you."

"You think so?" comes your reply. "He seems to be having a lot of fun with this." you both glance at Fred, who is indeed already coming up with some sort of thrilling plot.

"Did you hear that, George?"

"Sure did, Fred."

"I reckon we could come up with a potion for that," he muses, turning back to look at you. "Give me a week or two and we can start living out that worm dream of yours, love."

"Wait, Freddie, you're getting it all wrong," you begin explaining, tugging on the boy's sleeve slightly to keep his attention on you, "It was just a silly little question. I don't actually plan on turning into a worm or anything like that."

At this point, you half expect his enthusiasm to die down from the grounding effect of your words. In reality, it doesn't.

"S'that so?" he replies, earning a nod from you. "Looks like you're missing the bigger picture to me, (y/n). Isn't that right, George?"

"Right you are, Fred." the said boy affirms. "Sorry, (y/n). I'm with him on this one."

With a sigh, you turn back to Ron, who's busily stuffing his mouth with a look on his face that says I told you so. You shake your head with a small smile at your boyfriend's shenanigans. You're not sure how you can both dread and anticipate the day of his worm adventures.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

George Weasley

"That's a new one," he asserts with an amused laugh. The boy rests his head against one of his palms, feeling instantly intrigued by your proposition. "Now tell me more about this worm business of yours."

"That's about it, actually." you admit sadly.

George frowns at this, wishing he could hear more worm stories and whatnot. Mostly he's just happy to see the way you talk about things passionately. Makes him feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside in a way he can't ever get enough of.

"That's quite alright. I'll do the talking, then." he offers, rubbing his chin to think of what to say next. You light up in your seat, eyes wide in anticipation. Now it's your turn to eagerly wait for his response once again.

"I've got an idea. We could run off and start a new life— as worms!" he beams all of a sudden. You raise a brow for him to go on, not exactly complaining about your boyfriend's excitement towards the topic. "I'm only turning into a worm to make sure I can properly take care of you, of course. Wouldn't want to—er—squash you between my big human fingers, now do we?"

You both erupt into a chorus of laughter at the conjectured image, melting into one another like two fitting puzzle pieces. When you finally catch your breath again, you pose the main question once more, "So I'm concluding you're still going to love me, then?"

"Love you?" he repeats. "Oh darling, I'll be marrying you in a grand worm wedding!"

You can't hold back the gasp that escapes your lips, more than thrilled to have the first mention of marriage between you. Not too long after, you transform into a complete fit of giggles when George continues. "Then we'll happily live our worm lives, 'till death do us apart. Or when, you know, some bloke accidentally steps on us. Whichever comes first."

You lean into him lovingly to steady yourself after all the laughing. Taking a deep breath in, you mumble a soft, "You always know how to make me laugh, Georgie."

And the truth is, he wouldn't have it any other way. Worms or not.

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Hermione Granger

"I'm sorry, I don't think I understand the point of this question."

"Which part, exactly?" you inquire, watching your girlfriend pull out another book from the wooden library shelves.

A few seconds pass before you get your answer. "You're not a worm," she states simply, eyeing you up and down as if to prove her point.

"Yes, thank you for pointing that out, 'Mione," you follow her to the next section. "Which is why I said if I turned into a worm."

The girl looks at you again, analyzing your words and expression briefly before coming to another conclusion. "I still don't understand." she pauses to think. "Unless you might be interested in becoming an Animagus? Even then, opting for a worm wouldn't be very... effective."

You roll your eyes, speeding up to block the girl's way. She lets out a non-committal "Hey!", only for you to quickly muffle it with a warm kiss. A moment or two later, you pull away with a smirk that makes her heart melt. "Just answer the question, would you?"

Still slightly caught off guard from the contact, Hermione finally caves in. "Alright, you cheeky flirt. I love you. Even as a notional worm."

Satisfied with her answer, you plant another peck— this time on her cheek, before announcing a gentle "I love you, too."

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Harry Potter

The way his lips purse into a straight line tells you that Harry doesn't exactly understand the question. Not really, at first. Aside from being an entirely foreign concept to his ears, it also seems like an odd thing to ask someone, unless— "Oh! You're an Animagus!"

The smile on your face instantly drops at this. "What? No—"

"Why didn't you just say so, (y/n)?" he begins what—at the time—you don't know is going to be a nearly endless ramble. "I was planning on telling you this for a while now, but I know someone who's an Animagus, actually. In fact, I think you two would get along fantastically!" he lights up at the sudden idea, flailing his arms in the air out of excitement. "Yes, maybe I can try getting the both of you to meet up. No promises, of course, but what do you think?"

"I think you've got it all wrong," you frown; knowing you would have to disappoint your boyfriend and how you're not very fond of the idea.

"What do you mean?" he asks, albeit barely giving you a second to reply. "(y/n), it's alright, really. You know you don't have to hide yourself from me. Besides, I think it's brilliant!— what you can do, I mean."

The smile he gives you is the epitome of love itself, and now you're not quite sure how to handle the messy situation without pulling out the rug underneath Harry's feet. All you can do is squeeze his shoulder with a guilty smile, promising to talk about it again after dinner.

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Luna Lovegood

"Of course. Worms are lovely, don't you think?" she says with a dreamy smile. You gape at how easily the answer could be pried from your girlfriend; no questions asked. But then again, it's not like you hadn't expected this exact outcome already.

"Really?"

"Mhm," comes her gentle hum as she begins to stir her honeyed chamomile tea. A soft smile stays glued on her features, as if she's enjoying the conversation. "What kind of worm would you like to be, (y/n)?"

"I haven't really thought about it that far," You admit. "Are you sure, though? We won't be able to hold hands or anything like that."

You can't tell if you had just imagined the almost-frown tugging on her lips, because when she looks back up at you again, her sweet signature Luna smile is back in its place. "I suppose you're right. But I could carry you around everywhere with me. Wouldn't that be lovely?"

"It would be," you nod. "but can a worm even fit into that pocket of yours?" you question, noticing how hers are stuffed with unknown items; blades of grass sticking out ever so slightly. Flowers, perhaps.

"Oh, there's nothing to worry about. See?" she pulls out a couple of daisies and fairy foxgloves to reveal a now empty pocket. "Now, would you like some tea?"

You eagerly join her on the table, snuggling against your girlfriend ever so slightly as you both begin to talk about your day. The entire worm ordeal is slowly slipping out of your mind already.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Neville Longbottom

Neville stops in his tracks at your question, taking a moment to toss the idea back and forth in his mind before he can give you a proper answer. You nearly giggle when his face scrunches up, brows knit and lips parted as he innocently asks, “But why would you turn into a worm?”

"Neville, love, no. It's a hypothetical question."

His entire body relaxes at this, releasing what you assume is a breath of relief. "Oh. I thought you were being serious for a moment there."

You shake your head with a giggle, taking a step closer to adjust the scarf around your boyfriend's neck. "I'm just curious is all. Would you still love me, then?" you ponder.

"Yes! Of course!" comes his instant reply, hands balled up into fists that match the determination on his face. "I would get you a nice worm house with all your favorite flowers in it," he bends one of his gloved finger inwards, beginning to keep count of this hypothetical to-do list. "Would you still be able to have human food? Well, either way, I promise to feed you every single day!"

He pauses, only for a second or two. "Oh! And I'll sing you worm songs! Or maybe we can sing them together? I don't know if you would still be able to talk as a worm though."

You swiftly pull him into an affectionate hug, effectively bringing his rambling—as well as the entire worm topic—to an end. His hands sheepishly find their home around your waist, where he places them softly as if it's his first time hugging you. After all the months of being together, it certainly isn't.

"What was that for?" he dares himself to ask, avoiding your eye contact shyly.

"For being the most loving and adorable boyfriend I could ever ask for," you lean in to plant a soft, gentle kiss on his cheek. You don't miss the way he pulls up his scarf to hide the blossoming blush afterwards.

I have no idea why I wrote this either lol <3

🌷 draco taglist: @arossebyanyothername @kawaii-angelanne @thefandomplace @yuosmi @bbeauttyybbx @mywellspringoflife @slytherinsunrise @avatarbeeb @scarlet-says-hi @lunars @coldlilheart @beiahadid @justmimithings @soundsquid27 @youknowiloveyou-so @n3ssm0nique @ochrythum @explxsion @yaanasluv @autumnpleaves @booksmione @drxcomvlfx @the–queen-of-hell @aspiringsloth20 @runninglownad @snitches-at-dawn @badfvith

🌷 harry taglist: @teheharrypotter @badfvith

#blaise zabini x reader #cedric diggory x reader #draco malfoy x reader #fred weasley x reader #george weasley x reader #harry potter x reader #hermione granger x reader #luna lovegood x reader #neville longbottom x reader

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goji-pilled · 3 years

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I definitely do have criticisms of how Mari was handled in 3.0+1.0 but it's mostly just her character fell flat whenever she was centered around Shinji, but when she was focused on anyone else she was good. To be fair that's because the writers make everything about Shinji and will warp everything to fit what they need for Shinji to do. I am curious about your thoughts on that?

I've been thinking about how to answer this one for a bit now, since usually me talking about Mari's character is something I try to put into a single tweet, while this time I got a lot more space. Ultimately my best try is to just go at it though and try to be as coherrent as possible haha

I dont even know where to start really... I suppose the best start is that Eva's characters change. Them and their relationships with eachother change due to the events they go through. In NGE good examples would be Asuka and Ritsuko given how "extreme" the change between the first time they show up compared to the later episodes is. While in the Rebuilds Shinji is a good example of how a character and their relationships change over the four movies. Ultimately all characters go through changes and developement at some point, in some form (especially in 3.0+1.0).

This is where Mari comes into place because she completely, and absolutely, does not bend to any of that, does not fit into what Eva previously was. She's new, she's so diffrent and she was (and I guess still is) basically a complete wildcard. We couldn't predict how she'll act because we had not a single thing to base her on, no previous appearance or roll in the anime, not even the non-canon things like Anima or the bonus manga chapter since they're extremely diffrent to what Rebuild Mari ultimately was.

Where I'm going with this? Well... I don't think she ever acted out of character, or at least I never felt like she did.

Mari is a walking ray of sunshine, to be fully honest. It's the simplest way to say it. An incredibly intelligent ray of sunshine, but still. Mari loves people, loves being with people, she loves living, she keeps pushing forward and decides to live even in the face of traumatic, apocalytic events (Second, Near Third, Third, Fourth, Additional Impacts) and loss of people close to her (Yui and Asuka; funnily enough the Yui thing is kind of... not a parallel but something else with Gendo, or maybe its a parallel lol) and she does make the most of everything even if it's dangerous (See: Beast mode Unit 02 against Zeruel/The Tenth Angel; or even attacking Unit 13).

Mari is... she's the only one who doesn't change in how she interacts with people; in fact she hasn't changed at all since she went to university and between that and 3.0+1.0 is about 30 years.

Still the same walking ray of sunshine as before.

I do understand why it may seem like Mari's character seems... flat or strange with Shinji. Honestly the first time I saw Thrice Upon a Time I was very confused why she was so buddy-buddy with him/cared about him suddenly. Then I thought about it though and it started making sense.

Mari is the type of person to care abt people she doesn't have any real personal/emotional connection with on the basic empathy/human decency level, she only really cares about people she has history with, Asuka is proof of that. With her its a relationship that formed over 14 years, and 3.0+1.0 made it VERY clear that Mari cares about Asuka A LOT, as she is always her main concern, so on. And so, the same goes for Shinji.

Mari used to be friends with his parents, hell she was the one who introduced Gendo and Yui with eachother, and was even there during Shinji's birth.

She's known the guy since he was a baby, and based on Fuyutsuki's photo it's easy to assume that Mari had quite a bit of contact with him up until Yui's death when Gendo sends him away. It's logical that at that point any contact to him she had broke off for years until she finally sees him again 10 years later in Tokyo-03.

BUT. He is also the son of her dead friend, and I think that there definitely and 100% is an emotional thing going on because of that. In fact, I like to imagen that Mari realized that a part of Yui would always exist in Shinji long, long, before Gendo does and it's why she ends up being able to so... freely, almost joking mention the Yui-Rei thing later on.

It would also explain why she ends up helping him in 2.0, why she is so determind to get him and why she's so positive, so nice to him. And I think, that maybe, just maybe, Asuka's words ("That child doesn't need a lover, he needs a mother.") may not just have been foreshadowing of sort to Misato, but also may had have something to do with her later on keeping it up and being more... idk fierce? Persisstend? Either of those in how determind she is in finding Shinji.

And most of all, I think there is also a diffrence in how she cares about Asuka and Shinji, the only one's she has an emotional connection to. She fiercly cares about both of them, but with Asuka it's... it feels more fleshed out compared to how she is with Shinji, which could be the writing, but I think it's not bad. It highlights the one-sided, and in brackets made bond she has with Shinji (until the end-end) vs. the deep, 14 year long bond she has with Asuka (Besides she never looked at Shinji the way she looked at Asuka LMAO gay ass /lh)

Most of the weirdness I got from Mari and Shinji's relationship mostly comes from the fact that Shinji, has no emotional connection to Mari, while Mari does have that. The ending skipped past any establishing of how they bonded as well, which leads to the strangeness and that it almost feels a bit... off. Or that people see it as a nonsense ship that was shoved in there at the last minute.

I ended up thinking of it as friends at the beginning, and later on the more I thought about it as a sort of.... older/younger sibling thing, or something similiar. Honestly found-family is probably the best way to say it lol (But I do get why ppl saw it as romantic, it's all up to interpretation me thinks🤷‍♂️) But now this kinda took a wrong turn bc rambling abt the ending is a diffrent topic lmao

In the end what I can say is: I think the Mari/Shinji thing feels off at first, but makes sense once you dig into things (and I did a lot of digging in regards to Mari lol)

Only thing I actually hated is the "Nice girl with big boobs" thing, but I simply tell myself thats there because Mari is trans and happy her transition is going well to soothe the severe headache that sentence gives me rip

#neon genesis evangelion #3.0+1.0 spoilers #honestly this kind of ended up being a whole analysis on mari as a character lol #my bad sgansgsh #but say mari or asumari and suddenly my brain kicks into overdrive #and just wont stop bandvsndgjeegwjeg #felix answers

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gingus-doon · 3 years

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pov u just shot your childhood hero, wdyd

i.e. i ramble about keiji post-shooting; his occupation, what he does, how he copes, how he feels, etc. etc.

just putting this little thing here because the post got quite long and i couldn't split it up because it's all somewhat related. it started out as a rant / informal ramble but then it got serious lololol

—

one thing i don't understand is why people hc keiji as still having a job with the police post-shooting? like that just doesn't make sense to me– not only based on his character but like... why would you wanna make him a cop with all the talk of how much the police suck lately? personally i'm a brown bitch so i couldn't be down with thirsting over a cop lol. it's just kinda confusing sjdhd

i've seen the hc of him as a private investigator, though, which i like! it's a very neat way to let him flex his detective skills without being part of a corrupt organization and without forsaking his own personal beliefs and feelings about the police, because i don't think those would change anywhere near easily and i just kinda can't see him going back into the police force because of that.

i have often wondered what keiji would do after the death game, and what he was doing before the death game or after the shooting, because i think he'd definitely quit after the shooting, with all the grief and trauma surrounding the job and his newfound cynicism.

i don't think he'd be doing private investigation before the game, or more specifically, before his character develops into something reminiscent of his old self– as he is at the start of the game, he just doesn't have that faith in protection, so i can't imagine him being an investigator at that point. HOWEVER, in a post death game OR non-death game au where keiji has started to pull himself up from that tar (most likely with the help of others lol) i think that's definitely a plausible option for him and i like it a lot :]

as for other options, though... i really don't know! this is more of a stupid idea but i considered him working in a convenience store like shin lol. i had a whoooole au about him, kai, and shin working in the same convenience store just because they can't hold down any other jobs / don't know what else to do for work. shin is able to actually hold down the job because the last manager was mysteriously taken out of commission (i don't know lol) and they were ridiculously short-staffed already so shin ended up being the "most qualified" for the now vacant position. keiji's had a string of odd jobs since the police and this is just the next one. he's hoping to find something with a better wage but this'll do for now, it's even in walking distance from his apartment. and kai, kai's trying to exercise more independence from the chidouins' after becoming his own person! so he gets what i think would be his first job (well, his first official job, anyway... being an assassin and the chidouins' personal maid were more unofficial gigs lol.) ahh that was a lotta rambling about my dumb little au but i just think it'd be neat, they're three of my favourite characters so having them just vibe with each other at work and become friends sounds nice 2 me :] also Coincidentally i ship literally every combination of those three characters so that may have played a part in my casting decisions lmfao

oh wow that was a really long and uncalled for synopsis but this is just a rambly post so it can't really be uncalled for because this post doesn't have any particular point lol (A/N after writing this— IT HAS A POINT NOW, DISREGARD PAST ME)

SO ANYWAY ! i was just considering what keiji would do right after the shooting. honestly i have noooo idea, it's the beginning of a long road of him burying his trauma in a desperate attempt to avoid facing the pain it brings, and it marks a profound loss of innocence which makes his heart begin to grow cold. it's just hard to see the beginning of the process when where he started and where he ended up are very different places.

obviously, he'd quit his job. i wonder if the hallucinations would start right away? him being naïve in the beginning, i'm sure he'd acknowledge them– cry out apologies and plead for forgiveness until his throat is hoarse. the rule of hallucinations in yttd seems to be that if you acknowledge them, they'll burn themselves into your brain and you'll never be rid of them– implying that keiji has done so, as it's likely been years since the shooting and he's still suffering from the visions despite seeming to ignore them now.

ahh, i'm getting in my feelings about keiji now 😭😭 when i started this, i wanted to be held by him, but now i just wanna hug him like damnnnn

but back to what he'd do after the shooting– this scenario is self indulgent, but wouldn't it be nice if he took some time off and just stayed at his mom's place for a while? help her with chores while she's at work, try to regain a sense of normalcy in his childhood home...

i don't think he'd be able to do this right after the shooting. keiji had shame, once upon a time– the guilt would rack him like nothing else. i can imagine him spending a lot of late nights with alcohol, just wishing it was a dream. his resentment towards megumi slowly building as he feels he's being left in the dark as to why, why he isn't allowed to atone, why she's being so cold towards him about the shooting when he's suffering so heavily from the effects of it.

he wouldn't want to be around his dear mom as a murderer, and as a resentful alcoholic who's coping very poorly with his circumstances.

also (tangent incoming), i kind of wonder about keiji and alcohol a lot. in his fondness events with mishima, he says the following—

the "haven't drank that much in years" part makes me wonder– for how long? did he start to restrain himself before the shooting or after? i would say it's most likely after, considering the "feels like it'll swallow me up" comment he made soon after. and, how he talked about binge drinking when he was still a newbie. perhaps it was fine for him to do so, before the shooting— he'd just get wasted and flirt, have a good time. but after, it morphed into an inefficient coping mechanism which he fell far within the depths of to try and control the worst of his grief and self hatred. after that, heavy drinking couldn't just be for fun anymore.

i assume in the "before it got this way" comment, the "way" he's referring to is how he doesn't drink much anymore? or, he could be talking about the depression drinking, but i think the prior makes more sense.

even though i think, given keiji's example of drinking with megumi, that he could have gotten blackout drunk a couple of times purely for fun pre-shooting, i think here he's referring to the painful side of his relationship with alcohol here, the part that took place when he was trying to cope with his trauma. i think he brings up the story of drinking with megumi immediately after, then, to avoid talking about that part of his past. though he doesn't show it much, i think he's deeply ashamed of himself. not only of what he's done, but how he's handled it afterwards.

on a lighter note, though, it's quite funny to think of Lawful Good young keiji shinogi getting drunk off his ass and flirting with every woman he comes across willing to flirt back. like, what's up with that??? he seems like such a serious dork in the flashbacks, but doing well in his police job, he just... lets loose?? no no, honestly i think he hadn't drank much before going out with megumi and he took her insistence on him drinking a little too far, and with his inexperience with alcohol and the successive lack of self restraint that comes with each new drink, you get casanova shinogi, lmao.

BACK TO THE SERIOUS STUFF THOUGH !! i really like the idea of him going to his mom to help him pull himself back together. i think they'd have a solid relationship, fight me! he seems to adore his mom as a child with a good single parent usually does. i'm sure he appreciates her immensely for all the care and love she managed to give him when he was a kid while also working her ass off to support them financially. this very respect for her is what i think would drive him to isolate himself from her after the shooting– as i said above, he's a murderer now. a disappointing human being in general, and an even worse son. to let down his mother who worked so hard to raise him right... how could he? as his condition worsens and his heart grows colder, i'm sure that feeling would fester inside of him. he'd try to ignore it, as he does with everything else, but it's already wrapped its tendrils around his soul. that particular guilt isn't leaving him any time soon.

now that i'm thinking about it, also, i don't think it's likely that he'd quit his job right right away. it'd be more of a slow descent over the span of a few weeks. immediately after the shooting, he may stop showing up to work for a while. he just can't put on that uniform when it's practically caked in the blood of someone he held in such high esteem for so long. eventually, though, he gets a hold on himself– just a bit. he doesn't want to be cooped up in his apartment with his thoughts anymore, and he doesn't want to lose his job. what else would he do?

so, he takes it easy on the first few days back. megumi tries to make it easy for him. paperwork, whatever job he could do that's not on the field. he clings to her like a wounded puppy, hoping that she'll explain why she's covering it up when he doesn't want her to, what he's supposed to do with these feelings around the incident. he's drowning, and she's made herself a big sister figure to him– she's supposed to help him. but, she shrugs him off when he brings it up. she's so harsh about it compared to how she usually speaks to him. perhaps because of her own guilt around the incident, perhaps it's the family's response and how keiji is now, how panicked and sleep deprived the poor kid has looked since that day.

so he continues to spiral with nothing to hold on to. grasps at alcohol in a futile attempt to stop falling, because it's all he can think to fall back on. he's a wreck at work– he's barely living, much less working. but megumi tries her best to keep him from getting fired. she'll get him coffee and breakfast and try to say something encouraging. "hey. hang in there, shinogi." with a touch on the shoulder. but in spite of her efforts, of course, it hits a breaking point. everyone in the job thinks keiji's too damaged to continue, saying he either needs to see a shrink or get the hell out of the way and let everyone else do their job.

and keiji just stops coming into work one day.

the downward spiral ensues.

#your turn to die #keiji shinogi #yttd keiji #kimi ga shine #i really just wrote this much just about keiji like goddamn. calm down @ me #it's not that much tho i checked and it's like not even 2000 words 😔😔#i got sad writing some of the angstier parts of this. like keiji... my darling.... let me hug him #i feel like there's a lot to be said about ~after the shooting~ and the process of him becoming the man he is now #there's lotsa speculation about that here from me specifically lol #i'd kinda kill to read a fic that goes into this stuff! no ship or anything just keiji. and megumi and his mom #i wonder if it exists 👀👀👀 but there are few things without ships that exist....#anyway i love keiji more now somehow #i am super keiji simp trust #i am tired tho lol i think i'll sleep now. maybe #OH ALSO!!! it's very fitting that the last line mentions the downward spiral #because i was thinking of the nin album by that title earlier today #specifically keiji and a certain track. I WILL NOT SAY WHICH TRACK. YOU DO NOT NEED TO KNOW

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terramythos · 3 years

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TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 2 of 26

Title: Authority (The Southern Reach #2) (2014) - REREAD

Author: Jeff VanderMeer

Genre/Tags: Horror, Science Fiction, Ecological Horror, Cosmic Horror, Mystery, Weird, Third-Person, Unreliable Narrator

Rating: 8/10

Date Began: 1/05/2021

Date Finished: 1/10/2021

John "Control" Rodriguez, a disgraced former spy, is given an opportunity to redeem himself at the Southern Reach, the clandestine organization that oversees the mysterious and horrifying Area X. The director has gone missing following the disastrous "twelfth" expedition in Annihilation. Control is brought in to take over her job and fix the Southern Reach... and perhaps find a way to combat the insidious, paranormal effects of Area X.

But Control soon discovers just how deep Area X's corruption infects the place. Even worse, failures of the past-- both his own and those of the Southern Reach-- return to haunt him in disturbing ways. Badly outmatched within and without, Control will need to do everything he can to save not only the organization, but himself.

The last fragment of video remained in its own category: "Unassigned." Everyone was dead by then, except for an injured Lowry, already halfway back to the border.

Yet for a good twenty seconds the camera flew above the glimmering marsh reeds, the deep blue lakes, the ragged white cusp of the sea, toward the lighthouse.

Dipped and rose, fell again and soared again.

With what seemed like a horrifying enthusiasm.

An all-consuming joy.

Full review, some spoilers, and content warning(s) under the cut.

Content warnings for the book: some body horror but way toned down compared to Annihilation. Mind control/hypnotic suggestion is still a thing. Non graphic sexual content. Disturbing images. Without spoiling the entire book, there are several scenes that come off as gaslighting, but do have an alternate explanation. As before, a pervasive sense of unreality.

While Annihilation is a deep dive into the horrors of Area X, Authority takes a step back. It examines the situation from the perspective of the Southern Reach, the organization that oversees the expeditions we got to know so intimately in the last book. Control is a newcomer, so he functions as a natural outsider perspective. However, he's far from naïve due to his past experience in what I have to assume is the CIA (just called "Central" in the book). It's clear from the get-go that the Southern Reach is falling apart with its ancient buildings, circular and helpless theories, dwindling funding, and bizarre office politics. While Annihilation frames the Southern Reach as shady and possibly complicit in Area X's existence, Authority demonstrates the government would be predictably bad at handling an unknowable cosmic horror zone over any length of time.

Though I noted in my Annihilation review that most of the mystery surrounding Area X remains just that, Authority casually drops two major revelations in the first few chapters. First is... it's definitely aliens, right? Like, that's the only explanation that tracks-- why everything about the place is anathema to humanity, why it's impossible for characters to fully understand it, why mimicry is such a major aspect, etc. If you didn't suspect this already, it explains a lot. In particular, the "colonization" terminology and imagery in Annihilation hits different in that context. I have a lot of feelings about how this series approaches the extraterrestrial, but I'll save that for my Acceptance review.

The second reveal is that Control is taking over for the former director of the Southern Reach, who is MIA following Annihilation's "twelfth" expedition. Who is the director? The psychologist-- the pseudo antagonist of the last book, who we know got Super Killed Off. Turns out she's important and probably not actually evil? The biologist is also inexplicably back, but something is off about her, and she insists on being called Ghost Bird now. Did the biologist truly return (counter to the ending of the last book) or is this one of the shells Area X sometimes spits back out into the real world? If she's the latter, Ghost Bird seems to have much more personality and self awareness than the others. It is interesting to consider an entity of Area X would willingly name herself.

So, Authority is a weird book. The horror element is still present, but toned down. Instead, there's a lot of focus on the new character Control, his past, and the workings of the Southern Reach. In some ways this is refreshing. Annihilation (and the finale Acceptance) are so deeply entwined with Area X it's hard to see what "normal" looks like, and Authority brings that perspective. Relatively speaking. Second, and this is a spoiler, much of that normalcy is a facade. Control is basically mind controlled (heh) by a faction in Central, and is unaware of it for most of the book. It comes across in little ways, like the anachronistic storytelling and Control's confusion/disorientation at times.

We also learn that Area X doesn't just contaminate things inside it, but things outside it as well... and it's been doing this for some time. As a result, there's always a sense of Area X lurking in the periphery, manifesting in strange and unexpected ways. Something I like is the background chatter Control overhears being lines from Annihilation, which he isn't aware of, but the reader sure is.

I've read this book a few times, and while there are things I really like about it, it's probably my least favorite of the trilogy. I think the slower pacing and different narrative approach have merits, but just aren't as interesting to me as the rest of the series. It's noteworthy that my favorite bits in Authority are the disturbing video of the first expedition and the sudden End of Evangelion-esque return of Area X near the end-- not the espionage and philosophical tangents that comprise most of the book. There are several ideas that seem interesting but don't go anywhere, and those feel like a waste of space. I think Authority could be pared down to half its page count and still get across the same feelings and general concept.

Control is also not the most interesting protagonist, especially compared to previous and later characters. He's not terrible, but he spends most of his time just thinking in circles and observing mundane office politics. While this is fine at first it starts to drag as the story goes on. As I said, a lot of tangents go nowhere, and there's not much going on beyond those until well over halfway into the book. Control does have a hidden tragic backstory, and it's interesting enough, but it barely factors into the overarching Area X storyline outside some symbolic comparisons. He feels out of place, perhaps intentionally.

I do like the dry humor and observations Control brings and how they contrast with the intense tone of Annihilation. I can also see the appeal of having a more ordinary character, if only to bring context to the extraordinary. But the problem is Control isn't ordinary. He's the youngest member of a dynasty of professional spies! Yet somehow I just don't find him exciting compared to an antisocial biologist. I dunno. Ultimately Control is a pawn in the story, used and manipulated by other people, and (spoilers) this doesn't change in Acceptance.

I had similar dilemmas with VanderMeer's Ambergris books, particularly book two, so perhaps it's a fact about his writing. When it's good it's GOOD, but sometimes the things I like get lost in rambling narrative fluff. The question is whether getting through the less interesting parts is worth it for the really good parts. With The Southern Reach trilogy, I'd argue the latter. I have no issues with the style or pacing in Annihilation or Acceptance, and the overarching story is fascinating.

I've mentioned many times before that I usually struggle with book twos in trilogies, and this one isn't an exception. However, I do appreciate what Authority is going for on a meta and lore level when viewing the series as a whole. It does establish a lot of things that either explain earlier stuff or pay off later; it just takes a while to get to them. The context of everything else bumps this to an 8.

#taylor reads #8/10 #2021 reading challenge #google why was this image so crisp yet i couldn't find anything good for annihilation. biphobia at its finest #i like how this review turned out :>

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nvzblgrrl · 4 years

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Part 1 Heyo man, I'm absolutely ecstatic that you have this whole One Piece Big Fic project in the works. I'm honestly p paranoid about interacting with words, but your works have been something I've continuously enjoyed going back to and rereading over all these years. And while you've grown and your earlier stuff feels cringe, there's a charm that Witt and Witticism and all of your earlier works have that is longlasting. And I, and apparently others, can't help but love.

Part 2 I've probably reread your fics a good thousand times by now. Like seriously I've got a good bunch of the fics you posted on AO3 saved as PDFs for my own personal reading when I feel the urge. Namely Luck of The Draw, Ultimate Symbiote, and a portion of your Chain Adventures. I've been here quietly reading for a long time and I'm gonna make sure to properly give feedback this time. Good luck in your absolutely bonkers endeavor!

Yeah, absolute mood on the ‘cringe’ part. I think the only excuse I can make for the really early stuff is that -

(this is gonna get loooong and reference child abuse + the 2000′s-2010′s meme culture, so pre-emptive apologies)

1. I had a really messed up upbringing. Not as bad as some people’s situations but still on the deeper end of bad by the ‘White American’ standard and still (albeit barely) within the bounds of Funny Sitcom Abuse Antics (at least for mid-2000′s and older stuff) most of the time. Most of it was neglect and social isolation - I pretty much left the property to go to school, church, and to visit relatives because of court-mandated visitation, the last of which probably kept me from going insane, and that was it aside from events where my dad needed an accessory to compliment his public mask - but there were some other shit mixed in that relied on the Trunchbull Rule (it has to sound too weird to be real so nobody believes it/takes it seriously) to happen.

So besides like, the PTSD from that (which has a habit of bleeding into all of my works, which you’ve probably noticed by now, lmao), I had like, zero experience on healthy relationships, social skills (well outside of a few variations on ‘messed up friendships’ and what I picked up from books, movies, and TV), and basic life skills outside of stuff like ‘boil water and follow the box directions’).

2. I got into the internet really late compared to my generation and everyone after. This was mostly because we had literally no semi-reliable internet access until I was about 11-13 and that was either the school internet or the dial-up at home (which of course was time-limited with the time shared with my brother and done on the family computer with observation in effect). Most of that was spent on like flash games or webcomics, many of which I have tried to reread only to find them gouging my soul because god what the hell was happening in 2007 - wait. Yeah.

It got better by the time we hit high school because by then we had our own computers (not scanners though, I had to pass art and passwords over to a friend of mine to get them on the internet for a couple years before we got one at home), a better internet connection, and high levels of parental disengagement as we proved to be disappointments despite our previous ‘potential’ (my dad was hoping for me to become a life-long cash cow for him, IDK what was going on with my brother and his mom), which meant I could spend more time on the internet... which at the time, meant DeviantArt and FF.net (tumblr came way, waaay at the end of my time in high school).

Yes, that’s where I started out. That should explain a good 90% of why the early stuff was Like That.

Also don’t look for my DeviantArt because I deleted the whole thing years ago, for cringe reasons - namely, a really, really stupid minor war over something I can’t even remember but it ran a lot like those old ‘Potterheads Get Your Wands’ posts, though the fact that 80% of my output towards the end were extremely banal and/or fucking insane One Piece (and occasionally Soul Eater) Demotivator Posters didn’t help.

Pictured: proof of my crimes against humanity (with some minor repeats - every single one of those demovitators are something I did and that’s not even all of them) despite my attempts to destroy the evidence, because the internet (and pinterest) never forget and often reposts without permission.

[Image description: a series of drawn images of a man. the first panel is of him looking at a computer with the subtitle ‘recognition’, the second is a close-up of him with sweat and a look of surprise on his face along with two exclamation points subtitled ‘realization’, the third and final image is an extreme close up of his intensely stressed expression subtitled ‘fear’.]

[Image description, but funny: me accidentally coming across one of those reposts a couple years ago.]

I personally can’t forget because I know my style at the time (it had a few variations, but all of them have been seared into my soul) and how inane/insane some of them read. My favorite was one that ended up turning into a word vomit about how cool Gol D. Roger was that ran so far that it didn’t fit inside the format anymore and ended up running off of the page repeatedly.

...and yes, I did make one edit that was ‘Dead or Alive? is that a trick question?’ for Brook. That one’s still circulating too.

3. While that covers a certain amount of the problems with the early work, Witt and Witticism stands out as a pinnacle because I was both using a reaction heavy style (I was pretty much doing a live-blog of my One Piece anime rewatch in fanfic form, using Witt as a mouth piece - a similar style was used with Ultimate Symbiote but fortified with a few original stories and actual non-canon stuff happening!) and going through the tail end an extreme manic period brought on by escaping (read: getting kicked out of because they were no longer socially or legally obligated to care for me anymore) my abusive childhood home + having money (from my dead mom’s social security).

Seriously, that year was bonkers. I got to go to Disneyworld, got a new cat, published an insane fic, and blew through so much money on some dumb fucking shit when my dad wasn’t stealing it because I didn’t realize he had access to my then-bank account.

Also I’m pretty sure that you can detect when my sanity/depression started reasserting itself in the last few chapters of Witt because he starts experiencing consequences, though I’m not saying you should reread it to try to locate that moment because I’m having to re-read it repeatedly for reference purposes and I don’t think anyone should have to suffer this unless they’re into that (which admittedly, might be the result of that ‘charm’ you mentioned, because I can’t otherwise account for how that fic got over a quarter of a million hits otherwise).

Not to say that all of my early stuff was bad (some of it was actually shockingly good once I found it again, even though it was flawed) but the most easily accessible stuff is... not great!

And thanks for the well-wishes. I’m gonna need that luck if I want to get through it. I look forward to the feedback!

#asks #the big fat one piece fic project #Anonymous

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buns-is-sinning · 4 years

Text

The 5th popularity poll results are finally out !!

┏━━━━°⌜ Table of contents ⌟°━━━━┓

• Who did I vote for 'n why?

• Why are the results so different this year?

• What happened to Hawks and Endeavor?

• Shiggy!

• Chara placement explanation

• Poll Artwork

︵୨🎐୧┗━━━━°⌜ 目次 ⌟°━━━━┛୨🎐୧‿

Who did I vote for 'n why? -

Hawks! ..surprisingly. I knew Katsuki would make 1st place anyway (which is what I wanted) but I also wanted hawks to get on the list.

If I'd vote now I'd probably be Shiggy

Why are the results so different this year? -

• My first suspicion was that a lot of new fans started voting ...but it turns out there are actually fewer votes in the top ten this year !

• Maybe people know their actual favorites better by now, so they don't just choose who they liked best in the new season but overall.

• Maybe some charas got hyped or talked about more in events etc. In japan than here.

• I can't say for sure but it's so strange to me. Before this poll there weren't any drastic changes in the polls and most of the votes were comprehensible.

What happened to Hawks and Endeavor? -

• Hawks

↳ The last popularity roll was after he was first introduced . He immediately went on 4th place. I cannot explain to myself how he isn't in the top ten at all now. This is so damn weird .

It's not like he doesn't have fans fangirls he's extremely popular . I was already confused why he isn't getting any official merch by now but now I'm just ｂａｍｂｏｏｚｌｅｄ

• Endeavor

↳ He has been around since the first poll and was never on any spot in the list (1-20) but then in the 4th poll he went to nr.8 . Now he's gone again.

↳ I think this is because of his redemption arc it seemed like he was bettering himself but it became more and more clear that it's not really doing anything w his family.

↳ Another reason might be that we don't have as many interactions of him with Hawks as before ??

Shiggy! -

• AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

• I'm so damn happy ! - he really deserves this after the villain arc etc. ppl respecc and appreciate him a lot more .

• These are his placements from start to finish 19th→16th→15th→24th→6th

↳ Look at that big ass jump!! I think we all know why this happened but I just really needed to share it with y'all!

Character placement explanation

1. Bakugou Katsuki 💢 爆豪勝己

Why ?

↳ In my opinion there are lots of justifiable reasons for him to win and keep winning.

• Personality , character development , entertainment , looks , fangirls , waterfalls

•he is kind of an 'outcast' under the students and heroes . Which is also the reason shigaraki thought he'd be easy to 'convert to the dark side' . What i think is the important point in this is that he doesn't do that. His determination to his goal is what is so inspiring in my opinion.

•He's never afraid to say what he thinks and wouldn't lie either. Brutal honesty is entertaining to watch and sometimes you just want someone to say what you would be afraid to.

I'm sure even if you don't like him you've heard all the reasons why he's likable already, so I'm gonna move on now - If you want me to discuss why , how and what makes him so likable/popular tell me in an ask or the comments!!

Does he deserve it?

↳ This is a popularity poll.... There isn't really any debate on whether the opinion is right or wrong. I understand why some fans don't like him but seeing people get mad about a poll like this is straight up ridiculous. You don't like the chara that's popular? - then vote for your fav to be able to compete . Talk more about them and why they're great instead of just listening reasons why the currently popular character isn't.

//Tiny note - this isn't about literally everyone that dislikes him . Only people who act as stated//

• I would say because this isn't a right or wrong thing yes of course he does. Whoever wins does , because it's not about the characters actions being morally superior but his likability and connection he has with the fandom/audience.

If we wanna make a poll on which character is the most angel I'd say baby Deku wins! 🖤

2. Midoriya Izuku 🐰 緑谷出久.

I was actually surprised that he got on top of Shouto //no pun intended(͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)// They did have more tight votes than the others .

• It isn't too wild for him to be in second place the more I think about it.

↳ He too has matured and had some major character development taking place from ch.1 to now. The major complaint from ppl who didn't like him was that he's a 'crybaby'. He doesn't cry as often now and if he does it's almost always understandable . His attitude and self-esteem has also gone up quite a bit compared to the first chapters .

He kept all the good stuff in his personality and improved on the 'annoying' stuff . ( I personally never thought he was ¯(°_o)/¯ )

• All around he has a good heart , is more likable than most protagonists , is always working on improving himself , soft boy with the goal to save people. A genuine, non-superficial , real hero at heart.

3. Todoroki Shouto ❄🔥 轟焦凍

We all knew he was gonna be in the top 3

with all the fangirls he's got ... Mh but let's just say even the people that don't love him usually like him. I don't think I've heard a person shit talk Shouto . 🤔

• I personally didn't really pay attention to him until the U.A. Sports Festival Arc! - I know shocking .

In all the arcs after that I kept liking him more and more. I would even say he's one of my favorite characters at this point.

• There are again loads of reasons to like him. We are watching his personal journey into human/social interaction and a normal life outside his toxic household with him. There is genuine tragedy in his story that he himself didn't understand . God damn remember when he said that it was also his fault his mom is gone. We really want to support and help him, but he isn't just a sad story. We see him succeed. We see how strong of a person he is .

There's a lot more I could say about him as well but you get the point.

• oh yeah.. He's also incredibly attractive.

Poll Artwork -

I absolutely love the way Horikoshi Sensei chooses specific themes for these. They're always something to look forward to and are a big part of what makes the popularity polls so exciting!

The designs are so creative and cool . I love that their placement numbers are discreetly incorporated into their suits - the only nitpick I could find is that the villains almost got no changes which is kind of sad in my opinion !

These are my three favorite outfits!!

Click for higher resolution and full pic

1. Katsuki & Kirishima

My lord if you would hold me at gunpoint and ask which I like more out of these two I'd probably get shot . They're so awesome! (I'm sorry this is just me geeking out at this point) I keep trying to type why they're so cool but I just keep writing “they're just so cool” over and over again.

2. Todoroki

One thing I never liked about his normal hero suit is that it's just very blank. It makes total sense with his personality and the hero suit of his father being so different, which is why it works but just looking at it gives me the desire for more!

This. This is what I would love as his normal hero suit!

Tell me your thoughts by commenting or reblogging ^^

I am not a native english speaker

⌈ 𝗣𝗟𝗨𝗦 𝗨𝗟𝗧𝗥𝗔 🗯

!!プルスウルトラ!!

!!💓��に向こうへ!!

じゃあね 🌧⌋

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