#interestingly i just read this for the first time about a month ago
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Random thought! - Husband Gojo x Wife Reader-chan #inside the diary
Hear me out! Gojo read your thoughts in your diary and came to realize that he was a terrible husband to you.
He knew he was a good lay, hence the reason he managed to knock you up three times. But as of lately, he came to realize that you weren't interested in having sex with him.
At first, he thought it was just because you were too tired, having to take care of the kids while he works, all day by yourself (in which he understands, and he praises you for being such a wonderful mother).
But that wasn't the case. He just happened to come home early from work while you were out shopping with the kids, and he got a hold of your diary.
Interestingly, he took it upon himself to skim through the pages of your book, just to see what's inside your little head. Nothing out of the ordinary, just little notes and reminders to yourself about the task you had to complete and a few words of encouragement here and there.
He usually doesn't read through your thoughts, always thinking that if you had an issue you'd come and talk to him, so he was about to put your diary back where he found it because he didn't want to pry further into your thoughts, but that's until one page in particular caught his eye.
I find it difficult to enjoy sex with my husband nowadays and I don't know why?
Words in blue handwriting are written beautifully on the paper. He kept on reading, and as he continued to move further down the line, he felt his heart break.
It’s just me, but I don't think I'm attractive enough to have sex with my husband.
I wanted to suggest the last time we had sex [that was a month ago], but I didn't wanna ruin the moment for him because he looked like he was having fun.
Satoru came home today and wanted to have sex. I told him no. He never forced himself on me. He only kissed me goodnight and left to go sleep in the guest room. I know he was upset but did he really have to leave?
It's been 2 months, and Satoru hasn't tried touching me since that night. Am I not worthy of loving anymore? He doesn't even buy me flowers anymore or take me out on dates.
He doesn't compliment me anymore, doesn't tell me that I'm beautiful. He doesn’t even call me baby girl, doll or even honey.
No more I love you, only kisses to the forehead and peck on the lips before he leaves for work in the morning.
He comes home late, I'm always alone with the kids, no more family dinners, no more kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom conversations. No more late-night kisses, no more holding me tightly in his arms while he sleeps.
Does he not want me anymore?
Sometimes I wanna visit his office with the children but I’m afraid that he’ll find my presence a bit annoying. I feel lonely without him here with me.
I should've said yes that night and spread my legs for him,
That's my duty as his wife.
To have fulfilled all my husband's needs without complaint.
But it hurts to have sex, I'm just not in the mood. I'm too tired, I just need my husband to hold me, but he's not there.
I can't complain, he's the reason I don't have to work.
But is it so bad to ask my husband to love me without having the need to touch me?
The last entry to your diary reads.
I'm going to do it today, bare the pain and have sex with my husband, just so that I can feel his love once again.
Now he knows the real reason you won’t have intercourse with him, or let's say the reason you don’t enjoy having sex with him. You feel as though he doesn’t love you anymore, and he needs to fix that. So, until he can figure out a way to prove to you just how much he loves you, he’ll have to deprive himself of your warm loving touch.
Later in the day when you came home with the kids, you saw your husband cooking up a storm in the kitchen. “Hey baby girl, want something to eat? It’s been a while hasn’t it.” too stunned to even say a word, you just watched as your kids, ages 3, 4 and 6 ran over to their dad and engulfed him in a big hug. He giggled and stopped whatever he was doing to bend to his children’s height and kissed every single of them on their cheeks. “Hey boys. Did you all take your mom out shopping today?” Oh, that’s right you’re a boy mom. You managed to pop three boys, all of them came out looking just like their dad, especially your eldest son.
The boys chatted away with their dad until he excused himself and walked over to you and wrapped his arms tightly around your body. You're in a state of shock, unable to move for a moment until he whispers, “can I get a hug back?” and you did give him a hug.
“Welcome home, have a seat, dinner’s almost ready. I cooked vegetable curry today, I know it’s your favourite,” and indeed it is your favourite. For the rest of the day, he spent time in the kitchen cooking while chatting with his kids, not without taking small glances at you. You all ate dinner together, got the kids ready for bed when night falls, before preparing for bed yourselves.
You remembered that you wrote in your diary that you were about to try and have sex with your husband, all for the sake of feeling his love again, but that didn’t happen. Instead, you found your husband already waiting for you on the bed, fully dressed in pjs, a cup of your favourite tea in his hand and a warm loving smile on his face.
He immediately started up a conversation with you, asking you about your day and your trip to the shopping centre. You had no clue what was going on inside your husband’s head, but it’s been a while since he last sat down and had small conversations like these, and you weren’t about to miss this opportunity.
So with a smile on your face, you told everything that happened today and even the fact that you had to buy a bag of grapes you had no intentions of buying, but you did so because your 3 year old son stole and ate a few while you picked up a bag of oranges. The conversation went all a while until he sighed.
“Y/N,” he whispered in a serious tone. “We need to talk. I was going to wait until tomorrow, but I can’t bear the fact that my wife would be going to bed with doubts about our relationship and my love for you.”
You swallow thickly and rest your now empty cup against the nightstand before turning to face your husband fully. He reached his hand out for you, and you gently placed your left hand in his. He wrapped his large hand around your finger and gently pulled you until you were straddling his lips. You swallowed that thick lump yet again, before whispering, “So what is it that we need to talk about.”
“Why do you always refuse to communicate your feelings with me?” he asked as he let go of your hand and wrapped both hands around your waist and rested his head up against your chest. “I know I haven’t been a good husband to you these past few months, but I don’t want you to think that I don’t love you or that you’re not worthy of loving.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
He sighed heavily before taking a deep breath. “I found your diary in the living room when I got home, and I read through your notes.” Your body tensed up in his lap, your mind immediately racing towards negative thoughts. Is he angry? Why did you have to carelessly leave your diary out in the open for him to see.
“Oh!”
“I’m sorry for reading through your diary, but I’m happy that I did because my wife won’t communicate with me,” he said with a frustrated sigh.
You frowned, “Would you have listened even if I tried?”
“I would’ve dropped everything and listened to whatever it is that you have to say. I know it's my duty to ensure that my wife is living her best happy life, and that it’s also my responsibility to take care of your wellbeing, but I can’t always know what's going on with you if you don’t communicate with me.”��
Communication on your end has always been a big issue in your relationship with your husband. It bothered him and he’d hope that after a while you would’ve grown out of your bad habit, but he guess he’s wrong, because here you are now after 8 years of being a relationship total and that includes the four years of marriage, and 3 kids later, you still struggling to figure out a way to communicate your feelings with him.
“I broke my heart when I read that you thought that as my wife, your duty is to only provide for me sexually or even the fact that you don’t think that you’re attractive enough to have sex with me. What hurts me the most is that you have so many doubts about my love for you. Y/N you know that I love you right?”
“I do,” your voice trembled slightly as you answered.
“Then why are you doubting my feelings for you? I apologise for leaving you to sleep in the guest room that night, it was wrong of me to be upset all because you told me no.” There was a moment of silence, you figured he was waiting for a response in which you never gave.
“I know I don’t say this as much as I need to, but I love you. I LOVE YOU so very much. I love you as my best friend, my wife and I love you even more as the mother of my children.” Tears started to obstruct your vision as you stared off at your wedding portrait that was above your bed and listened as your husband poured his hurt out to you.
“I need you to stop thinking that you are not worthy of loving because you are more than worthy. You’re an amazing woman, an amazing wife, and an amazing mother to our children. Just the fact that you're a mother makes you worthy of loving.”
“Satoru… I- I,” you stuttered, trying to formulate the words inside your mouth, but even if you did, what are you going to say to your husband? You had not one clue.
“I’m not a mind reader Y/N, so you need to start communicating your feelings with me, because if you don’t tell me, I’m not going to always know,” he said to you as he snuggled his head against your chest.
“I- I’ll do better.”
“I’m happy to hear that, and I promise to show you just how much I love you and do whatever it is to ensure that my wife is happy, because your happiness means the most to me. I’ll get you those flowers you want, and I’ll try my best to buy you loads of flowers in the future. And about visiting my office.”
“Yes?” you said.
“I would love for you to pop up at my office one day with the kids and surprise me. My workers have been dying to meet my beautiful wife and children. And about the late-night work meetings. I can’t promise you that there won’t be any more late-night meetings, but I'll do my best to get home as early as I can to be with you and the kids. I don’t want you to feel as though I’ve abandoned you with the kids. I’ll take a few days off from work too and take the ends out. You’re right we barely have family time.”
“Thank you,” you said smiling as you allowed those tears to run down your cheeks.
“I’ll do better as your husband. It wasn't my intention to not cuddle and hold you tightly while we sleep. Baby you know you can always smack me in the head or do that cute silly little thing you do and crawl underneath my arms if you want to cuddle with me,” he said to you, and you let out a small giggle.
He chuckled too as he removed one hand from around your waist to cradle your cheek. “Lastly, this is about our sex life. If I make you feel physical pain, or uncomfortable at any time during intercourse you need to let me know because the last thing I want to do is hurt you. In your diary you said that you wanted to suggest the last time we had sex. I want you to tell me what it is.”
Your face heated up immediately, why would he have to bring that up now. Couldn’t he have waited until a better time. But nonetheless despite the obvious look of embarrassment on your face you whispered, “I was wondering if… if…”
“Yes?”
“I was wondering if we could try something outside the usual vanilla sex,” you said to him, and he cocked his eyebrow towards you. “It’s not that I don’t enjoy vanilla sex, I love having vanilla sex with you and you know how to be rough when you need to be. But I thought it would be nice if we could do something different.”
“What do you suggest?” he asked with a sunning grin on his face.
“Maybe we could try using some sex toys.”
“Sex toys heh?” he said, and you quickly covered up your face with your hands. “I’m open, I don’t mind getting a few sex toys here and there for us to use. I can order us a few online on another day.”
“Ok…”
“Good girl. I love you.” he whispered as he kissed your lips. "I promise I'll be a better husband for you."
“I love you too, Satoru.”
#gojo smut#jujutsu kaisen gojo#jjk gojo#gojo satoru#gojou satoru x reader#gojo satoru x reader#satoru gojo#jujutsu gojo#gojo fluff#gojo angst#gojo x reader#jujutsu kaisen satoru#satorugojo#jujutsu satoru#satoru smut
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TWST’s Magic Mirror
Wait a minute. I was lowkey having a mental breakdown (cater vibes) until I realized something about the Dark Mirror- or specifically what Crowley said about magestones that may change what we know about the Dark Mirror.
The magestone is the figurative heart of ANY magical artifact…Crowley says this in the prologue as response to the broken chandelier. Hm? ANY magical artifact? Including the Dark Mirror?
And suddenly, it clicked.
See, I’ve had these photos saved for a while, because I knew something was wrong with the Magic Mirror and Dark Mirror. They didn’t look alike, despite having similar powers and appearance. And for now, I’m still assuming that the Dark Mirror IS the Magic Mirror, just a little twisted. After all, I feel like if it was a replica, it would’ve been mentioned at least once.
About a month ago, I took the time to read through all the chats, and what Rook and Vil claim about the Magic Mirror confused me even more
Hm?? They mention in the chats AND in Book 5 TWICE about “IF the Magic mirror still existed.” The mirror is clearly respected, and Pomefiore knows a lot of lore about the Evil Queen, like her apple trees, the well, the robes.
And yet could they not realize that the Magic Mirror is literally the Dark Mirror…unless it’s been tampered with that no one recognizes it as THE original?
See, what clicked to me is the missing red gems from the Dark Mirror. I knew these were missing, but I never realized what this meant until today. Those gems must have been the Dark Mirror’s MAGESTONES, Aka it’s figurative heart. Look at the Dark Mirror and at the sides where the gemstones would be: there’s clearly an empty socket/space. As if…someone stolen the mirrors “heart”. It’s why the frame of the Dark Mirror looks so faded- the magic was seeped away from the entire artifact.
And since magical artifacts have magestones, could let “Overblot” too? The idea of an object Overblotting sounds silly, but the Dark Mirror isn’t just any artifact. The Magic mirror from Snow White canon has a spirit inside (or multiple if you like my “Meleanor is trapped in the mirror” theories haha). And from a 1950s brochure on Snow White, it specified that the spirit used to be the Evil Queen’s familiar demon.
So if it has a soul, it can Overblot too, yes?
And as we know from the Spectral Soirée, the Dark Mirror specifically can be manipulated to do some incredibly powerful magic- even host another world inside. Perhaps someone (cough Crowley) forced the magic mirror to do something impossibly powerful? Like permanently another soul (Meleanor)? Or perhaps create a “mirror” world inside it, like Twisted Wonderland?? Or does the Magic Mirror’s gems have a hidden power to them?
Speculation aside, I found even more odd was in an interview with the TWST voice actors, they all showed up in person- except for Malleus’ VA who “wasn’t invited.” And interestingly enough, they used the MAGIC Mirror for Malleus to speak though. See how it’s golden and it has those three red gems? Why would TWST bother with remaking the Hall of Mirrors background just for an interview?
But then I had ANOTHER realization. In the first Anniversary TWST animation, it opened up with Grim walking through a mysterious hallway, which I’ve talked about before. That theory is a bit wishywashy haha, but the point is, the camera focuses on a frame of…the MAGIC mirror. Although it’s barely visible, you can see the golden details and the red gem at the bottom.
The TWST creators didn’t have to remake the Hall of Mirrors background for the voice actor interview at all. They already have this image prepared in their files- with a clear distinction between the Magic Mirror and the Dark Mirror.
…This was a huge rabbit hole haha ∑(ﾟДﾟ) But there’s something to unlock from this case, I just know it!!!
#lowkey about to hack into Disney to find out the lore#jk don’t sue me#twisted wonderland#twst#twst theory#twst dark mirror#twst Magic mirror#twst Crowley#twst dire Crowley#dire Crowley#twst grim#KallistoPost
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I've been meaning to ask for a while, since you've read so much more Supers books than me, but what are your thoughts on Kon being retconned as Clark and Lex's lab grown love child? Asides from that one mind-controlled-into-shaving-his-head incident, did that ever factor into anything again? Is it even still canon? If it were up to you would you keep it and try to do something interesting with it or just sweep it under the rug and pretend it was never true?
I think it would be a great retcon if they ever did anything with it aside from one (1) incredibly stupid story.
Because the thing is, originally Kon's human donor was Paul Westfield, and genuinely, who the fuck cares about Paul Westfield? He was only relevant for, like, a year. He's a footnote at best.
But Lex? There's so much potential there:
How does Clark feel about it? Does he trust Kon less? Does he feel guilty about that? Does he defend him to people (Batman) who would question him?
What are Lex's plans? You can't tell me he would sic Kon on other heroes once and give up. Lex always plays the long game. He has to have other Machiavellian schemes. What if Kon gets the clone plague again and Lex has the cure? What if he built in a vulnerability other than kryptonite? Most interestingly, what if Lex cares?
And of course, most importantly, how does Kon feel about it? We've seen him ignoring it and then moping about it. And I think it was his Adventure Comics run where we saw him tracking his own behavior to see if he was more like Superman or Lex. But what if a story really interrogated the fact that Kon is a very different person than Clark? (Especially in light of Jon, Clark's mini-me.) Kon likes money; Lex is a billionaire. Kon loves attention; Lex is functionally a supervillain because he's jealous that people like Superman more. Kon is a sweet boy but he's not a shining paragon of virtue. Is that because of Lex's genes? Is everything good about Kon simply Superman's genes? Is Kon is own person with free will that exists beyond picking a donor to emulate? Is a clone a person at all? Let's get into it, DC!
If it was up to me, I would write two stories about it:
First is the story where Kon and Lex actually develop a relationship. Kon and Clark has never been close, and Kon has rarely had a stable home or consistent parental figures (Rex was untrustworthy, Dubbilex got written out a lot, Guardian died and came back as a child, Pa died, Ma lived but Kon died and then got retconned into another dimension...). Kon is primed to fall for lovebombing, especially if Lex is doing one of his regular "no, really, I'm Redemption Arc-ing for real this time!" routines. Especially right now with a trillion Supers Clark likes better hanging around Metropolis, and Lex swearing he's going to be Good...what if he stopped trying to convince Clark, and started trying to convince Kon? What if he spent time with him, and listened to him, and took his side against Clark, and let's be real, probably spent money like water on him? And what if Lex, despite himself, discovered that...he actually cared about his clone son?
Of course, Lex's self-interest would eventually win out. We see this over and over again, where he sacrifices his relationships on the altar of his ambition, where he just can't quite love anyone else as much as he loves being evil. And yes, Kon ends the story hurt, but also with another reminder that validation needs to come from within and not from a billionaire who wants something from you, even if he is your other dad.
(And maybe Clark is reminded that he has failed Kon. Again. Ahem.)
The second story I would write is the one where Lex goes to jail and Kon somehow inherits Lexcorp and many billions of dollars and is cartoonishly irresponsible with all of it. Lex gets out of jail and there's a giraffe in his office and all of his doomsday devices are full of Zesti Cola.
But yeah, instead DC does nothing with it. Literally a few months ago they had Clark and Kon and Lex all having a conversation about a villain Lex created and gave TTK to - so like, talking explicitly about how Lex created Kon, too - and aside from Kon being mildly snide, that was it. That was it! DC WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS. WHAT IS THE POINT OF SETTING UP SOMETHING SO JUICY AND THEN LEAVING THAT JUICE UNSQUOZE.
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New week new brainrot new timeline, this time for the Trigun 98 anime!
More detailed timeline with episode marks: google sheets
High res file & additional Trigun resources: bit.ly/trigunresources
Note: This probably works best as just a sequence of events rather than a strict timeline (since all of 2 actual dates were given in the entire series and there's some conflicting dates being given💀). But it does help showcase just how much it delineates from TriMax though!
Rest of the timeline & additional notes under the cut!
Notes:
Let me start off by saying: If you thought the TriMax timeline was rough, that was nothin compared to this (which BEFORE I FORGET: I revised the TriMax timeline, so if you saw that just know it’s been updated! )
Interestingly, unlike TriMax and TriStamp, the 98 anime seems a lot more linear(if that's the right word?). The series timeline pretty much starts and stops within a 130 year timeframe, rather than establishing the PE system by when the seven cities were first constructed. (This also makes 98 Vash the youngest of the Vash iterations by at least 20 years, maybe that’s why he's like That)
The two dates given were the Destruction of July (July 21, PE 0104, 2:06 pm) and the day Meryl typed up her report: July 20th (2 days after the Monev the Gale incident, over 4 and a half months after being handed down their orders which was back in early March)
Note: In the dub, Meryl says they were "handed down their orders last December", but in the sub it's "in the city of december". I went with the sub info cause that seems more correct, but you could always argue that the months on NoMan's Land aren't the same as Earth's. (in which case July has got to be a really long ass month with how much supposedly happens in it)
Legato makes a remark at the Fifth Moon incident that July was 23 years ago, which is why I placed the start of the anime at PE 0127
Before Meryl is told about the Vash sighting in Little Jersey, Karen makes a comment about how they “spent 5 months on the outside working with a dangerous man who’s been labeled a human disaster”, I interpreted this as their entire time on assignment was 5 months (including the 3 months before they first encountered Vash) which is why I placed the Fifth Moon incident in August) but could also be interpreted as they actually traveled with Vash for 5 months (which if we assume is starting off when they first encountered him (in June) would place the Fifth Moon incident in October like in TriMax. I just find it hard to believe that 3 months elapsed between Monev and Augusta but to each their own!
No time frame was given for how long Vash was disguised as Eriks (as far as I could tell), and for the latter half of the anime I could not for the life of me find any other relevant date marks so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ free for all. I assumed it was around 2 years though, maybe a smidge more, just to neatly align the the end year at 0130
For the keen eyed observer, the May City shooting competition documents further exacerbates how messed up the timeline is (so I blatantly ignored them) but as you can see it places the year as 0131, and then the competition is being held on April 1st (1th?) and Wolfwood entered Vash's name on March 31st. The other info on the forged data sheet is kinda funny though
Additionally, I couldn't find any clear indications of how old Wolfwood actually is in the series, but he was 7 when he shot his guardian and trained under Chapel the Evergreen for 10 years
Lastly: for those like me who can't stand having to re-read events (and are looking to start reading TriMax): You can pretty much skip Volume 1 and just start with Volume 2 (ch 13-20). Just know that Meryl & Milly only met Vash starting at the InEpril city incident (In the manga it's a city in Voldoor, not InEpril explicitly)
#resources#timelines#trigun#trigun 98#98 trigun#tri98#trigun 1998#this one also hurt my brain but for very different reasons#i also had to reupload the graphic like 10 different times cause I kept finding mistakes and adjusting things : P#anyways finally calling it quits on this and am never touching another timeline again (me when I lie I'm eyeing the BNHA timeline again :')#sorry if the colors are harder to read here hahaaaa I'm not changing them
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A Starter on B-Komachi Spotting
One of the things I most wish we knew more about in Oshi no Ko is B-Komachi - the peeks we get into their group dynamic in 45510 and especially Viewpoint B are always super interesting to me but in the manga itself, we get shockingly little info about them. We can't even match all their names to their faces! With a little sleuthing though, I've managed to identify three of the six unnamed members which should help us narrow down the remaining girls, with a bonus tinhoil hat headcanon that I'm going to finally table. With that said, let's give it a shot!
The No-Brainers
These ones are easy enough that I'm not giving myself any credit for them but I'm mentioning them for completion's sake. Hopefully if you care enough about Oshi no Ko to read this post you recognize Ai on sight, but did you know another B-Komachi member was identified by name too?
In the Episode 1 BTS video, some settei (concept art/animation refs) for the first episode's preproduction were shown and among them was a B-Komachi member.
At the bottom of the character turnaround, you can see the settei is labelled "めいめい" which is read as 'Meimei'. Case closed!
Interestingly, Mei is also namedropped in Viewpoint B and it stated to have written lyrics for at least one of B-Komachi's songs around when Ai was fourteen. Maybe we've got her to thank for Heart's♡Kiss?
The Deeper Digs
So, full disclosure – credit for this first ID goes to users thePermianwascool and ali94127 as they pointed out all these details in my Viewpoint B thread a few months ago. I'm just getting it all in one spot!
Viewpoint B, like 45510, is narrated by an unidentified B-Komachi member but we have just enough details about who she is in the story to put a face to her and it's the B-Komachi member in yellow with the penguin hairpin:
Her member colour is yellow
VB-chan left B-Komachi before the first gen disbanded and accordingly, Penguin Girl is one of the members missing from the final concert.
I don't think it's a stretch to call that one a slam dunk.
Interestingly, the fleeting connection between the Viewpoint B narrator and Ai is the heart of that sidestory and it meant enough to Ai that even years after that single conversation, she considers the narrator her closest friend in B-Komachi. And if you pay attention to the anime art, our Viewpoint B narrator suspect is almost always placed directly at Ai's side with a consistency that feels intentional.
Maybe Ai really did have a friend by her side all this time.
In addition to our narrator, Viewpoint B also identifies another B-Komachi member called Kanan. While this is not a name we've heard before, B-Komachi members are also referred to by fans by cute, affectionate nicknames in-universe. As such, it's possible that she is the 'Kyun' that Sarina refers to in episode/chapter 1.
The other identifying feature we're told about is Kanan's long, silky black hair. In the lineup there are only two unidentified B-Komachi members with long hair and only one with hair I would say reads as black to me.
The girl with the panda pin.
In addition, this post is mostly spoiler free but for Oshi no Sickos who are caught up on the current arc, here are some ROT13 filtered spoilers from the manga that make me slightly more confident in calling this shot.
Xnan'f ebyr va 15 Lrne Yvr vf na nf-bs-guvf-cbfg havqragvsvrq O-Xbznpuv zrzore. Va zber be yrff gur fnzr oerngu gung guvf cbvag vf rfgnoyvfurq, Xnan vf nyfb gurzngvpnyyl pbaarpgrq gb gur vzntrel bs cnaqnf juvpu jbhyq zngpu Xnana'f navzny zbgvs. Vg nyfb cebonoyl whzcrq bhg ng lbh jvgubhg zr fnlvat vg ohg abgr gur fvzvynevgvrf va gurve anzrf, gbb – Xnan naq Xnana.
Someone Stop This Girl Cooking
This part of the post is where I stray out of reasonable assumptions and into wild speculation territory but it's speculation I feel is backed up enough by the source that I don't want to entirely discount it. While this isn't strictly an ID, I do want to call attention to a character I think may be more important than she initially appears to be: the B-Komachi member in blue with the hamster hairpin.
Of the B-Komachi members, she is the only one other than Ai to have a distinctly fantastical hair colour - the other girls all have varying degrees of unnatural shades but Hampter Girl and Ai both stand out as having very distinctly 'anime' looking hair.
In addition, she is given a lot of passing but very notable focus but the anime's framing. She is one of the two other B-Komachi members who join Ai in the private performance of Sign wa B where the twins perform their lightstick dance and is the center of the trio of B-Komachi members we see at Ai's funeral.
Shun Sawai - one of episode 1's character designers and animators - also posted some official art that has her front and center of B-Komachi.
If these aren't just coincidences, it's possible she's being given some attention because she has some importance to the plot or the story as a whole. And why would that be?
As we've already established, Penguin Girl here is our Viewpoint B narrator...
So what if our Hamster Girl is the narrator of 45510?
If this is the case, that would make our Blue B-Komachi member one of the three founding girls paid homage to with Ai's passcode - Nino, Watanabe or Takamine. Picking entirely at random, I'm choosing to headcanon her as Takamine for the time being.
Keep in mind that this section of the post is strictly speculation of course! I just think it would be a nice fit.
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Dante and Vergil with their s/o giving them late Christmas presents
Pairing: Dante x Reader; Vergil x Reader
Summary: Interestingly enough, Christmas was a time of the year when demons decided to cause mayhem - giving the whole crew enough work for months to come. Because of that, you didn't have the chance to buy your dear devil a present... But that wouldn't stop you from showing you cared.
Age restriction: none, really. Dante's present you can interpret as NSFW only if you WANT to. It pleases all readers: you can read it as something very silly or kinda spicy - and BOTH go with our red devil. He is a seducing goof, really.
Author's notes: I'm not in a very jolly Christmas spirit this year and feeling quite meh about the Holidays, so maybe this can cheer up some people who are on the same vibe as me. Sometimes we're not on our best days and it's ok if we're not on the Holiday vibe - you're not broken. It's fine if you don't feel great.
ALSO IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: the poem on Vergil's part is a song lyrics I've written a long time ago and I went through my notes to find something I liked for this one. You're welcome to share if you like, but please credit me. It's my first time sharing this sort of work, so be nice about it ^^
Dante
Oh, Christmas. Jolly time, beautiful time, snowflake insanity time and carols playing everywhere a human – or demonic – hearing could reach.
One thing everyone seemed to forget, was the high incidence of demons causing pure mayhem. You understood Halloween – based on Samhein and all that – but Christmas…? Maybe demons liked to follow the Wheel of the Year as well and wreaked havoc during Yule?
Well, you settled with that explanation. Demons were all about magic, solstices, equinoxes, and such, so Christmas should be one of those magic heavy times too.
It was a bummer that the Devil May Cry always got busier that time of the year.
After the family and the crew got together, Dante started celebrating and waiting eagerly for it every time December 1st arrived on the calendar. Prior to that, though, you knew your red devil wasn’t much of a celebration type of guy – for a long time, he had no one to celebrate it with; therefore, he allowed the date to die inside his heart.
Hunting was his – and yours, to be honest – way to stop thinking about it. If you were busy, you wouldn’t notice that loneliness that seemed to approach during the jolly time.
You sighed, while walking back home in the streets of Redgrave. With hands inside your coat’s pockets, your sword was carefully kept inside a guitar case you caried on your back – something you learned with Dante to be less obvious of your status as a devil hunter to other people. You were just another tired musician, coming back home after a tiring day at work.
And what a day. You received so many calls, the crew had to cancel Christmas and each one go to a job and clear one demon infestation at a time. That meant no Christmas food, no cozy drinks, no jolly songs on repeat and no presents.
With your feet marking your way in the snow, the snowflakes spiraled as you let out another sigh. You wanted to give Dante a present – to show him you cared and all that, even after he told you he didn’t want anything. But that was the thing about him: Dante never wanted anything and always thought he didn’t deserve it.
If you could only grab him by the shoulders and shake that stupid belief out of his head. It was funny even how many times that type of thought crossed your head – but it was a staple of living with Dante.
You could hear people celebrating inside their houses. It was very late and probably in the middle of the night – you didn’t carry a watch or something to tell the time since a demon blasted your cellphone in two during a job and it took you more than a year to scrape some money to get a new one. Nevertheless, you learnt to tell the time by the skies and, giving how late it was, Dante probably was coming back from his as well.
He would be tired – or at least sore from all the fighting – and certainly in need of a shower, just like you at the moment.
Crossing the heavy wooden doors of the Devil May Cry, you left the guitar case and dirty boots by the jukebox, noticing how Dante’s were missing – that meant he still wasn’t home.
As you went up the stairs, you still thought about his gift. You could give him a pizza for the night and Dante would be happy. One would think it would be great to have someone easy to please around, but it did make your life more difficult: you had no idea what to give him when you wanted something to be really special.
Everything was special for Dante.
Reaching your room, you finally smiled while searching for some clean pajamas. That little thought made you realize something – and search for a beautiful ribbon you could wrap a present with.
*
“Ei, babe! Still in the shower?”
“Hey, Dante! Just got out!” You answered while drying yourself with the towel. You could hear a little laugh in his voice as he walked around the room on the other side of the door.
“Damn, seems like I lost my chance for a nice shower with ya tonight!” His voice was a little muffled, making some effort with something. If you knew him well, Dante was finally taking his boots off and would remain sitting on the bed for a while to let his feet rest.
“Oh, I was desperately needing a shower.” You sighed, making him giggle a little. “How was your job today?”
“Eh, same as always… Nothin’ special, just a bunch of buffoons thinkin’ they’re gonna conquer the human world.” The sigh in his voice made you lough this time. You found it lovely how you always could hear his smile in the way he spoke back at you. “What…?”
“Not a usual thing hearing you say ‘buffoon’. You’re really Vergil’s brother, huh?” You couldn’t stop giggling as your fingers fumbled with the beautiful stripe of red cloth that would be a beautiful bow when you’d be done with it.
“What can I say, babe?” You already knew Dante so well, his shrug was in his voice, as well as his smugness. The cocky smile was beautifully plastered in your mind – and you’d hope you’d never forget it. “You start livin’ with the prince of darkness there, you get a few of his mannerisms.”
“Hmmm.” You tried to hold back a laugh, but the wheezing was recognizable even to Dante in the room. “Now I’m imagining good ol’ Verge dressed as Ozzy singing Paranoid like a crazy metal dad.”
You could swear Dante’s laugh could be heard through the whole shop – and you couldn’t stop yourself from laughing alongside him. Moments like those were better than any presents you could give him.
“Ha! Now that would be a sight to see!” He coughed back. “But ya know, don’t mention this to Verge, but he used to like Black Sabbath and uncle Ozzy when we were kids.”
“Nooooo…! You’re joking!” As soon as your voice achieved the heights of disbelief, Dante just laughed in response. “Verge is a Sabbath guy?!”
“I’ll say two things: Mr. Crowley and War Pigs.” Dante’s voice disappeared for a few seconds before coming back again. “If ya sing one of these by his side, Vergil knows the lyrics by heart.”
“Man, I gotta do that one of these days…!” You giggled to yourself, hearing Dante falling on the bed. Probably sitting, waiting for you to come out of the bathroom. “What about you?”
“Oh, I love uncle Ozz and Sabbath! Who do ya think introduced metal at home?!” With a sigh, you knew he was stretching and finally starting to relax. “But yeah, I was more into AC/DC, and later bands like Mötley Crüe. Verge said it was all one hell of a noise and he couldn’t focus on readin’.”
“Huh. As if you can focus on Sabbath.”
“Touché. He knew some songs on drums too, he just liked complainin’…”
That was a good present for you. Having Dante remember things of his life and talk to you about mundane things, like music, was something that always warmed your heart – you loved everything about him, but spending time together and just getting to know each other more and more… That was something only his soul could gift you.
“Talkin’ ‘bout complainin’, is everything alright there, babe? Or did the toilet swallow you?”
“Oh, you know. Just a couple of sewer demons, I’ll be done with them in nooo time.” Your answer made both of you laugh – although, sewer demons were indeed an annoying breed of devils. “I’ll be out soon, red devil, chill out. I have a surprise for you.”
“What…? Surprise…?”
That suddenly kicked into his head: it was Christmas. Dante had completely forgotten about it. He was so used to not celebrating, that going about it like a normal day was just average to him. All the lights in the street, the snow, the songs, the smells of Christmas food… It was something he had learned to ignore.
“Oh, babe… You…”
But Dante’s mumbles were interrupted as soon as you emerged from the bathroom wrapped around the red ribbon; a perfect big bow resting on the top of your head as you opened your arms. You found him sitting on the bed, shirtless, stretching his legs after a tiring day of hunting – his dumbfounded sky-blue eyes staring at you in awe for the couple of seconds you took him by surprise.
“Merry Christmas, cowboy!” You giggled back, a wide smile on your lips. “I couldn’t buy you a present, so…” You signaled to yourself, opening your arms again right after.
“Damn. I love you, babe. Have I told you that already…?” Dante murmured with a beautiful big smile on his lips, taking your hand on his as you approached. “Merry Christmas, beautiful. Sorry I couldn’t get ya a present this year.”
“It’s ok. You’re already my present, big guy.”
Dante just kissed you in return as you sat on his lap. The only way for you to know how much your words meant to him, was by the rhythm of his heart, beating like fiery drums.
He wouldn’t mind receiving that Christmas gift every year.
Vergil
The last demon fell on the floor, slayed by your very own ghostly white Mirror Edge. Your hands were covered in blood, as well as the snow covering the ground in that Christmas night.
The moon was high in the sky, celebrations already starting to come to an end inside homes all over Redgrave. Vergil once told you there were times of the year, usually celebrated by witches and occultists in general, that held power – and Christmas time was one of them.
You had to take a different job than Vergil in order to keep demons at bay that night; returning home, then, was a lone path. Quietly walking in the streets, you kept your hands warm inside your pockets, watching as people went back home or just turned off the lights to go to sleep.
“I do recall Christmas at my family’s home…” Vergil said calmly, watching the snow falling outside while he kept his hands warm with the cup of fancy tea you brewed for the night. “It all seems like a distant memory. I…” He halted his words, furrowing his brows as Vergil carefully chose his words. He wasn’t one to speak without intention and, when it came to his feelings, he always struggled to find the right words. “…Spent too much time in Hell. Time itself is a concept forgotten on those lands.”
“Hmmm. Were you aware of the passage of years…?” You kept focusing on your painting; sitting in front of it, you let Vergil speak, paying attention to his words but being careful not to overwhelm him with attention. He raised his eyes to you, watching as your hands carefully painted the snow from the night outside – Vergil knew it required trust from you to allow him to watch you creating something.
“Sometimes…” He let out a deep, controlled sigh. There was a type of tug inside his chest every time he talked about those memories; as if something inside him was twisting and leaving him breathless. “Some minutes seemed like years… And some years seemed like seconds. I only realized how much time had passed when I saw Dante for the first time.”
“Huh. Makes sense…” You muttered, making him raise one eyebrow. You reached for something on your paint desk and Vergil gave you your teacup – he always feared you would accidentally take a sip of dirty paint water in your moment of being absorbed by your art. He had done that countless times while reading; it was something he wasn’t proud of. “I wouldn’t have wasted time trying to know what year it was if I was falling apart after crawling out of Hell. Makes sense you only noticed when V united with Urizen again.”
“Hmmm.” Vergil agreed with a subtle nod, brewing your words inside his mind. You seemed to be the only person he could openly talk with and not be judged – there was something of welcoming about it. “I… Forgot. How Christmas is like. I know the memories; I know the traditions. But I don’t know the feeling anymore… I see just a ritual that only has meaning if people believe in it. In Hell, no one believes in anything; the only thing keeping you alive is a small light of hope that one day you will make it out of there. The rest…” And Vergil did a vague gesture with his hand, preparing to take another sip of his tea. “Is frivolous.”
“Only survival matters.” As you added, he nodded alongside you.
“And keeping yourself. Not allowing your soul to die. If you lose that, not even your body can bring you back.”
That conversation with Vergil marked you. They were just a few words before he went back to reading and you focused again on your painting, singing a couple of songs ever time your heart felt like it. Surprisingly, it was something Vergil enjoyed while reading – as well as mindlessly massaging your feet and calves you usually rested on his lap while both of you were concentrated on something else.
Vergil was easing back on Christmas. It was a lot of work – he wasn’t specially loved by anyone but you and Dante in the crew, but everyone was warming up to the blue devil. Trish and Lady found it easier to welcome him given their history together, and Nero was working on his own feelings of having a father – and one who didn’t even know him, to top that. The first Christmas together was a miracle and the second Christmas, Vergil already showed he was a lot better at thinking of gifts than Dante – they usually didn’t remember people actually expected to receive something, but Vergil always knew each one’s preferences.
He never expected anything back, though. It had something to do with him atoning for his sins, but there was something else as well. If you didn’t get in the festive spirit, Vergil wouldn’t get into it as well. Time and important dates were a real struggle to the blue devil – as he said before, there wasn’t such a thing in Hell.
Vergil was completely tone deaf when it came to noticing the passage of time: it was common between you two a few reality checks. Vergil usually approached and you helped him make sure what he was living was real – not one of his many hallucinations when incarcerated – and when were you. “When” as in how many weeks had passed since an important event, how many months, how many hours. That way, you helped him with his time dissonance.
He probably didn’t even remember it was Christmas… It was your job to remind him, then.
*
As Vergil entered your room, he could hear the shower as your voice entangled around the notes of water in a song he didn’t recognize – not that he needed to, for Vergil loved hearing you sing.
Leaving his coat on the back of the chair, he sat on the bed to take off his boots. It was a relief, really. The moment the day ended, and he came back home – it had been a very long time Vergil didn’t really have a routine of winding down, changing to comfortable clothes and sleeping in a warm, comfortable bed. He always took some time to close his eyes and feel the ground under his feet, focusing on how grounding that was.
His heart seemed to go back to its own place – a forgotten place in his chest, filled with a warm sense of safety. He could only define it as the feeling of love and protection he longed during all his years of seemingly endless suffering.
There were days in Hell that indeed felt like an eternity. Sometimes, Vergil questioned if everything he was living with you was real – working in the Devil May Cry, talking to his brother again, getting to know his son. It was a dream, and dreams were prone to ending.
Shaking his head, Vergil took a deep breath before taking his boots and opening the closet to keep them safe and sound in their proper place. The next piece was his vest, carefully kept in a drawer.
Vergil calmly went back to the desk, in order to get his coat and hang it inside the closet – hearing while you turned off the shower and started to dry yourself, still humming your song of choice. It was one you had shown him before, that he could identify.
As soon as his fingers touched his coat, Vergil furrowed his eyebrows – his eyes meeting an envelope with his name atop of his read of that month. That was your handwriting; that he was certain.
Taking the envelope between his fingers, Vergil turned it around, finding the words “Merry Christmas”.
Oh.
Oh.
He had forgotten about Christmas.
Vergil stared at a lost spot on the wall for a while, internally complaining about his lack of awareness of important dates in a human world. Shaking his head once again, he finally opened the envelope, finding a simple piece of paper with your handwriting – a poem, by the way you framed it on the sheet of paper.
“When I believed life was concrete and coal
You made my heart rain gold
Dripping like honey over your chest and arms
I want to glimmer with you amid the stars
Your breath caught on my lips, kept in my soul
Your sparkle entangled in my hands, I will never let go
In the silence of the Universe, witnessed only by Venus and Mars
I give you, my love, my soul and my heart.”
Vergil didn’t know that poem.
He read those words again and again, breaking the meaning and feeling behind them. His silvery eyes had never seen them before, but there was something of different… Something that seemed to wrap around his heart and make his eyes threaten to feel more than he usually allowed them to feel.
Until he found the little note on the bottom of the paper.
I know it isn’t perfect, love, but I wrote this poem for you. It’s the sincerest thing I can give you this Christmas. I hope you like it as much as I liked writing it.
“Oh, you found it.” Vergil was lifted out of his storm of thoughts by your voice, recently emerged from the bathroom. He turned around, having a stern look on his face and his hands holding the single piece of paper for dear life. “Merry Christmas, my dear. I hope you like your present. I didn’t have time to buy anything, and I wanted to give you something meaningful.”
Without any words, Vergil approached you with the same resolution he did when he had an enemy in sight. You just looked at him, trying to understand his reactions – Vergil was always a box of surprises. He never reacted like everyone else did, but it was to be expected after all he had been through.
You were caught completely by surprise when he wrapped his arms around you, tightly holding you against his body – his face hidden in the curve of your neck. His heart was aligned with yours; and that made you smile.
It was the first time Vergil was the subject of a heartfelt poem – not just a heartless reader searching for some tenderness.
**
I blame Duff McKagan’s Tenderness for that last line and overall feeling of this ending part
youtube
This Tenderness. I love this man, I love this song, and it was Vergil written all over. It's also really comforting on trying times, give it a listen ;)
#devil may cry#dmc#devil may cry fanfiction#dmc fanfic#devil may cry imagine#dmc imagine#vergil sparda#dante sparda#vergil x reader#dante x reader#vergil x you#dante x you#dmc fanfiction#I hoped you liked the song lyric turned poem#I have so many lost song lyrics#maybe it's time for them to see the light of day#also again it's ok not to be in the jolly spirit#you don't owe hapinness to anybody#as he says in the song we just need a little tenderness#and know whatever it is that is making us down it'll pass#it all started 'cause I imagined Dante would love if his s/o gave themselves as a Christmas present to him#a rather stupid idea but yeah it's Dante#Youtube
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One thing that bothers me about jujutsu is that the author doesn't know how to develop some characters. 1 Shoko Ieri is an interesting character but I find her apathetic without a cold and superficial personality. 2 itadori yuji doesn't seem to be a protagonist he seems more like a tool than the protagonist of the work. 3 nobara had no development dry and emotionless death. and many other characters. There were only 2 characters that really had development, which was gojo and geto, for me, they were the only ones that had it. Why do you think the author did this, is it because he didn't want to develop the characters that's why he killed many important characters? I would appreciate it if you respond.
This is a lot to answer so sorry if it gets confusing a little.
1.) and you really have to keep this in mind, is that the manga isn't finished yet. It's also not about to finish. We have just reached the beginning of the end and we have at least another 6 months to go if not more. Without the last panel drawn, we can't really talk about the stuff Gege hasn't put into the story yet.
Still, many of your points can be addressed.
Shoko: In both the present and the past storylines, she is a side character without her side of the story being shown too much. Her being cold and apathetic can be a fitting description of her in the present but in the past she was more open and easy-going.
When you say she has a superficial personality that's where your interpretation is a little off. For one, her personality changes and for two, her current personality reflects the cost that living as a sorcerer has on people. We are also shown her inner thoughts on occasion but interestingly, one of those thoughts kind of comments her role in the story.
(This thought also establishes that she has trouble understanding Gojo's point of view on his godlike status)
The thing with Shoko is that we're never shown what she does: heal and save people. That's an aspect of her character that has been completely, and deliberately I say, missing until this point. But she has saved the lives of: Geto, Ino and Angel (plus some others) and she has therefore shaped the entire plot of the manga extremely.
But this I think will change in the most impactful way possible: with her saving Gojo's life by showing us for the first time what her CT is and how she heals people.
On Nobara, you're right. She had little character development and no reflection on her thoughts and beliefs. To this I say, read my post about her coming back because I believe that she will get that character develepoment and reflection when she re-enters the manga.
The same thing goes for Tsumiki. I was really disappointed when Yorozu died and Tsumiki basically disappeared from the story with her role never being more than that of a prop. But it was pointed out to me, that Tsumiki actually had been shown in an active role in the manga 70 chapters ago and that role will definitely be revisited when Megumi gets the spotlight again.
Now to Yuji. Did you realize that you contradicted yourself? You said that Yuji doesn't feel like a protagonist but you also said that Geto and Gojo had the best character developement. You're definitely talking about Hidden Inventory here but HI is and arc where Yuji is removed as the protagonist.
So the main protagonist being removed from the story temporarily has a purpose. You could say that that was a flashback and doesn't really count and that you mostly mean the 4 mini-arcs in Culling Games where Yuji wasn't present + the Sukuna/Yorozu fight + the Gojo/Sukuna fight.
Gojo/Suku we don't even count in this, that's a given, Sukuna/Yorozu is character showing plus setup for the future and Yuki/Choso/Tengen vs Kenjaku we don't count either, because that's a plot progression plus villain fight.
In my experience when people talk about Yuji not being a good protagonist because he isn't present often enough, they mean the arcs where Yuta, Maki and Hakari take centre stage. (The three other mini-arcs add to this)
Why would a mangaka do their story like this?
For world building. To be more precise: for plot building. Yuta, Maki and Hakari have important roles for the endfights and for that they needed character development (Maki), a show of their powers (all) and setups for the future (eg alliances with Kashimo and Uro).
Right from the beginning, JJK always moved the plot forward first. That's why the pace is so fast. The story is plot driven and not character driven, but that doesn't mean that the characters aren't given their time, just that that time isn't an entire chapter.
You can critizese this of course, I too would've liked small character scenes to have been expended on. That Yuji is taken off the picture for world building isn't sth I would critizise though. That's what happened in parts of Attack on Titan, and it also happens constantly in One Piece with Luffy albeit in Flashbacks.
It simply adds to the story when we can see other characters act on their own and while Yuji is back in the centre now, he will most likely take small steps back again to let other characters shine like Megumi eg. It also adds to his personality, but for the end of the manga he will be the centre of attention.
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Blood Upon the Snow
Word count: 6,814
Summary: The full flashback from Before the End of Time (TVA Loki fic I'm wrapping up). Loki and his love go into the forests of Asgard in the dead of winter to find an Asgardian child lost in the mountains. Ending up in a fight for their lives, both reveal their true selves and come together as one in the heat of battle. The myth of how Loki got his horns.
Warnings: Gore, intense fight scene, angst, bookended in fluff
The playlist I made while writing this linked here
Spoilers: The only spoilers are in the Epilogue, so if you haven't seen Loki S2 E6 just don't read that part.
Author's notes: This kind of just ran away from me while writing a fic inspired by Loki S2 E6 (coming soon!) -- but there are no spoilers for most of this. This all takes place before the first Thor film.
For this, I leaned a little more towards Norse myth, where the love interest/reader is heavily inspired by Skadi, goddess of the mountains and hunting (and skiing, interestingly, but that's not represented here). That being said, if you like the reader to "wear the pants" of the relationship, this one is for you!
This was truly my imagination running wild with easily my favorite fictional character of all time, Loki, as a love letter to him and the myth he comes from. I hope you can feel the love as you go on this adventure with me!
ALSO: Thank you all so much for the support for my first fic I posted a few months ago (linked here)! It means so much to me that people enjoyed it. I'm getting more comfortable with posting fanfics, now, so expect to see more in the future. The fact that some of you enjoy my unorthodox approach to fanfic makes my heart so full and grateful.
Loki held her to his chest. Her smell mixed with the freshness of the air coming in through their window — a cool Asgardian summer night. He could feel her relaxing into him.
She looked towards their bed, where he had put his helmet moments before. The long horns coming from it curled away from the bed, white and streaks of brown matching the rich earth tones of the bed, gold contrasting in a way screaming of the old world and power.
“Do you remember when we got those horns?” She asked.
“How could I forget?”
It had been one of the deepest, most harsh winters that Asgard had experienced in centuries — as if a curse had fallen over the land and made it permanently frosted. The snow had gotten so deep that a child had gone missing, running into the forest to play and not home when they should have been — evening beginning to come over the land.
The child’s mother had come begging to her, as most of the Æsir had gone to battle in another realm. It had just been her and Loki at home, helping to move cattle between fields. Or, rather, Loki was there for moral support while she worked her magic, singing to the cattle and them responding like she was speaking their language, butting each other and blowing out steam as they trudged through snow coming up to their withers behind her.
The mother had come right up to her, casting him a wary sideways glance as his love gently grabbed the woman's arms, steadying her. The mother then described her son running into the forest and not coming back, despite her calling for him and being gone longer than he had ever been before.
By the time she had looked over to Loki, he knew they had already said that they would find the boy.
The mother cast another weary look to him, turning to her and worriedly whisper-speaking to her. He was sure she was whispering something about how Loki couldn’t be trusted with something this important, that he always caused chaos wherever he went.
His love calmed the woman then, walking them over to Loki.
“I would trust him with my life.” She gave him a knowing look. “He wouldn’t let anything happen to you boy,” to which she then looked to Loki expectedly, tilting her fur-enrobed head to the mother.
Loki stuttered over himself trying to get the words out. “O-of course. We’ll bring him home to you.”
After settling the cattle, they moved to the stables to grab their horses.
Loki came up beside her, speaking low.
“Are you sure about this?”
To his surprise, she looked to him with foreboding, no admonishment in her voice.
“This could be dangerous, Loki,” she looked ahead and began to take her draft horse out of its stall, absentmindedly rubbing its muzzle. “We can’t not go out there, though.”
He recognized her demeanor — quiet, introspective, serious.
“A premonition?” Half-whispered as they stood between their horses, fully saddled. Ice crystals blew through the barn, making his horse shake its head, pressing into his back.
She cast him a wary glance. “I don’t know yet, for sure. But we need to be exceptionally careful.”
Looking out to the forest on the edge of the city, where spruce was white with snow clinging. She sheathed a long sword into the scabbard on her saddle, the horse adjusting to the sudden weight.
“This is the kind of forest that doesn’t want to be disturbed,” she spoke, “and we’re disturbing it.”
He took the hint and followed suit, sheathing his daggers. She had always refused to take a weapon into the forest outside of a battle, and it made his intuition twitch to see her doing so now.
When they rode out to the edge of the forest it was exceptionally quiet save for the disrupting of the snow, their horses making paths through it. His horse was struggling, a couple hands shorter than hers, which moved through the feet of snow with ease. She never lost that look on her face, though — whole body tense, eyes moving between the trees.
An owl moved from one tree to another, catching a rodent. The small scream reverberated through the trees, stilled only by its echoes fading.
Loki realized he was holding his breath, then, and gasped to breathe normally again. A billow of his breath crystalized in front of him.
Her horse was suddenly next to his, and she reached down to grab his hand. Looking up to her he was met with an intensity that screamed eternal, screamed ancient in a way he had never seen in her before, as if he were looking into the eyes of a wolf.
“I love you,” she spoke, steam billowing from her lips, “stay alive”.
Loki swallowed hard, looking up at her, in all of her beauty and wildness. He reached his hand up and caressed her head, pulling it down to his, lips meeting. The freezing cold left for a minute while they kissed, her lips full and warm against his, fortifying him.
When she pulled away from him, there was a red tinge to her cheeks. Their faces hovered for a split second.
“I love you,” he repeated, “stay alive”.
They moved into the forest, feeling the difference in light like a cloak as the forest enveloped them. He quickly found small footsteps dredging their way through the snow, leading deeper and deeper into the trees. They followed them.
Loki noticed that he had lost count of how many trees they had passed after a while, all looking identical to him save for the occasional gnarled knot or branch that he would duck under.
A quiet so profound it felt like a blanket followed them, making him jump every time a vole or bird would move by them. She, however, never startled, as if she had known they were coming long before an animal would make itself appear. She would twitch her head, cocking it one direction or another, like a dog catching a sound in its soft ears, pinpointing it.
They stopped after making their way close to a mile, where the tracks of the boy stopped.
Snow was kicked up in a several foot radius, like something massive had come from the side and bowled the child over.
She jumped from her horse. Moving to the disturbance cautiously, crouching down, she ran her fingertips over a few drops of blood, moving it to her lips. The bloodied snow stuck to her lips and her tongue darted out, taking it into her mouth.
Loki had never seen her do this before, but didn’t question it. He sat in the saddle with baited breath waiting for her to say something.
When she looked up to him, her face said it all: it was the child’s blood.
“What do we do now?” Loki spoke, breaking the silence that had lasted between them the entire way through the forest.
Standing up, she looked towards a tree to her left, where massive claw marks dug into the bark, revealing the lighter pulp underneath. Her fingertips ran across it. Immediately she jolted as if struck by lighting; she whipped her head up, back stiff, eyes wide as a gasp choked out of her.
Loki leapt off of his horse and came to her side, grabbing her by the shoulders, fingers digging into the fur of her cloak. He spoke her name, shaking her slightly.
She took in a shuddering breath, turning to look at him. Her eyes were wide and crazed, shaken, as if she had seen a ghost. Her voice came out stuttering over itself in a way he had never seen from her before. For her to be this shaken by something could mean Ragnarök itself was in the forest, a great wolf waiting to swallow them.
“Whatever took him was touched by a dark force — something I’ve never felt before.”
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up.
“What do we do?” He asked.
She looked to him again with that intense stare, the look of premonition.
“We kill this thing,” she said, “whatever it is, it a scourge on the land. It won’t stop with one life.”
The massive path of whatever this creature was moved onwards from them, towards the sharp black mountains that were a few more miles out from where they were, uphill.
They mounted their horses and made their way up the mountain, a solemn silence between them.
By the time they were approaching the edge of the forest, their horses were breathing heavily, steam coming from their backs. They had made their way into the upper mountains, where trees mostly gave way to rocky cliffs, creased with snow blowing over them. Ice shards blew into his face, no forest left to soften the wind. It was bitterly harsh and cold, the kind of place that only some of the most extreme and terrifying animals and monsters would reside in — or the land of frost giants, Jötunheim, from whence he came. A shiver rang down his skin at the thought of this birthplace.
Soon after they had cleared the trees and were up into the mountain, a boulder came into view — pressed up against the stone was the boy. His clothes were tattered, a large gash across his chest.
“There he is,” Loki gasped.
She immediately hushed him.
“It’s close,” she whispered. “It wouldn’t have left him.”
Just as the words left her mouth, the rustle of something large came from across the mountainside.
At first, Loki couldn’t see anything.
Then it moved, a mass that had looked like the shadows of many trees making its way towards them. An immense beast, with gaping, blood-coated teeth and several pairs of horns jutting from it. It towered at least fifteen feet above them at the shoulder, covered in snow-white and mottled grey scales. Several sets of reptilian eyes set on them, pupils narrowing as it began to circle them. Its eyes glowed red, a black smoke trailing from them.
A bilgesnipe, but not one like Loki had ever seen before. This beast was several hundred pounds more massive than any he had seen, and it reeked of a dark magic that Loki couldn’t place.
Loki looked over to her. She was looking towards the child.
“Protect the child,” she said, voice flat and low.
Before Loki could say anything, she moved back and ripped her blade free — one of the finest of the dwarves’ creations, a large broadsword forged with several metals, a hilt of gold.
He decided to trust her in that moment, his body flowing warm with his magic as he removed his daggers from his steed and sheathed them. He then ran to the child, concealing himself from the beast in the meantime. It felt unnecessary, though, for as Loki turned from his partner, he heard a guttural yell come from her, beckoning the beast over.
Glancing back, Loki saw their horses disappearing to the trees as she growled to the bilgesnipe, making animalistic growling sounds that he couldn’t recognize. It took the bait, bowing its head low before beginning its charge towards her.
Loki forced himself to turn his head away and focus on the child, fallen haphazardly against the rock.
The boy looked worse than he had from a distance. Blood smeared on the rock behind him, like he had been thrown against it. The wound on his chest seeped blood, soaking his soft wool shirt. Loki carefully moved the boy upright, feeling the warm wetness of blood on the back of his head, kneeling down to cradle the child in his arm. Loki bent his ear down by the child’s mouth, watching his chest for any sign of breathing.
Shallow and labored, the child was breathing. Loki gasped in relief, resting his hand on the child’s chest. Swirls of green emitted from his fingertips and into the wound, beginning to heal it ever so slightly. His magic was limited when it came to healing, but it didn’t matter — this boy was hanging on by a thread and Loki was not going to let him die.
Loki whipped his head towards the battle that was unfolding between the bilgesnipe and her. She moved close to the beast, staying just out of reach, forcing it to careen its head faster past its limit. Knowing she couldn’t take it head on, she was coming down on its back where she could, the hide exceedingly rough and difficult to get through. Her blows barely drew any blood. She had shed her outer coats, leaving a thin shirt and hide pants — also leaving her vulnerable to the beast. The smallest miscalculation in her movements and the monster would be on her.
Bilgesnipes were more a thing of legend than of fact — they were rarely seen and feared tremendously, like a dragon without its wings, lurking in the dark mountains and taking cattle that had lost their way as a snack. Their size alone made it almost impossible to take one down unless you had several men and a ton of luck, even with Asgardian warriors. Seeing her take on the creature alone terrified him — one wrong move and she was gone from him forever, the only person he had ever loved.
Her movements were almost unnatural, leaping away right as it would bring its head around to snap at her. She was taking full advantage of its blind spots, occasionally rolling away to avoid its spiked tail whipping around. Growls shook the earth they were on. The cry that would come from her as she struck the beast was guttural and extreme, the muscles in her arms quivering as she would cut into the massive beast.
He needed to join her in battle — but looking down at the child, he was barely coming out of his death throes.
“Come on, child”, said somewhat impatiently, “your time in Valhalla isn’t upon you yet.”
As if he had heard Loki, the boy choked to life, gasping, and clutching his arm like a lifeline. The small sounds he made brought tears to Loki’s eyes, laughing in relief.
Just as the child’s eyes opened, a blood-curdling scream ripped through the cold air.
The bilgesnipe had landed a massive blow across her torso with its claws, sending her tumbling back into the snow.
He screamed her name across the mountain, guttural and piercing, ringing silence following.
She didn’t move.
Loki sat the child against the boulder tenderly, sitting him up and ensuring he could breathe. He cast an illusion over the child, and he disappeared entirely.
The roar of the bilgesnipe barely registered in his peripheral as he ran over to her, knees collapsing in the snow. Loki turned her over so she wouldn’t suffocate.
Three long, deep gashes tore from her lower hip up to her face, slicing across her lips. Blood poured from her, streaming, staining the snow red — like a freshly hunted deer after you had slit its throat in winter.
Her eyes were closed, but he could see her breathing, laboring and shuddering as it was. Her face was torqued in pain, tears streaming down the sides of her face towards her ears.
This wasn’t happening.
He called to her, voice cracking, desperately trying to bring her back from where she was going. Pressing his palm into the largest wound on her chest, he flowed magic into her like a tidal wave, feeling every cell in her body desperate to repair itself. He had never revived someone before, but damn it all if he wasn’t going to do it now.
The moment his magic slammed into her, she shot up, a visceral scream ripping from her that echoed across the jagged mountains. Her eyes were wide, bloodshot and animalistic, pupils slitted and glowing yellow. Her teeth were bared and he saw that her canines were larger and sharpened, and he felt sharpened claws rip through his leather armor where she gripped it. Loki has seen glimpses of this when they had gotten into particularly heated arguments — the slight sharpness of her teeth, the look in her eyes of something untamed — but he had never witnessed her fully in this animalistic, berserker-like state.
When she looked to him, he saw that archaic thing that he had been noticing from her for years, now at its peak. He truly felt like he was looking into the eyes of a god for the first time, power coming from her that took his breath away.
After she had screamed, a deadly silence had fallen over them, and he realized that the wind no longer blew, the forest no longer shaking or making a sound. A pin could drop in the snow and he could have heard it a mile away.
Then the forest moved.
He couldn't explain it, couldn't contort any part of his conscious mind to make sense of what his eyes were seeing. The trees moved, as if they were shifting the forest forward towards them.
A cacophony of howling so loud that it rang in his ears, blurring his thoughts.
Massive streaks of brown, white, grey and black came bounding from the trees, practically ripping the spruce from their roots, backs breaking branches as they moved underneath them.
A dozen or more dire wolves surrounded them then, the same yellow eyes glowing as they looked to him, looked to her, and then immediately took to surrounding the beast, easily standing half as tall as the bilgesnipe themselves. A couple of them broke away, sending massive amounts of snow flying as they bound to the boulder where the child was, surrounding him and standing guard.
Looking back to his love, he could see the resemblance, especially with her massive head of hair knotted and braided all around her face.
He could feel her power emanating from her as she rose, bending to lift the long sword as if it were nothing. Her blood fell freely into the snow, but she never flinched as she growled, twirling the blade in her hands expertly and making her way back towards the beast. As she did so, the dire wolves reformed rank, nipping and growling, barking and tearing at the bilgesnipe at all sides, clearly distressing it. Now it bore seeping teeth and claw marks on its hide, each attack of a wolf adding more.
He noticed that they were behaving precisely the same way lesser wolves take down large prey, like a moose or wisent — surrounding it on all sides, making small attacks on all sides to exhaust it, making it easier to deliver the killing blow.
But the bilgesnipe came to its wits, lashing out and striking one of the massive furred beasts, where it flew and slammed into a tree, falling limp. Its companions cowered then, growling and moving their heads down.
Even now, the fight wasn't even.
She fought as if this wasn't the case — easily standing among the wolves, she ripped at the beast, now tearing away large chunks of flesh, distracting it and weakening it just as the rest of the pack was.
Loki suddenly felt his magic coursing through him, felt the chill of the mountain seeping into his soul, reminding him so much of Jötunheim. It coursed through him, the snow beginning to flurry and manipulate itself to his will; with the snap of his wrist, it turned it to a long shard of ice.
He felt growing pains with this magic, a familiar and suppressed power that gave away his roots that he had let go of in order to be in his place with the Æsir. He was hesitating, not wanting to allow himself to go into that place entirely — to completely yield himself over to his full power. Transforming back into an older version of himself.
Then he looked to her, seeing her in her warrior-state, blood streaming from her wounds. Entirely unyielding and releasing all of her power that she had suppressed for years, exulting cries and bared teeth. He didn't know if she, too, was of a different blood or not, but she was bearing all of her soul to this fight; screaming and howling, lashing and throwing everything into each swing of her sword, joining the wolves.
When the beast lashed her with its tail and she cried out, falling to her knees, all hesitation left his body.
When the creature turned to attack his love, a wall of ice bolted from the ground, shards of ice shoving into the creature’s gaping mouth. It reeled, letting out an earth-shaking howl, stepping back.
Loki saw her look to him with wild eyes, fully see him in his Jötun state. He froze in that moment, terrified of what she would think — would she realize that he was a monster?
She smiled — what?
No, she couldn’t be — but she was, her bleeding lips bearing her bloodied teeth, eyes crinkling with mirth.
Her voice resonated through him, more in his mind than in the air.
“Come and fight with me in our true forms, my love, my heart!” she waved her arm, beckoning him to her. “If we die today, we die as one in our true selves.”
He had never loved her more than in that moment.
By the time Loki had come up next to her, the wolves were in their full frenzy and the bilgesnipe was beginning to grow desperate — throwing its head and crying out, biting at whatever was near it. Another wolf had been knocked unconscious and others bore intense wounds, but they showed no signs of slowing.
Their cries were growing frenzied, heat rising in the air, the prey getting weaker, the time for the killing blow growing imminent.
Loki looked to her, the leader of the pack, asking with his gaze what the next step was.
She looked to him, smiling wide in the thrill of the hunt.
“It’s our time, Loki,” her words flowed from her like poetry, “when the time is right, we finish this monstrosity”.
Taking a deep breath of the frosted air, he felt it settle into his lungs like home.
The dire wolves then changed their behavior, beginning to take more intense bites, dragging the bilgesnipe by the legs, the hips, the back, throwing their weight into each part and dragging it down. The earth shook as its legs collapsed underneath it, causing so much snow to come up that it temporarily looked as if they were in a blizzard.
Loki to the chance, snow in the air, to bring an immense chunk of ice on the withers of the best, bringing it down completely. Its head trapped under the weight of the ice, it thrashed its head, deteriorating.
She didn’t hesitate. Coming down with her sword, she slammed the blade tip-first through the largest eye of the bilgesnipe, ocular liquid and blood flowing following a resounding crack as the blade was buried to its hilt in its skull.
Its body fell still against the snow, quiet settling over the mountains as its final cry rang through. Snowflakes fell and melted on the fresh blood pouring from it. The black smoke slithered from its slacked mouth and eyes, cascading over the ledge of the mountains and down out of sight.
The dire wolves stood then, howling into the dusk that had settled over the land, snow turning purple against the blue of the sky. The brightest stars and planets began to twinkle. Howling resonated in the air, the differential notes clashing and resounding, ringing and echoing in solemn victory across the wind.
She collapsed into him then, Loki grunting and looping his arms under her shoulders to support her. Her breath was ragged, blood continuing to leave her body from the gashes across her, matching the child’s but lager in magnitude — he could see her ribs between the shreds of her skin.
The boy.
Just as Loki whipped his head towards the boulder, he saw a grey wolf gently nudging the child to stand, another of white gently lifting him by the clothes onto the back of the grey. The white kept its muzzle up for the child to grab onto as he adjusted, falling forward and grabbing the grey fur of the wolf’s neck. They began making their way towards them.
Looking back down to his love, he saw that she came back to her normal form, eyes back to normal, teeth blunted and human. Her breath was ragged, crying out when he shifted his weight to support her better. Her face was dangerously pale, showing how much blood she lost. She gasped with every move she made, but she forced herself to turn and face him regardless.
She lifted her hands to caress his face, shaking and smearing blood on his blue-tinged cheeks, fingers ice-cold. Her face was bloodied, raw, and beautiful, looking at him in pure love and reverence.
“You’re so beautiful as your true self, my love,” she spoke.
Loki Laufeyson, adopted child of Odin, held her in his true form, tears streaming down his face. In all of his life, he had never felt love like this — pure and raw, bloodied and glorious, soft and furred. The love of his life looking at him in his true form and smiling filled a hole in his heart that had been aching for centuries, and the relief of it being filled brought tears to his eyes. She wiped his tears as they came down his face.
He smiled, lifting a hand and caressing her cheek in kind.
“I've never felt a love like this,” he confessed, face serious. “I've never loved anyone as much as I love you. I never will.”
Her eyes widened slightly at this; breath baited.
“Will you take me as your husband?” He whispered, looking to her perfect, scarred face.
She smiled wide in that moment, laughing despite the pain she was in.
“You were mine the moment we came together, Loki.” She leaned in, their lips brushing. “Ragnarök itself could never steal you from me.”
He hesitated for a moment, and then began:
“You will be mine and I will be yours until the end of time,
Under the leaves of Yggdrasil, we will be joined,
Two branches intertwined into eternity.”
She continued the vow:
“Of one mind and body,
Souls bound until the end;
I take you as my one true love,
In war and in peace.”
In unison, they spoke:
“The mountains will echo with our song,
The halls of Valhalla will be warmed by our embrace.
The fields will be fertile from our union,
And our love will battle through Hel itself.”
They were both crying, now, the happy tears of a wedding on a lonely mountain where their witnesses were wolves and the monster they had felled together, pouring blood upon the snow.
Their foreheads joined, breath steaming between them. They looked at each other with pure love, mirth at the edges of their eyes.
They came together as one when their lips met, the pain and ache they were both feeling melting away for that moment. The world disappeared from around them. He felt her lips against him and felt home, felt the rest of this life.
When they parted, she cried out, resting her head against his shoulder.
He sobered, looking over her shoulder to the dark mountains, stars shining over them. Her weakened body sent fear jolting through him, and the thought crossed his mind that he might lose her here.
“You’re not leaving me,” Loki said, voice lilting between a question and a statement.
She strained out a laugh under her breath and into his shoulder.
“Not this time, my love. It takes more than this to kill me.”
He held her face to his neck, arms wrapped around her, holding her warm body to him. She was the only thing in the Nine realms that mattered in that moment.
“I’m guessing we’ll need to postpone our lovemaking as newlyweds a few days,” he joked, starting to feel the deep ache of battle coming to him as adrenaline wore off.
That drew another hoarse laugh from her, making him regret it slightly as she dug her fingers into his sides in pain. Her warm breath cascaded over his neck, giving him chills.
Loki felt his body move back into its Asgardian form, the frost suddenly hitting him much harder than before. One of the wolves came up to their side, coming down on one knee and bowing its head towards them.
Despite his knowing, he still felt prickles of fear when regarding the dire wolves — again, a creature that he had been raised to fear, not fight alongside, ride on the back of. Its fur was bloodied in many places, its mouth dripping with fresh blood and scales.
But when he looked back to his wife, all that he saw was love and respect for the beast. She started moving them towards the wolf, moving from supporting herself on him to the side of the wolf. His body felt cold from the absence of her body against his, already missing her. The blood coating his front added to the chill against his skin.
She turned laboredly, gesturing to the fallen bilgesnipe. He looked to her, confused.
“Take a set of its horns, Loki,” she said, “let them serve as a reminder of our union and your true power”.
Loki nodded, cautiously moving over to the bilgesnipe. He grimaced at the grotesque state of the thing, sword still sticking from its head, eyes bulging.
It had a few sets of horns protruding from its skull, larger than Loki could even carry himself. There was one set, though, that appeared to have just started growing — only a little over a foot long and thin, curving elegantly back around, though not touching back.
He reached out to grab one, taking out a hunting knife and carving it out of the scaled head, trying to remove as much of the flesh as possible. Loki held it over for her to see, earning an approving nod.
After removing the other horn, he placed them both under his arm while removing her broadsword from the skull of the bilgesnipe, sneering at the squelching sounds that came as he did so. Both of their horses had returned a few moments prior, and he sheathed the sword after wiping it off with some snow. It gleamed from its hilt, as if exuberant over its victory. He stowed the horns in a saddlebag on his own horse, which turned to sniff at them curiously.
Loki helped move her onto the back of the wolf. He then leaped up behind her, holding her steady as the wolf rose. Her back was pressed against him comfortably, that warmth he had craved coming back to him. His hands were around her waist, grabbing some of the neck fur of the wolf, noting the mixture of coarse and soft hairs that constituted its coat. She leaned back and rested her head on his shoulder, shuddering a sigh of relief as she let some of the tension in her body relax.
He gazed down at her, still trying to figure out what he had done right to be here, with the love of his life in his arms, her warmth against his. Peace settled over him then, in a way he hadn’t felt before — it settled deep in his bones as her breaths rose into the dark sky, stars shining brilliantly, the starkness of the mountains beyond them.
Two ravens circled above them, coming together and moving out from one another in perfect sync.
They made their way back through the forest, the other wolves beginning to dive into their hard-fought feast behind them. The wolves carrying them and the boy seemed to know exactly where to go, and it felt as though they got back in a fraction of the time, their horses trailing behind. Loki flowed his magic into her the entire way, not caring that it made him slightly lightheaded to focus so much of his power for a prolonged time, working to start mending some of her wounds and relieve some of the pain. She sighed in relief as he did this, her face nodding into his neck.
They eventually broke the edge of the forest and entered back to the plains that surrounded Asgard, the full brilliance of the city on display as warm lights flickered from towers through the cold air.
Loki immediately took notice of the small crowd that was ahead of them. Men and women, most armored, were gathered around in groups, torches illuminating their faces as they began moving battle steeds out and were assembling weapons. Townsfolk, with a nervousness to their stares, watched the group. A search party was being formed, he realized, to come and find them. Even the warriors who had just come from a long battle were there, blood and exhaustion all over them. Loki felt his heart swell at this, that they would come out to find them.
Quickly, Loki recognized the armor and faces of several of the soldiers — his brother, Thor, stood out in his silver armor plates, Mjolnir resting anxiously in his left hand.
The moment they were in sight, a silence swept over the group, turning and looking out towards the two dire wolves, which hadn’t been seen this close to Asgard in centuries.
He knew they were about to call to arms, so Loki waved an arm above his head.
“It’s us!” he cried out.
“We have the boy!”
Thor, recognizing Loki’s voice, started out towards them, torch in hand. The rest of the group stood in an uneasy anticipation, unsure of whether to start readying for an attack or not.
Once the wolves and Thor met several paces from each other, a flash of recognition and bewilderment came over Thor, and he waved back to the others, confirming that it was them. Several others started coming over, then, torches in hand.
Thor came up to the side of the wolf. A slight terror that he was trying to underplay made Loki smirk a little.
“How…?” Thor’s voice was bewildered.
He opened his mouth to speak again, but Loki cut him off.
“I assure you, Thor, these are not illusions of my making.” Loki said.
He looked down to his love, who was resting on his shoulder still.
“These are her beasts?” Thor’s confusion only grew, his voice upturning in disbelief.
Loki nodded, reveling for a moment at having something cooler than his brother. It was childish, but he needed this. Just let him have his moment.
“If you’re done ogling, dear brother,” Loki began to shift her, making her gasp in pain, “my wife is injured.”
Triple-kill on Thor’s confusion, but he quickly focused on her, only taking a small step back as the wolf lowered itself and she slid off. Several rich Asgardian curses flurried out of her mouth as she landed, immediately grabbing onto Thor with a vice-like grip, knees buckling under her. He wrapped an arm around to support her. He grimaced at her front, soaked in blood and ripped.
“You’ve fought a great battle, haven’t you?” Thor asked, looking up to her face, echoing blood and scars. He smiled with sorrow in his eyes at her state.
She grimaced, looking up to him. “It would appear that way.”
Loki jumped down, turning to the wolf that had fought beside them. Behind it, he saw some bewildered soldiers take the boy from the back of the other wolf. The boy was weak, but alive, and Loki smiled as the boy’s mother rushed and clutched her child to her chest, tears of relief streaming down her face as she cried.
The wolf they had ridden in on looked down to him patiently, waiting to see what he was going to do. It was waiting for something form him, glancing over to her and then back. Loki reached a hand out to it, landing on its shoulder.
He felt a response come to him, though he didn’t fully understand it.
“Thank you,” he murmured, “for letting me have her.”
The wolf bowed its head towards him for a moment before turning back to the other wolf.
They bounded into the forest, completely silent despite their massive frames. They disappeared into the tree, back to their home.
He turned and rushed back over to her and his brother. He was doing what Thor did best, making his wife laugh to take her mind off of her gaping wounds. They had stopped bleeding for the most part, some of the flesh threading back together, but they still made him nauseous whenever he would look down at them.
“Loki!” His brother called to him, eyes twinkling.
Loki raised an eyebrow, coming over and helping to support his wife, relieve even just a touch of her pain.
Thor reached out to him, grabbing the back of his neck in the way that he did when really trying to communicate with his brother. Loki yielded, his wife leaning against him.
“She told me the smallest part of what you did up there,” he spoke gently, looking up to the mountains.
Loki gave him a confused look. Where was he going with this?
He noticed tears start to come to Thor’s severe blue eyes, dropping Loki’s obstinancy.
“I’m honored to have you as a brother, Loki.”
Loki couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“I mean it,” Thor said, putting their foreheads together.
“I will gladly fight with you until the end, brother, and then we will have our places in Valhalla together”.
Tears were stinging at Loki’s eyes, now, making his whole face ache from exhaustion.
“Thank you, brother,” was all Loki could get out.
When he turned back to her, she was smiling up at him. Her face was still pale, though, and he could tell that she was losing strength fast.
“We need to get you to a bed,” Loki remarked, looking to Thor.
They limped her over to the crowd, where Thor immediately started shouting about their glorious battle and the mighty feast that must be arranged for the two in celebration of their love and bravery. Loki was more focused on getting her somewhere where she could be healed, but there was a warmth in his heart that his brother put there, returning him to that serene sense of belonging, of love.
The official wedding was in the Spring, after she had healed and they had caught up on the newlywed traditions they had missed out on previously.
The ceremony was a true Asgardian ceremony, with lavish decorations and bountiful feasts, drinking and dancing that went long into the night and next morning.
When they repeated their vows to each other, Thor walked up to them, a helmet in his hands. It was a rich gold band with the bilgesnipe horns coming from it, curling back in spectacular fashion, polished to their full beauty.
She took the helmet, turning to Loki, tears brimming as she spoke.
“Loki Laufeyson,
This helmet, made from the finest dwarven smiths, bears the horns of the bilgesnipe that we battled on the day that we were married — on the day that we came together as one body, one spirit.”
She lifted it and set it on his head, the helm fitting him perfectly, black hair cascading out from underneath it.
“May it bear the symbol of our union under the loving branches of Yggdrasil, and your true power, for as long as you wear it.”
The cheers echoed for miles as he leaned down and captured her in a kiss, his love for her aching in his heart.
The merriment echoed far into the trees, bouncing through the mountains, where lay the bones of a mighty beast in the everwinter of the mountains.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Epilogue (Loki Season 2 Episode 6 Spoiler!)
Loki sat on a throne of shattered obsidian and gold.
Strands of time — of lives, of deaths, of freedom — came from him in all directions, each one tended by him. They ran down to the roots and through to the branches of Yggdrasil, intertwining with each other, branching into the endless cascading possibilities of time, glowing green with his power, his purpose.
His helmet sat on his head, the horns in their full glory, natural and no longer covered in gold.
He looked up at them, framing the intertwining branches of fate that were brought together by him. Now safe, under him. His true self, in a way that he grasped with an intensity and purpose that aged him, settled into his bones with such truth that it made him sigh.
A tear fell off of his cheek, echoing into the void until it landed on a branch, pulsing green.
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The slender acacia would not shake
One long milk-bloom on the tree;
The white lake-blossom fell into the lake,
As the pimpernel dozed on the lea;
But the rose was awake all night for your sake,
Knowing your promise to me;
The lilies and roses were all awake.
They sigh'd for the dawn and thee.
Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls,
Come hither, the dances are done,
In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,
Queen lily and rose in one;
Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls,
To the flowers, and be their sun.
There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, *She is near, she is near;'
And the white rose weeps, 'She is late;'
The larkspur listens, 'I hear, I hear;'
And the lily whispers, 'I wait.'
She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread.
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.
[excerpt from Lord Tennyson‘s Maud I, XXII.]
So i was briefly exposed to this poem in an art history seminar on the Victorian Era a few months ago, and because I am totally normal, all I could think about was how well it fit Aki on at least two layers. One: the entire linking of Maud with flowers, especially the rose, for obvious reasons works so so well. Especially the title „Queen Rose of the Rosebud Garde of Girls“ makes so much sense. And the second layer is a little deeper but also totally supported by my own confirmation bias. Maud is described to be deceptively beautiful but incredibly cold looking, with a stern expression and a complexion that makes her appear almost dead. I haven‘t read the entire poem down to detail but from what I could gather, the lyrical protagonist falls in love with her (and grows increasingly obsessed) after a disagreement between their fathers lead to his father‘s death, so at the beginning he tries to get back at Maud‘s father through her, but ends up being bewitched by her in the process, eventually dueling and killing her brother etc. etc. it‘s all very Victorian. Maud is mostly passive in this, never actively described to do anything and yet she is said to be both the best thing in the lyrical protagonist‘s life while at the same time being his demise.
Retrospectively one could assume that both of these things are not inherent to her character and just qualities assigned to her by the men in her life. In the Victorian era there was almost a popular belief that there were two opposing kinds of women: femmes fragiles and femme fatales, the first kind being dependent and almost sickly but on the other hand sweet and kind and docile, while the femme fatale as in popular media today is independent yet violent and oftentimes promiscuous.
It‘s an interesting duality that I see in Aki in a way (helped by the image of roses, y‘know, they‘re beautiful flowers with delicate blossoms but also piercing thorns which the show uses actively to characterize this duality in Aki) , but in a way where it has always been decided for her instead of by her. She‘s violent at the start because that is the side of hers that is fostered by Divine and towards the end of the show her caring nature shines through instead. Interestingly enough though, she is less independent when in her „femme fatale“ stage, which is really just her anger and pain towards abandonment as a young teen not being dealt with properly. She was never a true femme fatale to begin with and neither has she ever been and will ever be a femme fragile. She‘s just Aki, with both all the hurt she‘s had to experience but just as much all the times she got to experience genuine happiness, a lot of which comes from being taking care of by and caring for her friends.
There are a lot more thoughts in my brain about how women were characterized in literature throughout the decades, using the image of the rose — a sort of de-humanization of the woman and at the same time a personification of nature as woman. We talked about this extensively in another seminar on nature songs but that would exceed ALL limits on this post.
So instead just take this little drawing I made of my Queen Rose. She enables me to do things in my art I never knew I could do.
#yugioh 5ds#aki izayoi#akiza izinski#yugioh 5ds fanart#YuGiOh 5ds Aki#i am in fact not normal#especially not about her#or this trainwreck of a show#sorry I’m one third Art history student#inspired by victorian art#inspired by poetry#i have so MUCH MORE TO SAY ABOUT HER#TALK TO ME
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I have a problem with saying things without sounding rude, but I promise I'm not being mean: I feel like JD got together with Gen because of his mental health problems, with this I mean that I think he subconsciously thinks he doesn't deserve real love and just stuck with her. I have some best friends who were in these sort of situations (I was in it too) and the more I learn about the couple, the more I feel strongly about this. Also Gen gives me snake vibes...
Hello Anon, thank you for coming by and sending me this ask. I am guessing you may have seen at least some of my more recent posts pertaining to Gen and Jared. I have spoken with a few people in PMs about my views in more depth and have similar sentiments you do. If you have not looked at some of my posts I'll happily link them in this post for your and others' review. I speculated about a month ago actually on Leap Day on my J2 relationship timelines post that Jared and Gen may have had some conflicts with say number of kids they would like and even when they want to start having kids. I believe Gen was more ready and eager to get married and have kids but Jared was more or less... wanting to wait. Of course, a friend just yesterday sent me a video clip where Jared pretty much said "have fun" with conversations of this nature with Gen and confirmed my suspicions: He wants no more kids but Gen does.
I made a noteworthy mention of the palmistry reading Jared received many years ago on a "blind date" he mentioned in one of the old Supernatural magazines back in 2008 that I believe 100% is relevant to what you are saying Anon.
"I believe deep down Jared is afraid of taking an honest look at things romantically (thus all this "extra" shit coming from their way), and it all goes back to this palmistry reading where he was told he will be financially rich but his love life will be bad and confided part of him is waiting for his love life to get messed up. Do note this was from the May/June 2008 issue #4 of the Supernatural Magazine, which was published around the time he broke up with Sandy and not much longer later met Genevieve...."
For anyone that is interested in the direct quote from that magazine about Jared's palm reading, that tidbit states:
"Interestingly, Padalecki has mixed feelings about palm readings. "I went to a palm reader years ago [on a blind date], and I don't remember exactly what she said, but she said I was going to be rich and have a bad love life. And I was like. 'That's crappy. Can you switch it?’ So, good news and bad news. But it was kind of kooky and funny, and she was kind of crazy…" Padalecki hasn't forgotten what the palm reader said, and he confides that a part of him is just waiting for his love life to get messed up." [X]
I also threw in this edit on that post March 13 around 12:04pm EST a couple weeks after I made the post initially that I think also greatly applies to what you are saying here Anon:
"EDIT (added 3/13/2024 @ 12:04pm EST): A good friend of mine brought up a very good point when we were discussing this topic a little after I was done making this post. She brought up how Jared had his first breakdown on the set of SPN while filming the episode "A Very Supernatural Christmas" which was back around Nov or Dec 2007. She said it's possible that given this happened months before Sandy and him broke up it is entirely possible he was not in the "right" mindset when all this dating and breaking up stuff was going on in his life. It should also be discussed in this context how Jared had his breakdown May 14, 2015 while he was in Switzerland alone (Gen had flown home within a day or two before this happened). I don't for a second buy the story she saved his life at any point. I hope some of her stans come at me for saying that because facts hurt, don't they? His so called "hero" flew home before the fact, and didn't stop to think if Jared was doing okay before she did. This trip to Europe in her eyes was a paid vacation to her, point blank. Also, given he was arrested in 2019 while intoxicated and also the bad behaviors on Twitter he's displayed in the past before Charlie seemingly took reign as his and Gen's social media manager, I honestly doubt she "saved" him from anything but being single and alone is about it."
Now for the "snake vibes", alright so I have some interesting things to say about this one. I am going to guess you're not talking about this from any metaphysical standpoint or spiritual point of view but more or less from a general, every day observations point of view. If you want to talk about the "extra" shit I spoke about, I can point you to the absurd Jared kissing her billboard here last summer, post sex (allegedly) photo here from May 20, 2022, and that stupid yet super cringe shower TOWWN ad posted on Valentine's day in 2022, and let's not forget the time Jared quickly deleted a post back in July 2021 (this Tumblr post being from the 31st but am sure this post was made on Jared's page a little before then) because it showed a container of pills and a black dildo besides it, and remade it with the photo cropped out for starters. Some people in this fandom have said that Gen had this photo on her page that was quickly around the same time period. Coincidence? Hmm maybe but I'll bet I know who took the photo to begin with, especially given what this Anon has observed with the Pads' social media behaviors.
Also, I can't stop laughing every time I see the blacked out background photo seen in this post Gen made for her birthday this year. I admittedly also once noticed a notification on my phone that Jared made a post and the caption talking about Father's Day last year in 2023. Like a dummy, I fat fingered and hit the notification before I could screenshot this. Lo and behold by the time I hit the notification it was GONE. However, right after that post was deleted it showed on Ge's page. Hmmm... It's also funny on those posts where they are being all "extra", Jared is no where to be seen "liking" these posts on Gen's Instagram. Also, I find it curious how the original Nowandgen page tagged in some of his posts that Gen once had is now gone and is now taken by a Gen stan named Julie. Hmmm but we are SO in love, aren't we? Also, we all know Jared's toboggan is a source of his comfort, we don't care if he wears this hat. In this Instagram livestream Gen and Jared did talking about the book "Happy Place" by Emily Henry ironically so, in the first couple minutes of the clip you can hear Gen saying "No, don't wear your hat". Don't get me started on the stupid comment I saw below circled in green (totally agree with the comment circled in orange I copied and pasted on this screenshot I took today, April 2, 2024). I've noticed a lot of Jared's more recent posts have been what I suspect are in fact in their guest house not the main house (ex. the "Channeling Walker at Home" post, this SPN family hoodie post), outside, or just not at home.
I listened to a podcast Gen did with Dave Hollis back in Nov 2020 someone sent to me not too long ago, which I posted on March 25, 2024. I talked about this in the context of how Gen just doesn't seem to really like her husband all that much afterall. Please review the highlights of the podcast below again straight from Gen's mouth herself:
4:30 (in the context of Dave and her discovering what really matters to them the most continuing from the last question): "This is the first time I lived with my husband. I know that sounds really crazy but my husband had been filming a TV show for 15 years in Vancouver so when all of this started you know he came down here. He had 2 episodes left and then that was the completion of the series. Personally, it meant that I had to live with him and deal with coparenting which was really stressful like the thought of it. And to make that work, and it was crazy because we were always in this tight bubble with just us and our kids and it really was simplifying. It was you know like the layers are gone. The interference is gone, drama is kinda out the window in a way, and we got to really simplify basic needs. It's so weird how much unlayering we had to do and that's what I'm finding through all of this is a lot of unlayering to get to the core".
7:25 (con't from above) I'm finding creativity in that work and you have to work on, on that relationship and um find creative ways to 'cause you know especially after the two of use have been together for 12 years, we're really different people and you grow at different times and sometimes you are like "I really don't like you right now" and then the other person grows in a different direction and you kind of have to find the balance and that creativity to come back together and that commonality to come back together and you know..."
This must be one of the best parts of the whole podcast right here:
26:25 "I was just talking to someone about this that my favorite relationship with him is a work relationship. Sometimes it's hard to be married to him because he's like, Jared is so interesting because he's so analytical. I mean my husband, I'm going to toot his horn because he's literally one of the smartest human beings I've ever met in my life and it's annoying because he will correct you on words you think he didn't even know. I have a book of SAT words just because I'm like I am going to get him. And so I'll just casually talk about something and use a crazy word in a sentence and he'll be like well you pronounced it incorrectly. It's so frustrating. Also in our marriage he's very giving and emotional and supportive. He's supportive in everything that I've done and I feel really lucky and grateful. I think even more so when it comes to work he is your biggest cheerleader and it's going to be a lot of time together. But funny enough, I think we'll be better at work than sometimes we are at home. Because I'm like, this is how the kids are, this is how I like them, this is the order that I like things in. And it's hard for me to let go I think, at home. But at work, it's just a really nice exchange and I feel really lucky, and he'll sit there too. If he's not working, he'll take it, pull up a chair and talk on the phone and watch at me and I can hear him bragging about me and whether he's doing it for my benefit I don't know but it makes me feel good and I feel really lucky that he does stuff like that."
But but.... we're so in love aren't we?! And let me just say this, maybe Gen really is a snake and is very two faced. What we see on camera is totally different from what really happens behind closed doors. I mean... who puts their young kids in therapy and calls it "brain exercise"?
29:50 "but for us specifically we both are in therapy, actually all of us, the kids are in therapy as well. We feel really strongly like it's a workout. So you know, we know we put so much emphasis on exercise."
Bottom line is, I highly doubt they are in a truly loving marriage. Can't convince me otherwise, what we see publicly is smoke and mirrors. You will rarely see how things truly are when it comes to public figures and most people generally speaking. I'm sorry to hear about your past relationships Anon and hope you have found greener pastures that have stayed greener. I myself have stayed in relationships too long after they stopped serving me in part due to my own mental health issues.
Now onto the spiritual side of things I want to delve into but gotta hit "keep reading" below in case some readers here are not interested in this kind of thing ha ha...
If you are like some of my other followers, I also talked recently about Gen partaking in black magic in multiple posts. Even if you and others find it to be hogwash or superstition, I think we can all agree that the things she talked about in making these so called boxes to "keep the marriage alive" and even keeping a box he used is odd at best and even creepy from certain points of view. I talked about it here with Gen's "snow dance for the gods", as well as this post where I discussed it in further depth and then when I first started speculating on her witchy habits here along that with one of her suspected partners in crime Charlie Capen, their social media manager. Lots of things straight from Gen's mouth also from this podcast she did with Dave Hollis. Some noteworthy things she said with respect to this topic include:
6:15: Dave said "talk a little bit about the ways you have had to be creative in maintaining the relationship that you have, the love that you have with the distance that has historically existed and the complexity of what it means to do the work that you both do. To which Gen responded "yeah I think it's finding the little things and I always enjoyed having a long distance relationship with him. It's kind of silly 'cause like it's in some ways it's like this vacation you have when you're together and then they're gone and so it's almost like super- not superficial but but it's not realistic and when we were apart, what I would do is create boxes. I mean he still has this box from um when we first met he was a port drinker. And he had a bottle of this Pinto port that he loved and so I took the box and I put in you know love letters and n' what have you and then once we had kids you know it obviously gets a little more complicated and you're strapped but just making that time. It's so silly but it's work and you have to treat it as such but without it becoming monotonous I guess.
Even if you aren't into witchcraft or just don't necessarily believe in that stuff, I myself have spoken with a psychic guy who made comments on Jensen's birthday post addressed to Danneel earlier this year who did end up talking to me some about Gen doing black magic herself amongst other things via PM. He said the following things. One of the noteworthy things from below he discussed a "strong protective field so she cannot be exposed". Maybe this relates to why so many people including admittedly himself perceive her as a cheerful, bright person who is a friendly woman. It could also be why I have yet to come across other psychics who have talked about Gen in relation to her doing witchcraft.
Note that this guy isn't in the SPN fandom, he is not a fan of Jensen or Jared's and doesn't actively follow J2 or the wives on social media or anything so much. I chose to share these screenshots crossing out his name and icon, and only showed certain parts of the conversation that are relevant to the topic here (apparently lives across the sea from where I am here in the USA, doesn't speak English and uses a translator to send messages). I do not believe personally Jared will stay with Gen forever, although from a spiritual context, some of what we are shown today can change tomorrow.
I will say that at the direction of my guides, strangely enough a few days before I even started talking to him and he made these comments, I was instructed to make a tarot card reading post I made last summer private. Months ago on this very same post that's now private, I was told also to cross out the parts where I talked about Gen and Jared "working things out" and "rekindling things". I also spoke of a "quiet separation" that won't be public knowledge which I believe is going on. Very interesting stuff, the things our guides know that we don't at the given moment. Hmm..... Thanks for the ask Anon.
#black magic#caught in the act#anti genevieve#anti jarevieve#pada marriage is a mess#psychic messages
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number 11 for feligami (you know this is an excuse to warm my heart)
I am more than happy to warm your heart! 💜
11. What was their first impression of each other?
The thing with these two is, we actually got many different “first impression” scenes, so prepare for a looong post:
Gabriel Agreste (S4 E9):
Obviously, this little staring contest was building up to something, but we weren’t sure what that was at the time (and I don’t think the writing team knew either).
We don’t get much from this scene except that Kagami immediately sees right through Felix’s bullshit - she doesn’t know what it is about him, but it sure is something. Later in Pretention, we see that she is not afraid to call him out on said bullshit, which we always love.
More interestingly, there’s a form of curiosity in the way she holds his gaze and only breaks eye contact when Chloé starts yelling (as she does), continuing to observe him as he gets up to conduct very important plot business. He might be dangerous at this point in the story, but that doesn’t make him any less fascinating.
As for Felix's side: this encounter reads like a “first draft” of the reaction we get from him in Emotion. Even without knowing that Kagami is a Sentibeing, he senses something familiar in her, which reads a lot like this feeling of shared otherness queer people and abuse survivors often get very early on with each other.
But ultimately, at this point in the story, he is on a mission that takes precedence over everything else in his life. Which leads us to their actual first meeting, as in the actually plot relevant one that has been living in my head rent free since Christmas (what a beautiful gift):
Emotion (S5 E18):
Where do I even start with this one. Well I guess we need to start with the beginning.
Emotion is the continuation of Felix’s arc towards regaining his freedom and safety, and so far he hasn’t cared much about throwing people (including and especially his cousin/twin/clone) under the bus to further its advancement. He has an objective and he knows exactly how he will get to it.
Which is why it is so interesting and fun to see him deviate from his plan, out of to sheer concentrated annoyance (Chloé) or romantic interest (Kagami):
Kagami herself said it best: the kiss was a little too much. There was no reason for Adrien to do that. So what motive could Felix potentially have to go so overboard with his displays of affection? Well it’s simple, really: Kagami has the most gorgeous hazel eyes and the cutest nose and freckles like stardust on her cheeks. Flirting with this pretty girl he had already noticed months ago might be part of the plan, but he’s genuinely having the time of his life doing it.
Then of course he notices the ring.
And suddenly it’s not just about Kagami being the cutest girl he’s ever seen anymore. It’s a confirmation of the ✨ vibes ✨ both of them were picking up on in Gabriel Agreste. Of course, the in-universe implication is that they are both Sentibeings, but it’s not actually about that: it is about Felix recognising the horrifying abuse he’s been subjected to in another person, and desperately wanting to reach out to her.
WHICH BRINGS ME TO:
The Diamond Dance breaks my heart into a billion tiny pieces and puts it back together multiple times a day. I am so normal.
Felix is flirting so hard, because of course he is, and it hurts. Kagami cannot see that he is being sincere, and it’s not just because of Adrien: Perfection and Protection have shown us that she has repeatedly felt like an afterthought not only as a love interest, but also as a friend. Her self-esteem has taken a major hit and she cannot believe that anyone could be interested in her romantically at this point.
Which is utter bullshit because look at this boy:
Getting more and more enamored as he discovers that not only does she understand what he’s been through, she’s also brave, intelligent, honest, and considerate in ways that are completely foreign to him.
The best thing about this scene is how Felix « I lie for fun » Graham de Vanily progressively lets his mask slip around her, letting out more and more truths that cannot just be written off as Adrien getting bolder. Until finally he says the most Felix thing ever:
And this is when we get Kagami’s real first impression of him. When so much honesty from her leads him to take his own mask off. When the plans for rebellion and revenge are quickly abandoned for something more important. When he asks her to run away with him.
Obviously, she likes what she sees.
#miraculous ladybug#felix graham de vanily#kagami tsurugi#feligami#mlb spoilers#ml spoilers#mlb gabriel agreste#ml gabriel agreste#mlb emotion#ml emotion#mlb perfection#ml perfection#mlb protection#ml protection#sentimonster theory#ask games#random ramblings#And I haven’t even delved into Pretention here!
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Why Stone Ocean is cursed to be underappreciated
Posting this rant here because I think people might like to read it. Wall of text ahead.
In the manga industry, mainstream publications are usually split by target demographic: shonen for boys/young men, shojo for girls/young women (think Sailor Moon, Rose of Versailles, etc), seinen for young men, and josei for young women are the main four, with shonen being THE thing people think of when they hear the word "manga". Before SBR, Jojo was published in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump, alongside such titans as One Piece, Dragon Ball, and Naruto. And until SO, Jojo pretty well fit in with the shonen demographic, bizarre though it is. Fundamentally, it comes down to cool guys punching each other in cool ways, which shonen readers are absolutely down with.
But then SO comes along. Imagine Araki going to his editors at WSJ and saying "yes, this next part will be centered around a nineteen-year-old American woman in prison". It's a stark contrast to the historically-focused Jonathan or Joseph, or the Japanese cool guys Jotaro and Josuke. The whole premise is absolutely orthogonal to WSJ's target demographic; looking at SO as a whole, it's clear that Araki was pushing boundaries - for example, making Anasui first appear as a woman (he "wanted to make a character that transcended gender", which ironically FF ended up doing in the anime).
All this is anathema to the famously formulaic shonen genre, where the friendly, big-eater protagonist with a good heart who never gives up defeats enemies with the power of friendship, even from his hot-headed, abusive rival/frenemy, and also there is a Designated Girl there for some reason. There were few other WSJ titles with female protagonists; the only contemporary that comes to mind is Claymore, which only got a few months in WSJ, starting and ending in Shueisha's adjacent, less-renowned monthly publications Monthly Shonen Jump and Jump Square. (These days, there are more titles with female leads in WSJ, like The Promised Neverland, and, uhh... hm. The Emperor and I, I guess? Maybe you could argue for Spy x Family and Chainsaw Man part 2?)
In other words, SO pushed the envelope in many big ways. Interestingly, we already saw Araki start to expand his creativity beyond the shonen genre a little in DiU, and definitely in VA, where he starts to delve deeper into his idea of "fate", and where there are rumors about how Giorno was originally supposed to be a girl. But it's not just feminism - the story itself is complicated, with postmodernist touches that bring the reader's own experience into the story (i.e. the ending) and all the classic Jojo bullshit cranked up to 11 (frogs, snails, rods, "assassination feng shui"...). So it didn't exactly resonate with, say, Dragon Ball's reader base.
The final thing to remember is that SO ran from 1999-2003. All these themes that we're much more accepting of now - I mostly mean messing with gender roles - were not so unremarkable 20 years ago (at least in America; I can't comment on the gender politics of millennial Japan). It's not ancient history, but times have certainly changed; look at Guilty Gear's Bridget controversy, and ask yourself how that would've gone down in 2000, when virtually no one was coming out in support of trans people. To put Jolyne and Hermes and FF, and their bizarre adventure, in that context - it just didn't resonate with the world at the time.
For SBR and Jojolion (and, now, Jojolands), Araki moved to seinen magazine Ultra Jump, where he could be more creative and more adult. Stone Ocean got screwed over in a lot of unfortunate ways, but in my opinion the main thing was the growing pains of Araki's maturing storytelling, which just didn't jive with the typical shonen reader. The fact that Stone Ocean got published and sold at all is a testament to his existing reputation.
So yes, SO is massively underrated, and seems to have a curse on it to that effect, given how the anime adaptation was screwed over by covid (and, according to some, Netflix’s distribution). It's subtle and daring and complicated, which people reading Jojo for the fights didn't really go for. But it was not only a foreshadowing of Araki's even more matured storytelling in SBR and Jojolion, it's a magnificent work in its own right, and deserves to be appreciated as such.
(More can be said by anyone who actually has experience in the pre-2012 Jojo fandom either in the West or in Japan, which I don’t.)
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I shared these on Twitter a couple of weeks ago, but I figured some of y’all might enjoy this. I have some headcanons about the Kongs’ government and such that I’ve wanted to share for a long time, and with how the Mario movie handled the Jungle Kingdom and the Kongs as a whole, I have much more confidence in sharing them.
I actually use these frequently, especially in AUs that still use the same world just with some changes, but until recently I’ve held myself back from throwing them around out of fear people would think I’m overthinking things.
So, here ya go. Under the read-more.
We know in the games that there are at least a few different settlements across Kong Island, but I like to think there’s a one village for each major map location in each game that takes place on the island. I know for the Mario movie, it appears there’s only the one city for them, but I still like to think there are at least a few villages scattered here and there throughout the Jungle Kingdom.
While the kingdom's royal family does have a permanent house seat (essentially their palace/manor, where the throne room is located; in the case of the Mario movie, it’s the big golden monkey head), the reigning monarch is not always a resident of it during their tenure. Some prefer a home in one of the villages, but for those who choose this way, their children are still given the option of taking up residence in the main seat.
Their militia is a sort of "at will" enrollment. Unless in the middle of battle or otherwise necessitated, their fighting force/army is almost entirely voluntary and tenure in it can be ended at any time after about 90 days, with at least a week’s notice. Only those who have a tenure of at least three years are chosen as palace guards.
A council of elders acts as the "lords"/heads of each village. In the case of a monarch who chooses to reside in one of the villages, the current ruler will instead be the head of the village they reside in, but must still confer with the elders.
Aside from the island's ruling family, there isn't really anything considered "nobility". As a result, the family is allowed to marry whomever they choose, with or without the current monarch's approval. Despite this, members of the royal family, especially the heir, are often encouraged to approach more affluent citizens usually for political reasons. Interestingly, perhaps due to the small bit of free will involved in this aspect, a fair number of what basically amounts to the sovereigns’ consorts have come from rather humble backgrounds.
The Jungle Jam (from DK: King of Swing) is both the first event a new monarch hosts as well as the festival of celebration for their ascension to the position. Unless otherwise delayed, it is usually held within the first six months of their reign.
#the super mario brothers movie#super mario bros movie#mario bros movie#mario movie#super mario bros movie spoilers#kinda??? maybe????????#donkey kong country#donkey kong#headcanons#it felt really good to get these finally out in the world when i originally talked about these#also kinda expanded on some of them since there's not really a character limit here#hi i'm alex wanna see my overthink about donkey kong#alex speaks
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wait who is trying to cancel you an why
Currently noone as far as I'm aware 😅 A couple of months ago tho some people made call out posts about me saying I was a racist because they claimed a post I made was about something it wasn't about. Consequently I did get blocked by a bunch of people because turns out sadly nobody looks into claims and will take every post they see on their dash as gospel. I was also called anti communist (which I am very proudly because I am from a post soviet country I think that is self-explanatory enough.) and 'pro shipper' (i am this one too because idgaf what people write or read as long as they aren't shoving it down my throat). Then weeks later one of the main instigators of this shit show made another post about how they were disappointed my art was still getting a lot of notes. Btw they also make art and interestingly enough we both made art for the same wip at the time fic. My art was supposed to be on the lulu hard copy of the fic but then the author announced they "didn't wanna work with a pro shipper". Idk what happened to turning that fic into a hard copy (the typesetter is also a pro shipper so they also no longer felt comfortable working on the project) but I imagine if it ever got printed it'd have been with art from that other person. Which is like alright? What is not ok is harassing someone and spreading lies.
Oh and btw the person who made the first ever accusatory post about me being a racist later posted that they might have overreacted and they hope "people are not judging my character based on their post" which, after weeks of harassment and numerous hate posts, was absolutely hysterical to me. Not that people who dogpiled on me after that og post ever took down any of their accusatory posts or applogized.
Anyways, similar things happened to another artists in the fandom later and the same group of people were involved so it's safe to say that they are just a bunch of assholes and nothing more.
#my personal fandom herstory#not looking to dredge any of this up#but didn't want to brush it off either idk#so here is a lil summary
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One thing I personally noted and liked was the choice of plushie for the SEKAI B plot. Typically the SEKAI B plot is used to help parallel and illustrate some kind of point about the main event plot and the motif of a bird felt fantastic. Birds, are birds. Naturally a bird would want to do a flying show that the others couldn't participate in. It ended up doing it alone, and was lonely to do so (WxS main story, you can't be a star alone, etc) BUT!! Was still happy to be able to do what it wanted, even if alone.
It is in a bird's nature - even a "tamed" bird (literary reference heheh), to fly, and as unfair as it felt for the bird to go off and do a show the others couldn't join in on, it would be just as unfair and even cruel to demand the bird never do a flying show - staying forever on the ground for the sake of the peace. It is against their nature to not fly.
And it's for this exact reason I'm a bit worried about Rui's determination to have WxS's cake and eat it too. Is such a thing even possible - to achieve everyone's dreams and keep them together at the same time, or does this mean Rui is trying to go against his troupemate's very nature?
Which. If anyone could do it, it would be Kamishiro, but the conflict that would arise from such a thing...?
I'm sorry it takes a while for me to answer (^～^;)ゞ
Oh yes! I like that the plushie is a bird plushie too! It's that "bird leaving the nest" metaphor, isn't it? Something like to be able to grow you have to be able to be independent and away from your comfort zone. Very nice. And it's true that the bird said that even though it's lonely, it's fun to be able to do what he wanted to. Kinda shows that it (or a certain someone, definitely not Rui) can find happiness even if they don't do shows with their friends. Plus, I think Tsukasa is the only WxS members who take acting part-time gigs outside of WxS.
(Also, I remember VBS just had a "bird in a cage" theme a month ago and I haven't read the event story yet lol.)
Interestingly, WxS story is all about having a cake and eat it too! I mean, we have WMS as a great evidence for it. Becoming promotional ambassadors even though they're the youngest and the least experienced troupe in PWL by doing one of the best night shows ever? Done. Also, WxS have lots of motto, one of them is "making the impossible become possible", and it's a motto closely associated with Rui more than any other members. Not to mention, WxS story is more... Outlandish? Wish-fulfilling? compared to other groups' stories, so I'm sure Rui would be able to keep WxS and help the others reach their dreams even after they graduate. So by suspending our disbelief a little bit, the story might work.
Back to the bird plushie, so the conclusion to its story is in the latter part of Rui's 4* card side story... And it turned out the bird compromised. He did a show with the other plushies on stage and not on the train like he did alone before. The plushies used wires and moving backgrounds to make the flying effect onstage, so everyone is happy. So... Even though it's not exactly what he wanted, he got the best of both by compromising.
Which is something that Tsukasa had done in WMS, and almost did in Curtain Call, and probably will do again in the future. in WMS, Tsukasa chose to back down from the show contest even though he wanted them to win because saving Emu's dream is more important for him. In Curtain Call, he told Rui his disappointment of not being able to get away experience again, so he decided to focus on WxS and Wonder Stage (thank goodness Rui gently reminded him that he needed to cherish his goal as much as he cherished WxS, thanks for that WxS!Miku). And in his WMS side story, Tsukasa told Saki that he knew exactly what to choose between his goal and WxS... And I think he will continue to choose WxS every single time.
So if Rui told Tsukasa not to leave WxS because he would make Tsukasa a worldwide star, Tsukasa would do so. First of all, Tsukasa trusted Rui's directing and judgement 12000%. He knew that Rui's directing would make him shine the most, and he knew Rui's motto, so of course Tsukasa would believe Rui could do that. And because his dedication and sense of responsibility to WxS might be greater than his goal to become a worldwide star, there's a high chance that he'll keep being by their side until he's sure everyone can leave WxS with a smile.
So yeah, Tsukasa might want to spread his wings away from WxS, but if push comes to shove, he would always choose WxS so I don't think we have to worry about a clash coming from his side... Although I wonder what Rui would think about that lol. Maybe that's why he told Tsukasa to think it through again? Because he knew Tsukasa wasn't like him? So if Tsukasa had better opportunity, would Rui push his back or hold him back to stay with them longer? But Rui told him to cherish both his goal and dream, so what would Tsukasa do? Rui wasn't as scared of being alone like he was before too, so that's an interesting thought. Maybe we might know in future event stories.
But I think the most important reason for WxS not breaking up is that because Japanese gacha game stories is all about togetherness--because you can't break a group in the middle of the game service lol. They'd lose their group name ⊙﹏⊙
#pjsekai#project sekai#ask#tenma tsukasa#kamishiro rui#analysis#I lost my original draft lol so this might be shorter that it's supposed to be
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Hi! I actually read the new chapter on Saturday, but despite thinking on it for two days I just couldn’t come up with anything to comment on lol. I feel like this chapter was just a review that somehow transferred Mika and Yuu’s confusion to me. I thought original Mika’s soul was def in present Yuu but ig that’s still up for debate? And when it comes to the goal of resurrecting the angels, wouldn’t that also mean resurrecting some if not all humans since they were created with angel souls? Man this reincarnation stuff gets tricky. I did appreciate how it’s highlighting a focus on sacrifice/punishment and desire/obsession. Can these things be avoided? Should they be?
Anyways, I am curious to know what you thought and if you have any predictions on what the plan is. I feel like you have a better grasp on more characters and their motivations bc you read Cat16. Like when Mahiru was mentioned as a player I realized that I truly don’t know what she wants in the grand scheme of things.
P.s. I was having trouble with my asks going through, so I don’t think you got my follow-up to your response last month. Basically it boiled down to theorizing if the Yuu orb is sentient and whether og Mika’s soul was created by taking a part of the orb like it did to act as Mikaela. In which case, they’d share an original soul that is supposedly hidden from God
First, I’m going to address the PS and say sorry again I missed that message! That response is out so I’ll just let that speak for that portion of this ask. Now the rest of this.
Oh I completely understand. To be honest, I think this chapter was a big waste of space for the most part. I think your summation of this chapter just being review that made things more confusing is perfect. I’m incredibly disappointed and hoped we were past these kinds of chapters. ESPECIALLY since the last chapter ended with a flashback that is YET AGAIN going nowhere for the time being. Instilling intrigue into your story is fine, but to again and again taunt the audience with answers only to snatch those answers away time and time again gets irritating. You can only yank the audience around for so long before they determine that it’s not worth it. Sure we EVENTUALLY get the answers, but that doesn't change the fact that we're getting yanked around. That we're promised interesting bits of story only to have it ignored until Kagami decides it's relevant again.
It all felt pointless!! How do you, not but two chapters ago (last chapter even!!), straight up have one of the characters say “I am Mikaela” only to have him contradict that now? I get Yu isn’t supposed to be the sharpest tool in the shed, but we were told outright via flashback that Yu and Mika were supposed to trade names/roles in order to hide Mikaela’s intentions. Why would that suddenly not be the case now?? It IS confusing, but I feel like having Yu and Mika sit down and talk about it like they did here just made things worse in that regard? I’m not entirely sure what Kagami was hoping to accomplish here with that.
Now the angels vs humans resurrection thing? That at least felt like it had merit in being brought up. It IS confusing and I’m honestly not sure I would even know where to begin with that one. I think it, along with the “who is Mika and who is Yu” question, boils down to “what defines who a person is?” Is it the memories and experiences that they have or is it whatever the original form was? Does the fact that the current humans identify as humans and only have experience as humans make them human, so that’s how they should be revived, OR does the fact that they were originally angels mean that they’re angels and should be revived as such? It’s a deep philosophical question that I think could make for interesting debate. I’m sure everyone has slightly different opinions on it. I don’t think OnS will properly explore how interestingly deep that question truly is unfortunately, but I think it’s cool it’s present.
I too appreciate that the story is acknowledging this cycle of desire/obsession and sacrifice/punishment. I think it’s the heart of the story and one of the big draws of it. Maybe it’s getting a bit old since pretty much every character except maybe a couple fit in here, but it’s interesting. It HAS to stop somewhere and our protagonist being the one to stop it is just obviously how the story will go, and given that Yu and Mika are ALSO part of that cycle (even still I would say) it could make for an interesting dilemma. We’ll have to see if Yu (or Mika) is put into a situation where he has to let go of something to finally end the cycle or if they’ll be able to just push through and get everything they want without punishment, therefore ending the cycle (I feel this is more likely). It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.
I have absolutely no idea what the plan will be. Team up with all parties and defeat God to ensure they can’t be punished? That’s the best shot in the dark I got. Could be completely wrong though. After all, even though Sika Madu and Guren have essentially the same goal, they're kinda wanting to revive people as two different things. It ties back to that philosophical question I brought up earlier. I would think this would cause them to have conflicting goals, but maybe it won't.
Yeah of all the characters, Mahiru has been the worst in terms of her character being explained here in the main story. Her ultimate goal is pretty simple I’d say? She doesn’t wanna be anyone’s pawn since she was essentially raised to be Sika Madu’s host or whatever. She wants to live her life how she wants to live it, to fall in love and be a simple girl. Don't you think were asking for all that though so sorry if you weren't. Thought I'd throw it out there though just in case.
Ultimately, this chapter disappointed me and while I did write a fair amount here, I don't know if there's really all that much to say about it? I'm not as mad as I think I might come off here. It's just, again, disappointment, which is a shame since I think there have been some good things in the previous chapters.
#Owari no Seraph#OnS 131#Owari no Seraph spoilers#OnS spoilers#Anonysis Asks#My posts#Sorry this took all day!
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