just a little update!! bc i feel like it

Jon from the Magnus Archives for the character ask game?

character: hate them | don’t really care | like them | LOVE them | THEY ARE MY PRECIOUS

ship with: Martin, ofc, but also i’m honestly SUCH a sucker for jonmartimsasha. polychives is my jam

friendship them with: Melanie King. They’re both so prickly, dedicated to doing their job way harder than they’re supposed to, absolutely zero self-preservation instincts, snarky, fuelled primarily by spite - the list goes on. i just Love the idea of their dynamic as it would have developed if they weren’t trapped in the basement of a horror-tragedy together, yknow?

also!! Gerry Keay. other people have said it better than me but they operate on the same wavelength of wordplay/gallows-humour, and just.. get each other so well? they would have been so powerful together. if gerry had been alive jonah would’ve been dead by season 3, jon wouldn’t have been marked by half the things he was bc gerry would just tell him “yo here’s everything you need to know,” so many people wouldn’t have died for stupid reasons like “eaten by a table” and “caught up in the disaster that followed the destruction of said table,” and i just. want gerry back so badly

general opinions: absolute disaster of a human being. so much self-hatred that he comes across as pompous. absolutely neurodivergent, and i vibe with hyperempathy headcanons (hyperempathy jon/low empathy martin was metioned in a post i saw exactly one time and it will be my true belief forever)

he tries so hard and is genuinely so intelligent but desperately needs a support network to keep him from self-destructing in a well-intentioned effort to keep everyone else safe. his love language is causing problems on purpose (which is probably part of why it’s so distressing for him when he causes problems by accident. jon must do everything RIGHT except for when he deliberately knocks other people’s cups off the counter). jon sims is a bitch and i like him so much

Hi.

As I’m sure anyone who remembers this blog can tell (since there haven’t been any new posts in uhh *checks watch* basically two years) this au is discontinued.

Sorry I never made a formal announcement about it before! Life gets in the way and all that. I’m not here to make any excuses, just to give anyone still here a long overdue formal farewell.

This blog is still going to be up for archival purposes, so don’t worry about it going poof anytime soon! As much as I would like to, I won’t be deleting this blog. Over the next few days (if I have the energy) I’ll be posting the drafts I’ve kept the whole time, and I’ll also release the plans/lore I had for the au. If anyone wants to take up the mantle, please feel free.

If you’re curious, here are my reasons for quitting:

Lack of ideas. Bnha is a show/manga with a HUGE cast, and knowing enough about every single character to make a version of them that’s opposite in personality but still connected enough to the original is hard. Trying to keep things along the lines of the original plot is also really hard! Especially considering I didn’t really keep up w the manga and thus didn’t know a lot of what’s to come, it made things really difficult :( It’s easy to lose touch w the storyline when you’re behind! Plus, I’ve never wanted to make this just a complete villain/hero au flip, which probably would’ve been the easy track given the theme of opposites OTL

Loss of interest. Unfortunately, I don’t control what I do or don’t fixate on ;u; Once my mind latched onto other things with no sign of coming back to bnha, I kinda knew it was over even when I didn’t want to admit it :’) I also really don’t like the direction bnha is going in at the moment, so even the source material has lost me 😔 I highly doubt I’ll be coming back to this fandom in full :(

This au no longer brings me joy. Ultimately, all things done in spare time should be done w the intent of having fun! At some point, I lost the spark I had for this blog, partially bc I got too busy for it but mostly bc...it didn’t make me happy anymore. I got a lot of “will this be continued?” comments on the fic for this au pretty early on too, so I felt more and more pressure whenever someone else joined the bandwagon to ask and I hadn’t finished the next chapter yet. This combined w the fact that I feel the need to put on a cheery, showhost-esque front for all my posts made it really hard to enjoy what I was doing. Granted, I didn’t have to, but I pressured myself into it anyway. Even now, I’m more formal and restrained than I want to be. This post, like all the others I’ve ever made on this blog, will probably be meticulously checked over and over for errors or appropriateness in tone before being published. It’s pretty easy to see why the way I run this blog leads to quick burnout. Personally, I don’t think there’s really a point to managing something that constantly stresses me out ;u;

Lack of engagement. Admittedly, this is partially my fault! I waited and kept future au update ideas hidden/unclear with the intent to build suspense and keep you all guessing before I finally revealed them...but almost no one ever stepped forward to guess? I tried to put as many hints as possible in important lore related posts and even made several attempts to encourage asks about said posts, making a list w all of them and a tag for them, but I only ever received a handful of speculation asks. It was...really discouraging! I didn’t know if my posts were appealing to people. I couldn’t reveal things I wanted to bc I had no idea if anyone had caught on yet. I hoped for a cheeky back and forth between me and the audience, but it was more like speaking to an empty auditorium! I’m not blaming anyone ofc, but it was definitely a factor.

Overall, I just didn’t want to anymore, and I think that’s reason enough ;u;

I hope this answers any questions you may have had! May this blog and au go in peace, and I hope anyone reading this has a wonderful day.

Just wanted to talk a little Ordinal Scale, what are your thoughts on Eiji's strength and do you think it's answered in the movie? (sorry if this is kinda outta the blue. I just couldn't find anyone mentioning it, so I thought why not just ask one of the biggest SAO fans I know), love your blog as always asuuna and thanks in advance ♥

first of all i just wanted to say omggg thank you so so much for sending me this!!!! the fact that you like my blog so much makes me very happy aaa!!! and ofc im always willing to talk about sao, especially with the release of ordinal scale hehe~ i also rlly like this question - i think it opens up a lot of ideas for discussion!! my answer became unexpectedly long, so im gonna put it under a cut!!~ (like most of the ordinal scale things im posting ahaha)

okay so in terms of eiji, although his strength is not explicitly answered or explained in the movie, in terms of the events that unfold within ordinal scale, it all makes sense to me. ill go into some detail as to why:

eiji is someone who has a lot of regrets. throughout his time within sao, he was very physically and mentally/emotionally weak. he did not have the will to fight for his life or the life of others, instead watching from the safety of a guild as those in the frontlines (including the infamous black swordsman and lambent light) put everything on the line for the ones they loved and for themselves. eiji truly looked up to these players, but knew in that situation, at that time, that he lacked the motivation to stand next to them and fight.

therefore, once he was able to escape the horrors of sao, eiji must have felt powerless. it was not him, but others did the hard work to conquer the game, and they were the ones who were ultimately recognised, whereas he was soon forgotten - a mere phantom in the minds of many - and this angered him. such anger was especially highlighted after the release of the sword art online archives. nowhere was his name mentioned, and instead only the ones who contributed towards the end product of setting everyone free were commemorated. the lack of recognition towards him, yuna, and everyone else who simply lived in sao, instead of fighting, sparked an obvious need for change within himself. yet this was something that had been active since he awoke from the clutches of the nervegear, only rekindled to a stronger extent after the book was published.

and so eiji strived to become someone worthy of praise and reverence, in order to surpass his old self, and to surpass the ‘black swordsman’ who haunted his memory. the only way he knew how to do this was to become physically stronger, because of his knowledge from sao that power is status. he needed to become strong enough to surpass those for who strength meant everything. between the time of sao ending and ordinal scale beginning, 2 years had passed. thats quite a long time, and definitely long enough for eiji to work his body to breaking point - to become stronger than those he used to looked up to.

to validate his perception of power as status, i will state how eiji could have simply overcome his past by becoming stronger than how he used to be, but instead, he sought revenge towards those who stripped the legitimacy of the common sao player’s struggles away. only the major battles of life and death were highlighted. he instead had to exhibit his strength, even though this was through seemingly excessive means such as breaking klein’s arm, and becoming no.2 in ordinal scale only to yuna. this physical power that he possessed made the former frontliners in sao tremble, boosting his ego so much that it fed his hunger for status and recognition from the public even more. his previous self would have never done such things, and so he thought he was becoming stronger, a more desirable player, when in reality he was feared.

eiji is a character for who the past is difficult to face. his best friend, yuna, was taken from him forever, and his struggles were buried under the heroic endeavours of the frontliners. obviously he would feel injustice. this is where his physical strength comes from - to make up for his previous mental weakness.

as to how he became so fit, im going to put it down to a combination of martial arts and gymnastics. being able to jump over laser beams with an agility that surpasses average capacities, and the fact that he threw kirito over his shoulder with ease are the reasons why i think this way. studying these two practices religiously would have given him a solid base for strength and mobility, especially after 2 years. that i am certain of!

this being said tho, there is definitely some sort of superhuman element to him that is supplied by the suit given to him by shigemura. i reckon that the blue sparks that shoot out of the neck of that suit supply some extra action potentials to his neutrons, helping to surpass his normal strength. when he lifted klein by the neck with one hand, you can tell that no person would be able to that to someone who is that much bigger to him. and you can see when kirito breaks that device on the suit, eiji’s physical prowess wavers just enough to give kirito the advantage. after all, kirito has had the experience of fighting every single day in sao, compared to eiji who only sought power after realising his incompetence. i definitely have reason to suspect shigemura for developing some robotic technology to assist with human potential in this way, and this ties in with his ability to work with artificial intelligences such as yuna. his robotic inventions may very well play a big part in future developments of human technology used for scientific purposes!

i hope i was able to answer your question to an extent that you are happy with!! it became a lot longer than i expected, but there is just so much to talk about in regard to eiji! once again, thank you so much for sending me this ask!!!

[disclaimer: this is an archive of an old question i answered on curiouscat, copied and pasted so i can take advantage of tumblr's tagging system for organization. i'm mostly doing this for my own record-keeping purposes, so feel free to ignore this post and blacklist "clarz cc" to avoid seeing them in the future.]

answered March 21, 2020

Q (Anonymous): I feel like age difference , dad Namjoon is something new for u? What made u decide to write it? 😁

A: you're right, it's a little bit of a departure and not something i've really expressed interest in before! this is prob gonna be long and i'm SORRY ABOUT THAT but there are a few reasons!

1. this fic is a gift for jeonbenet and practically EVERYTHING in it is very specifically tailored to her interests! we came up with the beginnings of the concept during a conversation several months ago and i'd been meaning to write it, and her birthday is coming up so it was a good excuse for me to give myself a deadline to do it. so, the simplest reason why i decided to do ANYTHING in this fic is just bc i thought it would make jeonbenet happy and i love her very much!

2. the thing that first gave me the idea is v specifically examining namjoon's guilt. i feel like there is a specific pattern in namkook fics i've read, especially canon-compliant ones, where namjoon has a lot of guilt and anxiety over his attraction to jk bc he sees him as still being a child and feels like he's betraying some kind of responsibility toward him as the leader of the group by wanting him. it's an interesting pattern to me bc i never see this depicted as an issue in other namjoon pairings, or in fics where jk is paired with other hyung line members (except very occasionally, and usually to a much lighter extent) even though there's a larger age gap there. it seems v namkook-specific in my experience! and i think it's an attempt by the fandom to explain why namjoon can seem so hesitant and awkward with jk in canon in ways he isn't with other members, but it feels like an unsatisfactory explanation to me, so i always get a little frustrated with namjoon in those fics bc it's like "dude you're being SO SILLY!" so the initial impetus for this idea was kind of to think of a scenario where namjoon feels that same kind of guilt but it's actually TOTALLY JUSTIFIED.

3. i've wanted for a while to write a fic that sits somewhere in a more morally grey area. i think fanfic loves to examine feelings of angst and guilt and conflict but frequently shies away from giving the characters good reasons for having those feelings (e.g., creating the illusion of conflict via a misunderstanding rather than any actual argument), i think partly out of a desire to have every character make correct or good choices. and i wanna say EXPLICITLY that i don't think this is bad! in the first place, we all write about these characters because we love the real ppl they're based on, so ofc we don't want to cast them in a bad light or have them make bad choices. and also! ppl's guilt and anxiety in real life is NOT rational, and frequently unjustified, so it's great to explore the resolution of those feelings and self-acceptance in fic! however, it means that when i DO read fics where characters make debatably bad choices and the fic doesn't shy away from them, it's SO interesting to me. i wanted to try my hand at it! who knows if i will succeed!