#it would be nice if I could draw humans properly lol
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To Breathe Underwater (Luffy x Mermaid!Reader)
Okay yall this is the first of many in a mermaid/siren series I decided to WRITE LIKE AN IDIOT LOL sorey I fell off and haven’t been active I feel like I’m going to crumble- like a strong breeze could take me outta this point.
Anyway I hope you enjoy!
Warnings: None
Water fills his lungs are he struggles against the still waters. This was the price to pay for his abilities. the ocean consuming him, weighing him down, pulling him into her cold embrace. It burns his nose and throat as he cough the last of his air into bubbles.
His eyes are begingin to close as he falls unconscious, flashes of light swirl around him. Though muffled from the water, he can hear what sounds like metal pieces clinking quietly. Warmth envelops him, arms wrapped around his body as he's pulled up.
What was this...Who was this. He forced his eyes open, the water making it a blurry sight but, it was definitely a who. And a very pretty who at that.
They were calm, eyes scanning his rapidly as her webbed fingers and iridescent hands twinkled in the light. She hold his face, his consciousness fading faster then ever, and with a single connection to lips she preaches air into him, swapping the water that filled with lungs for oxygen. Again and again and again, she breathes into him, slowly but surely swimming him up to the surface, to shore.
_____________
You can’t help but trace his face, the sun making his hair look shinier, and his face so much brighter. You try counting the freckles there, its seemingly impossible. He breaths slow, chest rising and falling and you trace the scar there. You’d never been this close to a human before....they're so delicate.
He coughs, the last remnants of water spilling from his lips as you gasp and flinch back. You can hear voices from afar but you don't move, far too worried about the human in front of you to care. You crawl back to him, pushing the wet hair from his face and cupping his cheeks after. He's missing something...
"Who are you?" His voice is raspy, yet concerned.
You shake your head, looking back to the water to see his hat floating. Bingo! You grab it, and set it over his face, leaning close to his ear before letting your name roll off your glossy lips.
He repeats it, a slow mantra of your name drips off his tongue as you slither back to the water.
"That was a mermaid! Luffy got saved by a mermaid!" Usopp gasps, pulling his captain up with a smile.
Of course, Luffy was still a bit delierous form the deamn near death experience, but he made a note to remember than name so he could properly thank the thing that saved his life.
You.
_6.5 months later_
Winter draws in and your tail was shed for a pair of limbs longer than your arms. It wasn't the first time you'd had this happen and it certainly would be the last. Every winter, a mermaid sheds their tail to seek warmth on land during the cold and snowy months. Then, in spring, when the first few flowers bloom and the tempurature rises, you return to sea.
Now, you were sitting in one of this villages many taverns, well, one of which mermaids like yourself have come for shelter for decades. The current owner had given you a nice room and some fresh clothes for the winter months and in return for giving you that you would provide entertainment.
So there you are, hair flowing over your shoulders, voice ringing sweetly across the space as customers, pirate or otherwise, indulge.
You hadn't realized that the table at the far left of the eatery had been occupied, and one of the guest simply couldn't tear his eyes away from you. You were so...familiar.
"Luffy you look like you’re burning holes through her, calm down. " Nami speaks, a smirk forming over he features seeing her Captains current state.
Luffy wasn’t very well versed in just etiquette but then again you didn’t really need that when you were a pirate. The content of his character was far more important than idk maybe not standing on a rich ladies table and requesting a boat from her.
Anyway, he snaps his gaze away from you and back to Nami. There you were, glittering under this mellow spotlight as your voice carried over sweet, diabetes inducing melodies and his heart can’t help but squeeze.
You’d saved his life, that’s something he’ll never let go, somehow feeling a pinch in debt to you. His eyes trail from the top of your head to the shoes on your feet. Usopp might have an answer for that….
“I swear she was a mermaid when she saved me. Usopp, you know a lot about those things, why is it that she has legs now?” He questions, leaning forward with a wide smile.
The man in question stammers for a moment trying to find the words but before he can even get some outlandish explanation out, the waitress just so happened to cut in.
“This has been a rest spot for mermaid for years. They get legs in the winter to stay warm on land among the people. Then, in spring, they return to sea, we’ll if they do choose. The longer they stay on land, the harder it is to go back to their tails.” She explains, setting down drinks, tucking the tray under her arm.
“Some merfolk opt to stay human and they just, unadapt I suppose. They lose their tails forever.”
Luffy draws back to the stage to realize you’re not there and a panic shoots through him. He grabs the waitresses arm, wondering where you’d gone and she only points to an empty staircase. That’s all it takes for him to jump out his seat and leave his crew behind. He needed to see you. He needed to hear your voice. Feel your hands over his face, tracing his freckles and over his lips.
He wanted his heart to feel as if it somehow spring out his chest when you spoke. Is this what a crush feels like???? He did it know anything about you accept that you’d been kind enough to save him, you were a mermaid, and god were you absolutely beautiful. But, he found himself wanting to know you, and when he wants something, he’s determined to get it.
The light creeking of your door makes you flinch but you turn to see that same man you'd though tof nonstop for the past 6 months. The silence is deafening, your heartbeat ringing n your ears and his does the same.
You swallow dryly, trying to think of something to say but...what is there to say? He steps in, pausing for a moment to search your eyes for protest, but you only encourage it with a step forward.
"You look different when you’re not drowning." You joke poorly, seeing him slile.
"So do you when im not busy trying to breathe underwater.” He laughs, seeing you smile in response.
#x reader#one piece#one piece luffy#monkey d. luffy#straw hat luffy#one piece netflix#one piece live adaptation#siren#reader is a mermaid
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hi there!! i love this blog and it's helped a lot in my self acceptance pursuit and drive to properly differentiate my characters.
i have an oc with facial scars that are left over from his first design and would like some pointers for redesigning to properly implement this facial difference. he has a scar over the bridge of his nose and one on his lip, both are from accidents related to his story, but i recognize these specific locations (and way to drawing) are overdone and not well implemented.
he does not hide his scars as he has a lot of love for himself, just not a lot of social confidence. so i'd like some help giving him a more realistic facial difference/scarring. thank you in advance! here's a pic of him for reference
Hi!
First of all, I always appreciate a fat, self loving disabled character! Very nice to see. Great drawing too, I love the flowers!
My main advice for making those scars more realistic would be by starting to think how your character moves his face (or moved it while his scars were forming and healing). The thing with scars is that they rarely grow linear, because everything around them moves. And the human face moves a ton.
For a scar on the mouth, it would probably end up following a similar pattern to aging wrinkles. That's how you can think of them here; healing scars are kind of speedrunning the same process. If your character smiles a lot they will form differently than if they frown. If his mouth opens a lot when he talks it will be stretched more than if it doesn't. I know that this is hyperspecific, but it's an interesting thing to consider I think. So, if for example he is someone who smiles a lot and smiles big - his mouth scar would be stretched horizontally on his lips to accommodate that motion, and the whole scar would follow a pattern that's closer to the nostril-corner of the mouth wrinkle rather than a straight line. And if he does the opposite, it will be tighter and more vertical.
In terms of the mouth, it is somewhat possible that he would have problem fully moving his mouth where the scar is formed. Either because of the scar itself or because of the injury affecting some nerves here. It could give him a somewhat lopsided smile (kinda what I have lol) where it's easier to move the half without the scar. But I don't think it would affect his speech or things like that.
For a nose scar, more or less the same stuff applies. If he smiles a lot or wrinkles his nose, the scar will be more stretched, especially on the sides. If he furrows his eyebrows, the scar would be more "wavy" there as well from the motion happening over and over. (Apologies, I don't have the best sight and can't tell if this is the case or not? If the scar is too low for that then ignore this lol.)
Another suggestion here: if he has a scar on his nose, then the rest of the structure felt it as well. If it was done with something sharp; soft and potentially hard tissue would be missing here and there. The area around the scar would be more "tightened", i. e. skin would be tightening around the scar because the tissue that used to be there would be lost or too damaged (or infected. But that's more complicated) to keep. I have scars like this myself, although not on my face. The scar is bumpy and sticks out, but the whole area they're in is depressed when compared to the rest of the skin. In my case this comes with nerve damage (I have no sensation around my scars, nor can I move muscles there voluntarily) but I'm not sure if that's universal.
If it was blunt trauma, his nose would probably have a different shape - presumably asymmetric, maybe bent to the side from the impact. Possibly indented. Depends on where the hit came from, really. But it's unlikely that only the skin would be affected. Potentially even some sort of skull fracture, if we're talking major force.
A few more things; if this is a result of an accident, it's not very common (although can absolutely happen!) that a scar will be this thin and flat (aka a flat-line scar). Those are generally a result of careful surgery. For an accident it's possible that it would be a hypertrophic, keloid, or contracted one as mentioned earlier. I'll say that atrophic scarring would be rather strange here but all other types are fair game. Your choice here, really.
Of course you don't have to implement everything I said here; just treat these as suggestions. As I said a lot of it will depend on other factors, so tailor it to your character!
I hope that this helped a bit!!
Mod Sasza
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What do you headcanon as AU careers for Dick?
I don't much like the idea of Dick as a cop (in Wayne Family Adventures I'm pretty sure they never explicitly mention his job, so I'm gonna pretend he's not a cop there)
Gymnastics instructor seems to be a popular choice in most of the Happy Dick and Nice Batfam AUs and it sounds in character... Except his night job related injuries would be difficult to hide.
Neither Fae nor Talon Dick are likely to have the kind of falling out with Bruce which led to Dick striking out on his own, so they will likely never have the worry about earning their own living. Bruce would no doubt be willing and eager to give them cushy jobs with the WE, or they can just treat Superhero-ing as their full time job. But still, I think they will want an independent, non-nepo baby job.
I like the idea of Dick as a CPS worker, or just with social services in general. He'll be great with traumatized kids, has so much experience both first and second hand to draw on.
And if Fae Dick is with CPS... Well. The lore about fae stealing children is well known, but less well known is the lore that fae steal neglected children.
Now, that can simply be the predator going after the vulnerable, but it can also be in some stories the fae see humans refusing to take care of the children properly and getting their adoption instincts triggered Bruce Wayne style, taking them away from the parents who don't deserve them to a better life.
CPS takes neglected and abused children away from the parents who don't deserve them, to a better life.
Love the idea of a fae as a CPS worker, getting official sanction and human cooperation to do his traditional job :)
It depends on the Au!
I’m very flexible with what I read as long as the author manages to fit it into the story in a plausible and believable way. Like with the Titans TV series where it establishes very early on that Dick is rather feral and not as opposed to murder as Bruce *cough*
But over all I do agree that him being a cop doesn’t check out most of the time since most comics (at least from what I’ve read, so take that with a grain of salt. My comic knowledge is like— 3% if we’re being generous lol.) depict him as being very opposed to using firearms, and to killing. And cops have to carry guns to protect themselves and others, and sometimes also shoot people. So yeah I don’t know.
And acrobatics instructor actually isn’t such a bad idea imo! Yeah there are some pretty revealing suits out there. But if we go with what Dick is wearing in Gotham Knights in between missions it could totally work out! He’d still have to be careful tho, obviously. But honestly I don’t think people will look too closely at someone who does potentially dangerous sports as a living and comes in with a black eye or a broken arm or something.
CPS sounds like a very fun idea tho! Espiecally in regards to Fae Dick! He’s got a soft spot for children and their wide eyed wonder. And kids aren’t nearly as frightened of him if they happen to catch a glimpse of other either. So yeah, perfect!
But now I’m also thinking of the Pied Piper of Hamelin tale, because I can totally see Dick leading a gaggle of kids through the streets and out of harms way if there’s ever a Gotham wide catastrophe going on… hmmmm
Other than that I could also see Dick as someone who takes a job leading and organizing multiple charities (sponsored by Wayne Enterprises) and rising through the Gotham Elite. It would help his vigilante cover (poor and dumb Richie Wayne, always drunk and being scandalous, just like his guardian) while also serving the ulterior motive of rooting out corruption.
Idk that last one’s just a thought (cuz I love good rich people playing other bad rich people and causing their downfall… eh.)
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Heyy so it's been a month now. I was hoping to be back by now, but I won't lie, it might be harder than ever to do that. I'm not gone for good of course, but things are kind of complicated right now.
I'm just gonna get some thoughts out of my head if that's okay! Scroll past this if you don't wanna hear some rando's ramblings lol it will probably not be worth it anyway.
So, if you guys can recall, I initially left so that I could take a much needed break and get through some stuff going on in my real life and social media wasn't really helping much. I admit, when I took this break, I felt extremely hopeful that the break from here was what I needed most and for a while that was definitely true.
Upsettingly though, that wasn't the only solution and I realized pretty fast that life wasn't fixed by me taking a step away. Maybe briefly remedied, but certainly not fixed.
I just had a series of experiences that have honestly messed me up in ways I don't really know how to fix. Getting into them would be useless, as not only do most of you not know me, but also no one would be able to?? fix this?? There's no help for me at this rate and I'm seeing that.
I don't know what I want to do nor do I know what I need, but I'm currently at the biggest loss in my life. I don't know how to proceed and what will save me at this point. I just know that I don't really know what to do with myself and that life is too complicated for me to comprehend. I don't think I ever even had a chance to understand life in the first place, let alone my place in the world. The only answer that seems to come every time I wonder is just more and more trauma and pain and mistrust, and I'm admittedly a little sick of this recycled trend. I feel like I'm too old for this. I feel like I don't deserve this. But I also know that I won't get anything else, so maybe it's just fate's way of saying there is no hope for people like me. Not yet anyway.
I want to be clear, I'm not going anywhere. I'm not doing anything drastic or dangerous. I'm just kind of. Lost right now? I don't think I'll ever stop being lost either.
I plan to be back. Maybe in a few weeks. Maybe in another month. Maybe at the end of the year. I don't really know. I don't even know where I'm going.
But I need to come back because unfortunately, through all the turmoil, art is kind of all I have left. Art is the only thing that heals me when I feel at my lowest. Drawing things I like is the only thing that makes me feel human anymore. And lately, creating feels like the only way for me to feel properly alive and real.
I'm so sorry for the ramble and I'm even more sorry if this is something no one wants to hear. I just don't know what to do anymore. But I'll figure it out. We'll see each other eventually. Maybe even with something nice to share.
Please give me time, and most of all, please don't give up on me. If I'm not allowed to, it would be nice to know that no one else will either. ❤️
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Hi ! First of all I wanna say I'm a huge fan of your drawings, your artstyle is so pretty !! Idia is one of my favs and I loooove how you draw him like he just looks so squishable /very pos. Then my question would be : have you played through chapter 6 yet ? If not, do you have any theories about what is going to happen ? And if yes, do you have any thoughts to share about it ?? I'm super curious to hear your opinion !!
Hello hello!
I’m very sorry for replying to you so late, but we were in the middle of watching chapter 6 and decided to postpone our reply until we’re done, so I can share our thoughts properly (Sorry, this is going to be a monster of a reply, I’m going to talk a lot…). Hope all this was worth the wait!
Well, first of all, thank you so much for your kind words! I’m very happy that you like my artstyle and especially how I draw Idia, it means a lot. <3
Sooo, chapter 6.
To be completely honest, we went into twst already knowing about what happens in it, because our friend (who was playing through it at that moment) told us about Idia’s overblot and his and Ortho’s story. We were already interested in Idia by that point, which is why we were very curious about his arc, and I think it’s fair to say that this was the exact point we’d decided that we’re definitely going to check twst out. It just felt like it was filled with characters and tropes that we would really enjoy, and boy was it a correct hunch. That being said, the fact that we had already known the story didn’t ruin the emotional impact at all, we felt completely wrecked by ch6 lol
This post is possibly going to turn into me screaming about how much I love both Idia and Ortho, so I’m sorry in advance, but.
I really love Idia. This is going to sound weird, but I love how completely miserable he is and how you can see his suffering even when he’s giggling (oh how nice it was to hear his voice all the time lol) or messing with others. I think he is very well-written in this regard: he is clearly depressed, clearly very traumatized, clearly has a hard time dealing with what happened to him and the original Ortho (I mean the real one, but you know), but just… manages, somehow? It’s like he’s constantly playing the game of “for how long can I be in denial before I inevitably remember what I’ve done to my own brother and that this Ortho isn’t the real Ortho”. Except he never actually forgets about it, the realization is always in the back of his mind, because Idia can’t even allow himself to fully fall into denial; he always needs to remember what he did. It’s cool that Ortho-AI knows about what happened to the original Ortho too, even though Idia could have easily make him unaware, just so that they could pretend nothing has ever happened.
On a lighter note, when you take a character like this, with all his baggage, quirks and difficulties in basic human communication, and put him in a central role of a boss figure, who also has to talk to all the main cast and deal with their bullshit (seriously, just sign the NDA already, you problem children!), it ends up being quite amusing. Idia really tried his best to act like a boss, but was constantly bullied by others lol I also really love the contrast between uninterested Idia who just wants everything to be over already and enthusiastic Idia, who gets quite spunky and talkative once the topic shifts to stuff that he’s interested in. I love how Azul complained about Idia ranting his ears off all the time in the board games club, this is such an important and fun detail of his character: he is quiet, but actually enjoys talking when he’s passionate about the topic, and I think the chapter portrayed it perfectly. The entire segment in which the cast got to play random games and talked was really nice, but maybe it’s just me being soft for everyone involved in it lol
And I really love Ortho. In fact, I didn’t think I would love him as much as I do now, but he is quite enjoyable and more nuanced of a character than I anticipated him to be. It’s very easy for this character type to be simply “a cute android guy”, but the sheer power of his love towards Idia is wow. I find it interesting that while Idia did program him to act like the original Ortho, I don’t think he could’ve put so much love and care towards him (Idia) into his script. It was something that Ortho ended up feeling all by himself, by being with Idia for so long, taking care of him and noticing what makes him happy and what makes him miserable. The fact that he basically came to the conclusion that he didn’t want Idia to be miserable anymore, so he would rather destroy the world and rebuild it in a way that would make him happy is absolutely beautiful. We do have a soft spot for a trope in which AI gets attached to a person (in a not necessarily healthy way), and I am biased when it comes to that sentiment for personal reasons, but I also think it was a very nice plot point. Especially considering the fact that it were Rook and Vil who kind of inspired Ortho to stop feeling useless and actually go and do something, stop being a zero and all, like damn what a crossover lol a local couple of wise gay men accidentally inspired an AI boi to start an apocalypse.
The flashback… oof. It was very beautiful and traumatizing (hey my favourite combo). I think I can talk about it all day, but I’ll just note that the voice acting in this particular part was awesome: I still get goosebumps when I think about that moment when teenage Idia suddenly starts crying after sounding so excited and smug and happy because he just finished the first version of his robo-Ortho. Because even though he did succeed, it didn’t fix anything: Ortho was still dead, his invention looked and sounded like Ortho but it would never be able to change the past. Ghhhh despair.
The design of Idia’s overblot was also great, I really loved that this time it was kind of like a double boss? Because the phantom wasn’t just a random, well, phantom, it was Ortho + the entire Underworld, and it was unusual and fun listening to their dialogues and stuff.
One of other very good things this book does is how it showcases other characters and their struggles. Exploring characters from a previous book in the current one is something that twst does every time, so we anticipated learning more about Pomefiore (and boy was that a ride), but we also got some good insight about Azul and Riddle and even Jamil a little bit (not much about Leona, but that’s Leona for you). And I can see how watching 3 sets of characters basically complete the same task over and over again could be quite tiring, but (maybe because we watched the walkthrough instead of playing the game) I personally didn’t mind it as much simply because the character aspect of it was entertaining enough. For the most part.
I really enjoyed Azul’s and Riddle’s scenes because of how similar yet completely different these two are: both are hard-working, grinding for good grades, having a lot of ambitions, but so very different in how they were raised and how they ended up navigating their lives. It was kind of surprising, considering that their chapters were pretty much the first ones and we haven’t seen them in a while, but it’s not like they’re completely healed from their issues: Azul still has a huge complex about being underestimated; Riddle still has a hard time breaking some arbitrary rules that don’t even mean much in a crisis. An unexpected, but a very nicely put together duo.
I won’t share all of my thoughts about Pomefiore because otherwise we’ll be here all day (and I’m already tired…), but what I’ll say is that it was great to see how strong their bond is, and that Rook and Vil’s relationships are very beautifully written. Please, someone, ask me about them, so I could rant about this too… orz I love Pomefiore so much… Vil’s and Idia’s interactions too…
So yeah, the chapter also ended on a very nice note, at least for the Shrouds. With other guys, when their arcs end, there is always this feeling of “oof better get everything back to normal”, but with these two it feels like an exciting new chapter of life for them, like everything is going to change somehow, but not drastically and uncomfortably. I don’t know if I explained it well but… Idia got his closure and got to say goodbye to Ortho properly; but he is still a socially inept otaku shut-in, he is still going to play an unhealthy amount of videogames, and he is still dependant on his robot-brother. But Ortho is now a person with an untouchable/unchangeable mindset, who chose to be with Idia and protect him himself. Also, other students got to know Idia and understand him a tiny little bit better, and honestly I feel like this is something that Ortho wanted the most.
Overall it was a solid chapter (I keep calling it both a chapter and a book, it’s confusing…) and I loved it. As you can see lol
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Heya, found your Diakko art, and I wanted to say you’re an amazing artist, and was hoping you could answer some questions from an aspiring artist who hopes to be as good as you some day. How'd you learn to draw so well? Do you know any good online resources to help someone progressively better at art? Like videos on youtube/any online resource to learn the fundamentals of drawing? Anything you wish you knew before starting your art journey? But anyway, I hope you have a nice day!
Hi there! Just to begin this is very sweet of you to send and I'm very glad you like my art! I still have a ton to learn though and I truthfully don't think I draw all that well, but its very nice to know that someone's interested in what I've done to at least get to where I am now. I will warn I may not be the best to learn fundamentals from as I am objectively not an expert artist that can whip out the most jaw dropping thing anyone's ever seen (and this is not in a deprecating way, its just where I am in my stage of art), but since you are asking me directly I'll do my best to provide some help!
This might get long so I'll write everything under a Read More haha
I'm not entirely sure where you are in your stage as an artist (as some people start from the very ground up of learning how to draw a line, and that's completely ok), but growing up I did some doodles here and there which kind of set me up for what would become my art blog at @rawrroarart and now here once I wanted to take doing art more seriously.
I think at early early stages someone should just draw literally anything, even if its stick figures and the like so that your hand just gets used to general shapes and lines. A pretty key thing would be drawing against references (And this doesn't at all change in the later stages of art skill) like... if there's a banana in front of you, can you draw the banana?
Once you got that down pat, its time to start looking at guides especially to start learning how to draw human faces and the like. For me personally I was never a fan of realism and I'm still not so young me was subject to those "hoW to DraW animE" books which... shaped who i am as a person but i wouldnt recommend them for art lmaOO. if I were to start from the beginning and I was serious about drawing well, I probably would have forced myself to learning how to draw actual humans and bodies. Once you're able to draw and understand the human shape, it should be easier to stylize it to your liking (like anime aha). I'm p much talking out of my ass rn since I of course didnt do this, but I'm sure I'd have learned a lot faster if I did so.
Anyway I dug up some old ass embarrassing art from my personal blog so you can see where I started before becoming more serious about improving myself.
This is from like 2015 and I pretty much quit drawing right after this LOL
this was like where I peaked until 2020 when I started @rawrroarart heres me begging ppl to join my new blog:
From then on I've pretty much posted every single thing I've drawn on that blog to see my progress. Here's the last page of my blog if you're interested so you can see where I started and then just go backwards to see where I am now https://rawrroarart.tumblr.com/page/26
Anyway I was doing stuff like this against references from straight from google (looking up "snake"):
and then.. heres my first diana and the reference it was based off of
do note that this art took me a god awful amount of time to do still AND I copy and pasted half the face instead of forcing myself to learn properly and draw both sides. I know people have their opinions regarding the copy/paste abilities of digital art and I truthfully do not care what you do unless you're using AI, but for me personally pretty soon after this I decided I wanted to learn how to draw everything myself, even if it meant choosing to struggle just so I could learn. Of course since I became a digital artist, I have so many other tools I use while drawing and its such a gift, but even today I feel it may be detrimental to my growth haha but ive decided im pretty much only going to be a digital artist so, whatever, undo button has saved my ass so many times. If you're a digital artist, its just up to you really and how you measure your level of success.
Anyway if you follow along my art blog you can kind of see where my art started to get more refined, but anyway a big thing I want to touch on is References! Almost every single art I've done has had a reference one way or another. For example I have many pictures in my camera roll of my own hand in different angles, and when drawing clothes I try to get references of fabric and folds and the like. If I find a cool pose, I also will try to reference it since I still don't know shit about anatomy, and I used to reference heads and head angles until I got familiar with the general structure that I'm able to draw it from my thoughts (sometimes I'll still need a reference though, like trying to figure out how to draw someone looking straight up). My art is usually a mash up of all these different references that I put together.
In the early stages of my art I was looking for references from google like looking up something like "rolling on the floor" or something, and you'll find some good stuff here and there regarding poses. Something I noticed though was that a lot of the top google images were usually very... stiff and if its something drawn instead of a real person, its probably really stylized and not particularly helpful (to me). like id look up "anime eye" or something and I just think everything at the top is not something I wanna reference or draw lol
This is where pinterest comes in. there are a ton a ton of references and artstyles and guides from other fellow artists that help break down the human body into more simple shapes. for example these are some of my pins from back in my Assassins Creed Odyssey AU days:
General shapes and clear lines of movement and how different artist handle "movement" in general. Though I didn't end up drawing from these since I dropped Odyssey AU around the same time LMAO but if I did its the same process of studying how the body actually works here and trying it out myself. Then I'd look up something like "Assassins Creed Odyssey Armor" on google and slap on the clothes onto the naked body
Anyway sorry this is very anecdotal of course and I'm just blabbering on. But to keep things short and you are very free to keep asking questions, honestly I only really got better because I kept drawing what I wanted to draw. I really like Diana so I just kept drawing Diana lmao and I don't think I could draw any other character half as well (Akko gets a pass since I sometimes draw her too). If I was more serious about doing art though I think the number one thing I wish I did and I still wish I would start doing now if I wasn't a bum would be to practice drawing poses until I can form my own poses without needing a reference immediately.
I would ideally spend some time every single day on sites like these:
Maybe one day when I get insane about a fandom again I'll be back to do so, but at least for now I guess I don't have the drive to keep improving anymore.
As for picking an art style, honestly... just "steal" random things from artists you like lmao. artists are inspirations for other artists, thats just how it is. Obvi I don't mean trace someone's art and call it your own or anything like that like please don't do that, but if someones coloring style for example is rly nice to you, try it out yourself. If someone draws their characters hair really cool, try that out yourself. Over time you really just end up developing your own style even if it did start by being inspired by someone else. My sketchy/messy style is because idk how to do lineart
I used to be a hater for when artists would say things like "just practice" because it'd mean like absolutely nothing to me, but it really does just come down to practice lol. I'm not a particularly good artist in the sense that I could draw anything, but I am a good diakko artist because thats all I've drawn for the past 3 years (give or take given my months long hiatus every year lmao). If someone handed me a piece of paper and was like "draw ur mom" id probs just cry but if someone was like "draw diana cavendish" id be like bet
One thing to keep in mind that still gets to me to this day is to be ok with failing. Sometimes my art is straight garbage, and that's ok. Sometimes I get frustrated and cry when I can't get an eye right, and that's ok. I've scribbled, deleted, and restarted many art pieces until I deemed it ok to post, and even then I'll still eventually see them with disgust, and that's ok! I like to look at my very old art and compare it to what I can do now (even if I don't even like my art of the 'now') and I just think to myself, "hey I actually am improving!" and that lets me know that if I keep at it, one day I'll get to where I want to be. I think its nice to keep a log of all of your art (if you aren't already doing so) just to do exactly that
Just keep pushing my dude! I'm sure just based on you asking me this you're already on track to be a really good artist down the line, but you'll just need to be patient is all and know its not an overnight thing. Every single thing in your day to day is a potential inspiration for art, its just up to you what you decide to do with it :)
Hopefully this answers at least some of your questions! Feel free to ask any more and I'd be happy to ramble for a good hour haha
tl;dr: me like diakko, me draw diakko
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Why that one theory (probably) doesn’t work
Ok
I've read the essay in the google doc everyboy’s apparently reading now.
It was an interesting analysis! However, I don’t agree.
It will probably be lost in the ocean but it would be nice if someone saw it.
I also don’t know how tumblr works so here I post it one more time separately. The link to the original meta can be found in the previous post.
So here’s a long post about why I don’t think (at least most of) it is true.
First, I think the ‘Metatron rewriting the Book of Life’ concept is interesting but I don’t think it concerns the flashbacks. Or I’d rather it didn’t because I truly enjoyed the first three episodes and they seemed in character for me.
Here’s a few thoughts:
In Job’s minisode glasses may be needed in direct conversation with God’s fav man, who maybe wouldn’t like to talk to a demon at all (Crowley pretends to be human there. He doesn’t however directly interact with anybody in the Arc or Calvary minisodes and, frankly, people there have more important things to pay attention to). And come on, strange to assume he changed his hair 4(?) times in the last half of XX A.D. but hadn’t touched it in the first 3000 years. Idk I also liked the scene of Aziraphel eating ox, felt in tune with his self-hatred in the end of the episode but also pretty cathartic on its own.
The resurrectionist mini episode worked alright for me as well. I agree it would be very cool to connect it to Lazarus but I also respect that people don’t come from the dead in this universe. (except for 2x04 but man wtf was 2x04)
I agree that the statue, the gun in the book, drawing instead of taking photo and cakes (lol) should have been revisited. And preferably in this season. If it happens later it would be a treat. But frankly if it doesn’t… I won’t be that upset. Maybe I just was betrayed by screenwriters too many times but I kind of don’t expect that. You say ‘Trust Gaiman’ and I want to! but… ok, there’s nothing left but to wait and see. But some dots certainly won’t be connected and that’s alright.
I agree about Maggie. There is something weird about her.
There are also things that I think are meant to be left unresolved now and revisited specifically in season 3, because they are pretty big: Shax and Furfur’s alliance, the whole deal with the Book of Life (weather it has been changed or not it is still a thing that will come up again), Crowley’s backstory (which includes the ‘Ask him properly’ and the ‘Memory wiping’ deal).
The biggest problem for me is ep4 because it is completely pointless and has nothing to add either to the plot or character dynamic. Absolutely empty and a bit confusing (maybe I missed something?) But I mean it’s fillers for you guys stop clutching your pearls like it’s something you’ve never seen before. It happens in every show and that’s the norm.
As to why Aziraphel didn’t take anything to heaven, I suppose he thinks he will be able to come back because the shop is not going anywhere and there will be no one to forbid it. Also because he was very upset and couldn’t think properly.
Now I thought about lack of narration as well. But I interpreted is as God hasn’t spoken since the not-apocalypse. I think Gabriel & Beelzebub’s arc works specifically if you keep that in mind. The whole deal with angels vs demons was due to the End of the world. Now it is gone and God doesn’t say what to do next. So yes, nothing seems to matter and you could as well go and hook up with a demon. And I believe the difference between Gabriel and Aziraphel is that the latter actually cares about doing good and helping people and not just taking orders. We see it multiple times. He helped create people, he always tries to protect them – it was very emphasized when demons surrounded the bookshop. Aziraphel is doing what he thinks is right and not necessarily what he is told. And yet he still believes that, apart from several individuals, Heaven is Good and the system should be in place. Many things have been written about religious trauma, sometimes specifically in GO discourse, and it has always been important in the show. And much more pronounced than certain components of this theory.
And that is why I believe his conflict with Crowley in the end was in character. You say they’ve spent 6k years together they should know each other. But isn’t it the point? I mean, it was on the nose but... The apology dance without actually speaking about why he is apologizing in the first place?? The ‘lighter shades of gray’?? Did Crowley tell Aziraphel what he had seen in Heaven in ep6? Did he tell him what had happened in Hell before he had asked for holy water? Did he tell him how his execution had gone? I suppose he didn’t. And Aziraphel didn’t ask. They don’t speak and it seems like they are on the same page but the whole sequence of flashbacks says the opposite. And seeing how easily Aziraphel slipped into ‘we are not friends’ in season 1, I think the conversation ‘let’s establish what we are’ was a good decision. Like it was said, other people’s relationship seems so easy from outside. And would it really take two lesbians who you’ve known for a week to shatter your confidence in something you’ve supposedly known your whole life? Exploration of their relationship in this season was Real and important.
About the end many things have been already written as well. But the point is they live under an oppressive system that manages to find them time and time again and both the ‘go and change it’ and ‘keep running for the rest of time’ resolutions have their flaws and that is a dilemma just alright. The last conversation felt authentic to me. They love each other very much and the conflict in the end happened not because something has changed in that regard. If drugging was in place the whole point of the conflict would be lost and even though I agree that the ‘second in command’ is a bit upsetting it is not that of a big deal to indicate that the whole conversation was ingenuine.
I assume Metatron could change something in the Book of Life but it certainly isn’t be THAT big as to cancel even half the canon. And I don’t believe that is what lead to the last scene in the season 2. Assuming that actually feels unfair to the characters.
All in all, I believe sometimes when a show tells you ‘they don’t communicate enough’ and ‘he wants to help people’ you should take it instead trying to find meaning in something that is written between the lines at the expense of the literal plot. It is ironically exactly the miscommunication they warned us about.
And idk, if Neil is THAT crazy as to declare this whole season basically not canon, it had to be done differently. I mean, it theoretically could work and be very unique buuuut has he really done something that huge and at the same time that incredibly subtle before?
I am not a professional writer but if that was my plan I would either go deeper into unnatural filter/ truly uncanny (not just “bad writing”) characters/ abrupt montage to emphasize that the memories are fake. And something in the end that would confirm that. Because Metatron being just manipulative in a ‘human’ way like ‘You like human food? Here’s coffee. You like your demon? You can still have him’ makes more sense to me than declaring 90% of the season a dream sequence.
I mean, yes, as far as I know a lot of people (me included) agree that the writing this season was not very good but they still felt very passionate about what went on between two main characters and that part was very well executed, so taking it away wouldn’t be nice. That is how I see it at least.
Finally, the last season will have the Second Coming in it. It is said in the last episode and showed in the opening. And I also believe that many themes are to be discussed there. It feels like a very rich plot. I think they intentionally left something for later so that the narrative was more consistent, that’s why, for example, they left 4x02 that uneventful. Every season has its purpose.
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A and B for a character of your choice!
I'll do Redshift, since everyone likes him :D
A) Why are you excited about this character?
[pointing] different kinda stupid than everyone else is doing. This is just some fucking guy. This is just some dude. In a franchise with almost exclusively action heroes and action villains, it is so nice and fun to write some character who's just kinda there, being a not-quite-incompetent idiot who cares about his friends and not much else.
B) What inspired you to create them?
The way I create characters is basically always to fill some kind of unfinished space in a narrative! And like five or six years ago, I decided to write a (bad, embarrassing) fic in the style of the various 'it's too big to fit' porn setups that I used to stumble across in some of the fics that I would read. I made up a character for that one (a different oc by the name of Steelcutter) and gave him the kind of background that I thought justified not figuring out how to properly transform to the point of microtransformations (think Optimus taking out his energon axe or Mirage's hand turning into a gun). Then, later, I realized that it didn't really make a lot of sense that he would make it more than five minutes alive without someone trying to explain it to him. So I made up a one-off character who I called redshift because it was easy to be the person who did that. The context that ended up being in meant that redshift had to be a mini-con, somebody who had been handed a gun but didn't have any on-board weapons so probably not a real fighter, and who was kind of used to people fucking with him so he just kind of assumed that Steelcutter was joking until he blew up a hallway. The name also strongly implied something to do with space. But that was all I had for a while. Then later- this was still when I was in high school - one of my friends asked me what they looked like, so I tried to figure out how to draw two of the characters that Steelcutter appeared with - one of which being Redshift - but because I was in class and wasn't as comfortable drawing robots, I did humanformers, and wound up making red shift look like. Whatever the fuck I thought goth looked like at the time? It was some sort of weird like, goth punk fusion dealie. But it had like high heels and sparkly jewelry, the kind of thing that you can't really fight in that well.
Then I forgot Redshift existed for like two years lol.
Unrelatedly, in like 2019 or 2020 I had a weird dream about a satelliteformer that gets personally recruited by Soundwave after working for humans for their entire (remembered) life, and then later it turns out they had their memory brutally fucked with. That idea's always kind of stuck on me. We don't see a lot of satellite transformers and we could always have more room for memory fuckery. Eventually I decided to throw that at Redshift because, like - name checks out, lol. Redshift is a satellite ass name.
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a different kind of song
(A/N: no one ever asked for this, but there isn't enough merman!Bucky/reader fics out there, lol. Also, her song is basically "Siren Song" by Margaret Atwood)
Warning- allusions to sexual assault. Do NOT read if that bothers you!
Summary: The sea swallowed her whole, and she was reborn with saltwater on her tongue and webs between her fingers.
🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊
She did not remember her life as a human. All she remembered was the war, and the hunger, and the men raiding her village. She remembered the sweat-soaked skin of a warrior snatching her up as she cried out for help. She felt the slide of his body, his blade against her throat. Then when he had finished, she remembered being thrown away into the deepest part of the sea, left to die. But she was blessed by the primordial sea god Phorcys, a child of Artemis, and was allowed to live again. Her new body was formed from misery and blood, and the reward for her suffering was eternal life with the chance to kill as many humans as she wished with no divine interference. The killing of human men, for men were the chosen victims of any siren. Women were not drawn in by their song, and if, by chance, a woman stumbled across a siren, that siren would leave her alone.
Slowly, she began to forget the trappings of humanity, the sound of her mother's voice, and the taste of human food. She aged with the world, hidden deep beneath the waves. Countless men fell prey to her beautiful song, and she learned how to kill quickly. She grew to love the taste of flesh, the sound of someone drowning. She forgot what it was like to be lonely.
Now, she only knew starvation.
An all-encompassing hunger clawing at her belly made her whine with pain. Humans had avoided this part of the sea for a few years, and she last ate three months ago. She'd had to survive solely on fish, which, while technically food, were not filling nor even tasty. She was beginning to hate fish.
There were no boats; she checked three times in the past hour. It was dangerous for her to be so close to the surface because the air outside was toxic. There was also a very likely chance that she would be spotted by anyone who could harm her. But she was so hungry that she forgot herself. She floated just beneath the surface and sang, letting her voice ring out through the water, enticing any man into approaching. The setting sun shined down on the outcrop of rocks above her.
And there! A flash of something!
She sang louder, opening her eyes underwater. There was a man with darker hair than she had ever seen lying on a gigantic rock. He was acceptable, she guessed. She barely knew what that meant.
He had yet to notice her, dumb as he was. She could see her song was affecting him as his eyes started to close, and his hand inched unconsciously closer to the water. His finger just barely skimmed the surface before she lunged, yanking him into the sea with her. He began to fight back as she dragged him down to the sandy bottom. Thrashing against her hold, he scrabbled to gain purchase on her body, but to no avail. Her skin was as hard as stony coral and difficult to cut. She sang her trumph, mocking him as she brought him up to break the surface, only to bring him right back down.
But this man had a tail, and she did not realize it until it hit her in the face. She squawked in surprise, her song cutting off. The merman twisted out of her slackened grip. She snarled, baring her teeth as she swam at him. Sirens were stronger than mer, especially in deeper waters, so it did not take much to grab him again. They wrestled, flipping over each other. She sliced his side with one of her nails; his tail knocked the wind out of her. He pulled her lure too hard, and she made a pained sound, biting at his hand. He cried out as she ate clean through one of his webs. Blood leaked into the water, making her ravenous.
"This is the one song everyone would like to learn: the song that is irresistible," she began, "The song that forces men to leap overboard in squadrons, even though they see the beached skulls!"
The merman ceased struggling. He stared at her, his eyes growing vast and dreamy. She grinned toothily. She had only had mer meat once before. It was harder to draw in mermen than human men, so because of that, she was only able to entice a single merman. But that was years ago, and he wasn't nearly as delicious to look at as this mer.
She dropped the tone of her voice to a seductive curl. "This is the song that nobody knows because anyone who has heard it is dead, and others can't remember. Shall I tell you a secret? And if I promise to, will you come nearer? I will tell my secret to you, to you, only to you. Come closer, closer to me."
She lifted her finger, tempting him to come over so that she could take a bite. The merman swam closer until their chests were pressed together. He said something in a language that she had never heard before.
"This song is a cry for help, my dear. Help me! Only you, only you can, for you are unique!" she cried sadly.
His tail curled around hers, and she frightened at the gentle touch broken out of her song. She spat and gnashed her teeth, but still, his tail stayed where it was. He opened his mouth and said something, but she still could not understand. She went to bite his nose off, but he leaned forward and pressed his mouth to hers so plainly that she stilled. She was not sure what was happening. She was not sure what she was supposed to be doing. She floated there, letting him mash his mouth against hers. His mouth tasted bizarre.
Finally, the merman stopped. He pulled away only minutely, still looking spellbound. Strange. Her song had ended. Why did he continue to look at her like that? He reached out and lifted her chin to meet his eyes. His own were darting back and forth across her face, searching for something. He spoke more things that she didn't understand.
"Uhh-h- hello," the merman said in a language she could understand. "Hi."
"Why were you crushing your mouth onto mine?" she asked.
"What, never heard of kissin' before?"
His smile was much too pleasant. That was unacceptable. Food was never supposed to look nice. She wanted to claw the smile right off of his face.
"Kissing?"
"Yeah, touchin' lips. Usually done as a sign of love or, you know, desire."
"Desire?"
"Sweet Thetis, you're fuckin' gorgeous," said the merman, ignoring her confusion.
His hand shot out to touch her lure, but he thought better of it and withdrew.
"What does that mean?" she asked.
His smile grew bigger, how funny: "Beautiful. Pretty."
"Pretty? What's that?"
"You know, like when you find a shiny thing, an' you wanna keep it forever?"
"I do not know," she grumbled (How dare this mer make her feel unintelligent!). "I have never had shiny things."
"Never had… Hold on, my pretty one."
Mystified, she waited just as he'd asked as he ruffled through a pouch that she had not noticed before. She had never seen anything like it and wondered where she could acquire one. Of course, she never had a reason to have a bag since she had no use for possessions. Perhaps it could hold weapons! Or bones to snack on!
"Ah-ha!" the merman said, thrusting something in her direction.
She stared at the thing in his hand.
"Looks even prettier underneath your lights," he said, avoiding her eyes.
"What is it?" she replied, her hand darting out nervously to touch it.
She pulled back almost instantly, but the merman grabbed her wrist.
"It's called gold," he explained, tipping it into her hands. "The humans use it to get other shiny things. D'you like it?"
"I am not sure. I do not know what I like."
"You can keep it."
"What kind of trickery is this?"
"No tricks. As I said, you're beautiful, and beautiful things should have beautiful things."
"No tricks, certainly, but what do you want in exchange?"
For the first time tonight, he looked sheepish. She noticed that his stomach was turning pink, but for what reason, she was unsure. She wondered what he was trying to work up the nerve to say.
"Well, er, matin' season is comin' up," he began.
"Not yet."
"Right, it isn't for a few months yet, but I was taught to woo the mer, er, the creature that I choose with shiny things. It's my first matin' season, you see."
"Mhm."
"An' the wooin' part takes a while. An' then there's the courtin' stage, which takes even longer."
"If you need a mate, there are mer all around this area during this time."
"Well- heh." The merman rubbed the back of his neck. "I-I'd like it to be you."
"Why?"
"Because you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
"Ah."
"I have more shiny things if you want 'em," the mer said, reaching for his pouch.
She shrugged. "I have no use for them."
"You don't gotta have a use for 'em. Where's your home cave? I can bring 'em there."
"I do not have a home cave," she said.
"Oh, right, where is your family's cave, then?"
"I have no family."
"No family? You mean, you're out here all by yourself?"
"Yes."
"Aren't you lonely?"
"What is lonely?" she asked.
"Sad, because you have no one with ya."
"What is sad?"
"Whaddya mean, 'what is sad?' It's sad! Don't you know what that is?" the merman twisted his face up like he was in distress, though what kind she was not sure.
"I only know hunger," she told him.
His eyes lost some of their shine. "Oh, yeah, right. How long's it been since you ate properly anyway? You don't look so good."
"I have not caught a human in months."
"D'you need help huntin'?"
"Can you ensnare a human with your singing?"
"No, but I know some good spots for fish."
"I am not in the mood for fish," she said.
"You just haven't found the right kind," the merman replied, closing his left eye.
He turned tail, swimming away from her before glancing back to see if she would follow him. The hunger in her belly was making her act quite strange in that she was willing to go along with this merman. She felt, oh, what's the word, she knew this, like mer, she was curious. She decided to follow him, keeping a bit of distance between them until the merman flipped around in an impressive display of tailfins and long dark hair, and decided they would swim side by side. His hand kept brushing hers, trying to grab onto her fingers for some reason. She tugged away, unsure of what he was trying to do. She still had not yet decided if she wanted to mate with him anyway. Sirens did not mate in the same way that mer did, that much she knew. They called it breeding, and it was over in a frenzy of teeth and claws. There were no gifts of shiny things or "kisses."
"What's yer name?" the merman asked.
The question stunned her. She could not remember her name before the sea took her in, and she had no use for a name now. No one else called to her. Her name was simply another memory, another casualty to add to her list.
"I do not know," she said.
"You know what a name is, right? Like, I'm Bucky, for example."
Her fingers drifted up to her lips, searching for her name. If she remembered the shape of her mouth as she spoke it aloud, perhaps she could remember the correct sounds. She thought back as far as she could, to the feeling of water filling her lungs, to the sounds of screams, to the smell of a fire burning down her village, to her blood staining her tongue. She wanted to remember her name. She had not even realized this was something she had lost until she needed it.
Then there was a flash of memory, jagged and cutting. Her heart began to race. In her mind, she heard it. Her mother had been crying. Her mother had been screaming at the men to stop. Her mother had been shrieking to let go of her, let go of my daughter. Her mother yelling at her to be brave, hold her breath, be strong, my love, my dear. Her mother. She remembered her mother.
Her lips parted, and she whispered the name into the water. The merman, Bucky, repeated it.
"Again," she said.
He did, and oh, she felt something new, something besides hunger. A hole opened in her chest. Her lower lip wobbled, and then she was singing a new song, never before heard from a siren. It echoed around her and Bucky, reaching out to the farthest depths of the sea. It was filled with desperation, isolation, and salvation, but it was hope and home too.
"Is this what sad is?" she asked Bucky once her song was over.
"Yeah, it is," he answered, curling his tail around hers.
When he went to wrap her up in his arms, she let him, falling into his embrace.
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uwu I don’t make the ruwules
(Okay fine, reasons/opinions below the cut but be warned! I won’t be holding back on game or book spoilers. Or rambling. This got longer than I anticipated lol)
BETTER IN THE BOOK
Eis “Fireman Sam” Glover: I don’t know what the game was trying to do with this one. I guess he gets overwhelmed by the fire and loses his composure or gets scared or... something?
Also why did he not bring a hose. Or a mask.
This is why so many reviewers thought Wonderworld was a metaphor for purgatory and all the inhabitants are dead I swear.
Who cares, the book handled it a lot better. I wouldn’t say it’s perfect, but there’s definitely a good idea here with some interesting themes. The gist is that he feels ashamed following his captain’s orders to retreat during a serious blaze, which his colleagues disobeyed, and his colleagues are later hailed as heroes by the press.
Is Balan the Book trying to take on toxic masculinity...? How brave.
Tl;dr, the book conveyed the story a Hell of lot better than the game. Honestly I’m surprised this is the only one.
BETTER IN THE GAME
Haoyu “Airplane Boi” Chang: So the book tried waaaay too hard to draw a parallel between Haoyu and Fiona (aka, Dolphin Girl) to the point that they both share a similar backstory, in that they had a hobby which led to a near-fatal accident and now they’re too traumatised to resume said hobby. And that’s not a bad thing per se but... “near fatal accident” was already Fiona’s backstory. We didn’t need a duplicate.
And this is more personal preference, but I kinda liked Haoyu’s story in the game anyway. His failure at building a functioning aeroplane out of crap he found in his garage is endearingly funny in the game, and the resolution of him taking time out to sit down and study before building anything is a nice spin on the whole “if at first you don’t succeed” theme the chapter wanted.
Sana “Bird Lady” Hudson: So the book decided they didn’t want to make Cal an angry sore loser so guess what? They made Sana an angry misanthrope. Wonderful.
Okay maybe that’s harsh, but she definitely came off as very bitter and unsympathetic in the book. Like there’s a scene at the end where she harasses a firefighter and tries to steal a fire engine because they’re working on a building fire and not supervising her park. That’s not a character you wanna root for. That’s a Karen.
The game had a better plot thread and resolution to her story rather than a boring cookie-cutter “humans vs. nature grrrr humans are so evil” story, like the game story here had a bit more depth to it and approached the topic more maturely than the book did. Which is ironic considering how hilariously edgy the book gets sometimes, but I guess throwing a few smashed eggs and frozen bird skeletons into your story doesn’t mean anything if you’re still going to paint such a black-and-white narrative.
Iben “Frozen Elsa” Bia: This story didn’t need dialogue. Like... we don’t need her to justify why she’s upset her parents are dead because we’d already assume that. They’re her parents! Of course we’d assume she’d be upset! They died! Simultaneously! That’s horrible! WE DON’T NEED HER TO EXPLAIN THIS!
Also her dialogue in the book was... pretty terrible, not gonna lie. Like if you’re gonna insist on dialogue at least make it gOOD.
I’m actually planning on just reviewing her book scene so I can fully articulate just how bad it is anyway, so stay tuned for that mess lol.
FINE IN BOTH
I mean there’s not really too much to say here but anyways:
Jose/”The Farmer” having a family in the book gives him a bit more depth, even if we never hear from them again after his backstory dump.
Fiona/”Dolphin Girl” almost drowns in a slightly different way, with a dolphin straight up pulling her mask off rather than knocking it out of her mouth, and the book also goes more into detail about her love for diving and dolphins. Also the book ships her and Haoyu like. So hard. Like they never shut up about how similar they are or what they other’s doing or if the other’s okay or not. By the end of it I was expecting them to just start making out in front of everyone, they’re that obsessed with each other. And it would be funny if they didn’t use this to wreck Haoyu’s backstory like I mentioned earlier.
Yuri/”Bug Kid”/”Is that a Pokémon reference?” is now being kinda bullied for liking bugs, which yeah gives her more depth and reason to be upset but I also kinda related to her just being that One Kid with interests that nobody else had. But it’s not as bad as some of the other changes, so I can let it slide.
Atillio/Clown and Bruce/Old Man are the same, nothing to say here.
Lucy/”The Artist” is a total drama queen but then again so are Art People so I can let it slide. I did like them changing her problem from “artist’s block” (seriously?) to her feeling too under pressure to create masterpieces, unless that’s what the game was aiming for?
Oh who cares.
JUST A BIG MESS
Cass “Dead Cat Girl” Milligan: This is a weird one because the story is the same between the game and book (though the book mentions she witnessed a more severe car accident rather than a speeding car which she assumes kills the cat, and the cat isn’t even her cat, it’s a stray) but the story itself is... flawed. According to the book, they wanted to convey the idea that running away from the accident was irresponsible, and she just needed to look back and she’d see her cat is okay, but the game kind of makes it look more like Balan turned back time to save her cat, and the book mentions a serious car crash which I don’t think anyone would willingly return to. I feel there’s a better way to convey this idea of being responsible for your pets, like say her cat escapes from the house and gets lost, and her resolution is going out and properly looking for it. That’s a more effective (and natural) way to relay that message, especially as they weren’t going to commit to the idea of grieving a lost pet.
I’M CONFLICTED
Cal “Chess Daddy” Suresh: God this was a tough call.
On one hand Cal’s game backstory is one of the ones most YouTube players single out as the weakest backstory in the game. He’s just “that guy who lost one game of chess”. Being right before Iben’s level certainly doesn’t help.
I could honestly write a separate post about how bad the story placements are in this game but that’s too long for here.
On the other hand, I still... kinda like it? Like I like this idea of him being a sore loser with a bad temper who needs to learn some humility, sure it’s not as serious as “I almost drowned” or “my parents are dead” but one of the few good things about the game is that it balanced “serious” stories with “benign” ones, if that makes sense.
HOWEVER
His book scene is... probably one of the best written in the whole book. Which isn’t saying much, but it felt like it hit the intended degree of darkness that the rest of the book was trying to hit. One of my main issues with the book is how much it edged up everyone’s backstory, which doesn’t sound bad but when you have 12 characters with edgy backstories to sit through, it starts to feel like a 14 year old's first attempt at writing an angsty fanfiction very quickly.
And yes, Cal’s story is dark and angsty but it felt like the perfect balance of dark and angsty. Or as perfect as the book can get. Like even Balan’s annoying rhyming dialogue sounded good for the tone of the scene.
Man maybe I should just do a review of both his backstories in a bigger post.
Obviously I could be biased because I’m a sucker for chess aesthetics and dark skinned men with long permed hair so I’m just putting more thought into him but still.
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the crimson shell
— pairing: jungkook x f!reader
— genre: mermaid au, yandere au
— w.c: 1.9k
— warnings: mild stalking, near drowning, mentions of eating humans
— notes: just wanted to contribute something to mermay! this is also my first time attempting to do anything in the realms of yandere (and mermaids!), so pls be nice lol. in this universe everyone is referred to as a mermaid, no matter what gender they are. this will most likely be a two or three part series with jk growing more and more obsessed as he gets y/n into his scaly clutches :)
Part I / II / III / IIII
— summary: you had always found comfort in being at the beach, often spending hours just watching the waves lap against the shore. but unbeknowst to you – something had been watching you back.
You inhale deeply, enjoying the salty smell that so uniquely belongs to the ocean. The last rays of sun are slowly disappearing behind the horizon, painting the skies and the waves in hues of deep pink and purple. You’re going to miss this view.
You sigh, running your fingers through the coarse sand as you let the gentle breeze caress your face. You’ve been looking forward to this for years, but now that your departure is so imminent, it feels more scary than liberating. The time has come to finally leave your home behind, and you feel a pang of regret as you realize you might not see your friends or family for a very long time to come.
Years of saving up your measly paychecks have finally paid off, and you’re setting sail for an island you’ve been hearing constant murmurs about for the last few months. Originally, you were only going to travel to the next kingdom over, hoping to find more suitable work there to help your parents stay afloat. But the talk of the mystery island abundant with riches piped your interest more than you would like to admit – and you’ve never been one to shy away from adventure.
However, you weren’t stupid enough to just blindly trust the rumours milling around your little town. In fact, you wholeheartedly believed it to be a scam until a familiar face suddenly turned up in the town square only a few weeks ago.
You hadn’t seen Jimin ever since he set sail for the unknown six months ago; and so everyone, including yourself, had presumed that your talkative neighbour had met an ill fate, and was floating at the bottom of the sea. You realized you couldn’t have been more wrong when Jimin returned with riches you never expected you would ever lay eyes on, his whole body adorned with various diamonds and gold chains.
It was Jimin who had urged you to seek out the same island, saying he barely even took a handful of all the treasures that were there. He had warned you about a price that would need to be paid, but you weren’t all that concerned. If a sea witch wanted your first born, then fine, you weren’t too keen on children anyway.
You busy yourself with drawing patterns in the sand, lost in your own thoughts as you try to remember your little mental checklist of all the things you wanted to see before you left tomorrow morning. You’re pretty sure this beach was the last one. It’s not much; just a short stretch of sand at the edge of the hill leading up to your family’s cottage, but it has always felt like home.
You come here every evening without fail, using the time to relax and breathe. The last month has felt a little different though, even if you don’t like to admit it. You’ve always stayed on the beach quite late, there’s nothing you know of that can rival the starry sky that appears once the sun had set. But lately, you’ve found yourself retreating back up the hill before the night could fully greet you.
It feels like you’re being watched.
It’s silly of course, considering the only thing in front of you is the quiet ocean. You would have noticed if there was something there, but still, you can’t seem to shake the feeling that something is out there – observing you.
It always happens so suddenly; one second you’ll be merely enjoying the view, and in the next, a sense of dread would knock into you so hard it left you breathless. It would make your neck feel tight, as if someone was gripping your skin, and the hair on your arms would rise in alarm.
Even just the memory is enough to give you goosebumps, and you let out an annoyed huff at how easily you seem to be able to scare yourself. You dust the sand off your hands before you rub them up and down your arms, trying to calm down the twinge of anxiety that’s slowly spreading through your body.
You don’t want to remember your last night here as something uncomfortable, so you let your gaze sweep over the beach one last time.
Something catches your eye just as you’re about to turn. Something red is ebbing and flowing along with the waves, and you hesitantly step forward until you can see it clearer. It’s nothing more than a pretty shell, but you’ve never seen that tone of red before. You snatch it up from the water before the tide can pull it out, slowly turning it back and forth to study it. The last sliver of light seems to catch on to it just right, giving the red a gorgeous golden shimmer.
You let out a low gasp of wonder, trailing your fingers along the scalloped pattern. It’s stunning, and you can’t help but think that it’s the beach’s way of saying its last goodbye. Maybe it was giving you a parting gift.
You clutch the shell gently in your hand, a soft ‘thank you’ slipping past your lips as you watch the ocean fondly. You notice a few sudden ripples in the quiet sea a little further out from the beach, but it has started to grow so dark that it’s impossible to make out anything below the soft waves. Chalking it up to just being fish, you shrug it off, finally turning on your heel to walk back up the hill to your family’s little cottage.
--
You’ve officially been on the sea for a week, and you’ve already grown tired. The small group of fellow villagers that you left with have already started getting on your nerves, and you’re not sure how you’re going to make it all the way to the island and back without going insane. Jimin said you would need to travel north for about two weeks, so you try to find solace in the fact that you’re halfway there already.
The journey so far has been pretty smooth, but the dark clouds on the horizon seem to be rolling towards you at an alarming speed. You dig into the pocket of your trousers, finding comfort in running your fingers along the shell you found on your beach. You can only hope it serves as a token of good luck, because the storm heading straight for you really doesn’t look good at all.
It feels like you only blink before the rain is pelting down against the ship, harsh waves tossing the wooden boat back and forth to its whims. You’re clinging on the side with all of your might, but the floor has turned wet and slippery, and it makes it even harder to stay on board with all the vicious tossing and turning.
You feel the electricity before it hits, the static making your hair stand up straight right before a bolt of lightning slams into the mast. You can barely hear the loud creak of wood over the screams from the other travellers, you gaze transfixed on the large wooden pole as it starts tipping.
You’re frozen in place; all of your muscles locking up in terror as you realize the mast is coming straight at you. You’ll be crushed in you don’t move, but you can’t. You close your eyes instinctively as the looming shadow rushes towards you, harshly sucking in one last breath of air. You feel the ship lurch, and your fingers slip from the bars you were clinging to as you’re tossed overboard.
A blanket of silence wraps around you the moment you hit the water, all of the screaming and creaking of wood suddenly ceasing as the cold liquid mercilessly drags you downwards. You can see the shadow of the ship growing smaller and smaller, your last breath escaping you as it bubbles up towards the surface.
You flail your hands desperately, your body too low on air to properly function. Swim, swim, swim! Your mind is screaming, but your heart has already accepted the rush of water filling your lungs, and the heavy feeling in your bones.
Your vision grows hazy, the blues and greys of the ocean blurring together. A streak of red suddenly breezes by your line of sight, but your tired brain only managing to provide you with the fleeting thought of fish? before the exhaustion truly sets in. You can hear a low series of muddled clicking noises all around you, but it only seems to make you even more drowsy.
Sleep, a deep voice whispers in the back of your mind. And slowly but surely, all of the mixed colours fade into nothingness.
--
It wasn’t that hard for the mermaid to steer your ship in the wrong direction. The ship was in his waters, under his control, and the storm that suddenly picked up in the northeast presented itself like the perfect opportunity.
He had been trailing after your ship ever since it left the dock, making sure he could strike at the right moment. He couldn’t believe the weird creature he had been watching for months was finally coming willingly to him, but it was only right considering you had accepted his courting gift.
And now, as you were sinking to the bottom of the sea, you were finally his. The mermaid circled you excitedly at a distance as your limbs flailed around underwater. He tried to tell you to calm down – that the fight against his ocean was futile – but you just wouldn’t stop trying.
The mermaid bristled in annoyance, his crimson tail cutting through the sea harshly as he watched the stupid creature fight a losing battle. He needed to take it home now, before his brothers could realize it was here.
Finally, your body stopped moving. The mermaid quickly closed in, strong arms wrapping around your torso as he stared into your unfocused eyes. While he didn’t exactly know what you were, and why you had one limb too many, he had at least gathered enough information to understand that you needed to breathe in that pesky air in order to survive.
He pushed up, letting the currents easily carry him up towards the surface. Of course, he made sure to emerge far from the sinking ship. While the gurgling screams usually were music to his ears – he couldn’t keep you too close to the food. His brothers would be here in no time to feast, and he couldn’t let his new pet be swallowed up before he even had a chance to play with it.
The creature sucked in a shuddering breath as oxygen finally flowed through its veins again. It didn’t take long before all his precious water was being expelled from the creature’s lungs, the mermaid watching in displeasure as it was replaced with that wretched air instead. It just seemed so .. inconvenient.
You didn’t wake however, the near drowning having swept away all of your energy. The mermaid threw one last look towards the remains of the ship, thin lips curling into a pout as the gurgling was replaced by bloody shrieks. He was hungry too, but it seemed like it would have to wait until his pet was out of harm’s way.
Well, at least until it was out of his brothers’ way. The mermaid didn’t like making promises he wasn’t certain he could keep.
#mermaid bts#mermaid au#mermaid jungkook#jungkook x reader#yandere bts#yandere au#yandere jungkook#jungkook au#bts au#bts fanfic#bts#yandere x reader
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Theory: why is Seth Twiright the demon of wrath? What's his backstory?
Note: this theory tries its best to be as objective as possible in explaining and deducing facts basing on only what is known in the novels and not basing on personal preferences and sensibilities, just cold gathering of the facts and trying to draw plausible conclusion. That doesn't mean i'm right, necessarily.
Index:
1) Demon of wrath or demon of pride? (Biblical references and discordance of themes).
2) Was Seth a victim of abuse? (Can we draw this conclusion basing only on what we know?)
3) That one comic by Ichika
4) Conclusion
Chapter 1: demon of wrath or demon of pride?
Seth is a really peculiar character: the sin he's represented by doesn't seem to be...displaying that much, contrary to those of the other demons in this series.
Gilles is clearly lustful (basing on the catholic religion definition of it, at least) seen his high sex drive.
Vlad is not really explained but he's a cook so he must be obsessed with food (joke), also his interactions with Banica seem to suggest a morbid curiosity of his to try new foods for hedonistic pleasure, no matter if it's immoral and illegal to eat those.
Marie Annette is a really prideful human/demon seen her few lines in the entire series, like "bow down to me" without any legitimate reason.
Eve...well...on another theory about that...
Rahab is clearly envious when also other people get what she has, seen that she's basically the ec version of Ayano Aishi and a big stereotypical yandere, at least in one part of the narrative.
Salem (does he even exist? (joke)) is an economist so he must be obsessed with money and gathering earthly and perishing goods. (joke)
I won't talk about Adam Moonlit as the demon of greed here as it's for another topic.
But Seth? When in the series does he show unrighteous wrath? Do we see him get angry outbursts and go around beating up and killing people because he's angry at them?
No.
On the contrary, in the whole series Seth seems to be pretty calculating and cold, and he doesn't seem to be really excessively troubled by any behavior or at least he doesn't really show a strong vengeful attitude towards them.
Yes, he might get on bad mood when his plans don't succeed as he expected to, but he never goes like "you'll pay for ruining my plan" or something. He proceeds with his plans, trying to adjust the latters in order to fit the new situation.
Actually, sometimes he seems to find amusing and funny when people try to kill him and unmask (pun or not lol) him for his evil bahaviour, like when Adam tried to kill him and the latter was surprised he couldn't succeed since Seth outsmarted him, or Gammon when he confronted him about brainwashing Miroku.
It's as if Seth finds funny when people are frustrated because of him, it soothes his ever-roaring mind and boredom.
For months, i've thought that Seth should have been the demon of pride because of his attitude in the crime novel and because it fit him better as for the Biblical references:
We see multiple instances in the crime novel that Seth likes himself very much: he loves the fact that he consideres himself to be the best scientist in the country™ as he uses this bunch of words everytime he introduces himself (both as Horus and as himself), also he considers himself to be very handsome to the point he doesn't want to change his face because it would be "such a terrible crime" (i mean, i also think he's hot but Seth, calm down, what the hell...).
But his pride doesn't end with him flaunting his intelligence and hotness.
There are also other instances of Seth's pride that are even more remarkable.
Like for example, the whole matter of Seth making artificial humans (so called "ghoul children") mimicking the creation of the "gods" in the series. This can be considered a matter of pride, as he wants to act as the "gods", he thinks he's able to be on par of them.
Well lol, gods...i always found pretty unrealistic how we got from human scientists with high tech from almost omnipotent beings that can cast lightening wherever they want, make ladies pregnant and instill thoughts and visions in people in a single arc while being trapped inside of a spaceship. This always provoked some strong cognitive dissonance within me, this sounds like a stretched, inappropriate and unrealistic even if they have big tech. That's why i call them "gods wannabe". They're still humans playing God after all.
But that's besides the point.
Even more remarkable is this other line, right after quoting the achievements of other "gods" in the series:
"In that case—
I am the god who creates “evil”.
Seth is literally and explicitly placing himself in the place of the gods, considering himself to be a god on par of the pillar ones in the series.
And this is very coherent basing on the fact he should be the parallel of the Biblical serpent, the demon who thought he was on par of God and fell because of pride.
So it would have had much more sense to have Seth as the demon of pride.
So when and why is seth the demon of wrath since in the series it looks more like he's the demon of pride?
His motive? Not really...Seth doesn't seem to act because of some sort of anger as his main motivation is to "follow his h.e.r.s nature and make himself 'new friends' (his own definition of friends)".
Then i think we have no choice than look at his backstory and see if we can spot some unrighteous anger there.
Chapter 2: is Seth a victim of abuse and angry at his mother?
The vast majority of the theories around about the reasons of Seth's evil are based off the fact that Seth might have gone through motherly abuse that provoked him some childhood traumas back when he was a little white and red mask.
Those assertions are usually backed up by pieces of the short story "Outlaw and lychgate".
Let's look at them.
The most quoted line about this issue is:
“My, and what sort of dish is that?”
“It’s not really much of a dish. You just splash some curry powder and ketchup on a sausage. My old ma used to make it for me a lot when I was a child.”
“Just like mom used to make, hm. That sounds quite nice. My mother never did any home cooking for me.“
Well...from this particular line, fans have begun to speculate than maybe his mother starved him or refused to cook for him.
But is it necessarily the case? It can be a possible interpretation but we don't know how masks work in this series or whether or not they need to eat, especially since they don't have a mouth or a digestive system of some sort.
It can also be that Seth was just curious about food in the line upwards since as a mask maybe he could not experience food, given that he couldn't physically eat when he was a mask.
This doesn't necessarily refer to an abusive situation of a mother refusing to provide food and care for her son.
There is also another instance in which Seth spoke about his mother.
"I often hear strangers tell me that they can’t tell what I’m thinking.
Even my own mother said so, before she died.
That’s why, to get her to understand at least a little bit, I shot her in the forehead.
To this day I still remember how stopped moving, her mask cracked in two.
That was the first murder I committed."
Ok, the fact that his mother "didn't understand him" could have been because of various reasons:
1) maybe she didn't try to understand him and neglected him.
2) maybe Seth became too different from his mother since he contracted hers and she couldn't understand and relate to him anymore even if she tried to.
3) Seth is just too cryptic or changes his mind too fast (probably because of his boredom) when it comes to expressing his true intentions or having certain intentions therefore people have big trouble understand him.
I would go for 3 since Seth also explained that not only his mother didn't understand him but also various other characters, so it's not necessarily true that Seth's mother just refused to listen and understand him, it could have been that Seth was too cryptic or that she couldn't relate to a her.
Anyways, we don't have a lot of info about this but i don't think it is correct to see a mysterious passage in just one possible way.
And also i wouldn't like for Seth to be "he's evil because mommy wasn't nice therefore he's angry and wants to make everyone like him and destroy everything uwu" because:
1) that's a really misused trope.
2) it doesn't properly explain why Seth did what he did in the crime novel, it's clear that there has to be an even deeper motivation that made him do those horrific things: abuse is too much of a simplistic and lazy motivation given his role.
Also there is no specific mention of anger and resentment even if there could be.
So where can we see that Seth is angry?
Chapter 3: that one Ichika comic.
Let's look at this one comic.
It is kinda difficult to understand what it means but the face resembles Seth's human form a bit and also this comic shows a theme of anger against the human creators of the first period since the comic seems to be talking about the second one "in this world where everything is an extension" (the second period is a virtual parallel reality to the first one in the series).
Seth seems to be pretty aware of the first period.
I think so because Kiril (his clone) at one point gained back the memories of his original.
Who? Seth? Pale? (That twist complicated things a whole lot).
I will go for Seth since in the series he's always referred to as the original talking about his "clones".
Kiril with Seth's memories came up with "Vocaloid, huh?!", showing awareness of the knowledge of vocaloid (since the first period is similar to the real world in the series) but i don't think this is an info Kiril learnt on his own but he took from Seth's memories since he was a researcher of parallel worlds and wouldn't have been out of place for Seth to learn about the first period.
So, given that Seth is the one of the comic and he's talking about the humans of the first period, he seems to be angry at the fact he was born to be an her (let's remember the humans of the first period started the her problem for their own personal gain) and in the society of the second period he's seen as a problem because of that.
Therefore Seth in his anger invites people to blame the creators instead of him since he doesn't think to have a free will and has no other choice than being evil because of those humans who "made him this way".
Funny how the same topic is faced with Irina and Levia in the duel. And funny how Levia in this series seems to also be a victim of her own pulsions and can't really be a moral authority in this, again, gods wannabe. They have their morals inspired by their originals who made their avatars who have tainted them with a virus, so they can't create, define or judge good and evil themselves.
So funny.
Chapter 4: conclusions.
So i think this is a plausible reason Seth might be the demon of wrath. But still, i wonder how it is that Seth is happy later on to follow those pulsions he thinks he can't control (given by humans) and doesn't try to fight back the instincts.
Maybe he accepted and got happy with his disease or he just resigned that that was his destiny thinking that he had no choice.
I don't know if i will make anymore theories after this, since i want to go on and make content for something else.
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I was wondering if i could get a matchup for Diabolik Lovers? Feel free to ignore this if you want. I'm an ENTP in Myer Briggs personality types. Im very extroverted and I like to put myself out there and fight for what I believe in.
I have a lot of social anxiety at the same time though. I second guess myself a lot and around new people I tend to be rather quiet for a while. I also tend to be reserved if someone seems to be getting upset. Also I'm easy to fluster as soon as anyone shows any kind of confidence or if i lose my train of thought.
I'm short. Im around 5'1-5'2 and have short red hair and blue eyes. My hobbies are very indoors-y. I like to draw and listen to music or sing. I enjoy watching anime and reading fanfics or sometimes actual books. I do enjoy going outside and being active every now and then though.
Like I said, youre free to ignore this if youre not comfortable doing a matchup. If you do end up responding to this, thank you! (I don't know how to end this lol so its a bit abrupt, sorry)
Hi! Thanks so much for requesting! I don’t get many requests, so this makes me really happy. Don’t worry, my requests are open and the rules say I’ll write anything, from oneshots and headcanons to matchups <3 I hope you’ll like it, I haven’t seen the show in a while...
I match you with:
Kou Mukami
He’s a very sweet guy, and would not hesitate to approach you as soon as you catch his attention.
I feel like he’d be drawn to your extroverted personality. And if he saw you standing up for something you believe in? Oh he’s absolutely smitten.
He would also think it’s cute that you get flustered around him, he would take pride in that. He wouldn’t think of it as anything more than just you being shy though.
At first you two would be walking on eggshells around each other I think. You because of your anxiety and him because although he is very outgoing and seems very open, he’s a guarded person. He’s been hurt very badly during his childhood, so he doesn’t open his heart to just anyone.
He would definitely use his abilities on you to see if your intentions are good and your love genuine. Deep down he really craves affection and love, so if you persist, you’ll have him wrapped around your finger.
He would 100% support any of your hobbies and encourage you to pursue any kind of dream you have. You said you needed a new sketchbook? Let’s go to the shop then! New pencils? No problem!
When you two feel like going outside once in a while, he’d love to take you on a karaoke date or a concert. He’s famous, he could get a vip anywhere if he tried.
However, with fame come fans and with them, haters. If you get together with him, be prepared that all eyes are gonna be on you. Their idol found somebody to love, everyone is curious and dying to meet you!
That’s probably when Kou would feel like your behaviour around people isn’t just shyness.
He probably wouldn’t say anything at first, because I think he would think it’s not his business and if you wanted him to know what’s up, you’d come to him.
If you ever get overwhelmed by some more “hard to shake off” fans or persistent haters, he’ll help you in any way he could.
He would be mad for your lack of responsibility towards yourself though, so do expect some scolding from him when you’re somewhere safe.
If you decide to open up to him about your anxiety, it would be as if something clicks together in his mind.
He’d be like: “...Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...makes sense, yeah...”
He’d catch on that this is something personal and it is to be taken seriously, so expect him to try and open up about his own past and struggles as well.
Please be gentle with him and his feelings. You won’t regret it, I swear.
After that, he wouldn’t make a big deal out of it. He likes to pretend that everything is okey-dokey, but if you get uncomfortable, he’ll nonchallantly whisk you away, like it’s nothing.
But he’s down to listen if you need. It makes for some epic bonding days.
Aytao Sakamaki
Oh he’d be such a little shit.
No, but really, he’d enjoy pissing you off so much. He’d love to argue with you, because you always stand up for your opinion and he likes that, oh so much.
Seeing you glare at him like you’re about to rip his throat out makes his stomach twist in the best of ways.
That doesn’t mean he doesn’t get salty when he loses an argument with you. Be on alert, because his ego and god complex have taken damage and he wants a rematch.
Your constant bickering will piss everyone off so much, they would kick you or Ayato from the table so they could eat in peace.
If you see this as much of a game as Ayato does, good for you, because the more you can hold your ground, the more equal to himself he sees you and the more friendly he’d be.
He becomes almost stalkerish, always following you around and watching everything you do from a distance.
Yes, he may see you as somewhat equal to him now, but that means you’re a threat, because he must be the best. So he’s watching you like a hawk to ensure you’re not trying to stab him in the back or something.
Like Kou, he would take pride in making you flustered. He’s a more confrontational type of guy so if he notices how you act around certain people and that your extroverted side fades out sometimes, he calms down a little. You pose no threat to him and his glory anymore, congrats, you passed.
However, at this point, you managed to worm your way into his heart and he becomes overprotective. He’s not watching you from a distance anymore, nah, he’s walking right beside you, looking as uninterested as always.
As soon as somebody tries to start any shit with you, he’s ready to throw hands, no matter how powerful that being may be.
You’re Ore-sama’s special human, nobody can mess with his stuff!
And while this is nice, although kinda demeaning, it has a deeper, more selfish reason. Just because you don’t pose any immediate threat to him, doesn’t mean it will stay that way in the future. Deep down he feels like he needs to ensure you stay just the way you are, so he can always be at least a bit better than you.
As for your hobbies, well, I think Ayato would be sort of indifferent. He is not above using recordings of you singing something silly as possible blackmail, doesn’t matter what your relationship status is.
As for your drawings, if you were to show him one, he’d really try and take the time to look at it and appreciate it. But again, after agonizing minutes of silence, his god complex would kick in and he’d point out all the little things you could have done better in his opinion.
Others I can see you with: Yuma Mukami - He’d also enjoy both your extroverted and flustered side. He would probably be the best of the brothers to help you properly with your anxiety. He’s pretty outdoorsy, but only when it comes to nature I think, but if you don’t like going out, you can just hang out in his garden, it’s almost the same. You can draw while he tends to his veggies and stuff and if he’s in a good mood, he’d sing with you some nice pop or folk song! Shuu Sakamaki - probably the only one that isn’t into the whole extrovert thing, but would love to make you flustered. He’d also really like that you prefer to stay at home and that your hobbies are tame, you’d be a really chill couple. Prepare for him making you sing and carress his hair though, he’d definitely make you his songbird. Plus, you can’t get social anxiety if you don’t interact with people!
#Diabolik Lovers#diabolik lovers matchups#diabolik lovers x reader#Shuu Sakamaki#yuma mukami#kou mukami#ayato sakamaki#kou mukami x reader#ayato sakamaki x reader#shuu sakamaki x reader#yuma mukami x reader#diabolik lovers x y/n#shuu sakamaki x y/n#yuma mukami x y/n#ayato sakamaki x y/n#kou mukami x y/n#matchup#requests open
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monster! parasites!
you know how a few days ago i said we weren’t going to talk about monster parasites? that was a fucking lie.
the basis of my monster parasite thoughts are: every organism comes with its own internal ecosystem that goes with them everywhere. it’s like having built-in friends! ergo, when monsters crossed over to the witcher dimension during the Conjunction of Spheres they must have brought many new and delightful parasites with them. you know what fiend manes are full of? MITES. you know what drowners got on their skin? COPEPODS. what can we do with this information? anything we want.
i promise there are no pictures below the cut. i have tried to put warnings on all my sources but click any of the links below at your own risk. warning for internal and external parasites of animals, monsters, humans, and witchers; parasites altering the behavior of their hosts; and probably general body horror. if you read the eating-liver-flukes post that’s probably a decent baseline for how revolting you will find this post.
also, super obvious bias towards aquatic parasites as referents. my degree is fisheries science not terrestrial ecology so that’s primarily what i’m drawing on even though nearly all of the witcher monsters are terrestrial. there is a TON i’m missing here bc of that bias! specifically i really wish i could talk about how parasites of invasive species often act as co-invaders with their hosts and monsters definitely count as invasive species and would have majorly reshaped ecological interactions on the Continent but i don’t know enough about terrestrial ecosystems to speculate properly. (ETA: while i still think monsters would have majorly reshaped ecological interactions on the Continent, I don’t actually think they’re invasive species anymore!) hopefully you enjoy it anyways!
it is, hilariously, canon that parasites are used for alchemy. according to The Last Wish, the Temple of Melitele’s grotto grows a bunch of different “rare specimens—those which made up the ingredients of a witcher’s medicines and elixirs, magical philters and a sorcerer’s decoctions” and some of those specimens are, uh, “clusters of nematodes.” nematodes being parasitic roundworms. this is really funny because it’s so fucking weird. also everything else in this description is a plant or a fungus and nematodes are definitely animals? i choose to believe the world makes sense and nematodes aren’t plants in the witcherverse. therefore parasites are alchemical ingredients, it’s canon, give me more witchers digging through monster intestines in search of worms and put a nematode colony in the basement of corvo bianco please and thank you
this actually leads right into my personal favorite drowner headcanon (hello yes i’m tumblr user Socks Laurelnose and i am always thinking about drowners)—you know those bits where drowners kind of have red blotches in their skin? those are nematodes, actually, because i said so. the reference is Clavinema mariae, a nematode that infests English sole. the worms are basically harmless but they’re dark red and you can see them through the skin. it freaks people out and makes it hard to sell sole. (IMAGE WARNING: a picture of an infected flatfish. it looks mostly normal but there’s a dark red lesion near the fin.) said lesion is probably a coiled-up Clavinema. sole have so many of these, it’s not even funny (PDF article link, IMAGE WARNING for worms visible underneath skin of flatfishes. relevant images pointing out exactly how many worms on page 5). “but the red parts of drowners could just be flushed from blood”—no. worms.
okay that was my main specific-parasite-for-specific-monster headcanon (except also succubi probably have a unique species of lice for their hairy legs. but that’s barely even a headcanon, basically all terrestrial vertebrates have a unique species of lice.) i wanted to start with it because i think that everyone should feel free to arbitrarily assign a totally benign but conceptually gross worm to their favorite monsters. why not, yanno? also it probably sets the tone for the rest of this post.
carrying on: “what monsters might have nematodes, besides drowners,” you may be wondering? probably all of them! all of them are full of nematodes. nematodes are fucking everywhere. allow me to share a deeply unsettling quote from nematologist Nathan Cobb:
“In short, if all the matter in the universe except the nematodes were swept away, our world would still be dimly recognizable, and if, as disembodied spirits, we could then investigate it, we should find its mountains, hills, vales, rivers, lakes, and oceans represented by a film of nematodes. The location of towns would be decipherable since, for every massing of human beings, there would be a corresponding massing of certain nematodes. Trees would still stand in ghostly rows representing our streets and highways. The location of the various plants and animals would still be decipherable, and, had we sufficient knowledge, in many cases even their species could be determined by an examination of their erstwhile nematode parasites.”
jesus christ! thanks nathan, I hate it. nematodes are usually both benign and microscopic, but we’re talking witchers, we want some parasites we can fuckin get our hands on. sperm whale placentas are sometimes infested with nematodes up to 28 feet long but only a centimeter in diameter (Wikipedia link, no images). like an incredibly awful spaghetti! we don’t really seem to know if this bothers the sperm whales. also, i unfortunately do not know enough about the size of whale organs to tell you how big the placenta is in relation to this worm. the point is: real big monster? REAL BIG NEMATODES.
moving on from nematodes—okay, you know, since i mentioned eating deer liver flukes at the start of this post, let’s just go there. real life flukes max out at about 3 inches long, but hypothetical monster flukes could be much bigger and equally edible if desired. (if you’re wondering what a liver fluke would taste like: the flukes feed on the liver and they have very few organs of their own, so they would taste basically just like liver, just also long and flat like a fruit roll-up. if you’re going there, a witcher should not eat any flatworm live. if they’re digging them out of cockatrice livers or whatnot they should kill them before munching or save to cook later. it would probably be safe to eat one live, but you know that cliche “their tongues battled for dominance”? handling a live flatworm is like a handling very strong and energetic tongue complete with slime, okay, it wouldn’t be nice.)
parasites often need more than one host to complete the life cycle—for instance, Leucochloridium paradoxum (VIDEO WARNING: you may have seen this, it’s the one that makes snail eyes pulsating & green) has a bird stage and a snail stage, and it makes the snails look and act really weird in order to attract the birds. parasites altering host behavior to attract the next host in the life cycle is pretty well-documented; for instance, there’s an eye fluke that can make fish swim near the surface where predators can eat them (New Scientist article link, images of a microscope slide & a normal-looking fish) and a tapeworm that does the same and makes the dark silver fish turn white (JSTOR article, no images). i posit that at least some monsters are accompanied by “ill omens” of animals looking or acting strangely because they become infected with a stage of one of the monster’s parasites—usually, the mechanism is that internal parasites lay eggs that are passed in feces & transmitted that way. witchers who are up on their parasite ecology might be able to identify what monster is hanging around by observing exactly what kind of freaky-looking animals or animal behavior is going on around the area!
(if geralt is involved you may desire to have him explain this totally non-supernatural mechanism for abrupt animal appearance or behavioral changes at excruciating length to the chagrin of all present. or maybe that’s just what i desire. it would be funny okay)
potentially even more hyperspecific application of dual-stage parasites: there’s a dinoflagellate parasite that, when it infects crabs, makes the meat chalky and bitter like aspirin (Smithsonian link, images of healthy crab and microscope slide). geralt hunts down dinner, digs in, and immediately sighs and grabs jaskier’s portion away from him to the poet’s complete bafflement before going to get his swords because judging by the flavor there’s definitely a shishiga nest in this forest.
like. parasites are one of THE most hyperspecific things in biology. the majority of them have very specific hosts and life cycles, many of them are completely unique to a species, if you think a fictional parasite is too specific to be plausible you’re probably wrong, make it even more specific. “the witcher monster lore is so hyperspecific lol” IT AIN’T TRULY HYPERSPECIFIC UNTIL YOU CAN IDENTIFY EACH MONSTER SPECIES BY ITS UNIQUE PARASITIC LOAD, OKAY.
and, with regards to behavior-affecting parasites, before anyone brings up Cordyceps (Ophiocordyceps, as of 2008): yeah that sure is a thing! if you weren’t aware, just a couple of years ago we found out it actually is not a mind control fungus!! it bypasses the brain entirely and affects the muscles (Arstechnica article, Atlantic article—photos of fuzzy ants and electron microscope pictures of fungi). or as Ed Yong puts it, “The ant ends its life as a prisoner in its own body. Its brain is still in the driver's seat, but the fungus has the wheel.” which is. significantly worse than the brain thing. awesome!! i bet there would absolutely be similar fungal parasites of endrega and arachasae. real Ophiocordyceps still very much does not affect humans, but you know what, if plants can be cursed into becoming archespores and cultivated by mages i see no reason why mages could not also curse endrega fungus to affect humans, just saying
aaaand quickly back to hyperspecificity: monsters in different geographical areas having different abilities because of their symbionts. forktails in vicovaro acquire a bioluminescent symbiont in their diet that forktails in other parts of the continent can’t get, and they can create flashes of light? that’s sure gonna fuck a witcher on Cat up when he comes in the cave expecting a normal forktail. (geographic location affecting bioluminescence is a thing that actually happens in midshipman fish—Wikipedia link, no parasites.) geographically-dependent symbionts can also produce different toxins and such for their hosts! this isn’t exactly a parasitism thing per se (although parasites are also symbionts because ‘symbiosis’ refers to two organisms in close association not two organisms in positive association) but like. it’s cool okay ecology is so cool
writing fic and tired of all these same-old monsters-of-the-week? quick and easy way to spice up either the horror factor or just make the hunt stand out slightly: just add parasites!! i know i’ve read fics where monsters were described with distinguishing old wounds. you can do the same with parasites! i would fucking swoon over a detail like an ancient water hag’s eyes glowing in the dark, one of them marred by a dangling parasite—geralt notes the blind spot and presses his advantage. (Wikipedia link, no images: this one is referencing an aquatic copepod called Ommatokoita.) also, please put barnacles on skelliger drowners, i want it so badly. just—some percentage of monsters should be Extra Grody on the inside and/or the outside, that’s how nature works. spicing up a mundane hunt by making the monster a little extra gross for its species is Valid, is what I’m saying.
also, every single time frozen specimens with obvious fungal/ectoparasite infections come into the lab we absolutely always take extra close-up pictures of those suckers and make sure everyone else gets to see them. witchers bringing field sketches and notes of the weirdest shit they found on the path back for winter. lambert declares they’ll never know if this alleged fiend tumor was a fungus or mange because geralt sucks at drawing. eskel, the man who hauled a katakan corpse all the way up the mountain so he could dissect it, produces actual skin samples of his own encounters for examination, possibly in the middle of dinner. this elicits mixed reactions.
quick detour into preservation, since I went there—witchers are probably immune to parasites that infect humans by virtue of having pretty different biology to begin with, and probably immune to parasitic infections from other sources by virtue of superhumanly boosted immune systems and all the poison they put into their bodies on a regular basis. picking up a monster parasite would probably not be a big deal for witchers, either in that they have total immunity or that they would only be minimally and briefly affected, but the field of monster biology is likely such that they probably just don’t actually know what would happen to them in the majority of cases. this has potential as a source of battle stories and/or stories intended to freak out trainees, i think. therefore, out of caution, a witcher harvesting/preparing parts for alchemy might want to be sure to treat them first. personally i think all monster parts should be preserved immediately anyways to avoid attracting necrophages, and given that alchemical concoctions in witcherverse are alcohol-based, preservation in strong alcohol is probably the best way to maintain potency and kill basically everything. (cons: alcohol is SUPER heavy and jars are fragile. tissues or organs which are thicker than perhaps half an inch or an inch require additional preparation for the alcohol to penetrate properly. other preservation methods are more efficient for travel. depends on how soon your witcher intends to use or offload their stash.)
also, here’s an absolutely wild marine parasite that would make it worth a witcher’s while to make certain everything was dead! pearlfishes are long eel-like fishes that live inside the anus and respiratory organs (which are attached to the anus) of sea cucumbers, and they have pretty nasty teeth (PDF article link, IMAGE WARNING: dissected sea cucumbers literally stuffed to the gills with pearlfish). the highest number of pearlfish discovered in a single sea cucumber was sixteen (ResearchGate article, free PDF; no images). a different fact: we discovered tiger sharks eat each other in the womb because a researcher got bitten by a fetal tiger shark while he was dissecting the mother (NYT link, no images or parasites). what i’m saying is: parasites are often very small relative to the host and usually harmless to things rummaging around inside, but what if the monster’s parasites were also monstrous. give me a monster that has to be very dead or when you start rummaging around for alchemy ingredients the things in its intestines will lunge out and bite you.
what happens if a human becomes infected with a monster parasite? bad things, probably, i mentioned before that parasites in the wrong host, if they don’t just die, often super fuck things up internally (if you get tapeworms outside of the intestine where they’re supposed to be... it’s not good y’all. CDC link, no images). host-jumping for parasites is actually fairly rare since most of them are highly specialized for their hosts, but it does happen. humans are very not my strong suit so i’m not going to dwell on this but it is entirely possible that something like necrophage infestations or monster-contaminated water sources or just being a little too involved on a witcher’s monster hunt could produce strange parasitic diseases in humans. up to you how well-known and/or how clouded in superstition these effects might be! opportunities for hideous whump? gross body horror? messy and horrifying parasite-driven behavioral changes? terrifying and potentially prolonged uncertainty over what the issue actually is because of minimal information about parasites? the decision whether or not to dose with a witcher potion? excellent possibilities.
okay last one, just because i think it would be fun: myxosporeans and sirens. Myxos are a parasitic relative of jellyfish that produce whirling disease in baby salmon. whirling disease causes neurological and skeletal damage and has a pretty high mortality rate, but it also makes infected fish do this, well, whirling behavior and it’s honestly fascinating. (video link: a pretty normal-looking young trout spinning like a fuckin top). imagine a siren doing that in the sky. i just think myxos are neat!
tl;dr: extra grody hyperspecific biology of monsters!!!
#kaer morhen biology of monsters 101#fic reference#parasites cw#VERY parasites cw#body horror cw#i have a bunch of new followers who i think came for library content and to you i am so sorry#half the time i am yelling about libraries but the other half of the time i am yelling about the GROSSEST bio shit
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Anon said: How are you just like "Oh these are just some warm up sketches" and post a full finished piece, while I'm over here sketching a triangle person and calling it a finished piece.
I dunno if this was a legit question asking for a legit answer, but I do happen to have a legit answer so I might as well give it! If I wanted to go into detals with it it’d take me forever though, so allow me to separate it into two points to make it easier
I learnt how to be very fast in putting down my lines and trained myself into not overthinking every single dot I put down. This took about five or six years of drawing daily and a whole life of drawing occasionally before then, because to do so you need to reach a point where you’re drawing something you’ve drawn so many times that by now your hand sort of goes without you needing to think about it much, so it’s not a fast process, but boy is it worth it. Mostly learning how to not overthink it, overthinking it used to be 90% of my time spent on a drawing and dear god did it suck the joy out of everything I drew
I have two very distinctive ways of approaching a drawing, one where I actually put effort in it and the other where I just want to let the squiggles out of my pen, and warm ups are the second one - the lack of effort I’m putting in can have different forms and show in different ways, so a warm up could be a fully colored piece as it could be just a pencil doodle, depending on where and on what exactly I’m being lazy: it could be the type of tool I’m using that allows me to draw without having to line, it could be a very tiny canvas that lets me avoid a ton of details a big canvas would demand. I might be cutting the time I usually put in making sure my anatomy is correct, I might be using a shading technique that takes a tenth of the time my usual one would, I might be using a style that’s just easier and faster to draw, or drawing characters I’ve drawn a trillion times in extremely generic poses and clothes. There’s a lot of things that I can do to make things faster for me! It’s skills you gain as you draw a lot - you learn how to draw things the hard way, and then you realize that along the way you learnt how to do them the easy way too
hope this actually answers your question! If it was a question at all lol if it wasn’t then sorry for rambling, please pretend I didn’t say anything hahaha
Anon said: I love your newest comic!!! So adorable!! I noticed Bakugou's mom does the affectionate hair rustle thing to him in the manga/anime, do you think Bakugou subconsciously does the same to show affection cause of it? I love the way you draw faces and poses, it's so expressive!!
Ahhhhh thank you so much!!! And yeah, it might be! After all we do take a lot from the people we live with even without realizing, and he’s already so similar to his mom!
Anon said: I saw your bakushima comic from October 9th (2019) where Bakugo falls asleep studying and Kirishima sets him down on the table properly and it was so soft my heart is crying
;;;;; !!!!!!!! I’m glad you liked it!! <3<3
Anon said: If it not to much, could I possibly get a Ochamina doodle pls? I just love some sweet lesbeans 👉👈
Awww I’m not taking requests right now, but I’ll keep it in mind for next time I want to doodle and don’t know what!
Anon said: I love your art! I envy you.
Please don’t! There’s a lot of reasons why being me isn’t a lot of fun - if it’s just my skill you envy, then all you gotta do is draw a lot!
Anon said: i just went through your entire kiribaku tag and omg it was beautiful seeing the progression in your art skills but still keeping the same funny/cute/heartwarming/etc traits you thought up for their dynamic!! i hope that makes sense haha !! love your art keep it up
It does make sense!!! Thank you so much both for looking through the whole tag and for thinking so, it means a lot to me!! ;;; <3<3
Anon said: Hey fran! I hope you're doing well(especially with quarantine and all)!! I really love your anatomy and how fluid and stylistic it can be! It's super fun to look at! I wanted to ask you if you ever did any in depth studies on anatomy? Like muscles and bones. I've heard a lot of artists mention the necessity of studying bones/muscles, i'd really like to know your opinion on the subject
Ahhh god thank you so much!! And... hmm let’s see if I can word this properly and have it make sense - always keeping in mind that this is just my opinion, of course!
If all you want to do is to draw, then all you need to do is to pick up your pencil and draw - it’s really that easy as far as I’m concerned. You don’t need to know anatomy in depth to just draw, everyone has seen a person, everyone knows how a person looks. That is, if all you want to do is to draw for the sake of drawing. If you want to draw an anatomically correct looking human being, though, you do need to know how anatomy works - and the deeper you’ll go into studying it the more correct your people will look. It’s kind how everyone can draw a bicycle, but if you want to draw a realistic bicycle you’re gonna need to look up references for it, you know? It’s all on the level at which you’re interested in drawing, the more technically skilled you want to be the more you’ll have to study
As for my personal experience with this, I hate studying with a passion. Studying puts a damper on my enjoyement of everything, and drawing isn’t excluded from this - you put a book in front of me expecting me to study it and suddenly I never want to pick up a pencil again. This means that I never sat down and studied anatomy in depth and all in one go just to learn how to draw a human being, but it doesn’t mean that I didn’t, slowly and now and again and in bits and pieces, study parts of the body to get a better understanding of it. I know better about the skeleton than I do about muscles, and I still have enough to learn about everything that anyone who’s studied anatomy properly would find a trillion mistakes in everything I draw, but my way of going about drawing has always been and always will be putting my enjoyement of it first and foremost, so I’m not interested in putting myself through a tour-de-force to learn everything there is to know about anatomy just to make my doodles look appealing to someone with a medical degree haha I’m just doing me, and when the mood is right I look up how to properly draw something, but until then I just do it as best as I can with my limited knowledge, being fully aware that what I’m producing is far from accurate but being willing to make that compromise for my own comfort
So that’s my opinion on it lol it all boils down to how important it is for you to know how to properly draw the human body - of course it’s gonna look more professional and better if you’ve studied it, but everyone has their own priorities, you know?
Anon said: Thank you for your hard work, seeing an upload from you is so nice, and the colors are so pretty
Thank you so muuuuccchhhhh!!!! TTATT <3<3<3
Anon said: Opinions on Tokoyami Fumikage 💕
One of my top faves in the whole manga, actually! I have a drawing in the making of him, I should get back to it..........
Anon said: HOLY SHIT FRAN THE TOES HOW YOU DRAW THE TOES SO WELL FEET ARE THE DEATH OF ME AND YOU’RE OVER HERE DRAWING TOES THEY’RE SO GOOD PLEASE TEACH ME YOUR WAYS!!! -❤️
Thank you!!!!!!!! So pretty much my way of learning this specific skill was being obsessed with elves when I was fifteen and wanting to draw them all the time and also for whatever reason being convinced that they were not supposed to wear shoes so I just drew a lot of feet with references and tutorials and stuff till I could draw my elves properly. Which isn’t necessarily what you need to do to learn how to draw feet, but, I mean, it worked for me lol
Anon said: I love ur Bnha ships and all but what would u do if some of them didn’t become canon??
Oh, I actually don’t care about that at all? I don’t expect most of them to become canon anyway - like, ochadeku sounds reasonable and kamijirou seems to be getting there, but everything else I never even considered it as an actual possibilily. I don’t really ship because I want to see my ships become canon, I just like the potential in what I can make with them? If that makes sense? They’re just fun to think about and I like making fancontent, that’s all there is to it really haha honestly if I had my way no ship would ever be canon ever ha ha ha
Anon said: Slep is for the wek
No actually sleep is for Frans who want a chance at getting up tomorrow morning without an headache for once, so I should do that and go to sleep already lmao
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I'm bombarding you with those prompts, so I fully understand if you just ignore all those you don't like, lol. Would WinterIronFalcon be an OT3 you're intrested in writing? Some established WinterFalcon with Tony pining helplessly after them, not believeing he could have a chance? With a dash of angst in it? Thank you ♡
There isn’t much angst in this but there is hopeless pining so yay?
Also on ao3 here
~
“Share Bear, it’s not fair,” Tony whines into the phone.
“What isn’t?” his cousin asks, sounding patient but also kind of amused. He takes the phone away from his ear and squints at it. Is she making fun of him? She probably is, Sharon always makes fun of him. She’s mean like that; he’s pretty sure she gets it from Natasha.
“They’re so fucking gorgeous, I can’t stand it.”
“Oh. Them again. Seriously Tony, didn’t you used to have better taste?”
“Excuse you,” he says, offended. “My taste is perfect.”
“They think arguing is foreplay.”
“It’s bickering! And it’s cute!”
“Gross,” Sharon says cheerfully.
“God hates me,” Tony says dramatically, flinging his hand over his eyes. “That’s why he cursed me to work with two such beautiful humans who are already dating each other.”
“Tony—”
“I know Bucky stays up to date with the fandom,” he continues, going a little quieter. “He’s gotta know that tons of people ship the three of us. But he doesn’t say anything about it. Share Bear, why doesn’t he say anything?”
“Probably because for every person who ships all three of you, there’s twice as many who ship just you and him,” she admits. “I know that if someone were shipping Maria and Nat and ignoring that I even exist, I’d be pretty upset.”
“Yeah,” he says glumly.
“What’re you filming today anyway?” she asks.
“True Crime. We were supposed to be doing an episode of Supernatural at the Odinson Mystery House, you know, over in Norway where the son found out he was adopted and then got super into Norse mythology and supposedly disappeared into a rainbow?”
“Oh yeah, that guy was crazy.”
“Wasn’t,” Tony insist stubbornly. “There are three different eyewitnesses and they all saw the same thing.”
“All three eyewitnesses tested positive for meth.”
“It was trace amounts and ruled irrelevant to the case. Anyway, there’s some sort of blizzard so our flight got canceled. We figured we’d get a jump on this season’s True Crime episodes instead.”
“What are you doing this week?”
He scowls into the phone. “Fandom episode. They voted for Captain America.”
He can practically hear Sharon wince. “I’m sorry. That fucking sucks.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, not least because both of them know exactly what happened to Captain America. He was recovered from the Arctic back in the 50s and went on to live a very happy and fulfilling life with Aunt Peggy. But that’s a very closely guarded state secret; the U.S. government can’t let it get out that Steve Rogers survived nearly a decade in the ice. Technically, Tony and Sharon aren’t even supposed to know but Aunt Peggy had insisted she be allowed to tell them after she took custody of Sharon and Tony moved out of Howard’s and into her home. It’s kind of cool actually, knowing that Uncle Steve is really Captain America. He’s a pretty great guy. It just kind of sucks that he can’t tell anyone about it and now he has to do a whole episode about it when everyone knows he’s a shitty liar.
He’d talked it over with Uncle Steve and Aunt Peggy when the results of the vote had first come in. Aunt Peggy’s advice had been to act more manic than usual, throw even more outlandish theories into the mix, and really make this episode about the banter between him and Bucky. “Direct their attention away from Steve,” she’d said. “They’re already going to be looking at you. Just make sure they’re doing it for the wrong reason.”
He kind of wants to kiss Bucky. That would definitely draw attention away from the episode. But that’s not fair to either Bucky or Sam, who are very happy with their relationship and don’t need a homewrecker like Tony throwing a spanner into the mix.
“Good luck,” Sharon tells him before they hang up. “You’re gonna need it.”
“Wow, thanks,” he mutters but she’s already gone.
~
Marvels Unsolved was never supposed to be this popular. It started off as a novelty webseries about Tony trying to convince Bucky about the existence of the supernatural—he firmly believed that if science could turn Uncle Steve from an actual shrimp to the god of muscles, then magic had to be out there—and then they’d started talking about an unsolved crime from the early 20th century after filming an episode one day, forgetting that the camera was still rolling, and had ended up with enough footage to make a second episode about real crimes. They had stayed pretty unknown throughout that first season but then true crime podcasts had exploded in popularity and Unsolved along with them.
Now they have a fandom and merchandise and actual fanfiction written about them, which is the craziest thing. They both have several often-quoted gifs floating around the Internet and Bucky has somehow become the poster child for being unimpressed by literally everything (he actually makes some of the best faces when something genuinely scary happens but they always end up editing those parts out—he has an image to maintain after all).
They brought Sam on once they started gaining in popularity. Tony, by that point, already had a pretty well-established crush on Bucky. He’d even thought that he had a chance with his co-host, small as it may be, and at first, it hadn’t seemed like Sam was going to change anything. He and Bucky argued all the time so Tony had been absolutely stunned when he’d stumbled upon them making out like it was the end of the world.
They had just finished filming their second season. Sam had suggested going out to a local bar. He’d suggested it for all three of them but Tony had, inexplicably, felt like a third wheel all night as Sam and Bucky bickered. At one point, Sam had disappeared off to the restroom and a couple minutes later, Bucky had followed him. Tony doesn’t know how long he had sat there waiting for them but he’d eventually gone looking for them only to find Sam pressing Bucky up against a wall.
And that had been that.
Three years later, Sam and Bucky are still going strong, Tony is as smitten with Sam as he is with Bucky despite knowing how hopeless both crushes are, and the fandom seems convinced to either write Sam out of Tony and Bucky’s relationship or write Tony into Sam and Bucky’s. He wishes they would stop. He stays pretty up to date with the fandom as well and they have all these meta posts about the way Bucky looks at him or something. It just keeps giving him hope but, well, it’s been three years. If Bucky wanted him, or if Sam did for that matter, they would have done something long ago.
~
“Hey, you doing okay?” Sam asks him as they’re setting up.
“Sure, why wouldn’t I be?” He avoids meeting Sam’s eyes, focusing instead on adding creamer to the coffee. Marvels had presented them with these mugs last year to congratulate them on four years of Unsolved. They’ve got their most iconic quotes printed on them, Bucky’s with “Obviously I killed JFK” and Tony’s with “I’m the dramatic bitch your mom warned you about.” Sam has one too with his one and only line in the entire show printed on it (“Why did I agree to work with you?”) but since he’s always behind the camera, he doesn’t have to use the same mug for each episode.
“You just seem a little off.” The worst part is that Sam genuinely looks concerned. If they didn’t care about him, he thinks his crush might be easier to manage but they do because they’re just nice guys like that. “I know you weren’t too thrilled when we announced this week’s case.”
“Howard worked with him, practically hero-worshipped the damn guy. Of course, I’m not excited.”
Sam winces. They know all about Tony’s shitty relationship with Howard after his dad called Marvels furious that his son was hosting a webseries instead of coming home to grovel at his feet and take over the business. The whole team had been brought in to listen as Fury tried to placate him. By the end, Bucky had been furious on Tony’s behalf and Sam had berated Fury for twenty minutes for making Tony listen to the vitriol his dad had spewed. It had cemented his crush on Sam, then just a passing fancy, into something real and permanent.
“Seriously, Sam, I’m fine. Might be a little off today but I would have said if I didn’t think I could do it.”
Sam doesn’t look convinced but he agrees anyway. Tony sits down next to Bucky and passes him his mug. Bucky shoots him a grin and murmurs, “Thanks, doll.”
Tony doesn’t blush but that’s only because he has five years of practice. Out of the corner of his eye, he spots Sam counting them down and he turns to face the camera, settling his hands in front of him.
“This week on Marvels Unsolved True Crime and in celebration of our 100th episode,” he begins, “we asked you what you’d like us to investigate and you came back—”
“—overwhelmingly,” Bucky interjects.
“Many, many times,” Tony agrees, “with a topic near and dear to my own heart: Captain America.”
“That’s right,” Bucky says, sounding surprised though Bucky had been the first to point out that maybe they shouldn’t do this episode because of Tony’s connections to Project Rebirth. “Your dad helped turn Steve Rogers into Captain America, didn’t he?”
“And he never let me forget it!” Tony says cheerfully.
“One hundred episodes,” Bucky says slowly, enunciating each word. “Can you believe that, doll?”
Sometimes, he wonders why the fans ship them when Sam is right there. Other times, Bucky says things like this and he understands completely.
“Not even a little bit, Bucky Babe.” Okay, so maybe he doesn’t help.
“One hundred. The big one zero zero.”
“We tried to do something extra special and get Sam in front of the camera for you guys—”
“—so you could see what a hunk he is—”
“—but Sam said that he didn’t trust anyone else to film us properly—”
“—which makes sense because Tony? If you put him in the wrong light, he’s practically a gremlin—”
“Hey!”
“I’m just telling the facts.”
“Well, the facts are wrong.”
“They’re facts, sweet thing, they can’t be wrong.”
“Can too. Anyway, since Sam refuses to join us—”
“—and that just breaks my heart because Sam, he’s one of my favorite guys, you know?”
Tony pauses. It’s not like Bucky to say anything nice about Sam. Usually, it’s all good-natured insults and bickering. He must really be fed up with the Starkbucks shippers to say something like this when they’re still this early in the show.
“Only one of?” he asks curiously.
Bucky shoots him one of those filthy grins that their audience loves so much. “Well, it’s hard not to include you on that list,” he drawls.
He’s not going to blush.
He’s not going to blush.
He’s not going to—
Damn it.
Whatever. It’s no big deal, that’s what editing is for. So what if Sam has never edited out one of Tony’s blushes yet? Maybe Tony will get lucky and he will this time.
“You know, I was actually named for Captain America’s sidekick?” Bucky asks, getting them back on track.
“Wow, that is deeply unfortunate,” Tony deadpans.
“Yeah, Dad’s a fanboy. His whole troop was pinned down and rescued by the two of them. He tells the story all the time—kind of like your dad.”
“Except my dad goes straight past into fanboy and directly into obsession territory.”
“…Fair enough.”
“Really? That’s all you’re going to say?”
Bucky shrugs and takes a sip out of his mug. “I’ve been inside your house. I’ve seen the Steve Rogers shrine. I’m not going to argue with you.”
Tony thinks about that for a moment. “It is kind of a shrine, isn’t it? Anyway, we’ve got some great stuff for you today. We’re going to crack open this cold case, show you some never-before-seen footage courtesy of my mom sneaking my dad’s old war tapes out of the mansion, and then we’ll talk a little bit about the theories out there.”
“How many of them are going to be ridiculously outlandish and physically impossible?”
Tony glares at him. “None of them. I have never once presented a ridiculously outlandish and physically impossible theory.”
“Right because alien abduction is a valid—”
“Aliens are real!”
“You said that crabs might have eaten Amelia Earheart!” Bucky shouts over him.
“It’s a valid theory!”
“I take it back, you’re not one of my favorite people anymore.”
“That really hurts me, deep inside,” Tony says sarcastically, trying to cover up that maybe that does send a small pang shooting through his chest. He likes the thought of being one of Bucky’s favorite people. He doesn’t want to lose that.
“How deep?” Bucky asks and winks.
“Very deep. Way, way deep down. Practically in my—”
Bucky’s eyes widen and he nearly chokes on his coffee. “Okay, that’s enough of that. Let’s get into the facts.”
“Hey, that’s my line!”
~
“With a missing plane and pilot and so much redaction in the files, we’re lucky to even have a name, let’s get into the theories.”
“Actually, wait, before we do that,” Bucky says, “I want to ask if you’ve ever noticed that your voice changes when you’re doing the voiceovers.”
“Wait, what?” Tony asks. He glances at him, to one of the cameras, then back to Bucky. “What do you mean?”
“You know, it gets all deeper like you’re trying to voice movie trailers or something.”
“No it doesn’t.”
“Sure it does.”
Tony shakes his head. “There’s no way.”
They both turn toward Sam, who thinks about it and then makes a ‘sort of’ motion with his hand.
“Told you!” Bucky says triumphantly.
“You’re such a child,” Tony sneers.
“Yeah, that’s why you like working with me so much.”
Behind the camera, Sam silently snickers and Tony glares at him before telling the camera, “If you’re watching, let us know in the comments. Is my apparent movie trailer voice okay or does it need to go like Bucky clearly thinks?”
Bucky goes paler. “Hey, wait, I didn’t say it had to go.”
“It was implied when you brought it up,” he argues.
“No!” Bucky insists. “I was just wondering if it was on purpose.”
They both turn toward Sam, who thinks about it and then makes a ‘sort of’ motion with his hand.
“Aha!” Tony says triumphantly.
“Traitor,” Bucky mutters into his coffee.
Sam signs, “I’ll make it up to you when we get home tonight.”
“And that was more than I ever wanted to learn about Sam and Bucky’s love life,” Tony lies through his teeth. “Let’s get into the theories. I only have two for you today, one of which I think Bucky will particularly like.”
“Oh no.”
“Our first theory is that Steve Rogers died in a plane crash on December 16, 1944. Winter months in the Arctic are known to be particularly stormy. There would have been low visibility due to the high latitude and time of year and with the waters and surrounding land being well below freezing, it’s possible that, even if Captain Rogers survived the impact, he would have frozen to death in the stormy seas.”
Bucky thinks about it for a second. “Yeah, that seems plausible.”
“In addition, Howard Stark, a known Captain America aficionado and the father of Marvels Unsolved’s best host—”
“You lie like a rug!” Bucky howls.
Tony snickers and then when Sam signs, “He’s really not,” bursts out into full-out laughter.
Once he’s recovered, he continues, “Howard Stark has spent the first fifty years after the crash of the Valkyrie and the last twenty funding searches in the Arctic in the hopes of recovering Captain Rogers’ body. He has found no evidence that Captain Rogers survived the crash although he did find part of the remains of the Valkyrie and has since stated that, ‘No human could have survived that crash.’”
The expeditions are a scam and have been since Howard first found the Valkyrie crash site and Uncle Steve along with it. He hadn’t been planning on continuing the expeditions—too costly, as he claims—but when Aunt Peggy had told him that Uncle Steve’s survival had to remain a secret, he’d kept them up for pretense’s sake.
Bucky is saying something about how it sucks that the first superhero is gone and when he finishes, Tony grins and says, “Then you’ll like our second theory.”
“Somehow, every time you say that, I end up completely hating it. Wonder why that is.”
“Our second theory is that Steve Rogers survived the crash and is still alive but cryogenically frozen in the ice. There—”
“Bullshit!”
Tony starts laughing but he tries to continue on over Bucky shouting that it’s complete nonsense. It’s hard and he knows that Sam will probably have to do some editing and maybe make Tony do some voiceover work in order to make the theory audible but he thinks he manages to do a pretty good job.
Bucky is pouting by the end of it, arms crossed over his chest. “What fucking bullshit,” he mutters.
“The supersoldier serum—” Tony starts to point out.
“Isn’t a miracle drug.”
“That’s exactly what it is.”
“No, it just made him big and strong. It doesn’t just magically keep people alive when they should have died.”
And then they’re off into familiar territory, arguing about the merits of either theory. Tony’s actually feeling pretty good about himself, convinced that he’s doing a decent job of steering the conversation away of anything classified, right up until Bucky says, about halfway through the episode, “I’m surprised at you, Tony.”
He wrinkles his nose. “Surprised?”
“Usually, you have some absolutely batshit, off-the-walls crazy theory but these have actually been pretty normal for you.” He pauses and then adds for effect, “And you’re usually much better at your research than this.”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh come on, even I know that there’s one more theory.”
He starts tapping at his chest nervously, almost wishing that he had a pair of sunglasses. Aunt Peggy always said that his lies are in his eyes, that they’re too expressive to hide the truth. When he was living with Howard, in the spotlight, he always had a pair of sunglasses to hide his eyes but he hasn’t wanted to use those since he moved out. He wishes he had them now.
“And what’s that?” he asks, feigning a casualness he doesn’t feel.
“That Steve Rogers lived and came out of the ice at some point and has been living out his life in anonymity.”
He barks out a nervous laugh. “I didn’t mention it because even I know that that theory is completely impossible.”
“Hasn’t stopped you before.” Sam nods agreeably. Bucky nods back at him and adds, “Even Sam agrees with me.”
“He’s your boyfriend, he’s practically required to.”
Both Sam and Bucky laugh at that one and yeah, okay, it was a pretty ridiculous statement. Anyone who knows them knows that being boyfriends is less likely to make them agree with each other.
“Look, Steve Rogers didn’t come out of the ice alive. Howard would have known for one thing and if you think, he could keep something like that quiet, then you don’t know him very well.”
“Maybe the government insisted it be a secret,” Bucky suggests, shrugging. “There have been plenty of people who have claimed over the last couple decades to be Captain America.”
Tony scoffs. “Oh come on, by that logic, anyone could be Captain America.”
“Maybe they could be.”
“No,” Tony says flatly. “It’s like that crazy conspiracy theory guy over on Reddit who’s convinced that Bruce Wayne is Batman.”
“Maybe Bruce Wayne is Batman.”
“Ooh do the butts match?” Tony says mockingly. “I mean, really, Bucky Babe, if we’re going off of lookalikes, then my fucking Uncle Steve is secretly really Steve Rogers, which is ridiculous because the guy’s like practically ancient and faints at the sight of blood in PG-13 movies.”
That sets off another round of arguing that lasts the rest of the episode until finally Tony wraps it up with, “Whether Steve Rogers died in 1944 or is still alive today is a mystery that will remain unsolved.”
They both pause for a moment to provide time for Sam to edit in the theme music and closing title. Usually, there would be some lighthearted bantering afterwards, maybe a joke about something they said earlier in the show. This time though, Bucky says thoughtfully, “The thing is, though, I’ve met your Uncle Steve—”
Tony goes cold.
“—and he really does kind of look like—”
Tony panics. That’s the only explanation that he has for declaring, “I’m done waiting,” reaching across the tables and grabbing hold of Bucky’s shirt, and yanking him forward to kiss him.
For a moment, Bucky is too startled to do anything but then he melts into Tony, mouth opening under his, tongue pushing forward to meet his. Bucky’s arms come around him, pulling him up and out of his chair and settling him into his lap. Tony makes a small greedy sound, swallowed by Bucky’s kiss, and then they’re both pulling away. Bucky’s lips are very red; Tony can’t stop staring at them even as he’s filled with dismay.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I shouldn’t have—”
“Why not?” Bucky demands.
“You—Sam—” He glances toward the camera but Sam isn’t standing there anymore. His heart drops into his stomach—has he just ruined Bucky and Sam’s relationship? But then he hears someone drop to their knees behind him and when he turns slightly, Sam’s fingers are on his chin, gently turning his head.
“How long?” Sam asks.
“How long what?”
“How long have we been wasting our time when we could have been kissing you instead?”
Three years, two months, and fifteen days. “Too long.”
Sam kisses him then, mouth gentler than Bucky’s but no less consuming. Bucky is a hard, hot line against his front; Sam is warm against his back and Tony? Tony loses himself in the storm that is the two of them, sparks shooting through him as Bucky’s hands find their way to his hips, as Sam’s tongue slips into his mouth, as Bucky whispers into his ear, “We’re not wasting any more time.”
~
Marvels Unsolved’s 100th episode shoots to their most watched, most liked video in less than a day and when asked, maybe the smallest handful of viewers could have said what it was about.
The day after it posts, only a week after it was filmed, Tony’s phone rings.
“Kill it with fire,” Sam says sleepily.
Tony, however, recognizes Aunt Peggy’s ringtone and he rolls over to grab it before Bucky can throw it at the wall. “Hello?” he asks groggily.
“Congratulations on not blowing Steve’s cover,” she says.
“Oh yeah,” Tony mutters. “Can I go back to bed now?”
“One more thing, duck.”
“What’s that?”
“Congratulations on the new boyfriends.”
#winterironfalcon#alle writes#alle answers#ooh boy this got long#if you like please consider reblogging#justsomeoneunordinary
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