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fortisfilia · 2 months

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Promised Part 9 - Tom Riddle x reader

Info: This is a rewrite of a story I've posted on my old account years ago. If it sounds familiar, that might be why :)

Summary: In this story, Tom didn't grow up as an orphan, but with his grandfather and uncle. Reader's sister got very sick and the Gaunts offer their help. But not without asking for something in return.

Warnings: Arranged marriage

Word count: 3.4k

Masterpost | Masterlist | Part 8 | Part 10

Part 9 - Never trust a Snake

Tom’s dorm was the nicest one you had ever seen in Hogwarts. Single bedrooms were offered to head boys and girls only, as a further reward for their title. His room was the size of a normal five-bedroom, but instead of additional beds, it was furnished with a welcoming couch, a nice wooden desk and chair, a fireplace and overall much more space. It wasn’t located next to the other dorms either, which had its virtues and disadvantages. The good thing was that you didn’t have to walk through the hallway of all the Slytherin boys’ dorms to get there. The bad thing was that Tom’s room was right next to Freda’s, so you had seen her a couple more times than you had wanted to. She had never said anything though and usually stomped off right away, brows knitted and red in the face.

Tom had ordered you to his room the day after Slughorn’s party, which was a privilege not many students were granted. Maybe not that much of a privilege if one was engaged to him. But it certainly felt special when you thought of it from where you had started, as a fiancée that he hadn’t even proposed to, who he wasn’t even in love with when the engagement took place. It also felt like he wanted you to be there. He let you study there even when he had to attend to his duties as head boy, which took up quite a bit of his time.

And then there was the Moly. A magical flower, used to counteract enchantments, that Professor Beery, the Herbology teacher, had given to pairs of students to take care of. They were weakest the last days before blooming and needed tending multiple times a day. It was a tricky task to keep them alive, so Beery had promised to give everyone who could manage it extra points for the Herbology N.E.W.T.s in advance.

Tom had suggested keeping the Moly that had been given to the two of you in his room, as it would increase the chances of keeping it in good condition, seeing that no one else could get their fingers on it. Even though the plant looked quite healthy, he insisted on your help to look after it, as he was not willing to share points if you wouldn’t. So you had come to his room every day, only for the Moly of course.

Other times, when you were just reading or writing another Charm’s essay there, Tom used to stay nearby. He didn’t talk much, as per usual, and rather stared at you from across the room, but the fact that he never told you to leave and always asked when you would come back, for the Moly obviously, made it quite clear that he enjoyed your presence.

And you did too. So much that you had even spent the night accidentally. Accidentally, as in, you had stayed up way too long reading and making notes in your Guide To Advanced Transfiguration textbook, had really, absolutely, doubtlessly planned to go back to your own dorm, but couldn’t be bothered to get up from the sofa until you had finally fallen asleep.

You woke up in Tom’s bed, not remembering how you had ended up there and sat up slowly, looking around, until you noticed him sitting on the edge of the mattress.

“Have I overslept?” you asked, hastily fixing your hair and rubbing the sleep out of your eyes.

“It’s Saturday,” Tom answered, grinning at your attempts to get up. “8 a.m. You can sleep a bit longer if you want.”

“Oh, Saturday, yes. How did I… What happened last night?”

“You fell asleep on the couch. It didn’t look comfortable, you were all sprawled out and twisted. So I put you into bed.”

You swallowed thickly. He had put you into his bed?

“Did you-”

“No,” Tom shook his head. “I took the couch.”

“Noble,” you quipped, causing him to roll his eyes at you. “Why can’t I remember how I got into bed?”

He shrugged as he turned to face you. “You slept through it. I wasn’t aware that was possible either.”

Oh. An image of Tom picking you up from the couch and carrying you across the room flashed through your mind. He must have tucked you in too; the heavy duvet was still wrapped around you. “Come here then?”

Tom looked at you, scepticism thick on his features, before you reached out for him, holding a hand in the air and waiting for him to take it. He did and you slowly pulled him closer, lifting the duvet, until he lay down next to you. Cautious fingers went up to his face and ran through his hair, to which he closed his eyes, letting you play with his locks for a while.

Now that you were fully aware of where you were, you noticed how different Tom’s linen smelled compared to your own. They had his clean, warm scent, of tangy embers dying in the fireplace, mixed with leather and something fresh like dewy iron. The scent had rubbed off on you while you had slept there and it felt like he had marked you, without even coming close.

“You didn’t have to sleep on the couch,” you whispered.

His eyes opened again. “You were completely knocked out. That would have felt off.”

“Well, for next time then,” you smiled, took his chin between your fingers and pressed a kiss to his mouth. The touch was still unfamiliar, a great deal of uncertainty as to whether he would reciprocate spreading in your veins. But he did, soft lips meeting yours, lingering as he exhaled and parting only in reluctance. “We’re engaged after all. Have you forgotten?”

“Oh piss off,” he scoffed and pulled you in for another kiss.

Some hours later, when you were tending to the Moly, you looked over towards the fireplace, where Nagini was sleeping in front of. At least you assumed she was sleeping. Her eyes were open and her tongue flicked out of her mouth now and again, but she seemed calm. She had curled up like a cat seeking warmth. The only thing missing was for her to start purring. Well, a pet was a pet, you figured.

“How’s the Moly doing?” Tom asked and went up to inspect it.

“Good. Great actually,” you said. “I think we’ll earn those extra points from Beery.”

“Don’t you think it looks a bit sickly?” he asked, holding the thin black stem between his fingers.

“No, it’s alright.”

He uttered a humph. “You don’t have the book on you, the one I gave you for Christmas, do you?”

“No, it’s in my dorm. Why would you need that now?”

“Have you read through it? All the way?”

“No, I haven’t yet. I just flicked through it and read some recipes that sounded interesting,” you answered, not knowing what he had in mind. “I wanted to try one of the Potions after we’re done with school. They all seem to take a while.”

“Which one?”

“The Vial of Auras for starters. Why?”

He nodded, still looking at the Moly. “I think there’s a recipe for plant cultivation in there. Could be of use.”

“But it looks fine, why-”

He turned his face toward you, looking into your eyes. “Just bring the book next time.”

“Okay,” you muttered. “I can bring it tonight. I’m going out to Hogsmeade with Camille in the afternoon. I’ll be back around 7 I guess.”

“That’ll do,” he said, finally sounding satisfied.

It was five minutes past seven when you returned to Tom’s room. The date with Camille had been lovely, despite you having had one too many toffees at the sweet shop. You had also gotten the Potions book from your dorm, still wondering why the Moly would need extra support. It looked completely fine.

Tom’s room was empty, aside from Nagini, who had curled herself around one of the bedposts. You walked over to the desk where the Moly was standing and put the book down. Next to the plant lay a handwritten note:

“Coming back soon - Dippet needs me for head boy duties”

Killing time it was, then. You took Tom’s Charms book from the stack and practised a few spells for a while, trying to revise those that would most likely be tested in the N.E.W.T.s. About ten minutes later, the door opened and Tom entered the room. He dragged his feet as he shuffled in and was slightly out of breath.

“Are you alright?” you asked while putting the Charms book away.

He nodded. You walked over and took a seat on the couch, patting the space next to you for Tom to join you.

“I brought the book,” you said and pointed towards the desk.

Tom sat down, looked at it from afar and squinted. “Thanks.”

Slightly concerned, you frowned, “Are you sure you’re alright?”

Tom nodded and scratched the side of his face. “Yes, yes. I’m just a bit tired.”

Tired wasn’t exactly what you would have described the state of him. He seemed nervous and completely out of it, his shoulders hanging down limply.

“Did something happen? What did you have to do for Dippet?”

His eyes roamed the floor while he pondered. “Nothing important. Just some scheduling for the prefects.”

Something cold rubbed against your foot and when you looked down you saw Nagini, who had slid over. She was on the floor between you and Tom, hissing quietly.

“What does she want?” you asked.

Tom stared at Nagini vacantly and didn’t answer.

“Tom?”

“Hm?”

“What is she saying?”

“She’s hungry.”

“Hungry? We’ve just fed her recently. Strange,” you said and bent down to pat her head. “I’m going to get you some more mice soon, don’t worry.”

Tom’s gaze roamed the room as if he was looking for something.

“Do you want to take a look at the book now? For the Moly?” you asked.

“No,” he answered. “Actually, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Go ahead then.”

“You remember the day we got engaged, right?”

“Of course. Why?”

“Well, it was an arrangement between our families,” he stated.

“Yes?”

“So I was wondering… What’s in it for you?”

Your stomach dropped. What did he mean ‘what’s in it for you’? Your sister’s curse was the most evident thing in this whole situation.

“You know exactly what’s in it for me,” you said while folding your arms. “Actually, I could ask you the same thing. Don’t tell me you forgot why we’re doing this.”

He took a moment to think before answering. “Of course I haven’t. I just thought there could be something else. Like, perhaps your parents bribed my family.”

You blinked, irritated. He had not just said that.“Are you serious right now? You’re suggesting my parents took advantage of the situation, went and killed two birds with one stone? So that they could marry me off and make me your problem?”

He stared into your eyes for a moment, then retracted. “No, I didn’t mean-”

“Because I’ll have you know, my family would never do such a thing,” you interrupted him. “I know yours probably would, but my parents are not like that, believe it or not. I thought you knew that by now.”

“I was just wondering. No need to make a fuss about it.”

“A fuss! You know what?” you said and got up from the couch, making sure not to step on Nagini. “You sound exactly like Ben. Only more rude. And I thought you didn’t trust him. But it seems that you don’t trust me either all of a sudden.”

“Wait, I’m sorry,” Tom said and followed you. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“We’re done here,” you snapped, making your way to the door, followed closely by Nagini, until Tom grabbed your hand.

“Don’t leave now,” he said, pulled you in a bit closer and a whiff of cologne wafted your way. He reeked of sweat and coughed so loudly you thought he might throw up any moment.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Tom,” you answered, your hand still in his. “Maybe you have a cold coming on or something because you don’t seem like you’re in your right mind. Now let me go.”

“No,” he said but turned his face away from you.

Suddenly the door flew open and you sucked in a sharp breath when you saw who it was. Tiernan Lestrange. And next to him was... Tom? Standing in the door frame, his eyes darting back and forth between you and… You looked to your left, to the person next to you and saw that Emlyn Avery was standing in Tom’s place, still holding your hand.

You wrenched your hand out of his grip and took several steps backwards.

“Avery?” you asked. “What is going on?”

Tom, the real Tom, still stared at you, a fire burning behind his eyes as he pulled out his wand and dashed into the room. Lestrange followed and closed the door behind himself.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Tom demanded, glaring at both Avery and you.

Avery kept silent, a nasty grin forming on his face.

“He… You,” you stammered.

“You two? In my room?” Tom yelled, his chest heaving. “You must have lost your damn minds.”

“I can explain.” Could you, really?

“Well, I hope you can. Taking Avery into my room to do who knows what? Care to explain that?”

“He was you!” you said, only then noticing how crazy you must have sounded.

Tom shot you a look that told you better not to take him for a fool. His thoughts must have raced at top speed inside his head, you could practically see him thinking. His eyes scurried from your hand to Avery’s, then up to his face. His knuckles had turned white from how hard he clenched his fists and he couldn’t seem to stand still. What would his next move be? Beat Avery to a pulp, curse the two of you, or rush out of the room?

“Please,” you whispered. “Let me explain.”

Tom sighed and avoided looking at you. He shook his head as if he was fighting an internal battle against himself. It almost looked painful. Finally, he went up to Avery, pointing his wand right below the boy’s chin.

“Sit down,” Tom spat. “You too Lestrange! And I don’t want to hear a single word from either of you.”

They did as he said and Tom led you to the other side of the room, followed by Nagini. He cast a Muffliato Charm on the two boys so that they wouldn’t be able to hear what you had to say.

“Go on,” Tom then said, still avoiding eye contact.

“I came here around seven, as we agreed. I brought the book but you weren’t here. Then I saw your note on the table and waited for you. You, I mean Avery, came in shortly after. But he looked exactly like you. Just until you showed up right now. I swear to Merlin.”

“What do you mean he looked like me?” Tom asked, an annoyed frown on his face.

“He looked and sounded just like you. I thought he was you. He acted weird and I didn’t trust him, but I thought you were just stressed out. The only way I could possibly explain this would be Polyjuice Potion.”

“You don’t really think one of them would be able to brew that correctly, do you?”

“I don’t… But how else would it be possible? You have to believe me. I would have never brought him here. Or anyone.”

He looked at you now, so intensely, it felt like he was reading your thoughts, trying to see if you were lying to him. “Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know,” you answered and gave it a good thought. “He asked me about some things. About the engagement. Maybe he was trying to convict me. They haven’t trusted me ever since the school year began, remember?”

Tom nodded and exhaled strongly, walking in circles around you.

“Did he touch you?” he asked.

“No. He just held me back when I wanted to leave. Just my hand, nothing else.”

“Are you sure? Don’t lie to me. If he touched you, I swear I’m going to-”

“No. He didn’t.”

Silence. Nagini's quiet hisses interrupted your thoughts while Tom watched her.

“Why was Lestrange with you?” you asked.

“He came up to me when I was done at Dippet’s. Tried to babble on for ages about assignments.”

“That makes sense. So you wouldn’t disrupt their plan.”

“What did Avery ask you exactly?”

“If my parents had bribed your family. So we would get married.”

“Idiot.”

“That’s what I thought too.”

Tom eventually stopped circling you, placed himself beside you and you both watched Lestrange and Avery sitting next to each other on the sofa. They didn’t dare look back at you and simply stared down at the floor like two ten-year-olds waiting for their parents to punish them.

“Oh, and another thing,” you said. “Avery stinks.”

Tom, to your surprise, stifled a laugh. That was unexpected, so you turned to him and asked, “Do you believe me?”

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

He did? You looked at him, taken aback.

“Nagini,” Tom said to you, taking both your hands in hiss. “She’s your witness. She confirmed you’re telling the truth.”

“Good girl,” you said, to which she offered a small his. You really had to get her some more mice.

Closing the gap between you, your arms wrapped around Tom’s neck and pulled him close. With his hands firmly on your waist, he rested his head in the crook of your neck for the duration of the embrace, breathing you in.

“Thank you for letting me explain,” you said, your voice muffled against the fabric of his jumper.

Tom nodded, pulling back to look at you. He brought his hand to your cheek, his eyes still alight from the argument. “When Avery held your hand I nearly killed him.”

“I know,” you whispered as you laid your hand upon his. “I saw it in your eyes.”

He pulled you back into his arms and sighed deeply. The hug lasted for a long moment before you separated, almost having forgotten that the two Slytherin boys were still there.

“Now, what were they thinking?” you asked. “What point were they trying to prove?”

“Let’s ask them,” he said, broke the Muffliato Charm with a swift motion of his wand and walked over towards the couch.

“I’m going to ask you some things,” he said to them. “And don’t you dare lie to me. You know I can tell. You’re lucky you caught me on a good day, actually.”

They both nodded.

“Polyjuice Potion?” Tom asked.

Avery looked over to Lestrange. They both nodded again.

“Where did you get that from?”

“Stole it from Slughorn,” Avery mumbled so lowly, you could hardly understand.

“Speak up!” Tom ordered.

“We stole it from Slughorn’s stock,” Avery repeated. “At the party, when everyone was dancing.”

Tom sighed and pinched the skin on the bridge of his nose. Of course they hadn’t brewed it themselves. They were far too daft.

“Why?” Tom went on. “What’s the reason for all that?”

“Well,” Lestrange cleared his throat. “We were only doing it for you, Tom. To make sure she’s not betraying you. To find out if she and her family were using you, you know.”

“So we could help you,” Avery added and nodded vehemently.

Tom grinned coldly. “And you thought I wouldn’t have found this out myself by now? That I would need your help? Seriously?”

“We thought-”

“No! You didn’t think at all,” Tom interrupted. “You went behind my back, stole from a teacher and disrespected my fiancée. You’re both an embarrassment for Slytherin and I swear, if I ever see one of you just looking her way, it’s not going to end this lightly.”

Both of them nodded again and looked down onto the floor, not saying anything.

“Now follow me,” Tom said, still angry with them.

“Where are we going?” Avery asked as he got up.

“I’m going to report you to the headmaster of course. And trust me, you’ll be glad Dippet is going to choose your punishment and not me.”

Masterpost | Masterlist | Part 10

Tags: @ariachaos

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blackestnight · 1 year

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ffxiv and magic traditions: a very self-indulgent and nonsensical “““essay“““

as a joke i said “haha what if i went off and described each of my oc’s magical abilities but in terms of pathfinder’s magic traditions,” but then no one stopped me, so it’s no longer a joke. anyway.

this will come as a shock, i’m sure, but i play a lot of tabletop rpgs, especially pathfinder 2e. as much as i love ffxiv’s armory system as a mechanic (getting to take multiple classes! one one character! with no penalties! it’s fantastic!) the inherent mechanical limits on each class as a result just…bore me, frankly, from a worldbuilding standpoint; i much prefer the inherent flexibility of ttrpgs, where even two characters with identical classes and ancestries can play entirely differently. hence i like to draw inspiration from ttrpgs when doing my own worldbuilding for my ffxiv characters.

some necessary background: when i say “magic traditions” i’m referring to pf2’s four traditions: arcane, divine, primal, and occult—you might also hear these referred to as “spell lists.” these are separate from the eight schools of magic that you see in a lot of ttrpgs (including pf2 and 5e), such as evocation, divination, necromancy, abjuration, etc. put simply, the school of magic dictates what a spell does, but the caster’s magic tradition dictates where the power to cast it comes from, which will make more sense in a second if it doesn’t already.

also, obligatory because-this-is-the-internet disclaimer: these are my personal headcanons and class interpretations, applied for my own worldbuilding purposes to my own interpretation of the game world, i am not trying to dictate how you should play the game or write your story, you do you, etc.

with that out of the way: HERE WE GO

i’m starting with haruki mostly because he…actually doesn’t do much magic in the way of spellcasting, but he definitely has magical abilities, being a not-quite-dragoon. (i like to call him “waterbender with a pointy stick.”) instead of drawing upon the power of his ~inner dragon~ (he doesn’t have one), his supernatural abilities are a blessing from the auspice seiryu, which makes him a classic example of a divine caster. the most common divine casters in a lot of systems would be clerics, but it really just means that a character’s magical abilities are given as blessings from some sort of divine entity. on his own, haruki is not capable of breathing underwater or summoning tidal waves, but he possesses the power to do those things because the power is on loan from seiryu. it’s also important to note that just because he has power from seiryu doesn’t mean he worships seiryu; it’s pretty standard fare in the pathfinder universe for characters to receive divine blessings unasked-for, and sometimes unwanted (this is, like, the entire premise of the oracle class, and i’d argue also fits pretty perfectly with the oracles of light and darkness in ffxiv as well, but that’s a subject for another post).

i’m lumping adelaine and sjanna together because, not only do they practice the same magic tradition, they both practiced multiple traditions over the course of their respective lives. addie, who was enrolled in the conjurer’s guild while growing up in the black shroud, and sjanna, who was raised a servant of the green word in golmore jungle, both started their journeys as magical practitioners of the primal tradition. not to be confused with ffxiv’s primals, the summoned entities, primal magic is drawn from nature and a connection to the natural world—druids would be the iconic primal casters in most game systems. the line between primal and divine casting can get a little fuzzy sometimes, especially once you get into things like the elementals (who are sentient nature spirits worshipped in their own rights), but i ultimately lumped addie and sjanna into the primal tradition because conjury, from what we’ve seen, is about drawing aether from the land itself (and the elementals are depicted as “voices of the land”). the green word as it appears in ffxiv, similarly, is close to the green faith as it appears in pathfinder: a code that demands respect, reverence, and preservation of the natural world. addie learned magic as a conjurer who drew power from the land around her, and sjanna learned magic as a keeper of the wood who revered the green word. later in life, addie (who had suffered emotional and medical abuse under the conjurers’ guild) and sjanna (who committed anathema to the green word by deliberately causing harm to the wood) stopped being practitioners of primal magic, although addie left it behind willingly while sjanna had her power stripped from her.

so both of them instead re-trained in the arcane magic tradition. arcane magic is like, your stereotypical locked-in-a-tower wizard who spends all their time poring over spellbooks—they make a study of magic and use logic and rationality to categorize and control magic. ffxiv’s arcanists are also (fittingly) a good example of arcane magic as it appears in pathfinder. the arcane tradition relies upon casting spells from constructs, like magical diagrams or matrices, which can be physical (like the arcanist’s grimoire, in addie’s case, as she goes on to become a scholar) or a mental construct (which sjanna prefers, being more of a staff-wielder than a book-toter). it’s also worth noting that, in the case of pathfinder (and as i’m using it here), arcane magic draws mostly on the caster’s reserves, rather than drawing on power from an external source like divine and primal magic. addie learned arcane magic as a means of retaining her power without giving up her agency to an elemental tradition that had harmed her; sjanna took it up to reclaim abilities that had been taken from her, but this time under her own power. i just think it’s neat.

and last but not least: hanami. if you’re wondering why she hasn’t come up before now, it’s because i am cracking open a refreshing cold can of my bullshit (drk theorycrafting). settle in.

“but cyan,” you say, “isn’t hanami’s whole thing that she keeps insisting she is not a damn mage?” yes it is. however, hanami is a filthy fucking liar. hanami, as a dark knight, is a practitioner of the occult magic tradition.

occult magic is definitely the least-understood of the four magic traditions, both in the in-universe pathfinder flavor text and on a meta level by the players. the word occult probably brings to mind, like, a circle of hooded figures with candles and weird rituals to summon some horrible tentacled creature from whatever great beyond, but per in-universe texts on occult magic, these practitioners are benefiting more from sheer dumb luck than an actual understanding of occult magic, which is best demonstrated by the iconic occult casters of pathfinder: bards.

occult magic draws its power from the concept of a shared narrative. practitioners at their finest use magic to invoke symbols commonly understood by its beneficiaries (or victims) that, in turn, causes some secondary effect—usually an emotional reaction (you see a lot of mental spells on the occult spell list). in the case of a bard, they will most typically use song, but dark knights as written in ffxiv do the exact same thing. per the lv 30 unlock quest, dark knights are fueled by fear, pain, and rage (and, as we oh-so-memorably learn in the 50-60 questline, all of these are superceded by love, kupo), but the flavor text of several of the drk abilities (back in ye olden days when we actually got flavor text) also include references to emotional manipulation. per enyclopedia eorzea’s description of Unleash (the starting aoe skill): “Releasing his pain and rage upon nearby foes, the dark knight manifests an inky black circle of spikes on the ground around him. All those caught in its thorns are struck by unreasoning terror, and an irresistible need to claw away at its source.” also from EE1, under the section dedicated to Dark Arts (the conceptual magical practice, not the skill, may she rest in peace): “Fueled by the darkness from within, the dark knight employs these techniques to lend an arcane edge to the blows of her greatsword. Though known for their disdain for shields, the fighting style of the earliest dark knights was nevertheless built upon mundane swordplay, and it was not until several centuries later that one of their order first unlocked the secrets of the dark arts.”

we know from the very start of the class questline that dark knights are something of a folktale to ishgardians; the npc who starts the unlock quest talks about dark arts practitioners, and even later in the lv 63 quest, an npc named Lowdy (you know, the waitress who poisoned you back in falcon’s nest like 3 patches ago) explicitly mentions being told stories about dark knights as a child. (based on the relevant npcs’ social stations, it probably varies whether the mythical dark knights are presented as folk heroes or bogeymen.) “but cyan,” you say, “can you get to the fucking point?”

yes i can. my theory—once again, i direct you to the ‘this is me playing in a sandbox’ disclaimer—is that the original dark knights didn’t use dark arts or magic because there was no narrative surrounding them. the first dark knights, being the founders of the discipline, didn’t have the benefit of a ready-made reputation to go with the greatsword and the heavy armor: by the modern day, when the warrior of light and sidurgu and fray take up the mantle, dark knight evokes a very specific image that instills fear, and pain, and rage—which they then harness for their own ends. dark knights use the shared narrative of ‘big fucking scary knight with big fucking scary forbidden magic’ to actually do that magic: the belief and the fear is the source of their power.

also just, one of these days i will go off about dark knights and akasa/dynamis, but this is already long and i’m already getting off-track, let me just put a pin in that.

so hanami, as an occult caster, uses Unleash and summons a big circle of spikes in the ground. scary! that image, which is pretty universally interpreted as threatening, achieves the effect of inducing terror in anyone caught in those spikes, because the magic is powered by the narrative of “big honkin’ thorns made of pure darkness = danger.” on the flipside, the dark knight also draws power from love—the specific example we see is the love a knight bears for their charge. (additional side-rant that folks like @starswornoaths and @autumnslance could do better than me: better paladin story than the paladin story.) what is The Blackest Night skill, if not a manifestation of that story of devotion and adoration?

…this definitely got off track and if you’re still here you get a medal. the medal is metaphorical though. ty for enjoying my rambling, if you’re interested in more information about the pathfinder magic traditions, i pulled a lot of the stuff above from the Secrets of Magic sourcebook, which contains a ton of cool worldbuilding about magic, including stuff about the traditions, the eight magic schools, and the four magical essences that i didn’t even get into here because they’re not immediately relevant, but they are cool. also: if this was fun enough that you want to incorporate the magical traditions into your own worldbuilding, obviously you can because i’m not a cop, but also tell me about it!!! show me your divine red mages or your arcane paladins or whatever cool and funky stuff you wanna do!!! talk multiclassing to me!!!

thank you for reading bye!!!

#final fantasy xiv #journal #oc: hanami hagane #oc: haruki hagane #oc: sjanna eldfalk #oc: adelaine anselout #worldbuilding #YEETS THIS INTO THE ABYSS

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ariel-s-awesome · 1 year

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May as well post my response to someone on AO3 asking why I hate season 2 here. Already stirred the pot.

(Can't get read more working so everyone has to deal.)

I could write multiple essays about it but I'll keep it brief to avoid opening a can of worms. (Yes, this IS the brief version.)

1) Portraying Wander as a perfect immortal space Jesus ruined his character. Sylvia was forced to blindly trust him when she previously balanced out his worst impulses. So it also ruined their friendship by introducing a toxic power dynamic. And Sylvia's character too as she got forced into a subservient role.

Wander continuously pushing Hater's boundaries in an effort to make him good worked when he seemed young and naive, without knowing when to back off. If he's done this song and dance many times now Hater's just the latest entry in villains he's overwhelmed into submission. It's manipulative and cheapens their friendship.

2) They flattened Hater. In season 1 there was solid internal logic behind his foolishness. He's not just a stupid childish oaf. In much of season 2 his behavior seemed far more random with little purpose but to make him stupid and incompetent. (There were still some good episodes, mostly when Dominator was nowhere in sight, but...)

3) Misogyny. There were issues in season 1 but it really took off when Lauren Faust left the show between seasons to work on Medusa (which later got cancelled, sadly.) I have a feeling that her input kept it from getting out of hand with how it went from the usual lack of prominent female characters to the Dominator love interest arc.

Dominator worked well as a big threat that shook up the status quo and forced the main 4 to work together. But she was forced into a love interest role and demonized for not returning Hater's feelings.

This attitude is what leads to women getting assaulted for turning men down. As someone making children's cartoons, Craig has a responsibility to examine the messages closely and avoid reinforcing harmful ones because kids are very impressionable.

Also WOY used to be a great show for aromantics because it emphasized the importance of platonic love. That was no longer the case and many aro fans became bitter as the love interest arc wore on.

Her being portrayed as evil for not feeling love (I'm The Bad Guy) was the slap in the face as an aromantic (who thought I was a girl at the time) and my final straw. So I'm evil. Okay thanks guys. Time to pack it up and not even be able to bear to look at the show for several years.

Dominator was sexualized and it was disgusting. They constantly emphasized her boobs and hips despite her being fairly flat on model. There was even a storyboard posted with a note to fix her posing because when she was expressive that "wasn't pretty enough" or something like that.

They reduced what could have been a cool character to eye candy because she was a girl. Which is exactly what Wander and Hater did to her.

If this was a one episode thing that ended with Sylvia calling Wander out for being misogynistic and harassing her to pair her up with Hater, it would be fine. It'd be a good lesson. But it consumed most of the season without him and Hater ever being shown as wrong.

4) It was a waste of time that literally ended with the words "nothing ever changes" as they returned to the status quo. Craig McCraken failed to read the writing on the wall and thought that he would have unlimited time to tell his story. (Disney had an unofficial hard limit on keeping anything but breakout hits to two seasons at the time. And Wander wasn't one.)

Unpopular opinion but I'm glad Wander got canceled. Even putting the mess it became at the end to the side. That experience improved Craig's storytelling skills as he learned to work with the time he has instead of what he hopes for.

And that was what made Kid Cosmic great. I'm more attached to Wánder Over Yónder both because I was there for it airing and because it's my long-term special interest, but Kid Cosmic objectively has better storytelling because Craig learned to focus on the story he wants to tell.

It still has its flaws pacing wise, both because of Netflix keeping it short and him using so many main characters that most hardly got developed. (...Poor Chuck was all but abandoned by the narrative after his life was shattered.) Yet the story got wrapped up. Unlike Wander.)

5) Much more minor complaint but: The art suffered when they switched animation studios. I mean, I know Titmouse is a hard act to follow. But it looked cheap, with more errors, worse expressions, and more reused animation.

Probably not something the actual target audience would pay much mind to (I was a teenaged animation buff), still disappointing after how well-animated season 1 was.

#long post #woy critical #misogyny #assault m #actual original content

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galaxythreads · 1 year

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Why not just write a fic of the path u wish they took after thr dark world instead of making a video to tell the world why u personally dislike a movie? Why waste talent?

Anon, I want you to read the next words with as much compassion and gentleness as you can muster from text, because I do believe you're asking this genuinely, but do you have any idea how much time it takes to write a fic? I spend hours on a single chapter. I mean that. Usually, it's about ten, then I have to edit it. That takes another five hours. That's fifteen hours-ish per chapter. I usually average about 10-15 chapters per fic.

I have to plan it. I have to think about it. I have to figure out why the story is going the way it's going. I have to replan it. I replan most of my fics 3-4 times. that takes hours. Then there's usually the demon chapter per fic which takes 1-4 rewrites, which tacks on more time. I spend probably 3-4 weeks of time straight on a multi-chapter fic, which this would be.

Every time I start a fic, I have to be ready to devote that length of time or it gets abandoned or updated once or twice every year because I just don't have the energy.

This is completely disregarding the fact my mental health problems, which often cause set backs and delays as I try to cope with that. Fic writing is fun, but it's exhausting.

And this is just one part of it.

Another is that, anon, I genuinely just don't want to. Ragnarok has been out for almost six years. I've written multiple IW/Endgame rerwites (or at least IW-adjacent things, Porcelain, Drawing Keys With Water, Withering Away, We're A Mess Now, Huh? Empty, We Drown Together, the last half of Append) and almost nothing for Ragnarok except for Discolored. I have Avengers 1-adjacent things.

If rewriting Ragnarok was something I had any interest in doing, I would have by now.

And honestly, I don't know what I would put there instead. I don't hate the concept of Ragnarok. I own the movie on DVD, and have since like 2018? I don't hate it. It's actually really, really hard for me to loathe something entirely. Usually I'm like "I didn't like this part", but "this part was good!" All stories have nuance.

That's why there are a lot of people who like Ragnarok and the Loki series who follow me despite the fact I post anti stuff for both of them. Because I recognize there are good things about xyz and I'm not afraid to talk about that. So this is not going to be a video about everything wrong with Ragnarok.

I can get where you'd get that idea. My 3 part essay about the Loki series was extremely brutal and rarely brought up any positive, and I'm not happy about that. Honestly, I wish I'd taken a different approach with the essay and I probably will make another one about the series. But please have some compassion for me. I've had a YouTube channel for less than six weeks. I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm still getting my feet underneath myself and I'm human so it's not going to be perfect.

I can understand why you'd feel really confused about why I'm bothering to make a video essay when, to you, it seems like it would be easier for me to just write a fic and shut up about it. Because fanfiction is often very quiet and private. YouTube is much more public. I get the impression you're a little frustrated with me, if not a little embarrassed that I want to explain why I didn't like the movie publicly, which is fine.

I love Justice League 2017 and it's often regarded to be a horrible movie. I have a Shrek 3 myself. I have a lot of them. It's impossible to love only perfect movies because there are no perfect movies.

Recognizing where stories failed is not passing moral judgment on them. Realizing why other stories work does not mean they're superior in some way. How To Train Your Dragon is a masterpiece, and I mean that genuinely* But WHY. WHY did it work when something like Netflix's Seabeast was less beloved, but had no less heart? The WHY is what I want to address in my video essays and I haven't quite figured out the formula just yet on how I want to go about that. Because, again, it's been like six weeks.

(*and for the record, HTTYD still has a lot of people who don't like it, but that's more so because it's not their type of movie, not because they think that it was written wrong. And YES HTTYD has its' faults because every story has its faults)

There are a lot of unhappy MCU fans who didn't like Ragnarok. WHY? why didn't they like it? Are they not allowed to discuss it just because there are people who liked it? No. You like Shrek 3, but that doesn't mean there can't be discussion about why Shrek 3 isn't a good story. Ragnarok fans and those who don't like it can coexist and it's okay that not everyone likes something. Sometimes a movie isn't for everyone, and that's definitely a factor, but for THIS MANY fans to have not liked Ragnarok, that means that Ragnarok did do something major wrong.

And it's not just og Loki fans who don't like it. It's og Thor fans, too. A lot was done right with Ragnarok, but just enough was done wrong that it bothered a lot of people and I think it's okay to explore what it was. Declaring Thor Ragnarok a masterpiece with no fault is ignoring a lot of people and I don't think that's fair. I'm going to talk about what Ragnarok did wrong because I find it interesting and I think it does deserve to be poked at. What I hope my essay will do is a) provide a little more compassion for people who didn't like Ragnarok and b) offer insight as to what Ragnarok could have done better.

#anon #answered #ragnarok

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swamp-spirit · 1 year

Text

Petty things that will make you my enemy on AO3 (and what you can do instead)*

When I’m into something, I like to check the entire tag. That means I sift through ALL the weird clutter. And, especially when you’re looking through an underloved fandom or tag, clutter can get really frustrating, so here’s my desperate plea to not make tags unusable. This is all personal opinion, not objective orders on what you can and can’t do. I’m just a simple fellow passenger on this bus of life, wishing you’d waited until you were off the bus to eat your tuna sandwich but helpless to stop you.

DON’T put oneshots from different fandoms as chapters in the same fic. WHY NOT? Two reasons. Let’s say you’re putting your Lord of the Rings short stories and Sherlock Holmes stories as chapters in the same fic, but you also put one Inuyasha story in there. That means EVERY TIME you add a new Sherlock Holmes short story, it’s still updating in the Inuyasha tag. This can also hurt you as an author. Somebody who loves your Lord of the Rings stories is more likely to follow something that only tells them when an LotR story is added than something that updates three times a week with stories that won’t read. The other thing is it makes it hard to find crossovers. The person who desperately wants to see Sherlock Holmes and Inuyasha meet isn’t looking for a short story collection where the two properties never intersect. There’s plenty of times where searching two fandoms will yield multiple pages of results but only one or two crossovers. The more fandoms you add, the longer it takes to scroll past, and the more people are getting flooded with stories for fandoms they aren’t in. Many people will even tag fandoms for works they PLAN to do, then abandon the project, leaving people with one, 300 word Naruto short story in 14 fandom tags. DO use multiple works in the same series. If you did all these stories for the same challenge or just like having your short stories in one place, make a series! Users can follow the entire series, or just the fandoms or pairings they like. It gets you more bookmarks and makes the site more readable.

DON’T put things in the tag that should have been a blogpost. I’m not talking art of flash fiction. I’m talking posts that are literally just you talking. The most common offender is people asking for the location of a fic they read years ago. The more annoying cousin of this is posting requests for fic you want somebody else to write, especially containing complaints that more people don’t write it This also applies to headcanon and opinion posts. I have seen a list of Starbucks orders, each about ten words and it’s own chapter, with a tag for each character. I have seen somebody just posting a series of essays about why they hate a bunch of characters (all of whom happened to be women). WHY NOT? Because this fills the tag with things that aren’t fic. I assume a lot of these are by young people without other social media or people who cut there teeth writing on blogs like LiveJournal, but AO3 is designed as a fiction archive. The more people that use AO3 to share requests and opinions, the more unusable the site becomes. It’s like going into an art gallery and running across frames that just have a sticky note that says “draw my dog“ or “I don’t like Van Gogh very much”. The more people that do it, the less of an art gallery we have. AO3 works because most of us respect that and don’t use it as a blogging platform. Even if your fic requests get more responses on AO3, it still assumes that what YOU want to blog is important enough to abuse the platform. There are blog and twitters devoted to sharing opinions and headcanons or helping people find fic. DO put these posts in places intended for these posts rather than tagging them on a fiction archive. If I can’t talk you out of it, at least consider deleting things like “find this fic for me“ requests once you find it or replies dry up.

DON’T tag use the original work tag for RPF, fanfic focusing on OCs, or anything else that has a different tag. WHY NOT? Everything on AO3 should be an original work. Plagiarism is against the TOS, so by posting, you are promising original content. The Original Work tag is explicitly for non-fandom works. RPF works have a fandom tag. Even if it’s just “My OCs in the One Piece universe“, it still only goes in the One Piece tag. It’s very hard to get nonfanfic stories out there, and AO3 is one of the few places where non-monotized, queer stories can get a lot of traction, but the Original Work tag is often like 50% mistagged fanfic. DO use the Original Work tag for, and only for, non-fanfic projects.

Thank you for not making me want to challenge you to a duel of honor and keeping AO3 usuable.

*if you wish to be my enemy in a fun, sexy way, consider writing properly tagged, well-written fic of a pairing I hate. I will be filled with rage, but have no room for valid criticism, and will stew in the rage of being unable to enjoy an excellent story as others around me enjoy it. Or, worse, be forced to bookmark fic of a pairing I hate by your excellent takes.

edit: I read a good post noting AO3 isn’t just for fiction, and my second point was overly reductive. AO3 SHOULD have a place for meta people want to archive, but I remain firm that fic requests and other ‘posts‘ are clutter

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just--another--daydreamer · 3 years

Text

Bound Souls

» Izuku Midoriya x male reader

» Genre: Angst & Fluff » Requested (by @thatcucumberwhore): Soulmates with Midoriya and male reader? 👉🏼👈🏼😊 » Summary: Soulmate AU where soulmates share the same superpower. You were born quirkless and fall in love with the insanely powerful hero student Midoriya » Warnings: just some angst and crying » Words: 2.6k

You can find a link to my Masterlist etc in my bio and pinned post

***

Soulmate AU where soulmates share the same superpower

“Are you Y/N from the General Education department? Class 1-C?” You closed your locker and turned around. A boy stood in front of you, a bit too close, which he noticed too and took a step back while muttering an apology under his breath. “Yeah, that’s me.” You looked the boy up and down. His tie was not tied properly, his green hair was a mess and he looked way too excited to see you while you had no idea who he was. Judging by the single button on the shoulder part of his uniform he belonged in the hero department.

“And you are…?” “Oh, of course, sorry!” The boy stood up straight before bowing shortly. “I’m Izuku Midoriya from class 1-A! I sent you an email about the tutoring yesterday!” “Ahh yeah I almost forgot about that!” You only vaguely remembered putting up a small ad on the school’s website, saying that you would be willing to help other students with different subjects and topics in school that they did not understand. Especially for students from the hero department it was not uncommon to need tutoring since most of them were way too focused on the practical part of being a hero and neglected basic things like maths or foreign languages.

You opened your backpack and pulled out your calendar. “It was English and maths, right? I’m free this afternoon, so we could meet at the café that’s quite close to the school’s entrance? You know which one I’m talking about?” Midoriya nodded, so you scribbled the time into your calendar. “Alright, I’ll see you after school then!”

***

The warm air in the small café smelled sweet like cake and waffles when you entered. A few students from UA and other schools sat in groups and pairs at the tables with their faces either buried in books or enjoying something to eat while chatting. Midoriya was already there; he sat at a table next to a window, so you approached him.

“Have you been waiting for long?” Midoriya shook his head. The hero student had changed after school, he was now wearing an All Might hoodie. Nerd. You sat down and put your backpack on the empty chair next to you. Even though Midoriya had prepared himself for a longer and more relaxed stay at the café, and thus had ordered a drink as well as a snack, you got straight to the point.

“I’m willing to be your tutor, but according to your email you ranked fourth during your midterms? Why would you need tutoring for that?” You watched Midoriya’s face turn red. “Well, that has multiple reasons,” he started to mumble incoherently. “Don’t want to fall behind… Need to do my best… Then there was the-… and I wasn’t allowed in class…” You could not make much sense of anything but the last part. “You-” you pointed at Midoriya and narrowed your eyes. “-were one of the students fighting at night, weren’t you?” The colour of Midoriya’s face changed from light red to tomato red. “Y-yeah…” he sighed. “I didn’t miss many classes but all that’s on my mind is the practical hero stuff like fighting and I train that instead of studying for the other subjects. So, before the written exams, I always spend my time catching up and studying way too much and I want to change that. I need to work more on that stuff throughout the term, not last-minute.”

“I thought so.” You opened your backpack and pulled out a pencil and a notepad. “That’s a problem many hero students have, so I’m willing to help you with this!” Midoriya started smiling. “That’s great, thank you!” He reached into his own bag and put some books on the table. “Let’s get started then!”

Izuku Midoriya. Now that you were watching him rewrite his English essay for the third time, you remembered where you had seen him before. He had stood out at the sports festival as the kid who had broken all of his bones while using his quirk. Strong and effective but useless at the same time. You wondered if his soulmate had the same problems using their shared quirk. Shaking your head, you dismissed that thought.

Midoriya bit his pencil and furrowed his brows at his paper. “Can I help?” you offered and Midoriya nodded. “Did I use the correct tense here?” He slid his paper over to you and you skimmed his last sentence. “Looks fine to me. But I’d use a different word right here and here.” You drew circles around a few words. “Your English grammar is great, but your vocabulary needs work.”

“Alright, thanks!” Instead of getting back to work, Midoriya took a sip from his mug and looked at you. “You’re a great teacher,” he told you. “Are you considering becoming one?” The question caught you off-guard. You put your pencil down, sat back and thought about the question for a few seconds. “It’s not my first choice,” you admitted, “but that first choice won’t work out, so I’m considering becoming a teacher.” “Then what was your first choice?” “I wanted to become a hero. Like everyone else.”

Midoriya curiously cocked his head to the side. “Why didn’t it work out?” “’cause I’m quirkless,” you answered dryly. It was not something you liked talking about. Quirkless people were looked down upon more and more, and not being able to become a hero was not the only downside. “Oh, I’m sorry.” Your vis-à-vis said and looked down on his paper. “Don’t apologize, it’s not your fault after all.” “But I brought it up and you seem sad about it.” While that was true, you did not want him to feel guilty about it. So, instead of replying, you tapped on his paper with your pencil. “C’mon, fix that sentence!” Your student complied.

Your study session ended after two and a half hours, in which you had forced Midoriya to re-write his essay about four times. Even though you had dragged him through hell, he asked for your number and to meet you again in the future. Once you had stepped outside, Midoriya pulled out his wallet. “So how much for this lesson?” You looked at him, dumbfounded, before you began to laugh. “W-what’s wrong?” Midoriya lowered the hand that was holding the money when you raised your hands to mutely indicate that you did not want his money. “But it’s your time that you could spend in other ways!”

Even though he had a point, you shook your head. “Normally I’d take money, but I had a different idea,” you explained. “I’d like to ask you to teach me a thing or two about self-defence and fighting. It’s always useful, y’know?” “So you help me with my homework, and I help you train?” You nodded and offered Midoriya your hand. “Deal?” Midoriya shook your hand without hesitation. “Deal!” With that, you started walking back to the campus together.

Since it was getting dark, not too many people were out anymore. A few UA students were on their way back to campus as well, but you did not pay much attention to them. The two people who caught your eye were two girls standing in front of a park’s gates. One of them opened her hand and let her palm face upward. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a flower grew out of the palm of her hand, glowing in a warm, white light that lit up both the girls’ faces. The other girl clapped before doing the exact same. Shared quirks. Soulmates.

You looked down at your own hands.

Besides not being able to become a hero, never finding your soulmate was the other downside of being quirkless. Sure, the number of quirkless people was low in your generation, but there still was not that one person you could find. It was not even proven if quirkless people had a soulmate like people with quirks, who shared one and the same ability with their soulmate. It was not looked down upon to be in a relationship with someone who was not your soulmate, in fact, platonic soulmates were a thing as well as dating someone who was not your soulmate and people embraced that idea. And sometimes you held onto that romantic thought of meeting your soulmate and growing old with them together, either platonically or romantically. But being quirkless made that impossible.

“Why did you stop walking? Are you alright?” Midoriya was a few steps ahead of you already when he stopped and looked back at you. “Y/N?” You tore your eyes away from the girls and forced a smile. “I’m fine, don’t worry!” As the sun finally set, you reached the dorms and said goodbye for the night.

After that, you continued to meet Midoriya for extra tutoring as well as basic fight training, and you started to become friends. Whenever you saw each other on the hallway, he smiled at you sweetly, and you even ate lunch together every now and then because he needed you to read over his homework before class.

The training with Midoriya was exhausting, the hero students had some insane workout routines that you could never dream of completing.

But like every week, there you were again in your PE clothes in the small park surrounding UA. Next to you stood Midoriya, currently telling you about the importance of stretching as you popped your joints with every single movement.

After a while, Midoriya left you to do some push-ups while he activated his quirk to do some training on his own. He dropped his hoodie to the ground, exposing the many scars on his arms. It was not your first time seeing them, but they fascinated you every single time. Midoriya pushed himself so hard and got hurt so often, yet he never gave up on his dream of becoming a hero. You envied him a little – after all his quirk was insanely powerful. A sigh escaped you as you watched him from your planking position. “Are you done already?” Shit, Midoriya had caught you staring. A faint blush adorned his cheeks as he approached you, the green light from his quirk still surrounding him. “Yeah,” you lied, not having done a single push-up. You moved from your current position into a sitting one and Midoriya sat down as well.

“You didn’t do the push-ups, did you?” “You’re right, that was a lie,” you admitted. “You seem distracted, is there something on your mind?” Midoriya’s question caught you off-guard. “Of course, you don’t have to share, but I’m here to listen, if you’d like.” You nodded with a smile. “Thank you, Midoriya.” Taking a few deep breaths, you closed your eyes for a few seconds. The cool evening air smelled like grass and autumn, a calming scent that let you relax a little.

“One of my friends from class 1-C recently met her soulmate,” you told Deku. “Of course, I’m happy for her, she deserves it, but… but I’m jealous at the same time. People like her and you get to be happy with someone, but what about me? I-” you balled your hands to fists as tears dwelled in your eyes. “I’m just someone quirkless who’s doomed to never find someone, you know?” Before your tears started falling, you quickly wiped them away with your hand.

Midoriya looked at you with his brows furrowed. “You’re jealous of me? Because of the quirk I was born with?” His gaze fell on his hands. “Normally I don’t think about the soulmate thing too much, but- but I’ve fallen in love with someone born with a quirk.” Your breath got caught in your throat as you said it out loud for the first time. It was honestly surprising that you managed to admit that to yourself as well as to somebody else. Deku’s eyes shot up again and met yours.

“Oh,” he mumbled, “I’m sorry.” You let out a shaky sigh before you continued. “Deku, that person is you.” A sob shook your body. “But you have this amazing quirk, so I know that it’s already impossible, no matter what I do or what happens now that I told you.” Shock painted Midoriya’s face almost white. His mouth stood agape as he stared at you, no reaction. It was not like you had expected anything different to happen, but it still hurt. Your heart stung and the pain filled your whole chest.

Without your brain even telling your body to do anything, you got up and stood in front of Midoriya. “I’m sorry, forget it. I gotta go.” You turned around on your heels and made your way back to the dorms, stumbling across the grass with trembling legs. This was a nightmare. An actual nightmare. The cold breeze stung on your tear-stained cheeks, but the light of the dormitories was already in sight, promising warmth, and a blanket to hide beneath.

“Y/N! Wait!” You heard footsteps coming closer quickly and Midoriya’s voice yelling your name. “Please wait!” Your legs stopped walking by themselves and you came to a halt. “I- I-,” he struggled for words, but nothing came out, he just kept on stuttering incoherent words and sentences. He reached out and grabbed your hand loosely, but you still felt the way his fingers trembled. “Let me go, Midoriya.” With your free arm, you wiped the tears from your cheeks that had begun to fall again. “Please.” Your hand dropped to your chest and you clutched your shirt directly over your heart. It hurt. It hurt so damn much.

“No.” Midoriya’s voice was quite yet he was sure of what he said. “Y/N, I- that was a lie.” He panted slightly from running after you. “My quirk,” Midoriya sighed as his grip on your hand tightened a little. “I used to be quirkless!” It felt like time stopped around you, Midoriya’s yelling echoed in your head but you could not make sense of it. “What?” You turned around slowly. Midoriya’s eyes were red and filled with tears, and he seemed to struggle with keeping his composure.

“I was born quirkless,” he repeated, calmer this time. His hand let go off yours and limply dropped to his side. “Somebody else gave me my quirk.” “All Might,” you mumbled and Midoriya nodded in confirmation. “Yeah. I inherited his quirk One for All.” He shook his head shortly. “But that’s not important right now.” Midoriya took a step toward you.

“Y/N, I-” a blush crept up his neck and painted his cheeks in a soft pink. “-I believe that you are my soulmate.” For what felt like the hundredth time that day, your heart skipped a beat. “But- but quirkless people-” “-don’t have a soulmate?” Midoriya finished your sentence. “I don’t believe that. And even if I did, it wouldn’t stop me from… from…” The faint pink changed into a deep red. “…liking you…” Your breath got caught in your throat. “You’re joking, right?”

“No! I like you, Y/N,” Midoriya repeated, more confident this time. “And I didn’t say anything because I felt the same way about being quirkless as you do, and because I thought that someone somewhere received the same quirk as me, but that’s not the case. I was born quirkless and I fell for someone who was born quirkless too.” His lips quivered as he told you this, probably dwelling in memories. Midoriya took a step toward you.

“Y/N, it doesn’t matter if we actually are soulmates or not.” He reached out and took one of your hands in his once again. “It doesn’t stop me from liking you. Please, go out with me?” All you were able to do was giving him a short nod.

#izuku midoriya x reader #midoriya izuku x reader #deku x reader #midoriya x reader #midoriya x male reader #midoriya izuku x male reader #deku #midoriya izuku #midoriya #x reader #x yn #x you #x male reader #bnha x reader #bnha x male reader

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vrishchikawrites · 3 years

Text

About YZY leaving YMJ/JFM with her kids Post-WWX Arrival

Dear Dee, feel free to delete or ignore this or post it, whatever floats your boat. This just stuck in my head after those posts and I had to blurt it all to someone. Thanks for taking the time to read my word vomit.

So I had to do this instead of an ask because it got long and I wasn't sure how many asks it'd need or how short I could cut it down without losing parts of the argument. And then other things came up as I was writing and, well. Well..... >_>;;;;

But you know, after that post/ask you had about YZY fics saying 'Fuck U' to YMJ/JFM & leaving both with her kids, I had a sarcastic 'yeah right' attitude about it. Mainly due to a lot of negation emotions to such an abusive (and delusional) bitch, partly due to how she wouldn't do that since it doesn't seem to be something her sort of character would consider either because she'd think of it as 'losing' (losing what, IDK, it's why I consider her type of person crazy) or she legit wouldn't think about such a viable action.

But then later, in the shower, I seriously went 'Wait, she can't fucking do that' and it wouldn't be about how MXTX uses her as a part of the narrative but entirely about the/their culture in the novel; the actions that have and would be taken in response; and her entire toxic personality as well.

1) We already know that the sects and the cultivation world in general is sexist, elitist and so Capital T 'Traditional' to the point that it's starting to petrify and any deviancy from this is an exception rather than the norm. YZY might be a madame of a great sect (for what that's worth considering how shit of a madame she's been and the titles she's chosen for herself) but she's still a woman even with her high rank and the things she's personally accomplished.

Even if she was in her rights to leave a 'bad' marriage, she'd be the one who'd get scolded more instead of JFM by her natal family, her former husband's family and by their entire society at large even if she had a few singular supporters. Because That's Not How Things Are Done in their society and I do believe that such a thing was rare even when it was accepted method by the upper echelons. Especially since it would have to be done by more than YZY simply deciding that She Wants Out and just- goes and Gets Out. With no serious allegations that would allow her to divorce or separate from YMJ/JFM without the input from her family, JFM's family and, I think, possibly some measure of compensation as well. And no, having or bringing in a 'bastard child' is not a serious enough offence for such a humongous decision. I think something more along the lines of treason or crimes against multiple, high-ranking parties would be more along the lines. Maybe.

And even if she does this, she'd be considered 'Used Goods' (such a terrible comment) and there'd be no other good/proper marriage prospects for a divorced woman with children let alone a woman like YZY with her entire abrasive personality and attitude put off even easy-going JFM.

(If she'd been widowed then it'd be more forgiven but I consider that a Real Bad End since, IMO, it would lead to the sudden and inevitable decline of YMJ either via mass exodus of disciples and/or residents of LP; being merged with another sect due to it's unstable leadership; or create an internal political war 'cause I bet you anything that the YMJ Elders/relatives (if they have any) Would Not Want YZY in charge of YMJ when she's already proven herself such a shit betrothed let alone madame.)

2) Speaking of families, while YMJ/JFM/LP as a whole might be glad to see YZY's back, I don't think her natal sect, MSY, will be glad to see her come storming back after all the effort they put into getting that particular marriage alliance with YMJ. And if she brings her children with her? Oh man, oh boy- mother or not, that could be considered as kidnapping or line theft (is that a thing?) especially if YZY is also seriously considering divorce proceedings and raising them as Yu and not Jiang. That could give leave to, for anyone more unforgiving and maybe JFM if he's pushed enough, disown both JYL and JWY from the Jiangs through no fault of their own (though I'm sure YZY would make it so as well as blame JFM for her own decisions and mistakes).

Therefore, any inheritance or benefits they might gain for being legitimised children of a great sect are forfeited. JYL will likely lose that betrothal with JZX because JGS will drop it like a hot potato and JWY won't be a sect heir because YZY literally decided to remove that by deciding to raise JWY as a Yu, no matter their blood relation to JFM. They leave him, they leave YMJ and everything attached with it. Which is if YMJ/JFM doesn't demand MSY to give back their heir/ess and to punish YZY for her actions. Or send all three of them back for the appropriate reactions/decisions.

Their society would demand no less in reaction because, to them, it would seem like YZY had gone mad and JFM would look weak (or weaker) and imply that YMJ is vulnerable and exploitable if JFM doesn't do something in response to her actions. That's not even getting into what the other smaller sects may try to do in an attempt to curry favour with YMJ or what LLJ or QSW would try in order to destroy or diminish YMJ. And whether JFM chooses to demand his children back or not, it may not change the fact that this may give him reason enough to choose a nephew or niece to be the new sect heir especially if, even after getting rid of YZY's poisonous influence, JWY grows up to be his mother's child more than his father's or even his own person.

Either way, such a thing would bring great backlash on YZY, and MSY as well as the collateral. No one would want to give face to her or her children because it would bring up some very uncomfortable questions and scenarios to the other sects- specifically, what would happen if the female members of their clans/sets decided to follow the footsteps of YZY and leave with their children and heirs. Especially if they use it as an excuse to leave for their own comfort and whims and not some legitimate wrongs and dangers. That would create some more restrictions on women thanks to YZY

3) And lastly, if any one of those idiot YZY stans think that she'd ever give up the status of being a madame of a great sect they'd be as crazy or crazier than her. YZY is all about status and power and face. Specifically, her status, power and face and how people in her reach reflect her or 'insult' her. She is a selfish, terrible, abusive and toxic person and can only see people in regards to how they would benefit her and the elevation of her and in no other way. Especially her family. They cannot be their own person, they can only be an extension of her and gods forbid they go against her.

We can see this in how she treats the people she supposedly loves. JFM? Arguments day in, day out along with accusations and slander of cheating, having one(1) supposed 'bastard' and being 'in love' with CSSR. Which all seems sus as hell. And that's when she's actually there and not out 'night hunting'. Even her 'training' seems to border on unhelpful rather then helpful if my vague recollections of juniors fainting from exhaustion can be relied upon (please call me out if they're not or find proof).

JYL? Berated by not being 'strong' but not helped at all to be 'strong'. It doesn't help that YZY seems to believe in the same standards strength in their society- that is, of martial masculine strength which does not and should not apply to JYL who has been said to be sickly. Which means h should have been learning a different way of cultivation/fighting anyway. If that was something she wanted and had been offered in the first place- which I doubt. That isn't even getting into her repeated generational trauma mess of a betrothal which was decided only by those 'sworn sisters', accepted by her as a way out of her terrible home life and puts her squarely within reach of JGS who we know to be a womaniser, rapist, predator and a possible ephebophile considering we don't know the exact age of his youngest 'conquest' or the age of MZY's mother when they met which could be anywhere from 14 to 21.

JWY? Gods, so much meta on him and his(non-) relationships with his parents that I don't think I can contribute more to it. It's been all said and done. Unless people want me to stir the pot by saying that, maybe, just maybe, YZY resents JWY as much as she 'loves' him.Either because he's her son and yet never manages to 'accomplish as much' as WWX or because he's a boy and therefore, more benefits and allowances than a girl/woman- more than anything that YZY ever got without either a fight or screaming at someone about. *shrug*

So, in conclusion to this sudden an unexpected essay that I wrote(I'm so sorry about that, I thought it would be shorter -.-;;;;), YZY leaving YMJ/JFM with her kids? Impossible. Not without some sort of personality transplant or a complete AU. She's too prideful, too bitter, too angry, too everything negative and little positive. She's a resentful product of the values and restraints of her society taken to the extreme negative with a willingness to inflict her pain on others to an abusive degree. But she's also too obsessed and reliant on those same values and restraints to keep up the image of her status. So her? Giving those up? You'd be more likely to see WRH as a doting grandfather than that.

---

Dee - All of this is true and yes YZY leaving YMJ is highly unlikely. While there will be consequences if she decides to leave, she does canonically lives separately from her husband. They seem to be in a situation where they are married but living separately, which was a common way to end a marriage (at least in spirit) back then. She essentially had all the perks of being Madam Jiang but fulfilled none of the responsibilities.

Afaik, her training the Jiang disciples is a donghua thing? I may be wrong but I recall she spent most of her time nighthunting.

As for taking her children along with her- that's completely impossible. At that point, children were the property of the father. She could leave but she would've never been allowed to take JC.

#submission

36 notes · View notes

worldwidemochiguy · 4 years

Text

Sweets (Soft Yandere! Jungkook)

You keep being visited by the most peculiar thief…

➵ in which jungkook steals your lip balm and perfume instead of talking to you, you leave a post-it note with your number on it for the strange thief who only seems to take the most inexplicable items and has a strange sense of responsibility for your wellbeing, and the cute boy in your photography class with the fluffy hair and the oversized sweater keeps getting more and more endearing…

➵ Warnings: Soft Yandere Jungkook, Breaking & Entering but without the Breaking, Reader is a bit of a ditz (lol sorry guys)

➵ Word Count: 4.2K

➵ Masterlist

“Hello, uh, I’d like to… report a crime?”

Your statement, which had always sounded suitably firm and assertive when you practised it in front of the bathroom mirror, ended with an unplanned upturn, making it sound more like a question than you would like.

“Please state your name and address, ma’am.”

You did so, listening anxiously to the tap of a keyboard as your information was filed away. The undoubtedly over-worked police officer on the other end of the line sounded like he was two seconds from falling asleep, and you questioned yourself for the millionth time over whether you really needed to report this or not.

“What is the nature of the crime you are reporting, ma’am?”

“Um… well…”

You twisted your hand into the fabric of your shirt self-consciously, trying to decide the best way to explain the strange little occurrences that had been surrounding your apartment over the last few months. You had not yet found a way to put it without sounding ridiculous, but you supposed there was a first time for everything.

“I, uh, I think someone’s breaking into my apartment and stealing things.”

“You have an intruder?”

“Uh huh,”

“…Are they currently in your residence?”

“No, I think… they come and take things when I’m not here and then they’re gone by the time I get back.”

“What items have been stolen?”

You bit your lip.

“I know it sounds silly, but…”

“No crime is too small to report, ma’am. We are committed to making the lives of everyday citizens safer.”

“Well… they’ve stolen my lip balm like… several times. I keep buying new ones and they keep being stolen after a week or so. And my perfume. And my hairbrush one time, and-”

“Ma’am,” The officer cut you off with the impatience you had been both anticipating and dreading ever since you decided to call the police, “Listen, we don’t have the capacity to deal with prank callers-”

“It’s not a prank call!” You blurted, a momentary burst of desperation overtaking you, “I- um, sorry for interrupting, officer, but this isn’t a prank call. Things have been going missing. I can’t afford to keep replacing my lip balm.”

A sigh crackled across the line, and you pictured the officer maybe taking off his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose like those people in movies always seemed to do when they got frustrated. Personally, you had never found that it helped.

“Are you sure you aren’t just… misplacing them?”

You gasped, offended that even a stranger could think you so stupid. “No! I remember exactly where I leave things and then they just vanish! I swear!”

“Has anything of value ever been taken from your apartment?”

“Yes!” You exclaimed, excited to be able to prove the officer wrong, “My bunny plushy! Mr Snuggles is extremely valuable to me!”

“…Monetary value, I meant. Has anything expensive ever been taken from your apartment?”

There was an embarrassing silence. The officer sighed again, with a little more exasperation colouring his tone.

“If anything significant is stolen, call us back. For now, just… be a bit more careful with your possessions.”

He hung up. You pressed your forehead against the wall and wished your strange thief had taken your phone in one of his little visits. Maybe then you would’ve avoided making that agonising call.

The next morning as you were leaving to go to class, you noticed a pile of discarded post-it notes on your desk — the remnants of a redbull-fuelled late night study session. Your newly purchased lip balm lay next to it. Impulsively, you grabbed a pen and scrawled a message on one of the post-its, sticking it horizontally to the curved surface of the lip balm tube.

it reads:

pls don’t take this i just bought it and this brand is actually v expensive and i am only a struggling college student with loans and chapped lips (。•́︿•̀。)

It might have been a little too polite considering it’s intended recipient was someone who had stolen multiple items from your apartment, but you figured there was no point in being rude. They probably wouldn’t even read it anyway.

You strolled out of your apartment, planning to pick up a smoothie on the way to your lecture, and promptly forgot all about it.

When you returned home to find a pile of newly bought lip balms on your desk — all embossed with the logo of your favourite brand — you were slightly puzzled. But, once you remembered the note you had left- well, the confusion didn’t exactly vanish, but at least you were given some context.

The note had disappeared, along with the lip balm you had used a scant few times. But, you didn’t understand what the thief’s aim was. Why on earth would they steal small things like lip balm and perfume? And why would they buy you new copies of the product? Wasn’t that counterproductive?

you’re very bad at your job

Your next note read, stuck to your fridge as you left to grab coffee with your study group. It remained there for a few days, and you couldn’t ignore the way your heart sank a little each time you saw it hadn’t been taken.

After six days, when it finally vanished, you felt an odd sense of happiness bubble up within you. Yes, there was someone routinely breaking into your apartment, but at least now you had an open channel of communication with them. They had left a brand new bottle of your preferred perfume — which had been stolen at least twice before you stopped bothering to buy it because perfume is pricy — resting on your kitchen counter, beside a box of your favourite chocolates.

As you dug into the box later, snuggled in a blanket and having a Studio Ghibli film marathon, you didn’t even consider the fact that the sweets might be tampered with. If they wanted to kill me, they would’ve killed me already, you reasoned to yourself, sucking the icing sugar off your fingers. Nor did you question how they knew your favourite chocolate. If they broke into your apartment as much as you assumed they did, they probably knew you better than your own parents by now.

You were the very definition of a broke college student. As far as you were concerned, if this random stranger wanted to buy you things and sometimes clean up your apartment — you had definitely come back to a home tidier than you had left it more than once — then you certainly weren’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe it was a little naïve of you, but… you had already called the police, and they hadn’t cared.

thank you for the perfume and chocolate <3

You wrote next morning, hesitating slightly before putting the heart. Before you could convince yourself not to, you scribbled another line underneath.

i wish you’d write back someday…

As you walked to class, you scolded yourself for the butterflies swooping in your stomach. They’re literally a criminal, you told yourself, Stop getting crushes on anyone who shows you the slightest bit of attention. You don’t even know their name.

Despite the small amount of common sense that you did have mocking you all day, you sat in classes and daydreamed about your mystery home intruder. Would they read the note? Would they be happy about your appreciation? Would they — you bit your lip — would they write back?

You felt like a dumb schoolgirl, excited by the prospect of a badly written love note shoved in her locker. And, like a school girl, you trudged back home with your arms weighed down by class work, a billion essays and quizzes that had to be completed overnight. Did your professors not realise you had a life outside of college? Not that you did, of course, but like… in principle.

You were so preoccupied with the coursework that you didn’t even notice the note stuck to your bedroom door. After an hour of studying, you rose wearily to start fixing yourself something to eat, and your eyes snagged on a flash of yellow.

You squeaked, almost falling over yourself in your rush to get to the door and read the note.

i’m glad you liked them. i’m sorry i took your things, that was mean of me. i tried to only take things you wouldn’t miss, but i guess that backfired… i just wanted to feel close to you. and these notes… are the closest i’ve ever been. i know that must sound weird, but… well. i’m a weird guy, i guess. i just liked hearing from you. that’s all.

~ koo <3

You didn’t stop freaking out for a full five minutes. After that, you poured over every detail of the letter, eager to extricate any fragment of knowledge possible. You ended up with a list which you scribbled down in your diary, above which you pasted the note.

The list went as follows:

They want to feel close to you

They have not talked to you before, since the notes are the closest they’ve ever been, but they must have seen you in person at least once

They are a he

(you adamantly did not get flustered about that)

and

4. He calls himself Koo

When you left your apartment the next morning, you placed your note on the exact same spot he had left his. An indirect touch.

hi koo !!!!!!!!

i was so excited to see you had written something!! you know, if you want to talk to me more often, there is an easier way…

Underneath you had scrawled your phone number, hastily and not allowing for regret before you flounced out of the apartment. The reason why you were in such a rush was because you were about to go to your favourite class: Photography 101.

You had taken it as an extra credit, something that interested you but not enough that you wanted to pursue it as a career. You had expected it to be fun, something artistic to break up the monotony of classes. What you had not expected was the dreamy boy who sat in the first row and had full possession of your heart.

You didn’t even know his name, but you were pretty sure you were half in love with him. With fluffy brown hair that fell over his forehead whenever he leaned over to scribble down notes, and cute bunny teeth that stuck out in a flustered smile whenever the professor praised his work in class, he was perhaps the cutest boy you had ever seen.

Though you were sure he had many girls sighing after him, he seemed to be really shy, only ever speaking in class when called on, and even then it was in a quiet, soft voice. He was kind of like you in that respect. But that was where your similarities ended.

Yes, you thought, sighing as you watched him pay avid attention to the professor’s lecture on the composition of frames, his cute doe eyes wide and twinkling like stars were embedded in the pupils, He is way out of my league.

It took three days for you to lose hope. You hadn’t received a text, nor had you found any notes left for you. You tried not to be disappointed, even as your traitorous sub-conscience mocked you for being able to scare away the one person who arguably paid you the most attention.

You didn’t really have many friends, and the ones you did have preferred each other over you, and often left you out of activities because of your shy nature. You guessed this whole thing had just been a way to feel like you actually mattered to someone, like, for once, someone cared about you, but-

You were pulled out of your musings as your phone chimed.

From: Unknown Number

[6:48 PM]

this is koo

The two of you texted every day, and soon enough you were hiding your phone underneath your desk in order to chat to him, keeping your phone on your person at all times in case koo wanted to talk. Of course, the only class you didn’t do this in was Photography, so you could spend a blissful forty-five minutes staring at the boy who played the role of your husband in all of your favourite daydreams.

Koo still broke into your house occasionally, and he still left you sweet, considerate gifts. Often, you would receive texts like this:

From: koo ✨

[3:24 PM]

sweets i’ve been checking your groceries and your vegetables are not being eaten as often as they should be

i know you have a sweet tooth and that’s cute but please try to stay healthy

To: koo ✨

[3:25 PM]

but i can’t cook all i know how to make is microwaveable mac n cheese :///////

You came back home that day to discover a bunch of Tupperwares full of pre-made healthy meals and a note stuck to the top of them.

try microwaving these :)

To: koo ✨

[3:01 AM]

koo are you awake?

From: koo ✨

[3:01 AM]

i am now

what’s wrong?

To: koo ✨

[3:02 AM]

i can’t sleep :////////

From: koo ✨

[3:02 AM]

sweets you need to go to bed

you have an early morning class

To: koo ✨

[3:02 AM]

i knowwwwww

i just… i can’t sleep without mr snuggles :((

From: koo ✨

[3:03 AM]

Mr Snuggles??

???

To: koo ✨

[3:03 AM]

my cuddly bunny :((((

i think you took him a while ago

could i maybe have him back…?

From: koo ✨

[3:03 AM]

Shit

i didn’t know you couldn’t sleep without him

[3:04 AM]

sweets im so sorry

To: koo ✨

[3:04 AM]

its okay koo

From: koo ✨

[3:04 AM]

no it isn’t

you’re loosing sleep because of me

fuck

i could… bring him to you?

To: koo ✨

[3:05 AM]

you’d do that?

…i could see you?

From: koo ✨

[3:05 AM]

no i’d leave him outside

you’d have to promise not to come out until i text you saying i’ve left

To: koo ✨

[3:06 AM]

but kooooo :(((((

From: koo ✨

[3:07 AM]

sweets

To: koo ✨

[3:07 AM]

okay :((((((((((

but i expect you to leave a big box of chocolates on my pillow for me to come home to tomorrow evening!!

From: koo ✨

[3:08 AM]

of course sweets <3

im gonna get going now

don’t look outside your apartment

To: koo ✨

[3:08 AM]

okay

From: koo ✨

[3:34 AM]

im gone and mr snuggles is waiting outside for you

he might have a little gift with him

You trudged outside your apartment, rubbing your eyes blearily, and looked down to see your beloved plushie clutching a single rose in its paws. You gasped, leaning down to pick up the flower gently, and you noticed all the thorns had been taken off. Koo must’ve removed them so that you didn’t accidentally hurt yourself.

You felt warmth flood you, drowning the butterflies in your stomach and replacing them with something much less fleeting, much less shallow.

It sunk into your bones, into your heart, into your breath as you sighed, squeezing your long-lost Mr Snuggles close to your face. He carried the familiar scent of nostalgia, but also something different, something sharper. You realised with a jolt that you were smelling Koo’s cologne.

You went back to bed, nuzzled your face into the plushy’s furry belly, and dreamed of fluffy brown hair and bunny smiles.

Though with Mr Snuggles’ help you were able to sleep wonderfully, you were only able to do so for four hours before your alarm jolted you back into early reality. Honestly, you were sorely tempted to just ditch class, but it was Photography, and if you missed your regular dose of the cute boy in the front row then you thought you might just crumble into dust.

You dragged yourself out of bed, pulling on your softest oversized hoodie — a gift from Koo which, now that you thought about it, smelled like the same cologne that Mr Snuggles did. You flushed at the thought of him giving you one of his hoodies to wear, though you couldn’t say exactly why that image charmed you.

You stumbled into the lecture, arms full of textbooks because you knew you wouldn’t have the energy to return back to your apartment to retrieve the relevant materials for your next class later in the day. Your excellent plan was to crash in the library directly after this, have a two hour power-nap, and then make yourself get up in time for Calculus.

You barely had the energy to listen to the professor droning on and on about… the perfect lense, or whatever. You allowed yourself the indulgence of tuning out, resting your chin on your palm and gazing dreamily at the boy in the front row. He was taking notes, as per usual. What a good student! You praised him in your head. I bet he has the best handwriting.

Despite your best efforts, you fell asleep within ten minutes. You were woken as the class concluded by the clamour of students grabbing their materials and the scrape of chairs as your classmates stood up, leaving you behind — the only one half-splayed across the desk in front of you.

You jerked upright, grabbing your stuff in one hand as you tried to tug on your bag, eventually succeeding with much struggle, only to drop it all again as soon as you stood up. You whimpered, watching helplessly as your textbooks fanned across the floor. You saw one of them split along the spine as it landed on an open page.

That cost me two hundred dollars, you thought absently, and I just chucked it down like a bouncy ball.

Suddenly, you glimpsed someone crouching down and gathering them all up into a sturdy pile. As he stood up, your vision was full of fluffy brown hair, errant strands falling into star-filled doe eyes.

Oh. Oh no.

“H-Here you are,” He murmured, passing you the pile gently, making sure you were able to take the weight before leaving them in your arms. When he leaned close to you, you breathed in a scent that was oddly familiar, and yet new at the same time. As his hands receded, his skin brushed against yours for a second and you swear your vision blanked out.

“Thanks,” You whispered, your gaze so firmly focused on the floor that you didn’t notice his flushed cheeks.

As soon as you got to the library, you whipped out your phone, all tiredness banished from your system by that momentous experience. You had talked to him.

To: koo ✨

[8:47 AM]

koo i think im in love

From: koo ✨

[8:47 AM]

what

with who

To: koo ✨

[8:47 AM]

this boy in my photography class

he’s just so-

[8:48 AM]

i can’t even explain it

i dropped my textbooks and he picked them up for me and i stg i almost cried

From: koo ✨

[8:48 AM]

wait

seriously??

To: koo ✨

[8:49 AM]

yeah i cry at like the drop of a hat

From: koo ✨

[8:49 AM]

no-

cute

but i mean

that’s who you’re in love with?

To: koo ✨

[8:49 AM]

yeah?

From: koo ✨

[8:49 AM]

gray sweater

[8:50 AM]

big eyes

tall-ish

that’s him???

To: koo ✨

[8:50 AM]

OMG YOU’RE IN MY PHOTOGRAPHY CLASS AREN’T YOU

From: koo ✨

[8:50 AM]

WHAT

IM NOT

To: koo ✨

[8:50 AM]

OMGGGGGGG

YOU SAW HIM HELP ME SO YOU MUST BE IN MY CLASSSS

[8:51]

okay!

are you the frat guy who always comes in hungover???

no judgement

From: koo ✨

[8:51 AM]

To: koo ✨

[8:52 AM]

are you the guy who only ever wears knitwear???

From: koo ✨

[8:52 AM]

To: koo ✨

[8:53 AM]

…are you the professor?

From: koo ✨

[8:53 AM]

NO!!!!!

oh my god lets just meet up or something before i explode

To: koo ✨

[8:53 AM]

WAIT

ARE YOU SERIOUS????

From: koo ✨

[8:54 AM]

…you’re that excited to meet me?

To: koo ✨

[8:54 AM]

OF COURSE I AM

OH MY GODDDD

WHEN?

From: koo ✨

[8:54 AM]

now?

i can meet you at the campus coffee shop in like five minutes?

To: koo ✨

[8:55 AM]

five minutes???

that’s not enough time koo i have to go home and pick out something pretty to wear !!

From: koo ✨

[8:55 AM]

it doesn’t matter what you wear, you’re always beautiful to me

To: koo ✨

[8:56 AM]

you

you think im

b-beautiful

: ’ ))))))))))

From: koo ✨

[8:57 AM]

…

haha see you there!!

To: koo ✨

[8:57 AM]

GET BACK HERE WE HAVE TO TALK ABOUT THIS-

You sat on an empty table, fiddling with the tea bag tag which hung over the side of your mug. You had bought Green Tea as an effort to calm yourself down so you weren’t too anxious to meet Koo, but it hadn’t worked because you were impatient and sipped it too soon so now you were sat there nursing a burnt tongue like an idiot.

You knew it was irrational to be self-conscious. He already knew who you were, and seemed to like you, it was just you that was in the dark. You went over the possible people Koo could be, mentally cycling through the boys in your photography class. It was an annoyingly large class, which meant he would be anyone from the guy who smelled like Funyuns to-

Fluffy-haired boy strolled into the coffee shop and you let out an involuntary sigh. He seemed to be cheerful, a smile exposing his bunny teeth and making his cheeks bunch up adorably, with like, five different sets of dimples poked into them. You had never agreed more with the saying that dimples were caused by an angel’s kiss.

Well, at least I’ll have something nice to look at while I wait, you thought, just before all your thoughts suddenly tipped out of your head when you realised he was walking towards your table.

“Is this seat taken?” He grinned, before sliding into the seat across from you.

You whimpered, and his smile grew devastatingly wider.

“Hi,” He breathed, before his gaze flickered down to your mug of tea, clutched so tightly in your hands that you worried the ceramic might shatter. “You didn’t get hot chocolate? I thought you had a sweet tooth?”

“Uhm-” You choked, before forcing yourself to get a grip. How would Koo feel if he walked in here and saw you sitting with another guy? “I’m actually- I’m waiting for someone. Sorry.”

If it was possible — and it certainly seemed to be — the boy’s grin broadened even more, his eyes crinkling into adorable half-moons.

“Is that so? Is he your boyfriend?”

“No!” You blurted, before flushing profusely. The boy across from you seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the display. “I mean- uhm, I don’t know. Maybe? This is our- this is our first actual meeting.”

“Oh?” The boy tilted his head, “Really? How exciting.”

You hummed in agreement, eyes fixed on your slowly cooling beverage. You raised it to your mouth to take a hesitant sip and- nope, still too hot. You whined quietly, rubbing your sore tongue against the inside of your cheek to try and soothe it.

“Oh, sweets,” The boy murmured across from you, and you were too distracted to notice the nickname. He plucked the mug out of your hands and placed it on the other side of the table, as if he was trying to make sure it couldn’t hurt you anymore. “Are you okay? Do you want me to take you to the campus infirmary?”

“Wha- no, it’s okay,” You mumbled, lisping slightly on your burnt tongue and blushing when he cooed over you, “It’s- I’m waiting here for someone, and- I mean, I don’t even know your name-”

“It’s Jungkook,” He interrupted cheekily, deliberately ignoring the rest of your statement, “Some people call me Kookie, and really special people call me… Koo.”

Oh. Oh.

Fuck.

“Really special people?” You asked, your voice small, and not because of the burn.

“Well, people…” Jungkook- Koo paraphrased, tilting his head slightly, “I guess it would be more accurate to say… one really special person.”

“Really?” You breathed, and Jungkook leaned over the table, close enough that you could smell his cologne, the same scent embedded in the fabric of your hoodie- his hoodie.

“The most special person.” He murmured, the fervent emotion packed in each word speaking louder than any increase of volume could.

You had never been anyone’s most special person before, but, as you looked into Jungkook’s chocolate eyes, you started to believe you could almost taste it, sticky sweet on your lips. And when Jungkook eventually, finally coaxed your lips in a gentle kiss, you let him in, and found out that happiness tastes reassuringly honey-sweet.

#bts fanfiction #Yandere bts #soft yandere bts #yandere jungkook #soft yandere jungkook #bts fanfic #bts fic #bts imagines #bts x reader #bts scenarios #yandere kpop #bts jungkook x reader #bts jungkook #bts jungkook imagines #bts Jungkook fanfic #bts jeon jungkook

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bitter-sweet-coffee · 2 years

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look idek what warning to put here, but there's like, a novel and a half below the cut that's just... 6 hours of me going on tangents i never finish or clarify. no proofreading. no organization. it's absolutely not worth your time. but... i literally spent so long writing it that if i don't hit post it'll somehow be even more pointless?!?

basically there are no positive outcomes in any scenario with this post but the only remaining tragedy achievement is me writing all this and then deleting it. what proof will i have that i wrote nonsense for HOURS to avoid my research because i double dosed my meds and had too much caffeine?!? i gotta save this for the memories because no one will believe me if i tell them i live a fucking crazy life and use this as an example.

also for the record i'm goin thru it psychologically at the time of writing this. like, mania-turned-psychotic-episode, overstimulated, disassociated, exhausted, and currently procrastinating a LOT of serious things which only adds to my stress and scatterbrained gibberish. so like... please be kind but also don't get all freaked out either; i have enough psychological control rn to assure you i'm fine and this is just how i am sometimes... but i usually don't make extensive posts online during my more unstable periods. i gotta use the internet rn anyways tho so who's gonna stop me from hyperfocusing on the WRONG tasks?!? 🤪

okay, just had to say all that, and if you think my disclaimer is long? honey... you don't even have a big storm coming just keep scrolling and don't look back. don't click read more. it's not just "read more" like, it's MORE. a LOT more. too much. and like, there's literally nothing valuable there it isn't like my usual longposts that have a point or vague coherence. it was simply a huge waste of my time and it'll be an even bigger loss for you.

i can't even recommend mental stability as armour or a requirement since taking that away from you will make me feel bad, so if you're healthy please don't damage yourself with this.

ADMISSION REQUIREMENT: freaks, executive dysfunction regulars, people in boring classes, insomniacs, and sadists can proceed. and i'm STILL sorry to y'all because i didn't enjoy this either.

... so tell me why social media discourse takes itself more seriously than these people.

i've had profs with multiple doctorates and influential publications that changed academic discussions forever who like, roleplay deltarune characters on discord with students to avoid marking papers or cancel the last 2 weeks of class because they don't want to do 9 am lectures and know that we're all busy and probably gonna skip anyways. profs who change their mind and take assignments out of the syllabus since no one wants to do them and they don't wanna mark them. profs who forget their own publication deadlines because they were reading fanfiction, profs who hate the university administration more than you do, profs with mental health issues, queer profs, profs who play video games, or have tumblr, or make spotify playlists for every lecture and think the grading system is stupid, profs who hand out extensions if you ask because they weren't going to mark them all at once anyways, and profs who assign weekly pdf articles instead of big books and 300 dollar textbooks— even their own— because they're exhausting to read and super overpriced.

so many instructors in english literature are shifting away from academic essays and towards multimedia creations and fun writing prompts. "i don't want to read a 30 page research essay when i can read a brief informal paragraph explaining how this video game has the same vibes as this anonymous poem!" and "you can record a podcast or paint a picture or write fanfiction or do a minecraft letsplay as a character or honestly? do whatever you want as long as there's passion with coherent thoughts behind it!" and "word limits are stupid because adding nonsense to drag out your argument makes the paper worse: write whatever comes naturally as long as you sufficiently explain your argument but please don't make me read 70 pages in a 200 level course this is supposed to be easy on everyone"

i'll be real with you: academics are fucking bored. the content is stale. students dismiss profs because they seem like pretentious assholes who don't care about who/what they teach, but 99.9% of the time profs only seem dry and unapproachable because no one reciprocated their enthusiasm, and it was super awkward during classes, so they stopped trying.

some younger profs haven't stopped trying because they understand and haven't gone numb to their own content yet, and it's so painful to watch them put out good vibes and get ghosted by hostile students too focused on marks or checking things off their to-do list when the profs themselves would prefer conversations over the stupid assignments they're required to give you.

we talk about gamers, artists, other freelancers, musicians, thespians, dancers, and so many other career paths that require sacrifices, risks, and prejudice THAT I AM NOT DISMISSING but at least there are people acknowledging the isolation, instability, mental and physical health issues, social-wide neglect, and resilience of these people. to some extent anyways. people who break free from the mold and do something they love in spite of the consequences?

well, haha, if you voluntarily pay a fuckton of money and spend the duration of your 20's in school when everyone around you is actually earning money from jobs or at least enjoying their friday nights THERE IS SOMETHING DEEPLY WRONG WITH YOU!!! even if you get placement, if you don't have tenure (hard to get) the faculty is gonna dump extra shit on you that needs to be perfect or say goodbye to your crappily paid job. do you know how many publications and conferences and deadlines and actual work goes into that crap?!? you're supposed to answer questions no one in your field gives a FUCK about with no guidance or support or outline even though everyone is demanding you get your research done and then they're never happy with it. the elders in your field hate you (a cycle that hasn't been broken yet because those older esteemed people with tenure were in your boat once too) and i have a feeling no one outside the academic world likes you either since you're too hard to understand, pretentious, have no life, etc...

oh and on top of that? you gotta teach a bunch of people who don't wanna be in your class, hate the content because a) another instructor ruined it for them or b) it's a degree requirement and tbh you probably didn't have a choice either since 9/10 times this isn't what you wanted to teach and/or the faculty admin made you include it anyways. all that other work? well now you have to grade shit that a bunch of people didn't wanna write: even if profs have TA's to help with grading they're still required to handle a chunk of it and also deal with TA questions/concerns/regradings/pissed students/policies they're confused about that you're ALSO confused about. oh and a bunch of stupid questions since people don't read instructions and decide blame you for that?

also... do you know HOW FUCKING HARD IT IS TO TEACH??? you have to like, triple understand it and predict/plan for every fucking misunderstanding/question/problem that you can think of. including stupid questions. you'll also get a lot of people who ask things you either don't have the answer for or have the answer for but someone doesn't like it. and even if you're a flawless instructor who can handle every academic/behind the scenes/personal/basic human responsibilities or task (unlikely but i know profs who come close for at least 2 of those) someone is gonna be a dick about it.

... that dick is probably a student who is pissed they had to actually go to at least one lecture, semi pay attention, and read assignment instructions to get a good mark.

... brats who get mad about deadlines because they have other responsibilities and need extensions who go batshit insane when marks aren't released yet

... some y'all aren't gonna like this one: disabled students who say academia is ableist and profs are always evil if they don't accommodate and show sympathy because mental/physical health hinders their performance... but the thought that their prof might be disabled never crosses their mind. just like how you don't need to disclose that information, they don't either! profs can be neurodivergent. they can have conditions you aren't aware of. suffer from chronic pain. are battling an illness you don't know about. they can have mental illnesses. trauma. so many other examples, and this isn't a disability per say but THEY CAN HAVE PERSONAL EMERGENCIES TOO. maybe it's menstrual cramps, executive disfunction, someone close to them died, they relapsed on SH or addiction, are being abused or have been abused in the past, forgot their meds that day, cried all night, couldn't get out of bed, their favourite/comfort character died so they're feeling sick and can't focus on the lesson, didn't have time to eat because a loved one needs them, got triggered by the subject matter and don't know how to teach it, have a surgery next weekend and are worried about giving extensions since they won't he able to grade/put your marks in before THEIR deadline, had a bad interaction or just woke up feeling like crap so they're crossing their fingers the lecture runs smoothly, only to get shitty emails or bullied on rmp?

and y'know what? i don't care if your prof seems like a dick, because we're open minded about those appearing to be rude who are actually victims that didn't receive enough support to to their personal experiences and/or generational/ethical conditioning... until they're a 60 year old white guy who rolls his eyes when someone slyly ask a question or counters something he said to "school him" and "prove he's an overpaid, outdated, problematic bigot." maybe it seems really badass to people who are 2 weeks into the course... but he's been correcting that crappy misinformation for 30 years and your "okay boomer" attitude couldn't be more misplaced; this guy has probably been in the field longer than your parents have been alive and you think he missed this obvious oversight after teaching this course for decades?

if you think for a second that someone like my imaginary prof has it easy because of gender/race/sexuality/religion/ableness there are so many flaws to you logic because a) you can't confirm any of that shit and b) do you think extensions, accommodations, and other resources were available when they were getting their degree or even during most of their lifetime? i mean shit, we're all about helping meemaw understand what pronouns are and how they're used until it's your prof who was beat by his dad and classmates because "university is for devil worshipping snobs and faggots! if you think you're too good for the family business you're dead to me" and thinks this is normal. it doesn't matter if his peers/instructors were all "cishet white men" (since no one else counted as a person and they couldn't be anything else anyways) because if they were all forcefed toxic masculinity and misinformation that literally no one else could correct, embracing the privilege was their only move.

yeah yeah this isn't limited to profs since it's a sloppy and reductive commentary on entire generations that i'm not putting enough effort into, so take it with a grain of salt and try to hear me out in good faith since i'm improvising as i write this in a very unstable state with no intentions of proofreading or ensuring my point is clear. basically, the privileges we acknowledge in others are not the only ones out there because WE have privileges they don't. if you want "privileged people who benefit from the prejudiced foundation of a society that oppresses and profits off of suffering minorities" feat. more social media hot take discourse buzzwords etc etc etc.

"fuck reductive labels because they're inaccurate and build on outdated western mentalities, but also i'm gonna continue to judge someone based on labels i give them because i 100% know a person's race/gender/sexuality/ableness/psyche/religion/other things i consider to be privilege better than they do because they don't know what these things are and if they do it's wrong!!!"

okay, maybe YOU can pick and choose queer content based on if a contributor has a "your fave is problematic" entry or if the representation is approved by the community, take "am i gay?" quizzes in middle school, overcome internal prejudices through social media discourse, learn ethics through fandom trial and error, see enough cancellations to understand what NOT to do, or get enough adhd tiktoks on your fyp to self diagnose/get a formal diagnosis/access medical support/read articles and understand the medical side of things to validate your experiences/practice coping mechanisms and google tips/talk to other people with adhd/work on accepting you aren't a defect who didn't try hard enough/receive accommodations/know you aren't alone even if your current environment doesn't accept you because other places and people do. maybe this segment is too long but you at least has the time and ability to read it, on an electronic device, which you can access almost any time btw, and it'll give you access to endless content (which is somehow even more endless if you download a vpn and switch regions: yeah, infinity plus infinity level shit. oh and that's like 1% of the internet we're using all the maths in this parentheses tangent that's within a tangent within a tangent multiplied by a billion more regressed all inside a whopping procrastination activity. yay me! ok no more meta shit i already forgot where this fragment/sentence/paragraph/section/rant was going 7 times now)

okay. maybe you got this far and are totally lost, and i have no way of knowing how extensive the psychological damage is because I'M not even reading this post, so the real conversation is between you and the words on your screen, i have nothing to do with this experience. my fingers may have typed everything so far but my brain has been playing shrek 2 the entire time, so this is your mental health check since there is no thesis or sense of direction but i'm exhausted despite not being mentally present unlike you. i am just typing words as they appear based on writing patterns and routine from when i'm awake.

^^^ that's not a joke or shitpost btw so even if i've led you to believe it is at some point, so i am gonna be fully transparent in the caplocked paragraph below. it is as close as you're getting to me, bitter-sweet-coffee or whatever name you know me by, being aware and in control of my actions for the entirety of this derailed rant:

OKAY, BEFORE WE RESUME OUR SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING, I AM FORCING MYSELF BACK INTO MY BODY AND STEALING BACK MY SENSE OF SELF JUST TO EMPHASIZE WHAT I'M ABOUT TO SAY, SO YOU KNOW I AM BEING HONEST. BABES, I AM REGAINING CONTROL OF MY PSYCHE TO ENSURE THAT AMIDST ALL THIS DISASSOCIATED WORDVOMIT, YOU CAN TRUST SOMETHING 100% THAT I ACTUALLY MEAN. A MOMENT IN THIS BITCH THAT MY LESS UNSTABLE SELF WILL ALSO AGREE WITH. CLARITY BURIED IN THE 11TH HOUR OF THIS NEVER-ENDING STREAM-OF-CONSCIOUSNESS WALL OF TEXT. MY DARLINGS, i have no fucking clue what this post is supposed to be. there was probably an outline or vague concept 3ish hours ago when i started, but good luck asking me what it is now! some parts read like a viral tumblr psa but there are way too many rushed ideas that branch into tangents and unanswered questions. yeah i know there's no fucking coherence, but even though i'm aware everything i'm putting online this week is extremely concerning, it doesn't make anyone feel better if i say i know or put disclaimers because instability makes people uncomfortable. yeah we like freaks on the internet and y'all expect this shit from me by now, but even this is too much for my shitposting reputation, because at least i typically have enough control over my brain to proofread or follow a train of thought. i mean shit, not even i'm following this and it's my writing, which isn't even the most confusing thing i'm able to decipher, so unless you're god or extremely unstable this is probably the most incoherent thing you've ever read or at least since beowulf... or like, french. or russian cursive. or doctor-handwriting. or flat earth conspiracies. or the code to sonic 06 because NO ONE knows what the fuck happened there. actually, if you've used wattpad or twitter there's a chance you can make sense of this, but if you use either of those apps enough to comprehend their contents you're probably not fluent enough in actual recognized languages to successfully open tumblr and get here in the first place. okay, i can't think of anymore jokes that aren't even good so let's move on! basically, i love y'all, and even if i know this post is a train-wreck of a mistake that will worry people, it ain't gonna stop me. sure i might be goofy, unstable, informal, and hard to understand, but i also have credentials as an academic, well-spoken, published, articulate, accomplished, REPUTABLE person when i need to be in formal settings offline. FOR THE RECORD that's not a flex: we know i don't do labels or ego stroking beyond semi-satirical rarepair supremacy jokes and sonic lore flexes. my genuine intelligence has been my saving grace because i just KNOW if people thought i was some american teen from tiktok with no formal education or career accomplishments who regurgitates misinformation they saw on twitter y'all would REPORT ME!!! I WOULD BE BULLIED OFFLINE! "who's this cunt with the bad takes?!?" followed by "no no dw it's just another bsc moment on tumblr" is so important to bring up rn because it's not supposed to be a brag guys, my educational reputation is all i have to justify the stupid shit i post on here 😭 if i didn't remind people i am smart and accomplished when i need to be you'd think this is all i'm capable of and conclude that my stupidity is my full potential... THIS ISNT EVEN MY FINAL FORM! gah, i'm getting imposter syndrome and this was supposed to be the shorter heart-to-heart in a "brief" intermission that turned into another derailment. alright, even if there are glimmers of big brain theses buried anywhere that just needed an author from a healthier time and place, we know damn well i'd procrastinate/overthink/forget them if i deleted or drafted this monstrosity for another day... also i'm on mobile we know tumblr won't fucking save this LMAO IF THIS DELETES OR THE APP CRASHES (if you're reading this it obviously didn't, so idk why i'm @ ing a nonexist target) I'M GONNA BE SO MAD EVEN THOUGH THIS IS GARBAGE, SO A GLITCH FROM TUMBLR WOULD DO EVERYONE A FAVOUR. ITS MY GARBAGE THAT I WASTED VALUABLE TIME AND ENERGY ON!!!

wow. i discovered the text-block limit, that's embarrassing. at least it forced me to finish a thought (kinda) and complete my moral takeaway from like, 3-5 thousand words ago. SO LET'S GET BACK INTO IT!

okay look, i'm not suggesting it's everyone's job to be a doormat to mean old professors. that was where this was going, right? because even though spent a really long time on privilege and how older generations that are stuck in their ways deserve more compassion, you shouldn't let some dude hatecrime people and torture students. generally speaking, you shouldn't write off bad behaviour as a trauma response because even though i believe everyone is a good person if they have enough support, compassion, resources, and are encouraged to want to change... bitch this isn't a fucking utopia we're living in a fucking death circus. the last thing on people's minds is giving harvey fucking weinstein a redemption arc even if that would fix some shit because awful people learning to be good people teaches growth and self awareness that leads to more accountability and prevents more bad people from hurting others because resources and normalized support and systemic causes for bad people blah blah blah even I'M sick of my own tangents.

actually... this proves my point— the most recent unfinished one that is. YEAH, WE CAN UNPACK THE MORALITY AND PROGRESSIVE IDEAL COURSES OF ACTION AND UTOPIAN TAKEAWAYS FOR EVERY FUCKING SITUATION. NOT EVERYTHING IS BLACK AND WHITE. NOTHING YOU SAY CAN EVER BE ALL-ENCOMPASSING BECAUSE WORDS ARE HUMAN INVENTIONS THAT ARE NOT DESIGNED TO ACCOMMODATE EVERY SCENARIO. YAY, MISQUOTED NIHILISTIC DERRIDIAN HOT TAKES FOR MY GAY SONIC BLOG, RIGHT?!?

we all get it (probably). everything has an exception. but, as i stare anxiously at my clock and try to calculate how many hours i've been typing for instead of working on my actual work that matters, it's kinda obvious:

we don't have the fucking time or energy to do in depth discussions for every conceivable thing. no position will ever be enough, no words will capture truth in its rawest form because humans... have no clue what the FUCK they're doing. language, arts, the scientific method: the tools we use to express ourselves, the very resources we rely on as we try to pinpoint something undeniable, something constant, the way we go about actually PROVING something??? we can't even fucking agree on those! we made maths and sciences and words and arts but we can't even trust them because... well. if WE fuck up a lot and established ways to not fuck up... they're also fucked up.

sure we programmed computers and say they make perfect numbers but girl,,, WE made the computer and the numbers. sure it finishes our formulas better than we do but did the guy making the formula do a good job? maybe, but how do we know it hasn't been warped over time to an unrecognizable degree. there are billions of languages with endless dialects and regional variations for each one. WHO GENDERED THE FUCKING NOUNS IN FRENCH??? YOU'RE TELLING ME THERE ARE WORDS THAT ONLY EXIST IN ONE LANGUAGE? LIKE, THERE ARE NO TRANSLATIONS??? okay, so what the FUCK does that mean if we're the ones inventing translations in the first place? don't make me think about all the dead languages and their secrets or all the lost texts and stories... aight now i'm just sad

sceptic prompts aside, i hope you understand what i mean when i say we're never gonna do a perfect job of explaining shit. that's probably why i started so many things here and got distracted because i predict "what if's" and feel the need to sub-explain every ambiguity. that's not a valid excuse for this literary hatecrime but it's a bit of context i suppose.

where was this going? see my point?!? okay this was supposed to be the quick return to my pre-intermission thoughts that fixes shit, but nah it caused more problems. adding to the never-ending pile of jibberish.

RIGHT THE CRAPPY PROFS. yeah you have bigger things to worry about just don't be a dick and treat academia with a petty attitude but then demand acceptance and understanding because peace and love and social justice mantras. the diversity you're advocating for should extend to those who didn't have it, even if those people are shitty and misinformed as a result of their less progressive upbringing.

BASICALLY, EVEN THE PEOPLE YOU DONT THINK HAVE IT HARD DESERVE THE COMPASSION I WAS PUSHING EARLIER. the sobstory profs and the absolute cunts you want to strangle are both dealing with shit and i don't expect you to "fix them" but if i see people using bad prof anecdotes to justify hating all/some educators i'll eat your skin like it's kfc or something. idk, apparently people LOVE chicken skin! insert a featherless biped joke here if you want and if it'll make sense for you, i just wanted a threat that wasn't gonna be too mean because reading to this point is punishment enough even if you deserve worse lmao. the "privileged" profs still went through hell and the last thing we need are more generalizations based on profiling. mean profs could have been nice once so maybe power through the rbf and dryness by continuing to be nice and attentive: you might just save someone! and future students! and your gpa!

okay, no more lectures. here's some crap i wrote at the beginning that kept getting pushed lower and lower as i went on a billion tangents. it's probably more academic advice and silliness but i'm not gonna bother checking so uh, take it away past me...? yikes, good luck:

so, you don't wanna do that assignment? well, the prof doesn't wanna read it, neither does the TA. same shit new term, no one benefits, and they're marking a LOT more essays than you'll ever have to write

so, you didn't understand the reading and are afraid to say something in lecture in case you don't know what you're talking about? chances are your prof is either in the same boat and has no coherent plan for the lecture and also doesn't know wtf is going on, or this is their special interest they dedicated their career to and they'd rather just infodump the whole class anyways.

"i'm scared to go to office hours" these guys either have no social life and/or family, or they do and none of them understand what the fuck they're saying. do you know how hard it is to have normal conversations or make small talk when 99% of your brain is shit no one but maybe 4 other scholars in the world give a shit about?!? EXAMPLE FOR YOU FANDOM FOLK: IT'S NOT JUST INTERACTING WITH NORMAL PEOPLE, IT'S TRYING TO MAKE FRIENDS IN A DEAD FANDOM WHEN YOUR FAVOURITE CHARACTER IS A NOBODY AND YOUR FAVOURITE SHIP HAS NO CONTENT BESIDES YOUR OWN, EXCEPT FOR MAYBE 2 OTHER PEOPLE WHO YOU'RE TOO AWKWARD TO INTERACT WITH BEYOND FRIENDLY TAGS WHEN YOU REBLOG THEIR ART.

short answer to that ^^^ go to office hours. especially humanities profs or weird science profs, not just because you will do a LOT better on assignments but because they're lonely and appreciate it. when i go to office hours my profs are either trauma dumping or incoherently rambling about blorbos from their manuscript or batshit crazy theories no one wants to write/hear about.

like, think about how you feel when you get asks or nice tags or comments on your fanfic/art/videos. even questions about your au or opinions! hot takes maybe?

what about when new people follow you or ask questions about the fandom you've been in for years: when someone asks a silly question about the lore are you more likely to see red and fucking kill them, or use this as an excuse to infodump and excitedly point them towards secondary content and inform/motivate them, even splashing in your own personal theories? i know it's the second one don't lie to me or yourself.

at the end of the day, i just want people to know that the stimulating debates people have online in the 21st century are the fucking green forums, while the "scholars" and esteemed academics that so many people write off as pretentious or too serious are fucking losers. they're freaks. i want every academic to have tumblr because they're SO FUNNY OH MY GOD!!!

when i see y'all talk about blorbo from your shows all i can think is "damn this is more coherent than when i ask my prof a question and she excitedly rambles for 20 minutes without actually answering anything because she's so overjoyed someone finally asked" and am reminded of all the special interest/hyperfixation positivity. researchers are just people paid to get lost in their own thoughts and words because their niche is their universe and it gets lonely when no one else bothers to check in.

oh, and if they're dedicating their entire life to something no one gives a shit about and worker their ass off to make it profitable... they're one of us. probably into fandoms. assigns music to their work. make memes about their theories because no one takes them seriously anyways. absolute fucking LEGENDS

TLDR which i know y'all need:

profs are based as hell fjdksldldlds go talk to your instructors they're lonely like you are and listening goes a long way. the internet is way too serious now to the point our "serious" communities that we believe are more strict are actually the most lax places.

so like... when we talk about tumblr being the worst place ever and brought up it's cursed reputation for YEARS but then actually witness 2022 and go "nevermind.... this is the only fucking place online to exist safely" because what the FUCK are those other places doing???

yeah. that's academia. the tumblr of conversations (aka full of freaks but the fun kind: WAY LESS THREATENING AND PSYCHOLOGICALLY DAMAGING than the "silly sites" which have evolved into... no i don't even have a metaphor or joke for this one. it's just awful lmao)

cool idk how to end this after wasting 1/4 of a day making no sense, here's george:

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hanijunk · 3 years

Text

Alright boys, girls, and nonbinary folks of the world. It’s 5:36am (1/30 when I first started) as I decide to give up on my attempt to continue to focus on learning statistics, avoid studying for my two upcoming midterms, and put off my two actual essays for two different classes.

Instead we’re going into a dive about ✨ KazuFuuma ✨ . Is this me telling you you gotta ship it? No of course not, you’re entitled to your own ships! You don’t really gotta care about it as a ship. But I do want people to recognize it’s THERE canonically, and how disregarding it is extremely unfair to Kazuki as a character particularly. Also, I’m working on the assumption anyone clicking this at least knows the bare bones about what KazuFuuma (ex. You know they are a ship of Kazuki/Fuuma from Dolce, you know they are childhood friends, you know who Dolce is, you know about Honeyworks, etc.) I’ll be making references to specific things, but I won’t always go into heavy detail. Might just hope you know it or take my word for what it is, and go into analyzing it. Some I’ll put direct references to find, but some I’ll trust you can find it yourself. If you somehow read this MAMMOTH and want reference to a specific thing mentioned, hmu I can help you find it!!

Also I hate tumblr formatting sm if you legit wanna read this 7 page essay but hate tumblr format lmk I'll add it as a google doc link instead too. anYWHO

Before actually getting into the meat of things lemme preface some stuff.

Again it’s like almost 6am so this will be disorganized and very train of thought (and likely long due to the fact when I fly by the seat of my pants I’m known to get unnecessarily extensive). It’s definitely gonna be in large part why it’s important to recognize as a romantic relationship foundation and what about it shapes Kazuki’s character in particular. Maybe a bit of how it’s been built up and its general focus and implications. Dunno yet. We’ll see LMAOO

I say f*ck. Not a lot, just a handful of times. This ain’t something scholarly this is for my own enjoyment so if you don’t like that might not wanna read. And it’s not like spitefully I just curse a lot if you haven’t...read my tags before lol

Again this is through the lens of a Kazuki stan. Of COURSE I’m going to have some level of bias, but if anything that bias may help more than hurt because that means I become FIXATED and think a lot about Kazuki. Which plays into establishing just how important it is that Kazufuuma’s relationship is recognized, especially in a romantic light at this point. Lmfao.

I’ll have a few more prefaces about the actual content below but to keep this from getting too long if you wanna read come below the cut owo

I have extremely limited knowledge of Japanese just taking a few classes in highschool (so like 3 yrs ago) and live in America. This means a lot of my knowledge is gathered through the english translations of the super duper incredible and lovely people in the Honeyworks fandom who provide translations (delaix and takanenene esp have provided so much for me being able to understand Dolce) and my own limited Japanese paired with Google Translate for things that remain untranslated.

This only will be drawing on information I have come in contact with and have access to and making assumptions based on that, most (if not all) of which is in the public domain. So things like the Dolce Manga Volumes released via Animate, exclusive 4komas, and Light Novels are out of my area for the most part (apart from again snippets of translations thanks to this fandom’s godlike and generous translators).

I will not be drawing on anything from the first Dolce album with the exception of Nade Nade. From a meta standpoint, I consider those songs as songs made as performance media as opposed to character explorations. Nade Nade is the exception because (1) it was released a whole year before the album and (2) you can tell it’s explicitly an exploration of Fuuma and Kazuki’s interpersonal relationship even if it’s in a slightly more performance based context than the songs that came out with the Dolce LNs. Easiest parallel I can make to show this is if you held Non-Fantasy, Yume Fanfare, and Samishigariya up against each other, you could tell the difference in intended audience and intended purpose the same way the Dolce 1st album, Nade Nade, and the songs of the LNs do respectively. Even if there is some basis to ground Kazufuuma, for the purposes of this essay I’ll be acting under the assumption the 1st album falls under the Non-Fantasy equivalent category.

THAT WAS A LOT OF PREFACING CONSIDERING LIKE 2 PPL WILL PROBABLY READ IT I just have a tendency to anytime I do anything analytical lay down ground acknowledgements for myself to work on just...cuz it makes me feel less guilty for any accidental misinformation even if I’m writing towards my future self to read lolll IM SORRY WITHOUT FURTHER TO DO HERE’S THE BRAIN DUMP

First let’s go ahead and establish why it needs to be recognized as an important relationship. Again, I’m a Kazuki stan. He’s my favorite character not only of Dolce but also of the entire Honeyworks series, and as much as I love him for reasons outside the ship, whether you like it or not Kazufuuma is an essential aspect of his character and narrative. Of course there’s the fact that him and Fuuma are childhood friends, so that’s going to in part define their characters and interactions with each other and those around them. They’re both going to be relevant to one another and important to one another’s stories to an even greater extent than the rest of the members of Dolce. But on Kazuki’s side at least, it’s an EXTREME amount. A running plotpoint in Dolce Diary is the sheer amount of dedication Kazuki has to Fuuma and how much his thoughts and decisions are influenced by Fuuma, whether it be how he feels happiest spending time with Fuuma, how he decided to get his piercing to represent he wanted to protect Fuuma, how he doesn’t want to dislike food so he can eat what Fuuma dislikes, etc. Not to mention running jokes about his borderline overprotectiveness and downright possessiveness of Fuuma, how proud he is when Fuuma gets praised, or that one 4koma that literally explicitly states he can read Fuuma’s mind when he thinks motherfucking ‘dirty thoughts’ about his childhood friend (Fuuma). I still don’t know what the fuck to make of that last bit. Genuinely. Or the fact it’s a fucking running joke. As in it’s not a one off. It’s been brought up multiple times. Kazuki what the fuck.

That’s not to say that he doesn’t have character outside of Fuuma or he doesn’t interact with people other than Fuuma. He’s great friends with Sara, Girisha, and Kippei and is shown time and time again to have fun interactions with all of them, generally acting as the best support friend for every member of the group, not Fuuma alone. For instance how he helps Kippei with his self confidence issues or stays over at Sara’s to protect him from a cockroach (which he fails at lol). Nor is that to say all his interactions involving Fuuma focus solely on his devotion to Fuuma, especially in instances where the manga focuses on Dolce as a group dynamic (though even in that setting there are times where jokes about his devotion are thrown in). He’s kind, he’s stupid, he’s friendly, he’s an amazing character in his own right, and I love him for all those reasons. But that doesn’t change the fact a major part of his character and his character interactions are rooted in Fuuma, and arguably some of his most interesting, eccentric, and notable behaviors and traits revolve around Fuuma (again the mind reading for example).

Hell let’s take it one step further. If you look at the character bios of the Dolce members, you get everyone’s motives for being an idol and interests. Of them, Kazuki is the only one to have another character mentioned directly, not to mention that supporting Fuuma is explicitly stated to be his primary motive as to why he became an idol. Not even Fuuma’s sister is mentioned, though two arguments can be made for this. The first would be that Fuuma’s backstory about wanting to fulfill his dream for himself and his sister was decided later to explain Fuuma’s choice to crossdress though it can be argued it was intentionally done to leave it as a reveal at a later date, to which I would argue I don’t think this backstory was a choice in post. While Fuuma’s dedicated Dolce Diary extra exploring that backstory was released a little less than a year after Dolce was revealed, the preview to set up Fuuma’s backstory was actually the first thing released after the character bios on the Dolce Official Twitter page if you exclude a drawing of Dolce from Yamako. The second argument could be that information about his sister was intentionally withheld to set up the reveal when Fuuma’s extra released to explore it. However, going by that logic (which I do agree with), that would also mean that Fuuma’s inclusion and importance in Kazuki’s character bio also set up his dedicated extra, which I don’t think would be incorrect to assume considering what his actual extra turned out being.

Which brings me to the thing that makes it inexplicable to write off the romantic implications behind Kazufuuma: Kazuki’s dedicated Dolce Diary extra, Suki. I shipped Kazufuuma before even knowing of Suki, sure. But the fact that Suki even exists is a shock to me and drove into me the fact that Kazufuuma wasn’t just my own projection. Again, it’s not a surprise that Fuuma shapes Kazuki’s life. They’re childhood friends, of course they’re going to be important to each other. But this extra explicitly brought Kazuki’s feelings towards Fuuma under a direct spotlight. At first I was thinking oh, this extra was just to acknowledge the fact that Kazuki and Fuuma’s relationship can have romantic implications, but the end of it the conclusion that we got was that it didn’t matter what type of “like” he felt for Fuuma. Originally, I thought it wasn’t anything more than saying there are all types of like, and it doesn’t always need to be explicitly defined, but I appreciated the fact they were aware that they were writing Kazuki in a way that conveyed romantic implications.

Then I thought about it because, again, I love Kazuki of course I’m going to think about his character extra, and realized...that’s not how these character extras have worked. There are only three character extras out as far as I know and have read: Fuuma, Kippei, and Kazuki. If we look at Fuuma and Kippei’s, each extra had a conclusion, sure, but they didn’t have a resolution. Rather, they were simply setting up explicitly what each character’s primary character arc and conflict were. Fuuma’s extra brought attention to the fact that he’s particularly a crossdressing idol by exploring the motives behind it. His choice to be a crossdressing idol is constantly under fire both by himself and the world around him. He’s not immune to those who consider his crossdressing strange, and a part of his story is both finding people who accept his decision to crossdress and to succeed for himself as a crossdressing idol. It’s an essential part of how we understand and define him as a character and it’s a central part of how he interacts with the world around him. For Kippei, it lays the severity of his insecurity under the spotlight and his journey and motives for improving himself. Again, this isn’t something isolated and resolved in the extra; his extreme insecurity and negativity is constantly affecting how he interacts with practically everyone from his fellow Dolce members to his fans despite the fact in all honesty? He’s fucking insanely talented in his own right, his own brother mentioning how smart he is and how he has amazing reflexes. For Kippei, his negativity is an essential part of how we understand and define him and central to how he interacts with the world as much as Fuuma’s decision to crossdress is to him.

Which brings us back to Kazuki, of course. In his dedicated extra, in the chapter that’s supposed to explore and establish and bring attention to an essential part of his character, the aspect of himself under investigation is how he feels about Fuuma. It’s not just how he behaves around Fuuma, it’s explicitly an exploration of his feelings, on top of the fact it’s explicitly an exploration about whether or not he likes Fuuma r o m a n t i c a l l y. Literally the conflict is spurred on by someone outright asking “Do you like him?” and having to clarify “I mean romantically.” What they decided to focus on for Kazuki’s character and emphasize and establish is that Kazuki’s like towards Fuuma toes the line between friendship and romance. His ambiguous feelings towards Fuuma (if we leave them inconclusive as Suki did) are just like Fuuma’s crossdressing and Kippei’s insecurity in the sense the weight of whatever those feelings may be are seen in how he interacts with the world around him and influences his behaviors. It would be another story if they introduced the potential and shut it down all within the extra, because then his central conflict would to me be less directly open to romantic potential and more simply about how his arc was meant to explore the dynamic of the behavior of an extremely dedicated best friend. The fact that he may be romantically attracted to Fuuma or may be only platonically dedicated to Fuuma is instead something that looms over Kazuki in the same way Fuuma’s decision to crossdress constantly looms over him. It’s what Dolce wanted to point to and say this is Kazuki’s central character conflict and central arc: exploring what type of feelings he has towards Fuuma.

Sure, it can be argued that there’s only three Dolce Diary character extras, there’s not enough to be sure about that being the purpose of the extras unless we get the other two’s extras. First, at this point I honestly don’t know if or when they’re going to release an extra revolving around Sara and Girisha just because not only has it been over a year and a half since the latest Dolce Diary Character Extra (Kazuki’s) was released despite the gap between the first and latest Dolce Diary Character Extra (Fuuma’s and Kazuki’s) were within a year of release but also because the Dolce 4komas and comics they’ve been posting to Twitter have decreased (last one being over half a year ago) potentially due to them deciding to focus on releasing Dolce manga content through the purchasable volumes instead. (This is not particularly related to the Kazufuuma argument, just wanted to put out there my two cents on what Sara and Girisha’s extra/focal arc would be. Based on a large part of the Dolce Diary in conjuncture with Can’t an Idol Fall in Love, I’d argue Sara’s would be his journey to regain his passion for performing, and if it’s not that I’d say it’d be coming out of his self-imposed isolation and opening up to people again. As for Girisha, I have less of a concrete idea but I’m assuming it’d be something pertaining to how people often misconceive him whether it be in tandem with his determination, his optimism and sociability, or his stupidity/ability to ignore those misconceptions and work past them. But Girisha is treated like the comedic relief 90% of the time so I’m not entirely sure, but his primary conflict is definitely rooted in misconceptions of him being his roadblock imo. #MoreGirishaContentPlz) That being said, I personally feel like the three are already enough evidence, especially considering it would be honestly even more cruel for Kazuki’s character-centric extra to be focusing on something that wasn’t essential to his character and character arc, anyway. And though it’s not explicitly stated that these chapters are extras exploring a central character, you can kind of tell based on how they are (to my knowledge) the only Dolce Diary updates with cover/title cards each which include their focal character front and center. So working off that fact, the Kazuki-centric chapter established that a pillar to his narrative was his feelings towards Fuuma and that those feelings are still open to romantic potential.

But if you follow me, this is why up until Can’t an Idol Fall in Love With Another Idol’s release, I was terrified of them writing that off. I would have been ok if it was just an arc that was given attention then continued to actively work in the background, as all the character arcs have been over all of Dolce’s content. The fact that they might be giving Fuuma a love interest and giving Fuuma a love arc while Kazuki’s feelings were still up in the air and were still the primary highlighted narrative for him would have been fucking scuffed. To me, it would be like… why would they make him so Fuuma-centric to the point that even his dedicated chapter was not just focused on Fuuma but focused on the ambiguity and potential of him having romantic feelings for Fuuma, yet reduce him to being Fuuma's designated right-hand man. Don’t get me wrong, friendships are just as important as romantic relationships. But again, rather than conclude Kazuki’s answer in Suki to be that his feelings were of friendship, they left it open ended and allow audience members to be actively aware that Kazuki’s feelings towards Fuuma still had potential to be romantically coded. It would just be so weird to quickly close off that narrative by giving Fuuma a love interest as opposed to letting Kazuki conclude it himself. It would be fucking beyond frustrating for me, at least Eventually, I kept trying to drive my hopes that they would explore Kazuki’s narrative at all down to the ground because it was a Fuuma-centric novel; maybe if anything they’d explore those feelings in his own novel after the fact. But then they kept having little drops here and there of Kazuki being even the slightest bit relevant and I’d go back to questioning “Are??? They??? Is this on purpose??? Do they know what they’re doing or are they just doing this because Kazuki’s just so important to Fuuma as his best friend that he’s there as his right-hand I genuinely can’t tell???” And um. Welp.

Safe to say Can’t An Idol Fall in Love sold me on the fact that they know what they’re doing LOL. And to anyone who thinks that Kazuki’s feelings can still be read as ambiguous in CAIFILWAI as opposed to explicitly romantic - whether it be due to a fear they may pull the “I like him as a friend” card or due to the disbelief that they have an explicit mlm main character in the Honeyworks series - I’d like to cover any bases that may make you think this way. If you think it’s just Kazuki acting like a protective friend, why do you think he calls Yui a rival? If you’ve only seen the MV and think it’s ambiguous or can be taken as the "likfe" for friend, then does that mean you think Yui’s feelings toward Fuuma are also ambiguous or as a friend? With the way Yui responds, she is trying to rival Kazuki’s feelings towards Fuuma. She and Kazuki recognize whatever feeling it is that they hold towards Fuuma, both of their feelings are the same type. I don’t think most people would argue that Yui’s confession about Fuuma was one of pure respect and friendship. Plus, if anything I’d argue of the three characters in the MV, Fuuma is the one whose feelings are left the most ambiguous despite him being the central character. It’s heavily implied that he may be forming feelings for Yui, but nowhere is it established either in the song or in the MV, especially if you compare it to Kazuki and Yui’s declarations or if you compare it to Sara’s feelings for Uru in Can’t An Idol Fall in Love. Fuuma’s romantic narrative here is trying to figure out how he feels for Yui, while for Kazuki and Yui they’ve established a rivalry because they both have mutually established they like Fuuma romantically.

If the MV isn’t enough for you and Suki isn’t enough for you for...some reason…??? You can check out the snippets of the light novel which the wonderful takanenene translated: one which revisits the conflict set up in Suki and one that covers the confession scene in the MV in more detail. If the fact that the conflict set up in Suki (aka the lurking feeling of not knowing if all he felt for Fuuma was only platonic or more than platonic) was specifically reestablished in the LN for anyone who didn’t keep up with Dolce Diary didn’t tip you off that it was something important, his behavior in the confession scene as depicted by the LN definitely should have. He’s possessive about his spot by Fuuma’s side. He doesn’t want that spot to be taken by anyone else. Even if he knows that they can help Fuuma, he wants it to be him. And this line: “Kazuki then trails off his words, quietly saying ‘That’s why…’ and then gave Yui a slightly painful smile, his cheeks turning red,” before he declares Yui a rival and states he likes Fuuma. If you can tell me you read that line and are still on the fence about Kazuki’s “like” towards Fuuma being romantic, please message me and I will see how I can get through to you. Like it wasn’t even just a romantically coded confession. It’s just a romantic confession. That “like” is romantic. And I’m so proud that he’s not only come to understand for himself how he feels, but that he’s confident enough to ask the person he sees as a romantic rival to speak in private and not only clarify her feelings for Fuuma but before she can even do that firmly establishes that he loves Fuuma with conviction. Kazuki my boy I’m so proud of you. *sniffs*

And that’s it for establishing Kazufuuma as at least canonically one-sidedly canon and why there’s not only no reason to deny it but also why denying it is a fucking disrespectful move towards Kazuki. He’s a character, sure, but that doesn’t change the fact you shouldn’t write off his struggle to come to be convicted enough to say it out loud. This has been something weighing on him at least a year, if not more (all I know is it started when both he and Fuuma were in some year in middle school). And as a character in a piece of media, I’ve been saying this the entire time, but brushing it off as non-romantic is literally chucking a fucking pillar of his character’s story into the gutter. And to those who may be saying Kazuki’s confession came out of nowhere and is pandering reread this entire fucking essay again I dare you to do it and tell me to my face it’s pandering. Again. Writing off the buildup as pandering is disrespectful to him, disrespectful to his character and narrative, and disrespectful to the wonderful people who have been creating Dolce so diligently and have crafted this narrative for us. Saying his “supposed feelings” and “ambiguous confession” is pandering is like saying Fuuma’s crossdressing is pandering which. If you say either of those I will find you and I will shank you in the fucking gut. Even if you’re not fully into Dolce, recognize these characters are actually very well developed and executed amazingly, as per every Honeyworks character that has come to exist. I don’t blame you if you weren’t aware of the weight of Kazufuuma, but now that you read this I hope you are. That’s mainly what I needed to get out there, but as follows will be me more exploring how Kazufuuma has been built up and generally waving my hand off at where it may be going. If you want you can dip, thanks for reading up to here because I know I repeated a lot because it’s just. So important to drill into your head and has been something I’ve been hung up about constantly. LOL

As for where exactly they’re taking it from this point on, I honestly don’t know. In all honesty, I didn’t even expect them to take it the direction they did. But honestly, I think the direction they went with it is really interesting and better than I could have imagined, in my opinion at least. Honeyworks never ceases to amaze me with their storytelling and narrative choices, and I don’t think there’s any that stand out to me as being severely questionable that they haven’t reapproached at some point down the line. And, again, I think they’re treating this with a lot of care and deserved respect. So I’m just gonna be gushing about how smart they set it up and how smart they’ve been executing it and maybe my own hopes on the direction it could go.

Whether they make Kazufuuma reciprocated I have no real clue or bearings, but to me my gut reaction is they will. Of course, I’m biased, but again if you trace things all the way back to 2018 and step through Dolce’s content and growth from there, I’d say even if they didn’t know if they could execute it like this and see it to fruition, I’d argue that Kazufuuma has been at least heavily implied since the beginning as a relationship they wanted to explore from both sides of the relationship. Obviously I brought up Kazuki’s character bio already, but if you look at the *goes to count* 5th Dolce Diary update already has a joke jabbing at the fact that Kazuki is technically Fuuma’s type (and the way Kippei and Kazuki excitedly react is so cute). The fifth update. And as stated before there are tons of Kazufuuma moments in Dolce Diary, whether it’s played for comedic effect or played straight (and this is post Suki but oh my god I’ve said it before I’ll say it again get yourself someone who looks at you the way Kazuki looks at Fuuma oh my jesus). But song-wise, I mentioned the one Dolce album song I would bring up is Nade Nade and this is where it comes!

Not only is Nade Nade specifically focused on Kazuki and Fuuma’s relationship as opposed to the whole of Dolce despite being the first song, it included the setup/preview of the Fuuma-centric extra prior to the full release of the Fuuma-centric extra itself and was released early as fuck. Literally between the 6th and 7th update to Dolce Diary. Sure, it could be to isolate them as a duo for marketing purposes (they’re very often the two promoted idols together if the whole of the group aren’t included), but the way it’s established as a perspective song as opposed to a general idol duet is what fascinates me. Anyone who didn’t know about Dolce prior and only followed Honeyworks for music would be first introduced to these characters through this song alone, and maybe this is where my Kazufuuma bias comes from but I was one of those people LOL. I thought it was just a cute one-off relationship that they had set up for the purpose of a song and that it was an implied friends-to-lovers story that would never get a conclusion. Also I mistakenly thought Fuuma was a girl oop-. In the full context of Dolce, this song in part helped establish Fuuma and Kazuki more solidly as a unique duo out of all of Dolce, but it also specifically explored through Fuuma’s eyes just how much Fuuma recognizes and appreciates the unwavering support Kazuki gives him to follow his dreams as he wishes. For Fuuma, he loves Kazuki too, though whether it holds any romantic potential in the same way Kazuki loves him has never been explored to nearly the same extent. But Fuuma appreciates how Kazuki’s remained by his side and does everything he can to support him, so Nade Nade explores how his way of expressing his love and thankfulness to Kazuki is by never saying that he needs Kazuki by his side. He’s glad Kazuki’s always been there for him, and his reciprocation takes on the form of being ready to unwaveringly support Kazuki and not ask for more than he already has, even if it meant Kazuki would be leaving his side, despite the fact that he really does wish they could remain together forever just as Kazuki does. The one point he lets himself say something vaguely close to always wanting to stay together, he gets a surprised expression out of Kazuki and says an ambiguous “suki dayo.” Of course, this it much less romantically coded than what we get from Kazuki in Suki and CAIFILWAI, but there is an interesting emphasis put on it nonetheless. Keep in mind, this is all established through the song, which released long before not only Fuuma’s character-centric extra released but also Kazuki’s character-centric extra released, so there is at least a substantial setup for Fuuma’s feelings towards Kazuki’s being strong as well and possibly grow to be reciprocated one day.

I think for me the most fascinating part about Nade Nade is how they tied it back around to Can’t An Idol Fall In Love with Another Idol. Again, without remembering Nade Nade, I still thought CAIFILWAI was brilliantly explored and executed, even if some people would have preferred no love triangle. But honestly, revisiting Nade Nade makes me trust even more the direction they’re taking with this. Whether or not they make Kazufuuma canon mutually (which. Even if they for some inexplicable reason didn’t I’m going down with this ship.), I’m sure they’re putting a lot of thought into the story, because the last bit of Nade Nade directly parallels the misunderstanding that arose from Fuuma mishearing the Kazuki and Yui. Fuuma is resolved to support Kazuki in any area he’s given the chance, and that explicitly includes if Kazuki had some girl he liked, which is what he assumes is going on. The fact that they tied this back around in the form of a misunderstanding was really really smart and Honeyworks is always so good at parallels and references back to their older songs, but for some reason I didn’t expect this. I don’t know how to say why, but the fact that the song that started it all, kicked off both Dolce and Kazufuuma, was directly referenced both visually in the MV with a cameo at the start and narratively despite the central dynamic being predominantly explored in this story in particular was that of Fuuma and another potential love interest and involves said potential love interest for some reason makes me think that (sorry Yui) this is all planned out for Kazufuuma in the grand scheme of things. That being said, I don’t know if me thinking it was planned all along is just me with shipper goggles, but the idea it’s come full circle nearly 3 years later is not shipper goggles and a very very well done parallel in my opinion, whether this trajectory was their plan for Kazufuuma from the beginning or not. Just wanted to gush about that some more.

There’s more I could go into especially if I went into specific details about interactions or specific implications established in Honeyworks' Dolce content about different characters that would be fascinating to explore in relation to and under the lens of Kazufuuma, but I think this is uh...plenty long enough. Plus, I doubt you'll stop seeing Kazufuuma posts from me so those ideas will probably just be miniposts or somethin.

Back to the overarching point of this segment, idk what they’ll do with this story in the end, but do I think Kazufuuma will canon? I’m used to looking at ships that aren’t explicitly apparent with a sliver of skepticism, but all things considered (as I stated before) yeah. I don’t see reason why they wouldn’t now that they’ve explicitly identified there is a romantic dimension to it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Like to me, the setup isn’t something that would be written off as unrequited? And this doesn’t have to play into why I don’t think it will canon, my personal opinion on the Fuuyui relationship (again albeit through the lens of a hard Kazufuuma shipper lmao) has it’s own merits and is really cute, I find it cute in the way I found Koyuhina cute. I personally never really shipped Koyuhina, and especially since they slipped Kotarou into Ima Suki Ni Naru I was more curious about who this kid was and how he played into things I didn’t really see Koyuhina as something that would come to fruition. Similarly, there’s more importance in the overall sense on Kazuki than there is Yui (considering he’s one of the 5 original and focal members of this generation of idols, this would be natural), as well as the fact there’s just way more foundation and exploration in Fuuma and Kazuki’s relationship than there is Fuuma and Yui. As for how much of a balance there is inside the LN itself, the fact that they seem to have spent a substantial amount relaying the foundation of Fuuma and Kazuki’s relationship and re-exploring it (at least in Kazuki’s perspective) at all on top of how much content there is covering their relationship prior to the LN ever since Dolce’s origin just feels like that relationship holds more weight. Pretty much Kazufuuma feels more established as a priority in general. The way I personally hope Fuuyui plays out is whether they wind up holding mutual feelings or not or whether Fuuma doesn’t feel that way towards Yui is they get a relationship akin to Kotarou and Arisa. Albeit, Kotarou and Arisa never viewed each other in a romantic light, but they had mutual respect and solidarity. That’s the type of friendship I hope comes out of Fuyui. And considering there hasn’t been a break-up in any Honeyworks’ canon relationships (nor do I expect there to be… they’re all perfect for each other LMAO) it would actually be interesting if Fuuyui get together but don’t endgame and Kazufuuma is established as the inseparable endgame after some realization or another, though I don’t expect them to go that route nor do I know if that’d be the best way to go about it anyway. Also final point, Honeyworks seems to have a thing for childhood friends trope anyway soooooo owo All in all, don’t know where they’re taking it, just excited to see where it goes.

TL;DR of this *counts* 7 page essay, stan Kazufuuma. Not gonna proof this. Maybe I’ll edit and repost but yall are getting a confusing clusterfuck of ramblings over 2-3 hr periods of me writing across 3 different days at around 5am each day. Uh. If you got this far like and subscribe and-- jk plz reply to this mammoth anywhere you see fit or tell me if you have stuffs to add or counter or whatnot I like hearing people talk about Kazufuuma ;w; I am Kazuki and Kazufuuma brainrot can you tell after reading this? No? Lemme just remind you I’m K--

#honeyworks #dolce #kazufuuma #kazuki haiga #fuuma shirayuki #long post #analysis #character analysis #kinda?#nobody cares trash #also keep in mind this is PURELY for self satisfaction LMFAO read it if u wanna dont if u dont idgaf either way #anyway kazufuuma canon fight me #or have intellectual conversation with me #if you want it on a google doc bc it's easier to read hmu #if you can't tell i think about kazufuuma too much #how much of this is repetitive? probably a lot...

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macgyvertape · 3 years

Text

Castlevania kinda had a pacing problem

spoilers for all of Netflix’s Castlevania. I haven’t seen much analysis for the show on tumblr, im honestly curious if discussions I had with irl friends mirror what fandom talks about

tldr: Castlevania seems inconsistently paced from season to season, and within season as well, leads to a lot of characters motivations feeling unclear so characters repeatedly explain why they are doing something while they’re doing it

overview of the seasons:

S1 I know somewhat of a test for Netflix but it has good main trio character establishment and sets the scale of the conflict

s2: pretty complete emotional arc for most characters and resolves the plot of killing Dracula while setting up additional characters to continue the story. Isaac, Hector, Carmilla all established with the audience as characters whose story would continue

honestly I would bet this is the most popular season

S3: s2 did a bit of worldbuilding, but this season really fleshed out the world with both a wide range of locations and exploring the question of “what now, Dracula is dead but vampires and night creatures remain”.

There were basically 4 plot threads: 1) Sypha/Trevor investigating the cult & Saint Germain; 2) Hector & Carmilla (also introducing Lenore, Striga, Morana); 3) Isaac’s journey of revenge & self discovery; 4) Alucard sits around the castle and is betrayed.

overall characters roughly feel like they are in the same place if not worse. A big criticism I saw at the time, which hold up after rewatching this before s4 is nothing felt resolved for the main characters

I would say this season is where the pacing issues start to become apparent, juggling 4 plot threads that lack a central theme or even mutual character connection. If there was a central theme it would be “humans are awful to each other”. The Judge doing Hot Fuzz style murders, The Wizard in the tower, Sumi & Taka

S4: it starts with the same 4 plot threads, though upfront it is made clear that the plot theme is “people are trying to resurrect Dracula”, and the progression of the plot works to resolve unrelated plot threads until the main trio reunites for the boss fights. To me and my friends watching it was obvious that the show would reunite the main trio, the question was how and how far into the run time.

Season 4 is why I’m writing this essay, for the past 2 days I’ve been like, yeah that character sure explained their motives repeatedly maybe with some philosophical discussion, but it’s just such a weird place considering where they were in s3

Alucard’s arc:

Where he was left in season 3, it was after killing people he had trusted in self defense and impaling their corpses. It was clearly meant to parallel Dracula’s dislike of humanity. However overall his character lacked a proactive motivating force.

Honestly the most interesting thing I found in s3 was Alucard clearly misses Sypha and Trevor, however they don’t miss him or refer to him

One reason Sumi & Taka betray Alucard is for the secrets and power of Castlevania. After inviting the village including St Germain who Alucard was warned of into the Castle, Alucard makes 0 effort to secure anything, not even his personal childhood room. Guess he really learned nothing

Discussing St Germain, I think it’s funny that they had a several minute flashback sequence for his lost girlfriend (who doesn’t have a name or a voice actor), to remind the viewer of who he is, and to justify how he’s suddenly back and down for murder.

In s4 there is the call to help the village, and the walk back to the castle is a montage of Alucard opening up to Greta and becoming friendly literally overnight. He laughs off the impaling, and basically all of the darker things he went through in season 3, which has me asking what was the point of his season 3 arc then?

Honestly writing this I realize the biggest parallel he has with Dracula is the call to action from a bold woman with a dramatic entrance speech which then leads to a romance

Isaac’s arc:

in s3, with all the other themes of “humanity sucks” I was always unsure if the townspeople were meant to appear irrational while attacking a larger force instead of letting him pass through an leave, or him not caring about how he’s provoking them is meant to show his insanity

ive seen the discussion elsewhere, curious about the Discourse here

is s4 Isaac has the whole monologue about how he now has agency but him gaining that agency was his s3 arc. In s4 he’s already at the point of accepting it. By the end of s4 he’s one of those who comes the furthest from his first character appearance to his last.

s4e5 where of Isaac attacking Carmilla in Isaac’s 2nd appearance had him resolving like 4 plot threads at once (Carmilla, Striga& Morana, Hector, and Isaac himself).

but i do wonder if Trevor, Sypha, or Alucard even know any of these people exist. I think not

I was honestly confused if I missed a scene from his dialogue about building something and what is inherent nature, to “My plan has evolved, my plan is now conquest” because he only conquests the one castle and the rest is left unclear

Upon rewatch the connection there is “killing [the wizard] felt just ... I liked that feeling”, so the show says that Isaac in the end attacked Carmilla for the sake of justice and not revenge.

Isaac in his last conversation expresses the theme of s4 “build something new on these old bones, where people can live for the future”

however, his arc honestly feel scenes were cut, and then dialogue was written around it. He’s the only living character who doesn’t show up in the epilogue and the sentient night creature “what if I could empty hell” dialogue was some of the most interesting worldbuilding. Night creatures with sentience and possibility of regaining memories!!!!

The Council of Sisters & Hector’s arc:

oh I’ve already seen s4 discourse about Lenore/Hector while searching for character analysis, a chunk of it seems to be rationalizing the absolute difference between how s3 ended with these characters and s4. It was extremely confusing for me and my friends; wondering if 1) was Hector showing more emotional intelligence than before and putting on a facade to cover up hatred? Nope 2) did more time pass than 6 weeks for there to be some kind stockholm syndrome? No, Hector seems fine to let Lenore kill herself

The slave control ring: played up in the climax of s3 and easily solved s4. s3 Lenore says if he tries to harm them, flee, or take it off it would cause crippling pain, in s4 Hector just easily cuts off his own finger.

for a control ring that they take time to show a version being on the Rebus, it doesn’t do much controlling of Hector

also guess the definition of “do harm” just refers to direct action

Lenore in s4: has no purpose in conquest, has that useless remarked on by multiple characters, is imprisoned, then kills herself after a genre aware philosophical discussion. This essay is long enough, but what the fuck happened to this character who ended s3 clearly physically and sexually abusive? Seriously this was one of the biggest writing changes to the point where she was treating Hector as an equal. Compare her last words in s3 “shh the real people [vampires] are talking”. The change in the relationship is actually something I would have taken being shown, or atleast told of what exactly caused this change other than the vague “you adopted him”

Striga&Morana get the best arc of the Council. 3 scenes: the tent argument, Daybreak armor fight & argument resolution, declaration of feelings and turning away. You could argue Castlevania is plot to be connective tissue between fight scenes, but for all the dialogue about human resistance in different seasons it was nice to see it. Overall the scenes were short but had a lot of showing what their relationship is not just telling,

unlike Carmilla. For as much hyping up as they did with her, and as much power as she had, she only appeared in 2 episodes and no other group except Isaac knew about her military conquest.

the map scene where she states her motive for conquest of wanting to take things from old men is the key example of how characterization became tell not show. How interesting was that monologue compared to the past seasons flashback to her murmuring the old vampire lord, or all her repeated insults of men/man-children that shows how she judges people??

That monologue had to carry the weight of justifying the Sisterhood bonds falling apart as well as why her motivation changed from building a human pen from Styria to Braila to world conquest. I think it did so poorly

Sypha & Trevor

really Sypha & Trevor have the main plot in the show. I checked and post season 1 the only episode they don’t appear in is s4e6, which is entirely devoted to the Isaac, Hector, and Council of Sisterhood arc. Their partnership and adventures are the main plot of the show.

Its easy to see what Trevor’s arc was over the show: coming to peace with the deaths of his family, taking up the mantle of being a Belmont, and starting a new family with Sypha.

With Sypha I actually had to scroll through tv tropes for what is her character arc, and I guess hers is disillusionment from adventure and life outside the speakers? My friends joke that Sypha’s magic is what the plot demands to look cool in a fight, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Tangent: the ending of their arc was easy to guess: as soon as Trevor went to fight the final boss alone I literally said “oh i bet Sypha’s pregnant, Trevor’s doing a heroic sacrifice, theyll use the unexplained magical dagger mcguffin, and 60/40 odds that he goes through an infinite corridor to outright come back vs just the implication he might come back”

I guess my final thought of the show, was overall the SUPER Final Boss got my by surprise. It was a good twist I enjoyed. Not that Death appeared, I had guessed that from the heavy foreshadowing, but I was surprised by who it was, because I had thought I thought the characters involved feeling shoehorned into the plot was just more bad writing. The Alchemist who put St Germain on the path or murder for no discernible motive for helping? Sure gotta move the plot along. New Dracula court member Varney who has a whole introduction with almost every character he meets and banter about his smell? Sure thats basically how all characters talk with a snarky and acerbic voice.

#Castlevania #castlevania spoilers #castlevania meta #castlevania season four #overall i enjoyed the show #id love to find some discussion of the show #this wound up being more of a recap than a persuasive essay #but i think my tldr thesis statement stands

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theimpossiblescheme · 3 years

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So one of my favorite musicals of all time turns forty today…

Funnily enough, my first exposure to anything even related to it was through a little magazine called Cricket. I genuinely don’t know if it’s still in circulation, but it was a children’s magazine full of short stories, poems, fascinating articles, and book recommendations. It was old enough that not only had some of my favorite writers as a kid contributed to it (I also owe my love of Lloyd Alexander to the magazine since he always wrote the “Old Cricket” editorials at the end of every issue), but my aunt had also been subscribed to it. One day, my grandma let me borrow an old Cricket record full of stories and poems being read out loud, and the last track on the second side was a poem by T.S. Eliot. The poem that would eventually become “The Song of the Jellicles”—“Jellicle cats are black and white, Jellicle cats are rather small…” I thought it was a cute poem, but I had no idea there was anything more to it than that.

A few years later—when I was about eight years old—I read that poem and a bunch of poems like it had been turned into what was once the longest-running Broadway musicals. As soon as my brain saw the words “Jellicle cats”, I immediately flashed back to that old Cricket record, and I decided I had to learn more. As luck would have it, my grandma also had a VHS of the 1998 Great Performances show. For a long time, I dragged my feet on watching it. What if it didn’t live up to the hype? What if they were really better off as poems and not songs and dances? How did you make an entire musical based on poems for kids, anyway? But one evening I finally broke down and put in the VHS. I still have all the previews on it memorized—one for the huge Andrew Lloyd Webber concert in Royal Albert Hall, one for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and one for the movie The Borrowers. Then after a moment of silence, the overture started and the first glowing yellow cat’s eye appeared onscreen. Showtime.

What followed was an honestly life-changing experience. I’ve talked before about Cats being pure fantasy and escapism, and eight-year-old me had never seen anything like that outside of Disney movies. These were real people in these fuzzy, colorful costumes doing these incredible dance moves, performing magic tricks in real time, and transforming themselves into these fantastical creatures who sounded like humans, but behaved like cats. Real people who did this for a living—who went to work every day and got to become something else for hundreds of audience members to see. Who could make you laugh and cheer and cry while wearing fluffy wigs and painted stripes on their faces, and you never questioned it for a second. I marveled at Victoria’s ballet solo, Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer’s double cartwheel, Mistoffelees’s sparkling coat, Jemima and Grizabella’s beautiful voices. And by the time the credits rolled, I decided I wanted to do this for a living. I wanted to be an actress and make this kind of magic happen myself.

For a few years afterward, I’m pretty sure I was “the Cats girl” to everyone I knew. I always talked about it, I had all the characters memorized, and I first discovered fandom and fanfiction thanks to dedicated websites (once I was old enough to have unlimited Internet access). I even tried to stage my own production of it in elementary school, starring myself as Grizabella and my best friend at the time as Victoria (it never got off the ground, and it wouldn’t have been legal anyway without the Really Useful Group’s permission). And of course, it was a gateway drug to the wonderful world of musical theater; I wouldn’t have found Phantom, Great Comet, or Man of La Mancha without Cats. It wasn’t until I was older that I learned what a strange reputation Cats had. People respected it, but no one really seemed to like it—it was just a weird, silly fluke of a show with a strange concept and no plot. Some even considered it the worst thing Andrew Lloyd Webber had ever written. It didn’t make me love Cats less, but it did make me feel more… self-conscious about it. Like it was something I needed to precede with an “Okay, hear me out…” or “I know, I know, but…” before mentioning it to anyone. So while I still loved the show, I talked about it a lot less.

Then, about a year and a half ago, the movie came out. And for better or worse, it got people talking about the musical again. I was absolutely dreading the amount of people who were going to come out of the woodwork and keep saying what I’d always heard—that Cats was a bad musical and its fans were deluded, and they were never going to give it an honest chance now because of the movie’s reputation. Hyperbolically awful reviews and video essays came out, all bashing the very concept of Cats, and I wanted the earth to swallow me whole. But then, a miracle happened. People started rediscovering the actual musical again. People started talking about how they’d grown up with the 1998 version just like I had. People talked about liking it—actually liking this funny little show with its poems and songs and elaborate choreography in service of a loose, highly metaphorical plot. Actual fans talked about how they loved Cats and saw multiple productions of it and cared about the dozens of characters just like I did.

And very slowly, I started talking to them. I started learning new things, like little bits of trivia and the names of different performers and exactly what a “non-replica” was. I made friends and talked about headcanons and favorite productions with them. I started writing again after a long dry spell. I rejoined my first fandom ever, this time with new people I could actually interact with instead of just leaving messages in a long-dead guestbook, and I had the time of my life. I’m still having the time of my life with everyone in the Cats fandom here on Tumblr, getting to share one of my oldest and greatest inspirations with people who feel the same way I do. So thank you guys—for liking my ficlets and headcanon posts, for introducing me to the Mexican and Italian productions, for saying such kind words when I needed cheering up, and for letting me be a part of it.

And thank you, Cats. For sparking my love of theater and everything it’s capable of creating. For being such a joy to watch and learn about even on my most depressing days. For being wild and unapologetic the way few shows are brave enough to be. And for holding a special place in my heart, now and forever.

#the schemer speaks #cats the musical #cats fortieth anniversary #I love this show and I don't care who knows it--it's been such a formative influence. <3

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cashewally-sarcastic · 3 years

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It is hku’s 6th month anniversary, and it’s been a growing theme (tradition?) that I tend to write essays for said occasion, most of them being jokes. But instead, today I present a different kind of essay, one that isn’t written as a joke for once. This is an essay focusing on the grey morality of hku, and focuses on Siv as the example of said grey morality. Because of this, I do have to warn that there are major story spoilers ahead, so if you haven’t read hku or aren’t caught up to current events, I would recommend not reading this! This essay isn’t going anywhere, and spoiling yourself isn’t a very fun experience!

With that disclaimer out of the way, the essay (as per usual) is under the cut! Enjoy!

~~~

The Grey Morality of HKU

We live in a world that is not purely black and white, but instead many different shades of grey. Writing greyness into stories is difficult, especially when trying to create morally ambiguous characters, which is why most character conflicts in fiction is black and white. Moral greyness in characters is a very thin tightrope to balance on, since such characters fall in between heroes and villains, and bring layers of depth and complexity into the world. Most humans are not purely good or evil, and morally grey characters showcase this well. These characters can be incredibly complicated, and thus, it's difficult for authors to commit and stay on their tightrope. Sometimes they lean too far to one side and their intended moral greyness gets destroyed. But in Hyrule Kingdom Updates, or HKU, Quill not only walks this tightrope with ease, but does backflips on it and performs a whole circus act with their characters mimicking the same routine. One of these talented tightrope-walkers that performs in such a circus act is Asivus Hartell, better known as Siv.

Siv is one of the main examples of the grey morality of HKU. He’s the sarcastic, pessimistic orator that serves as the role of the narrator for the story. Introduced as a psychological egoist, or someone who believes that everyone’s actions are derived out of personal interest, his personality, attitude, and actions all reek of the scent of “villain”. He’s cynical, hates almost everyone in the castle, and is also a criminal. Over time, his egoist beliefs are slowly challenged, and when his ties to the people who challenge his egoist morals are cut, his egoism goes even further downhill, leading him to become a utilitarian existentialist.

Utilitarian existentialism is hard to properly define, as there is no clear-cut definition. It is the combination of two different philosophies, utilitarianism and existentialism. Utilitarianism is the belief that actions are right if they are useful or for the benefit of a majority; if it provides the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people, it’s the right thing to do. Existentialism is the belief that there are no set morals for life and no specific meaning to life— people are free to create their own meaning and define their own existence. Utilitarian existentialism is the combination of these two beliefs, and Siv falling into this moral belief can lead to its own opportunities, both for the plot and for himself.

Siv, by the dictionary definition, is a villain. One of the core beliefs he holds, mostly thanks to his egoism, is that everyone is a terrible, selfish person except for him and Ganon. This is not only harmful to the rest of the population because of the possibility of the Calamity being revived, but it’s harmful to Siv as well. Thinking everyone is bad except for the entity that’s weaponizing your malice, or manipulating your trauma, is not the most healthy thing. In addition, as the readers, we can see things from multiple perspectives, and therefore know that not everyone is a terrible or selfish person. By seeing these multiple perspectives and knowing these things, we root against Siv and his goal of resurrecting the Calamity, for his view of the world and the people in it is flawed. Siv succeeding in his objective wouldn’t be good for anyone, including himself. If this was Siv’s only belief, it would be more of a clear-cut black and white story, and Siv would just be a villain. However, that is not the case.

The other core belief Siv believes is one that Astor leads him to: Getting rid of all the terrible, selfish people in the world is the morally correct thing to do, as the kingdom would be a better place and he’d finally be happy. “Defeating the evil in the kingdom will make everything end up good” is a mindset that many stereotypical heroes share. This is the belief in the stories of many people’s childhoods, and people root for them because it’s usually correct in the context of said story. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with Siv’s belief; he does have a point and does deserve to be happy. Furthermore, most of the problem causers in Hyrule would be gone, preventing all the hurt and trauma all the characters have to cope with from happening again. For example, getting rid of Ligero is something the entire reader-base has been cheering for since the old man was first introduced. It would be satisfying to see people such as those face consequences for their actions, and as readers, we like satisfying endings. Unfortunately, the problem is that Siv believes everyone is bad except him and Ganon, so he’d be getting rid of everyone, and effectively resurrecting the Calamity, something that devastated the kingdom and brought a massive amount of death, in the process. Taking that into account, you wouldn’t want Siv to succeed. And as a bonus, killing anyone and everyone he could possibly care about in any capacity would not be good for his already crumbling mental state. All of this creates a mental tug-of-war in the reader’s head, because they're rooting for Siv to succeed but also hoping that Siv will fail. Is he in the right? No, because not everyone is a bad person and killing everyone by raising the Calamity isn't ever the right thing to do. But is he in the wrong? Also no, because utilitarianism isn't inherently bad, neither is existentialism, and the moral principle itself can have good intentions. Quill writes Siv to be a very complex character with no absolute right or wrong mentality. There’s no surface answer to if Siv is correct in his thinking or not, as this moral greyness goes a lot deeper than the surface level you see within the dialogue.

Siv walks upon the same morally grey tightrope that we, the readers, fight ourselves over within our own mental game of tug-of-war. His moral ambiguity is a huge part of his characterization, as well as a major highlight on the plot of HKU as a whole. The picture Quill painted is not only in multiple shades of grey, but also full of color and life. And out of all the shades of grey Quill used in their masterpiece, one of the most interesting shades is Siv. Quill did an excellent job at exploring this moral greyness and it shows well; you can truly see the care that they put into Siv as a character through how he affects the world around him. The kingdom of Hyrule is not made of black and white, but instead, is painted in multiple shades of grey that reflect our own world within itself, since nothing is as simple as it seems.

~~~

Want to read more about Siv’s morals? Quill wrote an in-depth explanation themselves, and does a much better job of explaining it than I do, so I recommend reading it if that peaks your interest! Click HERE to be sent to that post! (also major spoilers, so be warned)

~~~

Now, since you got to the bottom of this post, and because I might be a little too polite, I need to give some thank-yous to a handful of people.

The first thank-you is to Rev (@swordlesbianss) for giving me the push I needed to actually write this thing! You pretty much kept me accountable for getting this done by mentioning your essay (which I look forward to reading when it’s ready, take your time), so thank you, Rev! You definitely got me to actually start writing the original version of this essay, and caused me to write it to where it is now!

The second thank-you is to Aura (@auroraborealis1890) who beta read the first draft of this essay! You made sure it wasn’t completely incomprehensible, thank you so much Aura! By being able to read it at all, you were a huge help to what was essentially a crazy person’s ramblings. You’re a great friend and I’m very grateful you read my first draft of bullshit <3

The third thank-you is a huge one to Bunny (@bunnywabbit229) who polished up this essay! All of the tone, spell checks, and really beautiful analogies were proofread by Bunny, some invented by them! They took a good 5+ hours out of their day and made this little rock of an essay become the shining diamond it is! I could point out so many things that they made better, but I don’t want to gush for too long. Bunny, I know I already told you this but if I could buy you a large brownie pizza, I would because you helped so much and I appreciate it so much!

The final thank-you is to Quill, the author of @hyrule-kingdom-updates, who made the inspiration for this essay. You have made such a wonderful story that’s rich with so many amazing characters and astounding worldbuilding. You made a masterpiece that inspired an essay of over 1000 words and I’m in awe. You truly deserve to know how wonderful your writing is and all the effort you’ve put into your characters and story is not going unnoticed. So thank you so much for putting your story out into the world, Quill.

#hku #hku spoilers #<- got that out of the way now time for the writer's cut in the tags #this was originally going to be an essay about Siv and Larc and how their morality challenges our view of it #Siv is moral. Larc is immoral. You'd expect them to be opposites. But they're not #as time went on Siv slowly started taking over the essay entirely because there's just SO MUCH TO HIM #so the topic shifted into an essay about the moral greyness of hku and used siv as a prime example #it eventually got to this point (which is fortunate because that other essay was going to be even worse that this one)#also the tightrope analogy with a bit of circus theme is half inspired by some google stuff about how hard moral greyness is #and half inspired by the fact that i am a clown honking my little clown nose at 3am trying my best #also another tangent: if you were awake around 1am (est) and you heard me going insane on a google doc #the first draft of this essay was that google doc but i didn't want to say it because what nerd writes essays at 1am #(i am. i am that nerd)#anyways #thank you for reading all of this!#i hope you have a wonderful day/night/whatever time!#<3

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kazo0-boy · 3 years

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WARNING: Talk of mental illness, trauma, suicide, PTSD, solitary confinement, torture, generally dark topics, talking about c!dream in a somewhat sympathetic light

honestly idk what this is. it had a point somewhere but it just devolved into my thoughts on c!Dream. i also wrote half of it while dissociating oops

gonna put a disclaimer first: I am in no way trying to excuse any of c!Dream’s actions. he’s done tons or horrible things. this is just an analysis post from the perspective of him being mentally ill and flawed and the effect the prison would have on him, and what i think should have been done instead. Also, this is a fictional character.

This is something i’ve been wanting to put into words for awhile but haven’t really gotten to until now, but honestly as someone who has struggled with mental illness for most of their life and been in toxic mindsets I can’t help but sympathize with c!Dream in that it’s very clear to me that he isn’t just evil for the sake of being evil, but he is also a character that has gone with untreated mental illness and no proper support system that has resulted in him spiraling into the toxic mindset and abusive behaviors that we see him with now.

Nobody just goes into a spiral of cutting everyone and everything important to them off in order for them to have no chance to hurt or be used against him out of nowhere, developing unhealthy obsessions with power and control, attributing having attachments to displaying weakness, ect.. He’d have to have been struggling for a while to get to that point. There’s no way in heck that happened without a lot of internal struggle. Tbh i think what we saw with him snapping at Tommy for using Spirit’s leather against him was only the tip of the iceberg. We didn’t see any of his internal thoughts or descent but we did see the breaking point that led to his downfall. And he just kept getting worse from there.

do i think his actions are justified? no. he’s done a lot of unforgivable things that cannot be excused with any explanation and that’s not what i’m trying to do. can i see what state of mind would lead him into the place he’s at now? yes. just like every other character on the server, he is someone with complex actions and motivations that go beyond just being evil for the sake of being evil.

do i think he should be in the prison? no. now before you write me off let me explain why. NOBODY should be in the prison because it is inhumane and designed to break the prisoner’s spirit rather than contain and rehabilitate them for the safety of the server. It’s more of a torture chamber than a prison honestly. And being in it is clearly not helping c!Dream at all and traumatizing him more than anything. He’s mentioned that he doesn’t get full meals (during Bad’s visit, he asked if he gets 3 full meals a day and Dream brushes off the question) and what he does get is barely anything. Essentially starvation. The original prison plans were for the prisoner to also be able to leave the cell and go into a courtyard and such for ‘enrichment’ but neither Sam nor Dream has mentioned that. So as far as we know he’s been stuck in his cell the entire time with almost nothing to do. So essentially solitary confinement with a touch of starvation and isolation (people rarely visiting him, visitation being taken away as a punishment, ect) plus more for an extended period of time is a recipe for disaster (this is the only time i’m gonna mention specifics but i can see this resulting in specifically C-PTSD among who knows what else, as unlike simple PTSD it is caused by multiple traumatic events for an extended period of time. things like childhood abuse or being held captive for an extended period of time, and there have been cases where solitary confinement has caused it so he could easily end up suffering from it). I’ve seen people make the point that ‘oh well he was gonna put Tommy in there so he deserves it.’ that’s not the point. the point is that NOBODY should be in the prison. It should have never been built in the first place. any character that would go in would come out with serious trauma therefore it’s inhumane. Plus, how is Dream going to ever become a better person in that kind of environment? Isn’t that what a prison should be aiming to do?

Even if he hasn’t entirely broken yet, as he still shows hope of getting out or fighting back it’s inevitable that he is going to. We’re already seeing the beginnings of it in the form of self-destructive behavior like burning his clock and killing himself in lava (basically suicide). As time goes on its only going to get worse and worse. and even in the off-chance that he’s doing those as some kind of attempt at manipulation, the fact that he’s willing to go as far as to do serious harm to himself is seriously seriously concerning

So what do i think should have been done instead? first off, get this man some therapy. get EVERYONE some therapy. he’s no less deserving of getting help than anyone else. Second, put him in an actual prison that isnt a literal torture chamber, that will give him consequences for his actions properly without dehumanizing him and taking away any chance at recovery?

so uh, yeah. theres my 2am dissociative trigger-enduced rant on c!Dream over. i cant believe i wrote an entire essay on a minecraft roleplay

#dream smp #dreamwastaken #torture mention #mental illness mention #abuse mention #suicide mention #trauma mention #character analysis #ask to tag #long post #self harm mention #self destructive behavior mention

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pappydaddy · 4 years

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I Wanna Know What It’s Like (f.w.)

A/N: So, I am going to start making new Masterlists and today I was supposed to start them, but I’ve had this idea for an imagine in my head for weeks now so I am writing it instead. I also couldn’t choose who to write this for so I’m doing multiple variations of this for different characters and stuff. I decided to do Fred first bc my other Fred imagine was really sad so this is a way to make up for that unnecessary sadness.

I am also testing out a new scene divider, idk if I’ll like it, but we’ll see! This is a repost bc the tags weren’t working the first time a posted which was upsetting and I really hope that they work this time. This is another repost (last one for a while if this one doesn’t get any feedback or the tags don’t work).

Anyway, Enjoy!

Pairing: Fred Weasley x Gryffindor!Reader

Fandom: Harry Potter

Inspo: The Tik Tok audio for Let’s Be Friends by Emily Osment, links to the song below so you don’t have to search for it like I had to 😂

- The song the Tik Tok audio is cut from - Slowed version I found and really like

Warnings: None except making out I guess. Some NSFW hints and thoughts. Like downright sinful thoughts. Hints towards a kinky reader? (Is that even a warning? And is wanting to be completely railed a kink? Is it?)

masterlist | taglist | wips | navigation - my gif -

Y/n couldn’t seem to pull her eyes from the red-head seated next to his identical twin. The pair of them sitting farther down the Gryffindor table than Y/n and her friends. The hall was silent as all the students were working on their essays, being monitored by Snape, but the greasy Potions Master nor the rules silenced the twins - them having found a loophole that let them annoy the largely hated Professor. There was a rule about no talking, but he couldn’t punish them if they never spoke actual words, could he? From where she sat, she could hear their loud grunts and hums from their wordless conversation with each other.

She didn’t understand the sudden fascination with the Weasley boy. It confused her since when she had left Hogwarts last year, she found him annoying, but alas, once she laid eyes on him for the first time this year at the Welcoming Feast, something had changed. She definitely couldn’t pin-point it to save her soul. Maybe it was the fact that he had grown his hair out, but then she’d also be attracted to his twin since he had done the same. Could it have been that she finally developed her attraction to bad boys? Was she looking to spice up her dating life since her past boyfriends had been quite lackluster with their golden-boy attitudes? Whatever it was, it made her question her sanity since this was Fred Weasley she was talking about. The same boy who decided it would be funny to throw a large Dungbomb into her dorm in First Year. She had stunk for a good two weeks along with the only other girl that was in her room at the time.

“L/n,” The monotone drawl of Snape made her feel like someone had just dumped a bucket of ice water over her - which she was thankful for since she could sense her thoughts for the red-head were about to take a steamier turn. Gulping, she slowly turned her head to look at the scowling man donned in black. “I suspect that you’re done your essay already since you certainly do not look like you’re working on it anymore. Didn’t take you to be too keen about potions based on your unsuccessful potion brewing.” His voice was slow and sharp, showing that he was not in the mood to even be pleasant to Gryffindors.

“Almost, sir. Just a bit distracted. Sorry, Professor.” She shrunk under his hardening glare, realizing that he probably didn’t want her to answer his statement.

“Five points from Gryffindor for talking, L/n.” Snape sneered making Y/n’s jaw fall in shock. Her eyes stared up at him in disbelief. He was the one who talked to her first!

“But I was just-”

“Another five points from Gryffindor, need I take more?” Snape asked in a threatening tone, his frame seeming to grow and tower over the girl, intimidating her. She gulped, shaking her head nervously, remaining silent. She might not be someone who thought things through before acting, but she certainly did learn from her mistakes - usually after the second time. With a nod and a flick of his long cloak, Snape stalked along the table, glaring at the Weasley twins as they continued on with their nonsense, pushing his buttons as he waited for the moment one of them slipped up. Huffing as she casted one last glance towards Fred, she couldn’t help letting the question slip through her lips.

“When did he get hot?” Her eyes widened when she realized she muttered the words out loud. Her friends looked up from their own essays, snickering at the red-faced Gryffindor. A few other Gryffindors looked up at the girl in confusion, but she noticed that her quiet voice hadn’t reached the students near the Twins. She let out the breath she held, thinking that she was safe from embarrassment from Fred hearing and Snape hearing, but her false sense of security was yanked out from under her.

“Another five points from Gryffindor, Miss L/n!” She cringed, peeking up to see Snape glaring at her from the middle of the Great Hall. A groan emitted from her before her forehead fell against where she thought her pile of parchment and books were only for it to thud against the wooden table harshly. She didn’t react, only hissing and scrunching her face in pain but otherwise keeping her head down.

_____________________________________________________________________

Saturday was the day of relaxation. Where you ignore all your problems like the load of homework you had due on Monday. The day was designed for this, putting everything off and worrying about it on Sunday when you had a pile of work that needed to be done in the single day. Y/n was the queen of blissful Saturday ignorance which is why it was so surprising to see her sitting outside, staring blankly at the lake (at least they thought it was the lake) as she clearly worried about something. Her friends, in turn, ended up breaking their Saturday tradition to worry about their friend.

In reality, Y/n wasn’t staring at a wall and she really wasn’t worried about anything. As her and her friends sat under the shade of a large tree, the Weasley Twins were tossing something into the lake. She was sure they were up to something, but that wasn’t on her mind. What was on her mind was the fact that she was still trying to figure out why she liked Fred Weasley. She had figured her feelings for the boy when she saw him flirting with some random Ravenclaw Prefect to create a distraction for George to slip past the Prefect and place their product in her bag that sat on the floor by her feet. Before realizing what the two masterminds had plotted, she felt a wave of unfamiliar anger flaring in the pit of her stomach - something she later diagnosed as jealously.

Her thoughts were definitely clouded with steamy thoughts that could be the contents of a dirty movie. As her eyes scanned over the tall boy standing at the shore of the lake, laughing mischievously with his twin, she couldn’t help but wonder if he was different than her past experiences. He was a flirt, he talked a big game, but when it got down to it, did he really know how to please her? Did he know how to make her scream louder than she ever has? Would he be scared to hurt her or would he not think twice to push her into the mattress and completely destroy her? “Y/n!” Her friend shoved her, making her almost topple over. Snapping her once glazed-over eyes to her friend, she saw her friend group blinking at her expectantly.

“What,” She asked, clearing her throat when her words came out too high to be played off as normal. The friend that had pushed her shared a concerned look with the others before looking back at the wide-eyed girl whose cheeks had become tinted with pink when she retraced her thoughts. “What do you want Cami?”

“We were talking about Cedric and asked you a question-” Another friend, Alyssa, popped into the conversation. Cedric, Hogwarts Heartthrob and Golden-boy. When Y/n broke up with Roger Davis, they were sure her and Cedric would pair up, they were the most attractive students at Hogwarts, they would be the power couple - it must have been destined. Y/n was even convinced that they would end up dating this year, but once she caught sight of Fred, that all went out the window. She wasn’t entirely convinced that it was entirely the oldest twin’s doing since when Y/n saw Cedric on the platform before boarding the train, she questioned what all the fawning was about. Sure, he was attractive, but he was too good. If she had dated him, she’d probably end up bored of the relationship just like the others.

“Repeated it ten times, too.” Her Hufflepuff friend, Sophie, spoke up.

“We wanted to know when you guys were going to get together? Word has it, Cho and him have been talking, you might want to jump on him when you have a chance! Ask him to the Yule Ball!” Cami regained control of the conversation. Y/n shrugged, opening her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by her other friend pointing off towards the lake.

“Look! Janet Green is going to ask Fred to the Yule Ball,” Alyssa exclaimed in a hushed, gossipy voice. Y/n instantly looked towards the lake to see the same Ravenclaw Prefect Fred flirted with approaching the snickering twins. “I heard she’s been plucking up the courage for days. Poor girl, hope he says yes. It’d be awfully embarrassing to be turned down after it’s all she’s been talking about!” She gushed in a fake sympathetic tone. She lived for drama and gossip, no matter what Fred answered, it’d be good for her since she’d be able to spread the news.

The group watched, Y/n hoping that Fred would say no. Janet started to talk, nervously playing with the ring on her pointer finger as she talked to him, George watching with a playful smirk on his face still. Y/n took in the younger twin’s form, seeing his shoulders shaking ever so slightly with smothered laughter, the smirk on his face saying that he knew the answer his brother was going to give. Y/n furrowed her brows as he obviously enjoyed the situation his brother was being placed in. “I can’t watch this-” Sophie gasped, being cut off.

“Be quiet, they’ll know we’re watching!” Alyssa hissed at her, whacking her with the muggle magazine her mother sent her. The snap of the magazine resulted in George flicking his eyes up to the group, all of their eyes widening, but his smirk just grew more and they could clearly see a sparkle in his eyes when he noticed Y/n staring intently down at the group. They could all see that his eyes stayed on her for a solid second, singling her out before he sent her a knowing wink before he looked back at his stammering twin.

“That,” Sophie breathed out. “Did not go well, poor girl.” She finished with a real sympathetic sigh.

“Yeah,” Alyssa let out a fake sigh before smiling brightly. “I’ve got to go tell Alicia Spinnet, she owes me ten sickles!” And with that, she scrambled up and was running towards the castle.

“Alyssa, no! You’ll embarrass the poor girl further!” Sophie gasped, chasing after her Gryffindor friend. Cami watched the two runoff, but Y/n couldn’t be bothered with them. She was too busy trying to decode what had just happened. From her thoughts to George’s wink. It was all like a secret code. She watched closely as George poked fun at Fred once the embarrassed Ravenclaw was far enough away. She hummed, noticing George trying to discretely point towards her as he tried to convince Fred of something. She could see Fred’s hair blowing slightly, the flaming hair looking smooth. Suddenly, her mind was clouded once again, imagining how it feels to have him press her up against a wall, her legs wrapped around his waist, their lips locked together in a heated kiss, their tongues invading each other’s mouth, her fingers tangled in the locks of fire-

“What are you doing, Y/n,” Cami asked, snapping her out of her daydream. She looked over at her friend to see her with furrowed brows. “You were,” She paused, looking disturbed by the next word she was going to say. “Moaning, I think?” She wasn’t even sure what Y/n was doing. Y/n would have normally flushed in embarrassment, but it seemed like her mind had a different plan. She wanted to know what the big deal about Fred Weasley was about. There must be something about him that she wanted, why else would she be plagued with these curiosities? She can’t even look at the guy without suddenly wondering something about him. She wanted to know how his lips tasted, to know if his hair was soft, if her fingers could glide right through his locks without getting caught on any tangles. She wanted to know everything her mind was wondering.

“I’m going to go get answers, that’s what.” She told her friend, making Cami more confused as she stood up, her eyes on Fred and George. George, seeing that Y/n was storming her way over, looking like she was on a mission quickly told his brother who seemed to freeze before turning around to see that his brother was telling the truth. After a second of shock, he plastered his normal smirk on his lips, but Y/n could see the nervousness in his eyes. She had studied that smirk since the beginning of the year after all.

Cami watched in shock and confusion as her friend marched up to Fred, standing in front of him. The tall boy looked down at her, his smirk still on his face (looking normal to her) as Y/n craned her neck to look at his face. “Hey, Fred.” Y/n smiled, completely unsure of how she was doing this. Her inner self was having a complete meltdown, her brain being overridden with confidence.

“Hello, Y/n.” He perked an eyebrow at the girl, feeling her confidence rolling from her, a stark difference from Janet a mere few minutes ago. She hummed, a smirk that she didn’t even know she could produce stretching onto her face. It was like she wasn’t even in control of her body, she was being driven by her sheer attraction to the boy standing in front of her.

“Let’s be friends so we can make out,” She came right out with it, Fred’s smirk falling as he nearly choked on his own spit, taken back by her statement. “You’re hot, I wanna know what it’d be like. We can go to the Yule Ball, sneak away to make out in a dark hallway,” She shrugged, her eyes glistening with the normal flirtatious sparkle Fred held in his. “Don’t you wanna know what it’d be like to make out with someone who has only been with good guys? Show me the wild side?” She stepped closer to him, her hand skimming his hip as she did so, her hip bone hitting just below his hip due to the height difference.

Fred was silent, his pupils completely blown as he processed what was going on. Her confidence faltered slightly, but she then remembered all the flirting tips she had read in Alyssa’s magazines. Walk away, leave them wanting more. She picked the dropped confidence up, adding more onto the surge she was miraculously given somehow. “If you want to take me up on the offer, you know where to find me.” She rolled up onto the balls of her feet, pressing a soft kiss to the skin close to Fred’s mouth while still being able to say it was the cheek before spinning around and sauntering back towards stunned Cami. It took everything in her to fight against her inner self that wanted to die right there not to drop the smirk, hoping that he’d come after her once he got over his shock.

The hand wrapping around her wrist didn’t surprise her, she almost knew it was coming. In a swift movement, she was whirled back around, facing Fred who panted slightly, a flirty smirk on his face as he gazed down at her. “I think I’ll take the offer,” He hummed, his eyes dropping down to look at her lips, his tongue swiping over his bottom lip hungrily. “You and me, the Yule Ball and a dark hallway, see you then.” He pressed a kiss to the very corner of her lips, regaining his confidence before releasing her wrist and walking back towards the lake where his brother smiled proudly. She watched him, the corners of her lips feeling the aftershocks of having his lips touch her. Cami walked up to stand beside her, looking at Fred and George as well.

“Guess you’re gonna need to get a really sexy dress now,” She commented, nodding absentmindedly. Y/n hummed in agreement, stunned that it had worked and that she had actually just did that. “Now I know why you’re a Gryffindor,” She added on before grabbing Y/n’s arm and dragging her back to the castle. “Come on, we need to make a list for possible dresses and Alyssa owes me the ten sickles Alicia is giving her.”

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