#uhhh sorry i think this one may seem a bit all over the place LMFAO | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kimbapisnotsushi · 1 month

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i was feeling shiratorizawa + semiten and kawashira hcs so y'all know the drill LET'S GO

goshiki has 100% forgotten that he sleeps in a bottom bunk bed and consequently has shot up awake at the sound of his alarm only to bang his head on the underside of the top bunk bed

or the ceiling if he has the top bunk it's the same either way

also for some random reason i really enjoy thinking about semi and peach green tea. idk he feels like such a peach green tea person

fun fact when i first got into hq i made a list in my notes app where i could keep track of what i thought EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER (organized by team) would order at a boba shop/cafe so i could reference it for fics. i just looked at it for the first time in years. i apparently put down strawberry black tea for semi which still remains a pretty good choice i think

you know what. semi can be a strawberry black tea AND a peach green tea person. he goes for peach green tea when he feels like straying from his usual strawberry black tea. there i fixed the problem we're back on track

tendou uses the excuse of going on boba runs for the team to get alone time with semi. he'll be like "haha i can't get ALL the drinks by myself!! eita come with me :3" and semi just sighs but is honestly secretly really pleased that tendou would choose him out of everyone to run errands with

the greatest love language of all: running errands together

i actually think that, all things considered, semi was probably a little bit insecure and a little bit shy when it came to performing

like yeah he doesn't mind BEING in the spotlight. but he had to work on thinking he was good enough for it at first if that makes sense??? and i think being benched for shirabu probably exacerbates that

he's not used to showing other people his songs and his music!!! he's not used to being vulnerable!! he's not used to believing that he's skilled!!! because obviously that didn't work out in volleyball!! what if semi isn't actually as good at music as he thought himself to be?

tendou of course is determined to make him throw all these thoughts out the window

furudate please give us the secret cultural festival arc where semi gets a chance to shine because of his musical talents . . .

actually since shiratorizawa is a bunch of rich kids i wonder if yamagata has a smartphone bc i just think that'd make him constantly losing it 100x funnier

yamagata: "can everyone shut the fuck up for like five minutes i lost my phone and need help listening for the vibrations"

honestly why do i feel like half the times yamagata has "lost" his phone was really just tendou messing with him

like he's in the foreground running around looking for it while tendou is in the background snapping selfies with it or whatever

reon, ushijima, and yamagata like to go jogging together early in the morning. semi tried it once and then promptly decided never again

i actually think soft quiet early mornings are reon's favorite time of day!! he gets some peace to himself and he gets to see the sunrise bleed into the sky and he gets that crisp sweet air of fresh dew in the dawn and it's so so comforting to him

god i don't know how he does it i could never be that much of a morning person

however this does also mean reon goes to bed at like nine pm at the latest which tendou is personally offended by

reon the early bird riser who probably does yoga or some shit before meeting ushijima and yamagata vs tendou the night owl who stays up til three reading manga in the dark

genuinely how is tendou functioning at practice he probably stays up til three like four out of seven days of the week

(sorry i know i'm dunking on tendou a lot i'll stop now)

kawanishi will never admit it but he is so incredibly fond of the height difference between him and shirabu

it allows shirabu to fit his head perfectly in the crook of kawanishi's neck during bus rides and such and it makes kawanishi's heart flutter every time

but also kawanishi is MISERABLE during spring because shirabu can't comfortably do that when kawanishi is prone to sneezing like every five minutes

shirabu, teacher's pet that he is, is really good friends with the school librarian

oh my god . . . kawashira blue sky complex au . . . i would actually cry . . .

okay anyways shirabu kenjirou is really good friends with the school librarian and that's how he finds out that the school librarian used to know ushijima's dad

wouldn't that be crazy tho????? i'm thinking it was either the same librarian that utsui had or it was a close friend of utsui's who became the school librarian after they graduated and stuff. i'm kind of leaning towards the second one bc i feel like that makes more sense

i just. can you imagine how alone ushijima had to feel. can you imagine how suffocating it had to be. like there's plenty of reason to assume that his mom's side (and perhaps the mom herself) ended up disliking utsui and i wouldn't be surprised if they tried to scrub him out of ushijima's life

new idea guys utsui comes back and gets with the shiratorizawa librarian

i'm KIDDING

(mostly)

honestly i just think this scenario would really show off how much shirabu and ushijima mean to each other because i think that gets underestimated a lot

they trust each other!!! they respect each other!!!! they understand each other!!! ushijima who knows that he is to be used for his pure raw strength and that that's all shirabu wants to do for him and shirabu who wants to bring out the best in ushijima and thinks of himself as someone who serves ushijima!!!!! shirabu and ushijima who both think they're being used by the other but they don't care because that works best for them!!!! it's their way of showing respect!!! by handing the reigns over!!!!

okay that's a really serious oversimplification of what i'm actually thinking but i got like five hours of sleep and i'm running on two mugs of some strong ass lotus green tea i trust you guys y'all get what i mean

like idk i think ushijima wouldn't really know what to do with shirabu when they first meet in their second and first years. quiet upperclassman who is occasionally a jerk but mostly does not mean to be and his equally quiet underclassman who IS a jerk and DOES mean to be. they'd be so fucking funny together. they back each other up in ways they don't even realize. they could leave entire crowds in tears on accident

actually . . . the poor third years back then who had to deal with this first year they thought was quiet and composed and unassuming and totally chill. but was, in fact, completely unchill

shirabu's gone to bat for every single member of the team at some point btw. soekawa ushijima reon yamagata semi tendou etc etc. none of them have ever witnessed it though word just gets passed around to them like shirabu is some honor-defending ninja who only works in the shadows

and then it really surprises shirabu when they come to bat for HIM

i mean i just. i think shirabu is really used to being independent. is used to doing things by himself. he's not used to other people sticking up for him or other people trying to guide him (which could be another reason why he clashes with semi). it's not that he thinks he's perfect but like. he's never had people who wanted to do that for him before!!

but now he's got goshiki who WANTS compliments from him and he's got kawanishi who loves him for whatever reason and he's got the upperclassmen who ruffle his hair and swing an arm around his shoulders and tell him ot text when he needs help and he's just like ???? like a system error.

give it up for shirabu kenjirou everyone i love him

#MAN it has been a long time #uhhh sorry i think this one may seem a bit all over the place LMFAO #but yeah i really love shirabu :333 #ushijima wakatoshi #tendou satori #yamagata hayato #semi eita #oohira reon #kawanishi taichi #shirabu kenjirou #goshiki tsutomu #semiten #kawashira #haikyuu #haikyuu!!#haikyuu hcs #sou says stuff

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faebriel · 3 years

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ok ok I'm insane and couldn't pick one so have two (no need to answer both if you don't want to)

“You talk to him.” Not kindly, but he does.

“I’m used to him,” he shoots back. “I’m the only person who is.”

That makes Niki feel something, some uncomfortable tug in her chest. She mentally kicks herself. It’s not jealousy, she reminds herself, because despite the near-cliff jumping and the long nights without food and the nuclear fallout that has punctuated her last few months, being jealous of Tommy would be the least reasonable thing she’s allowed herself to be, maybe ever.

“You don’t believe me,” Tommy says flatly. “You never - eugh.” He cuts himself off with another ragged sigh, running a hand down his face. “Look, Niki, it’s - we were all together in Pogtopia, right? But I was there first. With him. And you didn’t see the start of it, it was horrible, and I’m glad no one else saw the beginning of it either but it was still just so shit and he kept saying all these terrible things about Tubbo and Fundy and you and,” he takes a shaky breath, “then, when I died, I saw him.”

Her breath catches in her throat.

Well, the voice in the back of her head whistles. If you were still wondering about all this afterlife bullshit, if you want to know where you’re going after your third life, here you go.

and

“You didn’t even - this isn’t about L’Manberg, Wilbur!” Niki shouts.

And then he stops, breathing hard, and he looks at Niki the same way he does whenever her voice is being drowned out in a crowd - the way he does when he wants to hear her, when he wants to know what she has to say.

“What else is there?” he asks.

Niki freezes. Stock still, unable to move, unable to breathe, ice threading its way through her gut, her chest, her shoulders, chilled down to the bone. With slow-dawning horror, she can feel hot tears welling up behind her eyes, sitting in her throat, threatening to spill over into a sob. She swallows - to keep her cool, to stay calm, to keep it together -

And then, something in her chest just snaps.

“You said you’d come back for me!” she cries, and her voice hitches on the lump of tears at the back of her throat and god, she sounds absolutely pathetic. Wilbur’s face softens immediately, which somehow just makes her feel even worse. “In Manberg. When Schlatt put me in prison, and you and Tommy were in Pogtopia, you said you’d break me out when it was safe. I waited for weeks , Wilbur. It was… it was horrible.”

“Niki…” a kaleidoscope of emotions flicker across his face, and he seems unsure which to settle on. “We got you out though, right? After the festival.”

“You looked for the button first,” she says quietly, and he stills.

Her sniffling sounds embarrassingly loud against the quiet background of night.

thank you sm!!! i’m gonna put these under the cut because they got a little long sorry (tw for discussion of suicidal ideation)

to preface: tommy is kind of the accidental but incredibly necessary invisible support beam for niki and wilbur’s making amends in bitter. niki cannot accept wilbur’s actions and apology without first acknowledging her own actions and making steps towards an apology, because otherwise it kind of falls flat? in that ending scene niki finally gets what wilbur is feeling and wilbur finally gets that someone else knows how he feels (it’s not perfect 100% yet, but…. that’ll get explored later)

onto the actual snippet! “tommy talks to wilbur - not kindly, but he does” was very important to me! tommy has stuck by wilbur ever since pogtopia, but the tragedy is that he is not equipped to deal with wilbur’s issues, and it shows. wilbur’s first stream after revival depicts this really clearly, where tommy tails wilbur around the whole time but insults him, is still stuck on calling him the villain, physically fights him at some point, etc. on one hand this isn’t healthy but on the other hand tommy is actually around, which is more than can be said for basically any other ally wilbur has had on the dsmp, maybe excluding his dad, who literally killed him lmfao.

this whole issue is exacerbated by the fact that tommy believes that he is the only person who properly understands wilbur, the only person who gets what happened to him, and feels like wilbur is generally his burden to bear. he failed to stop wilbur from both 1. hurting other people and 2. killing himself after the pogtopia-manberg war - and he doesn’t trust wilbur not to do either of those things again, so he’s stuck hovering around wilbur while wilbur is inadvertently setting off his own trauma and feeling responsible for any way he might fuck up and hating that but not wanting to leave. tommy’s memory isn’t perfect and he isn’t a perfect narrator, what he remembers from pogtopia the most were the scariest parts and that’s understandable but it means he’s holding wilbur to the worst expectations of behaviour (and he does so very vocally). the others showed up later, sure, but in tommy’s eyes he’s the only one who saw wilbur’s descent, and by the time they showed up wilbur had already changed irreversably. tommy tries to rationalise this by splitting the ‘different wilburs’ apart from each other in his head (he does this in canon too - there’s one quote from like late 2020 where he says he and tubbo need to keep on going for who wilbur used to be, not who he became, even though they’re,, the same person), and no one challenges that perspective, so he just keeps doing it even though it’s not healthy for him or wilbur.

and then limbo happened and, oh geez, THAT didn’t help jhfaskjjfsa

tommy is on a bit of a knife edge with niki in this fic. niki’s in this state of “ok, he’s annoying whatever, i’m moving on”, but all tommy knows is that she tried to kill him that one time, disappeared off the face of the map, joined a book club with two people who definitely do not like him, and now is just acting weirdly mellow and polite. she is not someone he wants near wilbur bc what the fuck is she gonna do? what is he gonna do? who knows. he’s frustrated that niki doesn’t seem to acknowledge how he’s feeling (especially bc once upon a time she would have been someone he trusted to acknowledge them - they were friends, they fought together) and he’s taking a big step by telling someone about his concerns here, especially bc tommy doesn’t really like talking about them at all. he wouldn’t be saying absolutely anything to niki if he didn’t truly believe she should stay away from wilbur, even if he’s wrong about him. (sometimes i think i write tommy as a little too emotionally mature here but it all goes out the window when wilbur’s brought up. idk if that balances it out)

ok onto niki: this is the first she has actually heard of limbo! she’s only just come around to the fact that resurrection is possible at all. death is kind of a touchy subject for niki both in general and re: wilbur in the fic - she’s coming off of a period in her life where suicidal ideation was, uh, a big thing (whether you want to read that into canon or not is subjective, that’s just the angle i went with in this fic). the sudden existence of a life after death, miserable as it is - and whether she really believes in such a place, when it only exists in tommy and wilbur’s words - that is a lot of information for her to absorb all at once. death is a weird connection point for tommy and niki here, coming right off of the fact that they’ve just acknowledged each other having those problems - tommy, out of, yknow, altruism, would very much like to keep niki out of that place, and niki is quietly reckoning with the fact that that is where she would have sent him. the concept of limbo from the perspective of a character with no experience of it, even secondhand, is so interesting to me like what kind of eldritch location would you feel like you’re living in asghjkl

(also - i gotta be honest the jealousy angle here but mostly when she’s talking later about dream not deserving wilbur’s companionship kinda came out after this post came across my dash while writing. whoops /j)

fun fact, this is the very first snippet of bitter that i ever wrote! all the way back in may!! this is like the moment of the fic - it's where the miscommunication that niki and wilbur have been having is shattered entirely - and so sticking the landing was uhhh kinda important to me lol.

wilbur's entire being in this fic is basically consumed by L'Manberg - he equates his self worth to it entirely. in his eyes, everyone (rightfully) hates him because of what he did to L'Manberg, because L'Manberg was corrupted and he himself with it, etc. niki tries to tell herself this, and while it definitely does form part of her issues with him, it was the betrayal that causes her this much pain - that he seemingly brushed her and their friendship off entirely when he supposedly left her for dead in manberg. because here is what we as the audience know: wilbur couldn’t leave niki in trouble when he heard her life was in danger, even when he was trying to find the button (pretty much the only thing he sees himself as having left at this point) and so he returned. here is what it looks like from niki’s perspective: wilbur told her to wait in manberg until it was safe to come to pogtopia, laid the place with TNT, went to blow up the place, and only returned when he couldn’t find the detonator (and then the first thing she saw him do in pogtopia was encourage the pit behaviour but that’s not what we’re talking about asdfgh). that is massive miscommunication and it’s been brewing between them for months - to make a quirky little reference to the title, niki has been carrying that anger with her so long it's gone bitter. it was never just about l’manberg with niki - not that anger, not her and wilbur’s friendship (hence the little flashback earlier in the fic, bc niki’s relationship to anarchism and statehood or statelessness juxtaposed with her friendships with wilbur and eret - she loves l’manberg bc she loves wilbur, but she loves eret too and those national ties don’t undermine that - is Real Interesting to me) - so when wilbur asks what else there could possibly be (because in his mind, what else could she have bothered staying around for?), she just fucking breaks.

“Niki freezes. Stock still, unable to move, unable to breathe, ice threading its way through her gut...with slow-dawning horror, she can feel hot tears welling up behind her eyes” - prose discussion time! heat and cold are two big throughlines in this fic - particularly for niki, cold is what she is. admittedly when i started with it i mostly wanted to subvert hot = angry and cold = dead but i kinda ended up enjoying this take on it for what it is instead of just as a subversion (also i like the idea of revived people running hot, their bodies r working hard to keep em going). she’s holding onto her feelings and refusing to deal with them, she’s frozen over. descriptions of cold are key to niki’s mental state throughout the fic - cold weight on her chest, feelings of frostbite when she and wilbur hug the first time, ice cold water during the dinner scene, waking up in the cold flat, etc. this was an attempt at describing a more visceral feeling of like, when you’re really mad and you can just feel the adrenaline running through your veins. always felt more cold than hot to me. when she starts to cry, the facade she’s been putting on is finally thawing out and cracking the ice she’s buried her feelings under. (also gives an excuse to write warm comforting hugs towards the end /hj). it’s a loss, it’s catharsis, it’s a whole mess.

and ofc this is all news to wilbur and he feels terrible, because as unintentional as it was, he really really hurt her - because the destruction of l’manberg fucking sucked but above all else wilbur hurt the people he loved because they loved him so much and not in spite of it, because they cared about him so deeply and his death was a massive blow to them. this hasn’t even dawned on him, because how could it? he respects deeply niki (lowkey respects her opinion more than his own at this point) so he has to listen, because it’s niki (“and he looks at Niki the same way he does whenever her voice is being drowned out in a crowd - the way he does when he wants to hear her, when he wants to know what she has to say” - because he does), and what she says fucking floors him. in his eyes, he failed her by putting her in danger and then by destroying her home - the idea that she valued him and their friendship so much flies entirely over his head until this moment, and he is forced to re-evaluate the mindset that has motivated him since… basically since pogtopia! the way i write wilbur is like… yes, he’s one of niki’s closest friends and he’s more aware of her insecurities and issues than most (which is why he does always take the time to listen to her, etc) but he does over-idealise her a bit. tbf, i think he does to some extent with everyone (calling tubbo strong on the anniversary stream, for example). also the fact that he really wasn’t around for niki’s lowest moments as a character! he still thinks of her the way she was in l’manberg - confident, steadfast, respected - and this moment shatters that for him as he realises exactly what effect he and his death had on her and everyone else, not just by his actions, but because they loved him and cared for him so deeply.

sorry that this got horrifically long!! and thank you so much for sending snippets in <3333

#ALSO SORRY THIS TOOK TWO WEEKS. LMFAO #asks #thespoonisvictory #dvd commentary #< i have successfully coerced a discord server into doing the dvd commentary on a regular basis and it is the BEST thing

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