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#After Ten Long Years
uncleasad · 9 months
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Sunday night status update
As Rod Stewart was fond of saying, “It’s late September and I really should be back at school…”
Here at Uncle Asad in Fandomland, that means it’s time for the annual “some night status update” checking in on all the unpublished words and works. (OK, the 2022 update was in May, dunno why, that was…18 months ago, and you expect me to remember? 😂 Oh! It was because of the announcement of the cancellation of Legacies, which felt to me a little bit like a non-event in the wake of Kaylee’s departure the previous fall/winter.)
Back in 2021, nearing the end of my summer writing hiatus, I tallied up all the words in my unpublished, in-progress fics—7 works and nearly 107K words then; in 2022, it was 10 works and nearly 135K words.
Sad to say that although I’ve published 8 new stories since then, all 10 of the in-progress works are still unfinished (8 with no new words), and I’ve added 6 more in-progress stories, too!
The list, with word-counts and estimates of percent complete:
Josie returns to a derelict and overgrown Salvatore School after 10 years away (aka After Ten Long Years) (25,213 words in 5 distinct sections, +60 words, ~75% complete)
Hope meets the Saltzmans in the post-Civil War upper midwest (aka Old West Hosie) (11,340 words, ~25% complete)
Alternate realities bleed over into the lives of Hope and Josie (21,040 words, ~50% complete)
Part 3 of The Model and the Painter (1,265 words)
Hope investigates the disappearance of crime boss Josie (2,778 words, 1+ chapters complete)
Crime heiress Hope meets an enchanting woman who may be her moll (aka runaway Josie) (36,053 words, ~25% complete)
Newly-divorced Hope takes a job teaching art at Whitmore College (aka divorcée Hope) (14,376 words, 8+ chapters complete)
Hope, Josie, Lizzie, and others struggle with their lot in life in the brutal Geminid Empire (aka Hosie dystopia) (16,313 words, ~10% complete???)
A sequel to the surprisingly-popular You Couldn’t Even Bother To Check On Me? (3,140 words)
No-Humanity Hope goes on a rampage across North America, hunting her enemies and extracting revenge (aka Dark Hope on a rampage) (4,708 words, +358 words, ~60% complete)
In the olden days, Alaric sells Josie (aka Selling Josie) (608 words, ~10% complete???)
Ten years after leaving Mystic Falls to try to save Hope, Josie is summoned home by a mysterious letter from her father (aka Stepmother Alyssa Chang) (11,328 words plus an 831-word excerpt scene; ~60% complete)
A disaster of a fic I shouldn’t write and which may never see the light of day (aka The best ones always break my heart twice) (16,260 words, ~75% complete)
Hope Mikaelson is sitting at the bar when Josie Saltzman walks in (aka Josie walks into a bar) (2,211 words, ~50% complete)
Something something Hosie Santa Claus (aka Hosie Santa Claus) (962 words, ~10% complete???)
An intersection of the lives of Hope and Josie just before the fire (aka Hosie half-shot) (1,239 words, ~50% complete)
That’s now almost 170K words of unfinished stories! 😳🤯 (Across 16 works; 32,608 words in 6 new in-progress fics.)
I did finish/publish more works than I added new unfinished ones since the last check-in, however; thank goodness for small favors, however minuscule! 😂
I don’t have a great strategy for whittling this down; as many of you may have noticed, I’ve been in a bit of a slump since spring—and I haven’t written a word since July 1 😢 I feel like, aside from the late summer writing sabbatical of 2021, the summer writing decline usually happens to some degree, and with the coming of fall and winter, I have more time, but that may all be wishful thinking. Still, fingers crossed. At some point, though, I’ll find an hour or so to finish writing the Hosie half-shot and go from there….
Thanks to everyone who’s stuck with me this long and read my fics along the way, and I’m sorry I don’t have a more upbeat outlook right now.
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buggiebite · 3 months
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The Mockingjay - Sketches
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Primarily after-Mockingjay. A snippet of getting better and growing back together.
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katabay · 5 months
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trains :)
this is a very rough and scribbly comic, but sometimes that's all a comic is going to end up being lmao. the guy with the jacket is darren, glasses is andy. not featured, andy's dead brother who nevertheless insists on haunting the subtext
the main thing I wanted to draw was the train tho
bsky ⭐ pixiv ⭐ pillowfort ⭐ cohost ⭐ cara.app
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lonely-night · 5 months
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janeway x seven; if I only could I'd make a deal with god
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doctor-disc0 · 1 month
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Bethesda needs to bring back elder scrolls games taking place over multiple years. I'm sorry, but I genuinely don't think that the Oblivion Crisis and all the Oblivion DLCs happened in 4 months.
And don't get me started on the fact that every event in ESO happens in the same year.
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bloodydeanwinchester · 5 months
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idk if this is an unpopular opinion but i’ve read a few fics where cas says the angels fought in hell for forty years to raise dean and i just dont think that’s true. michael wanted the apocalypse to happen. cas says in on the head of a pin “When we discovered Lilith's plan for you, we laid siege to hell and we fought our way to get to you before you—” why would michael send the angels to hell to stop the righteous man from breaking the first seal if that’s what he wanted to happen? i think he waited until he knew it was too late and then he sent the angels to hell to raise his sword.
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dani-luminae · 8 months
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"Disney's princess needs to have more diverse personalities!" Yes true, sure, but also
Disney's first three Princesses (Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora) are all graceful, sweet, like singing songs about dreams and wishes, and do not actively fight: "omg they're such anti-feminist caricatures!!!"
Disney's next princesses have more established emotions and personalities, alongside the establishment of the "I Want" song as applied to motives outside of love (exploration, adventure, making their family proud): "OMG Ariel traded her voice for a man, how stupid!" "Belle's so stuck-up!" "Jasmine's just a spoiled brat!"
Tiana's a dedicated hard worker, loves her family a lot, and wants her loved ones to be very happy even at her own expense and gets... totally ignored in this conversation, gee I wonder why
Rapunzel, Anna, and now Asha are a little bit awkward, silly, but exuberant and get written off as "stupid adorkable" despite the other tenets of their personalities setting them apart, like Rapunzel's creativity, Anna's dedication to her family, and how Asha strives to help those around her
Moana gets called a disobedient brat for seeing beyond her father's narrow-mindedness
Disney Princesses have many wonderfully different personalities. It's just that people are dedicated to misinterpreting them, and that's why I never take the "Disney Princesses need more diverse personalities!" comment at face value.
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etrevil · 9 months
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dazai being dazai, an insufferable bastard, and sigma being done with his bs /// “Isn’t it more fun to have someone show surprise and awe over my actions?”
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layzeal · 2 years
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something about the way wwx, against all odds and against his own plans, just kept living and surviving through events that he was certain would kill him, so by the time sunshot ends and his heart is still beating he just becomes... mellow
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gen-is-gone · 5 months
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my for some reason unpopular opinion is that it's boring when Fitz remains unhinged levels of self-deluded and closeted actually. Why does he have to be doctor who's answer to dean winchester, huh? why would this man in his mid-thirties who has spent at least a decade traveling in time and space still have weird insane hangups about being attracted to dudes? why does that need to be the thing about the text that we all collectively think is worth taking at face value? it's boring and fucking depressing and honestly doesn't make sense when the future of humanity in doctor who is that bisexuality is the cultural default and completely unremarkable.
#like geez I don't think that making it to thirty+ years old and still being afraid and filled with self-hatred is funny actually#eighth doctor adventures#eighth doctor#fitz kreiner#megan whines into the empty abyss of cyberspace#it's also weird because this definitely wasn't the attitude in fandom ten years ago#my suspicion is that Steve Cole's confirmation that Fitz was always meant to be bi made people start taking the text literally#in a way folks didn't before when slash shipping culture was just used to reading against a text as a default#like I vaguely recall a post going around shortly after that was confirmed in 2019#that brought up how Fitz being canonically bi meant that all his weird hangups couldn't be handwaved away now#because if fandom made him bi against canon then you could just ignore his weirder no homo moments#but if he was intentionally written as bi then he was also intentionally written as deeply closeted#and like. that's true. but also you can just do whatever the fuck you want with canon no matter what#and also like#sure many of the writers were writing him as queer intentionally#but like the writing in the EDAs is so inconsistent of course some people are going to write weird no homo crap#because those writers weren't comfortable with queerness even if Cole's intent was that Fitz was bi#like The Gallifrey Chronicles's whole thing with Fitz and Trix is one long lance parkin no homo moment#does that really matter more than textual evidence that he is attracted to men and knows this about himself?#like I just don't know how you reconcile 'Fitz will bend over backwards to pretend he's straight' with#'a consideration of his chances of [...] getting laid by the Doctor'#or for that matter 'with the Doctor it's the real thing'#or the really really heavy implication that he and Sasha had a one night stand in History 101#or that he and George went on a date in Camera Obscura which led to Fitz being invited on the Siberia expedition in the first place#and again and I can't emphasize this enough: why is this the thing about 'canon' that is so worth keeping?#why is Fitz being depressing levels of in denial more fun than him being openly bi?#destielification of Eight/Fitz smh
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vargaslovinghours · 2 months
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And never let you go ♥
Bonus without the overspill lighting:
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#💟#Digital art#Full Art#Art#Edgar#Scriabin#It's that time of year again where I get real sappy about Vargas ♥ Because yes! Once again it is my own personal Vargasversary! 🎊 Yaaaay#Seven years now - I don't know what to do with seven years it feels like a hard to define number haha#Right in the middle between five years and ten years! A while to be certain but hard to define as a Long Time either hmm#Well whatever it doesn't matter <3 The important part is that I still love Vargas and them very much ♥♪#I actually didn't really have any specific plans for this Vargasversary :0 I haven't been drawing them much again#Other things have drawn my focus and attention hehe ♪#So I just kinda set my hand loose - no sketches on paper no defined idea - this is just what my hand/brain came up with in the moment#I'm pleased :) I think it accurately expresses how I feel about them hehe <3#I wrote down what ended up being the text/caption a couple months ago while I was in Big Love in their direction#I don't remember what inspired it anymore other than just - They ♥ Themst ♥ Do love them <3#I've planned my next reread now ♪ Barring anything drastic (like an update lol) I know when I'll be rereading next#I'm looking forward to it! :D As always hehe <3#It's still a bit a ways off which works well for recharging :)#And of course I'll be doing my usual in the meanwhile - this and the main anniversary and my sketchdumps and Requestober haha#The caption is as much me as it is Edgar after all <3#Even quiet and sleeping I still find them as a comfort - a place I find rest and joy in ♥#Inspiring and lovely and wonderful - pretty and tender and dear!#Oh and#Always finding a way to flip up the bottom of the shirt#Hehe <3
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uncleasad · 1 year
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Thanks to this conversation with LegaciesFics over on AO3 (note: Stefanie Salvatore is now, henceforth, and forever in the appearance of Landry Bender), I went in to my oldest in-progress fic (I began writing it April 8, 2020, after getting blocked on my first fic, Have at Least One Totally Epic Love) and made myself a note to properly describe the appearance of an OC in said fic at a point in the story once doing so is no longer a spoiler to the character’s identity.
Whilst (because that sounds cooler than “while” 😂) searching for an appropriate point to leave said note in my draft, I made a number of edits 🎉 and then went on to read a Merge-related scene and bawl my eyes out. OMG. This fic is so much better than my more recent stories, and I need to find a way to finish it…but that would involve writing a whole bunch of death and despair, and it’s hard to get up the energy to do that even on a good days… 😢
But, hey, that’s two days this week where I’ve done some actual writing of words! 🎉😂
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ai-higurashi · 7 months
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Thinking once again about Beakley and Scrooge post SoS and before the family moved in, and I'm going to be sick.
That's her best friend! They've been together through thick and thin, and she's seen him through highs and lows, but never like that. He's so hurt and angry, his misery has completely overtaken him.
Like, how do you miss someone who's right there?
He's like a shadow of the man she used to know. And she can't help him! Duckworth can't help him! Webby can't help him (and even if she could, it's not on her to fix him, she's a child, Beakley is not potentially putting her in the way of Scrooge's short temper and lashing out just for the chance it may work, no matter how much she wants for the two most important people in her life to get along.)!
He's pushing everyone and everything away, but he let her stay, so even if she could, she's not leaving.
Idk they make me a little bit insane.
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irresia · 1 year
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BUMBLEBY IS CANON I REPEAT BUMBLEBY IS FUCKING CANON
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hii 📓
Okay so the thing is that I wanted a “the Zenin raised Megumi instead of Gojo” fic but the thing is that I’m absolutely convinced that if the Zenin were the ones that took Megumi they wouldn’t actually take tsumiki too. The fandom consensus I’ve personally seen has been that she would have been taken and mistreated by zenin for being a female non sorcerer but I personally think they would have just straight up left her behind.
They only bought Megumi. They keep non sorcerers and women as servants in their compound but all of them are Zenin themselves. Tsumiki isn’t related and I couldn’t really see any reason why they’d want her. Which turned this into a fic where Tsumiki loses her brother, but she’s trying to find him again, she swears. I think of it as my “siblings doomed by the narrative desperately try to write a new one where they can be together” fic.
The thing is that Tsumikis mom was one of those people who thought love and consumption were synonymous. She had a habit of getting caught up with assholes and just… having both of them chew on each other for a while until it turns into this horrible fucking bloodbath.
Tojis just another loser her mom got caught up in, but he’s Tsumiki’s favorite out of all the losers, because he gave her her brother. Her mom marries this random guy she barley knows and Tsumikis pretty sure she does it so they can both ditch their kids twice as much, secure in the knowledge that there’s supposedly another person checking in. It works out great for them, because they both stop coming entirely. It’s fine, because Tsumiki has Megumi and Megumi has Tsumiki and they don’t need anything else.
It’s one of those things where they were in really unhealthy circumstances and it made their relationship a little bit unhealthy but not necessarily bad. They both had to grow up way too fast and deal with way too much too soon and become codependent on each other because they are, in the most literal way possible, dependent on one another. Neither of them know how to love in a way that doesn’t involve sacrificing themselves for their sibling, mostly because they don’t have a way that doesn’t involve that.
They’re in a sinking ship and tsumiki knows it. Their parents aren’t coming back. The money is going to run out sooner or later. Their problems are stacking up.
Megumi has confessed to her that he sees things that no one else does. When she asks him how he knows no one else sees them, he explains that they’d say something if they did and won’t say anything else. And she doesn’t know what to believe but she refuses to call him crazy. He tells her that monsters cling to her back and he fights them off for her. She patches up his bruises and cuts and tells him he’s brave and tries to figure out if she’s just imagining that her back feels lighter after. He tells her that there are dogs that only he can see that have started following him around, and she tells him she believes him and can never remember, later, if she meant it or was just saying it.
The last time Toji came by, he left them more money than tsumikis ever seen in her life, took them to ice cream, told them that he was sorry he was so shit at this and that the money was Megumi’s share in a payment. It was for something he was going to help daddy with later. Tsumiki and him were to use it to take care of themselves and be healthy, because Megumi couldn’t help him later if he wasn’t. And tsumiki was always afraid of what he meant by that, but in the end, she let it slip her mind. After all, Toji hadn’t been by in ages. He probably wouldn’t come by at all.
And he didn’t. But others did. Two men she’s never met before are waiting outside their building one day, and when they see Megumi, they laugh. But the thing that Tsumiki can never get out of her mind later is that she swears they weren’t looking at Megumi directly. They were looking at his dogs.
Tsumiki basically tries to get Megumi and powerwalk past them, but they’re a lot bigger and a lot stronger and there’s nothing she can do, really. They have a brief conversation about whether they should take her too, before one decides that Toji only sold him his kid and to leave the other behind. This makes both of them try to run, but there’s nothing either of them can do to overpower the men, and the men say that “Naobito would go ballistic if they left the ten shadows behind” so they take Megumi and leave her.
They put Megumi in a car and shove Tsumiki to the curb outside of it, and she tried to hold onto his hand, she swears. She grabbed at the car door even when the car started moving, and she banged on the windows, and she watched as Megumi kicked and punched and screamed inside, until one of them hit him and he went still. She ends up falling and hitting her head when the car picks up speed, and when she wakes up again, the cars gone and she has no idea where it went.
And it becomes a foundational moment for who she is. I think she was just intensely lonely before Megumi and poured a lot of herself into this idea of a family together. Tsumikis never able to shake the moment of her being outside the car and Megumi being on the inside, and not being able to get into him. She can never again get what she felt in that moment out of her head.
She goes to the police and tells them that it’s her little brother, his dad sold him but she wants him back, and they’re like “…”. The issue is that apparently her mom can pick up the damn phone if the police call and she shows up, spins some lie about how her and the stepdad split up and he took the kid with him, they never adopted each others kids so it was within his rights, Tsumiki was taking the separation hard and acting out. She lies, basically, because toji hadn’t kept up his end of the deal and dropped in to check in (neither had she) and his kid wasn’t her responsibility, he could do what he wanted with him. She doesn’t want the police poking around the way she lives. Just let the kid go because he’s probably dead and not her real brother anyway.
Tsumiki refuses to give up on him. They were both kids who no one cared about but they cared about each other and that had to be enough. But she’s seven with no support and zero idea on how to find him. She starts skipping school to look for him in random streets, puts up flyers, can’t go outside without looking for him. She gets held back a year in school because of how much she skips and she can’t bring herself to care. She buys him gifts on every birthday and writes him letters she can’t post because she’s going to find her brother and she’s going to prove to him that she never once stopped looking for him. She just. She needs him to know that she never stopped looking for him. She needs to find him and be able to honestly tell him she never stopped trying.
One day her mom comes back in clothes she can’t afford and comes with movers they shouldn’t be able to afford and announces a move they definitely can’t afford. Tsumikis absolutely opposed to going because if her brother comes to look for her, she needs to be in their old apartment so he can find her. She doesn’t have much of a choice in the matter. They have mysterious new benefactors who are setting up a trust to take care of tsumiki with a very generous stipend for her mom but they have to move to Sendai as a stipulation of getting the money.
It’s not until the attorney who’s managing her trust hands her a set of glittery blue butterfly hairpins that tsumiki realizes her mom sold her brother a second time.
The thing is that tsumiki had this one cheap set of butterfly hairpins she’d always stopped to look at in the store when she took Megumi to go grocery shopping. Shed never buy them, because they couldn’t afford it, but it was the thing she wanted most openly in front of him. She was always secretly really insecure about her hair, because they were the kind of poor where bar soap was a luxury they could only sometimes afford and kids at school made fun of how her hair was dirty and frayed. Megumi was the only one who ever saw how badly she wanted those stupid hair clips. If they had to give her a set of butterfly hair clips, it’s because he demanded that they did.
It’s basically implied that the Zenin are the ones paying for her care and upkeep due to an unspecified deal they cut with Megumi, but when they approached her mom with it, they added the caveat that Tsumiki had to be moved to a new city entirely and there could be no forwarding address left anywhere.
The zenins stance on tsumiki is, effectively, that she’s a weakness Megumi needs to be weaned off of. They honestly assumed he’d just like, forget she ever existed and he. Did not do that. He actually pitched a total bitch fit. Tried to scale the compound walls. Bit multiple people including the clan leader. But he’s got the ten shadows, he’s heir to the clan, and he can’t be caught up on some random non sorcerer who isn’t even a Zenin. They end up agreeing to pay for her to live very comfortably if he starts cooperating more but they want to make sure that he can’t ever find her again if he does ever succeed in running away.
Tsumiki is at once full of hope and hopeless, because on one hand, the butterfly clips prove that Megumi still loves her and remembers her, at least in her mind. But at the same time, she’s being moved to Sendai and doesn’t know how they’ll ever find each other again. She doesn’t honestly know if they’d recognize each other if they saw each other again. She wears the butterfly clips every day, even when she gets too old for the style, because she’s more confident about her brother recognizing them than her.
The thing about tsumiki is that she doesn’t understand hate. She just doesn’t. Her mom and toji always got caught up in these perceived slights and revenge and never once let go of the past. They’d destroy themselves if it meant taking down the people they hated with them. She never wanted that. She wanted to live with the people she loved and she’d happily turn around and forget everything, all the pain, all the searching, if it just meant she could go back to being megumis sister.
This isn’t about hate. This is about that moment outside the car, where her brother was inside and she couldn’t get in to him. This is about how helpless and small she felt when they shoved her to the curb and ripped megumis hand out of hers. She needs to make sure that when she finds Megumi, she can take him home again. So she decides she needs to learn how to fight.
Itadori Yuuji has the constitution of an ox and the strength to match it, and he is known for getting in fights with bullies and trouncing them so thoroughly that it’s never a question of who wins when the fight starts. He’s insanely physically capable and can hold his own in a fight with ease. He’s also nice and kind and Tsumiki’s comfortable enough asking him to teach her how to throw a punch or two.
She is bad at it.
So fucking bad at it.
But she never gives up, and Itadori is nice enough to keep teaching her despite how embarrassingly horrible she is at it all. He always asks her why she wants to learn so bad, she doesn’t seem to like it all, and she never answers his question honestly.
In their last year of middle school, their class has a trip to Kyoto. She, Itadori, and the rest of their group walk into some random restaurant in the city and have barely sat down when someone comes inside, starts searching every booth in the restaurant while shouting Tsumikis name.
And oh. They could recognize each other after all.
She looked for Megumi in every crowd she was ever in, but she didn’t consider that he was doing the same. Or that he would see her first.
Her brother grew up without her seeing it. Hes older, dressed in strange, expensive clothes, has a slightly bruised up face and split lip, but his eyes are the same, and he looks like the brother she remembered.
But a lot more nervous than Megumi ever was. He was a tiny, stoic child who didn’t take any shit and never showed fear, even when there were monsters that only he could see. But he’s nervous when he tells her that she probably doesn’t recognize him or remember him, but when she was a lot younger, he—
Megumi. He’s her little brother. Of course she remembers him. She’s been looking for him everywhere.
Megumi didn’t smile much as a child, but he smiles at her then. He tells her he doesn’t have a lot of time and she tells him that they can leave out the back, and he never let her hold his hand as a child but he takes her hand so easily in that second. And just for a second, she’s his sister again, and it’s everything she wanted.
They never make it out the back.
Two men come in. Megumi calls one of them uncle, and he goes stiff and flat the second he sees him. His uncle apologizes for his nephew, tells everyone that he always makes scenes when they’re out in public, tells him to apologize to the nice people and leave. Megumi was mistaken.
Tsumiki tríes to keep ahold of his hand. Really, she does. She tries to tell people to call the police. But megumis “uncle” steps towards her and Megumi slams him into a table, and then suddenly Megumi’s the one insisting that they leave immediately. They can go. It’s fine. They’re leaving. She loses ahold of his hand.
She tries to follow, but the other man restrains her. She learns that she’s better at slamming plates into peoples heads than she is at punching, and at this point itadoris Friend In Danger Override has been triggered and he fucking tackles the dude, which gives tsumiki the clearing that she needs to chase outside after her brother. She gets out just in time to see him be pushed into a car, and she’s had years to think about the last time this happened and figure out what to do differently. She throws herself in front of the car and refuses to move.
See her entire stance is that she’ll sooner get run over and killed in the street than let them do this a second time, but she also can see Megumi trying to fucking punch the drivers head in from behind because he’s about to hit his sister. His uncles trying to restrain him, and just for a second, she sees his hands make the shape of the shadow puppets he used to show her as children. Something invisible slams her out of the way just as his uncle knocks him out.
She picks up a rock and tries to smash in the fucking window with it, and itadori has to pull her out of the way to keep her from getting her feet run over when the car finally tears out of the parking lot. She goes ballistic on him for stopping her because her brother was right there and she lost him again and she didn’t even get the license plate. He was right there.
The police basically do jack all again. There’s no license plate, no names they can follow up on, and they’re still half convinced this is a settled custody issue even though tsumiki insists her brother was sold by his dad and is very plainly getting hurt wherever he is. Itadori is now a devoted advocate of finding tsumikis brother and reuniting them, and both basically kind of end up becoming really close to the other? He’s taking care of himself and his grandpa alone, she’s alone while her moms awol again, and they both become the others support system.
At one point, there’s this random girl and boy who doesn’t speak who shows up to their school for indeterminate reasons. The girl is bored and twirling her glasses in one hand while the person in a suit that they’re with asks the principal questions, and when tsumikis eyes catch at the right angle, she sees an invisible monster clinging to a classmates back through them. She realizes it’s exactly what Megumi always talked about and still remembers that the people who took him could see his dogs. She corners the two others in a room and tries to demand information about the invisible monsters or see if they know her brother or the people who took him, and immediately gets blown off. The fight escalates until the girl tells him that actually, yeah. She knows tsumikis brother. He is a very special person to some very powerful people, and the only way she can ever help him is to tell him that she’s let go of him and that he needs to do the same to her. That’s the only message that the people who have him would ever let get through, and his life would get a lot better as soon as he got it.
The people who have him would give him anything in the world, except for her. He could be a lot happier and healthier than he is right now if he just agreed to stop trying to find tsumiki. If she really wants to help her brother, then she needs to let him go.
Tsumiki nails her in the back of the head with a milk carton when she tries to walk away. It sloshes out on her. Tsumiki did not intend this. She cannot admit that fact. There are some actions you just have to own when you do them. She tells the girl that he’s her brother and she’s never letting go of him. She’s going to find him. They can’t keep him from her forever. She doesn’t care how long it takes her.
For a second, tsumiki really thinks this girl is going to kick her ass, but she doesn’t. She wishes her luck and tells her she’ll need it, and it’s only later that tsumiki realizes she slipped the eyeglasses into her pocket.
And as it turns out, her brothers monsters were real all along.
There was a knife that toji left in the frame of his bed. Tsumiki confiscated it from Megumi as soon as he found it, and it was odd and strange and gave her bad feelings when she held it, and it can kill the things that gather on her back. When she follows Itadori to their local high school and joins the occult club in an attempt to find more people involved in this world of invisible monsters, she wears the eyeglasses and keeps the knife hidden in her bag.
It comes in handy when her senpais are trying to open this thing and suddenly there’s like a fucking portal opening and Actually Let’s Not Oh Too Late Let’s Run Let’s Fucking Run.
They run.
Meanwhile at the hospital Megumi found out in very quick succession that his sister has fucking sukunas finger and also that there’s a very over enthusiastic himbo who is the self appointed vice president of the Find Fushiguro Megumi And Bring Him Home Club who absolutely fucking refuses to leave his side. Sorry who are you. Why are you so enthusiastic about finding him. Megumi sort of was the one doing the finding there was a whole tracking situation and him waiting dramatically in the shadows like they just did it.
Anyway they run very very quickly to tsumikis school where she is dodging she is serpentining this is a fuckton of monsters oh holy fuck is that her brother?
The fight goes bad.
Tsumiki manages to follow itadori and her brother out at a much slower pace because she’s not a freak of nature like itadori and shows up just in time to see her brother shouting at itadori to not eat the fucking finger while itadori is absolutely trying to eat the fucking finger.
She chucks her shoe at him. The finger goes flying.
Then the monster eats it instead.
Tsumiki: :o
Yuuji: :o
Megumi: fuck
Now there’s a bigger monster and the fight goes even worse. There’s a lot of shouting. Itadori ends up with her knife. Then he ends up getting eaten and they’re down both a knife and itadori, who’s probably fucking dead. Then megumis insisting she run and she’s insisting he shut the fuck up because it’s sort of taken a decade to get this close to him again and she’s not fumbling the bag now because of a monster on the rampage. Have a sense of fucking priorities here.
Then itadori bursts out of the monsters stomach with the knife like the fucking Kool Aid Man and the fight is suddenly very over. Good job, team.
Gojo rolls up to his most stoic and eternally pissed off student having a dramatic and emotional reunion with his sister.
Yuuji, in a very bad whisper: no no so like she’s been looking for him for years but he saw her in the restaurant
Gojo: :o go on
Yuuji: and then he got caught by like, I don’t know, he said he was his uncle or something but the dude acted so weird and creepy and they put him in a car and Tsumiki tried to stop the car but they got away
Gojo: *gasp* what no
Yuuji: I know! Anyway then I start helping her look for him but we can’t find him anywhere until I’m at the hospital and he just walks up to me right?? And I’m like “dude I have been looking everywhere for you” and he’s like “I have no idea who you are, I’m here about that fucked up demon finger” and I’m like—
Megumi, really trying to have a moment here: we can both hear you
And megumis like “this is uh. My new teacher. I guess. I am his only student. And he is uh. Enthusiastic. Do not linger in conversation with him.”
Tsumiki is lingering. She needs fucking intel so he can’t disappear again. Where does he go to school and can she transfer there. It’s fucking wizard school? Will they take her even though she’s not a wizard? She cannot emphasize enough that she will study any fucking subject they want so that way she can be close with her brother again she does not care if it’s applicable to her education or life. She can throw things at people itadori tell the man tell him how enthusiastically she will throw things at monsters for their weird fucking wizard school.
Itadori: she hit me in the face with her shoe like five minutes ago
Tsumiki: see???
Megumi keeps trying to forbid her from wizard school but she’s technically the older sister so she has override rights. She will go to wizard school. How does she get wizard school to accept her.
And Gojos just really weird and off and keeps looking at Megumi and saying that he “didn’t know he had a sister.”
He really didn’t know that Megumi had a sister he wanted to stay with.
And then suddenly it’s like a switch is flipped and he’s back to his normal self telling them to leave everything to him, because he’ll make sure tsumiki can come back with them. And uh? Itadori? Weirdly physically capable kid who will apparently eat anything? Is he going to be good getting home after all this?
Itadori: actually if it’s not too much trouble can I go to wizard school too my grandpa sort of died half an hour ago and I don’t have plans for the rest of my life. Tsumikis kind of my best friend and I’d like to make sure she’s all good at wizard school. I’m a really good fighter and I stabbed the last monster so like can I come too because you know. Dead grandpa. No family or future to speak of. Haha.
Gojo:
Megumi:
Tsumiki, softly: dude
There’s more after they make it to jujutsu high but this is already really long so we leave it here
#ask games#jjk#jujutsu kaisen#continuing my streak of becoming obsessed with minor background characters#other highlights include itadori trying to platonically wingman for tsumiki with her brother (because it’s been like a decade and she knows#nothing about him and he knows nothing about her and she’s terrified he won’t like her once they get to know each other again) so that way#itadori can be the one asking the get to know you questions and tsumiki doesn’t have to admit out loud that she and her brother know nothing#about each other only the inherent problem is that her brother is actually unfairly pretty and has a sort of dry wit and is reserved but#when you get to know him he’s such a genuine dude and oh fuck oh no he’s in trouble this is his best friends long lost brother he has to be#violating some kind of code here. Kugisaki stop laughing at him this is a crisis.#gojo basically backed out of teenage fatherhood when he saw Megumi walking around with the divine dogs because it’s one thing to butt heads#with a major clan over an outcast member it’s another to do it for their most sacred technique#he thought that Megumi would be better taken care of than anyone else in the clan as the person with the ten shadows and that he’d probably#be better off than with an emotionally broken seventeen year old who works at least 28 days a month and has no idea how to raise a child#he never realized that Megumi had a sister he wanted to stay with who the Zenin separated him from#he tells himself he would have intervened if he had known because he’s been secretly worried and guilty about not taking in Megumi after all#since Maki showed up and said some worrying things about the clan heir and his standard of living and got the confirmation when he met#tsumiki and realized that he could have kept them together all those years ago and didnt. megumi and tsumiki kind of haunt him with lost#potential because not only could they have grown up a family but they could have grown up his family. megumi doesn’t know why satoru gojo#of all people is being so weirdly helpful and intense about about sponsoring tsumiki and keeping her close to him
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kakashisthickthighs · 10 months
Text
i am thinking about if getou and gojo really did continue talking afterwards and like the tiny intricate details and logistics of their lives.
they part in 2007. they had flip phones.
getou dies in 2016. they had iphones, instagram, snapchat, and dog filters.
when getou first goes rogue, shoko and gojo probably still have his number and are blowing his shit up. he probably has his phone off for the first days of it and turns it back on after. there’s no need to trash it out of a want to stay hidden—he won’t die unless they send an army or gojo himself.
when he turns his cell back on, he’s half-tempted to delete all his photos of jujutsu tech, with shoko, with gojo, and he gets as far as deleting maybe 15 of them in a heavy-breathed rage before convincing himself that maybe he doesn’t need to delete these. these are mementos of the said pinnacle of jujutsu, and they’ll come in handy when there are no non-sorcerers left.
he’s about to put the cellphone away before it rings. it’s satoru. he sighs. he calls once every day. it’s relentless, six or seven calls at minute intervals. getou almost laughs at it—the world’s strongest, desperate.
a month after his disappearance, he calls every night at ten. sometimes the pixels on his cell read 10:04, 10:21, the latest was 10:42. it becomes a ritual, agonizing every night wanting to finally beat gojo at something, to make him lose. but suguru finds himself holding his breath as 10pm wanders by every day, breathing easy only when his phone stops buzzing.
maybe one night he’s yet again alone in his shoebox apartment, assorted belongings littered about, convincing himself this was the best path for him. not jujutsu tech, the horrible missions, the loneliness, the taste. it feels better here, where no one else is happy.
he’s lost in a daze when his phone rings. it’s been three months and satoru won’t let up. every night. he scoffs and flips his cell open just to sneer and make a point, to feel powerful in his own mind, but once the line connects, he’s silent, mouth agape and eyes wide that he actually picked up.
he hears static from the other side, a shift of fabric, a shaky inhale. “suguru, you fucking idiot,” gojo sneers, loud on the other end, “what’d ya pick up by accident?”
getou can’t help but laugh from the bottom of his heart. his abs are burning and tears are falling by the time he contains himself, and memories flood back. selfies, dumb finds, food pics, phone bills crazy all from hours on the phone together. there’s satoru’s voice, and then there’s lofi samsung static-lined satoru’s voice. both sound like home.
“suguru—“
“satoru,” he breathes, and this is what it feels like to talk again. he’s lived in this apartment in silence for the past three months, voices only coming from his saved videos.
“come home, suguru.” they both know it’s impossible.
getou chuckles again into the speaker. he can almost see it, satoru’s spindly form, one leg propped up on a chair, elbow resting on it as he holds the phone in distaste. or maybe he’s completely prone, jolted awake by a voice he hadn’t expected to hear.
“satoru, you’ll be fine,” he chimes, hanging up. he squeezes his eyes shut and swallows a sigh, and just like that, he’s left home again.
three years later the calls have stopped. the iphone 4 comes out, and the world is awash in touch screens, app stores, and missing charging cables. it’s time for an upgrade, and getou powers off his flip phone—his youth—one last time and tucks it gingerly into a shoebox. he starts completely anew with no data to transfer.
gojo meticulously transfers every contact and double checks only one number. it’s the first call he makes on his new phone.
the number you have dialed is not in service—
he hangs up and slows his breathing. he doesn’t delete the number. suguru, the contact reads.
you’ll be fine.
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